Opportunism before principle (1989)

From the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was only in 1918 that Labour officially adopted the word socialism to describe its aim. It is true that prior to that date Keir Hardie, the father of the Labour Party, had stated his aim to be that of working for a socialist society whose character we would not have argued against. But Hardie's views was one amongst many in an organisation primarily concerned with representing trade union interests in parliament. He also mistakenly believed that socialism could be offered up to workers after winning mass support for reform programmes.

So why did this party representing a vast mix of reformers and single-issue campaigners adopt the word socialism in 1918? It was a pragmatic decision to present Labour as a serious contender for power. The Conservatives had Toryism, the Liberals Liberalism, and Labour needed a label, something to wear on their lapel with which to court the newly enfranchised workers—the label was Socialism. As Samuel Beer wrote in Modern British Politics:

Labour saw the real possibility of achieving parliamentary power with the help of the new working class votes. The adoption of socialism as an ideology was functional to this choice of political independence.

Labour Seeks To Govern

The achievement of state power to govern over people has never had any place within socialist thought. The state could never exist within socialist society as, with its agents of coercion, the armed forces, the police and all other representatives of law enforcement, it only exists only to serve and protect the interests of the ruling class. The Socialist Party was formed to urge upon workers the need to understand their position of exploitation under capitalism and to organise to end class society, abolish the state and to replace "government over people" with "the administration of things". This can never be achieved as long as workers continue to leave parliamentary power in the hands of leader.

Wring in 1905 in Socialism and Society Ramsay MacDonald, who at the time as the Secretary of the Labour Party was one of its top leaders, made it quite clear that Labour only ever intended to use workers to gain power and that he considered them incapable of autonomous thought:

It is practically impossible to maintain a pure and simple socialist party . . . in Great Britain. The mass of the people are prepared to accept the new doctrines not as absolute ideas, as the fully fledged socialists do, but as guiding principles in experimental legislation. That is what the rise of the Labour Party means, that is all it need ever mean.

It should not be thought that MacDonald's use of the term socialism bears any resemblance to what socialism really is. He took his cue from the Fabians who envisaged socialism as ownership by the state in a society run by "enlightened intellectuals". These enlightened intellectuals were to be  . . . you've guessed it, themselves.

Share Ownership or Common Ownership?

Labour is now having doubts about whether socialism still is a useful label today to help win power. It is now seeking to win support by emphasising the virtues of the free market which is what its leaders perceive to be the popular bandwagon. At last year's Labour Conference the Sunday Times (2 October 1988) quoted Bryan Gould, architect of Labour's "new realism" as saying:

It would be stupid . . . to be frightened of labels by saying that anything which bears the name 'shares' is not socialist.

Labour have never been frightened of labels, it is all they have ever dealt in. But Gould went on in his cynical abuse of socialist concepts to say that "workers owning shares in the company they work for is a form of common ownership". In support of this idea Labour's Deputy Leader, Hattersley, referred to "the full clause four of our constitution".

Labour has never understood the true meaning of common ownership. Their Clause Four speaks of common ownership of the means of exchange, which is a contradiction in terms. It has been left to us to explain that common ownership is the ownership of all the means of production by society as a whole and that it must mean the disappearance of exchange as there cannot by any exchange of what is commonly owned.

So, with another Labour Conference on the horizon, can we unmask Labour's real intent? All we need do is let them speak for themselves. There are the words of Kinnock, again speaking at last year's conference, that "we will be faced with a market economy and we are going to have to make it work better than the Tories". Socialists have never seen Labour as trying to do anything else, but this sort of talk shook the faith of some of those present. One exasperated delegate declared:

Given that we, ordinary working people, built the bakery in the first place and installed the machinery, we should own the bloody bakery. (Daily Telegraph, 4 October 1988).  

If workers listen to the rhetoric of leaders, who time and again promise a fair and equal society—on condition that you give them power of course—and if workers let these leaders occupy the political arena with their smug assertion that all will be safe in their hands, then the result is inevitable. It is—as this delegate learnt—betrayal.

Tony Dobson 

Mixed Media: 'Nothing But a Man' (2014)

Film Review from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing But a Man (dir. Michael Roemer)

Nothing But a Man, a 'lost' black 1960s American film was recently screened at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank in London. It won the San Giorgio Prize at the 1964 Venice Film Festival then disappeared although it was released in 16mm format and found a black audience when it was shown in churches and schools. It was re-released in the USA in 1993 when the US National Film Registry at the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation as 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'.              

Nothing But a Man was made by white New York liberal Jews, the director and writer was the German Jewish Michael Roemer who had fled the Nazis, and the producer, cinematographer and co-writer Robert M Young. Roemer and Young with the help of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) travelled to the South for three months to research the script for Nothing But a Man.

Nothing But a Man was filmed in the Summer of 1963 on a budget of $230,000 around Atlantic City and Cape May in New Jersey although set in Alabama which was out of the question as a film location. This was the time of the civil rights movement, and Alabama Governor George Wallace’s support for 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever', and the existence of 'Jim Crow Laws' (mandated de jure racial segregation) in the South. Everyone on the film crew was paid $100 per week, the crew and cast took the day off to march on Washington DC with Martin Luther King Jr.

Nothing But a Man tells of the relationship and rather sweet courtship between Duff, a railroad worker and Josie, a schoolteacher and daughter of a preacher against a background of economic, social and institutional racism and deals with the discrimination, lack of jobs for blacks, and poverty in American society. Duff is played by Ivan Dixon later in the TV series Hogan's Heroes, and Josie by jazz singer Abbey Lincoln who sang on Max Roach's We Insist! Freedom Now Suite 1960 civil rights jazz album. The film is notable for its Motown soundtrack of Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas, and Little Stevie Wonder.

Nothing But a Man is a pioneering drama about African-American life, 'one of the most sensitive films about black life ever made in this country' (Washington Post 10 July 1993), and an early portrait of black pride and anger. Duff says ‘They can reach right inside you with their white hands and turn you on and off'. The film was Malcolm X's favourite and was endorsed by the Nation of Islam newspaper Muhammad Speaks. The film is emotionally powerful with its portrait of Duff's embittered alcoholic father who was maimed at work in a sawmill, Duff's attacks on Josie's preacher father as a 'white man's nigger, you been stoopin' for so long you don't know how to stand up. You're only half a man', and the heart aches with lines like 'It's not gonna be easy but everything's gonna be alright' and 'I feel so free inside'.

Nothing But a Man has a naturalistic and neo-realist style that is in stark contrast to the Hollywood liberal middle-America films about African-Americans such as Lilies of the Field, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? It can be compared to the cinéma vérité of Fred Hampton's Chicago Black Panther Party in Medium Cool by Haskell Wexler and the Paul Schrader film Blue Collar about Detroit car workers which starred Yaphet Kotto who was also in Nothing But a Man.

Nothing But a Man is set in the period of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin', but how much did life change for African-Americans in American capitalist society with the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Fair Housing Acts?

In 2010 law professor and civil rights activist Michelle Alexander wrote in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness that there are more African American men in prison than were slaves before the start of the Civil War. 846,000 black men were in prison comprising 40 percent of the total when African Americans comprise 13.6 percent of the U.S. Population. More African American men were disenfranchised due to felony convictions in 2004 than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

The black and white working class need to realise that they create the world's wealth and that their interests are in common irrespective of race and when the united black and white working class recognise this they can solve their problems by abolishing capitalism.

Steve Clayton

SLP history (1991)

Book Review from the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Labor Party 1876-1991. A Short History by Frank Girard and Ben Perry (Livra Books, 422 W. Upsal St, Philadelphia, PA 19119, USA.

In our August issue we referred to the SLP of America as "our political cousins". This was a reference to the common historical origin of us and the SLP in the "impossibilist" (i.e, anti-reform-programme) wing of pre-WWI Social Democracy. It was not meant to suggest that we had some political affiliation with them. In fact, of course, we are opposed to them as we are to all other political parties.

The SLP, for those who don't know, is a party founded in America in 1878 and whose outstanding figure was Daniel De Leon who edited their paper from 1891 till his death in 1914. Until 1976 it used to contest the US presidential elections every four years, polling around 40,000 votes. Its main plank is "socialist industrial unionism" which advocates that, to establish socialism, workers should organise into industrial unions to take and hold the means of production and then to administer future society.

The SLP has a detailed blueprint for future society involving the substitution of what they call "industrial government" for the political state (people are to vote at their places of work rather than where they live as at present) and the substitution of labour-time vouchers for money, and which is seen as being able to exist in just one country. We have seen this as pre-empting the democratic decision of those who will set up and live in socialist society. Clearly there will be democratic control in the workplaces in socialism, but there is no reason why the whole decision-making and administrative processes should be based on industrial constituencies and we have never favoured labour-time vouchers even to deal with any temporary problems of supply that might exist in the very early days of socialism. We also say that socialism must be worldwide, because capitalism already is.

Although they never regarded the Bolshevik coup of 1917 as a socialist revolution nor Russia as socialist, right up until the Russian invasion of Finland in 1939 the SLP did consider Russia to be some sort of "proletarian" regime and even today are reluctant to refer to it during this period as "state capitalism". They took the view that Russia was not ripe for socialism and had first to be industrialised and saw the Bolsheviks as doing this in some "non-capitalist" way (a position similar to that of some Trotskyist groups).

This short history of the SLP by two of its ex-members brings out another difference which is not apparent from a comparison of their policies and analyses and ours: the SLP's undemocratic internal structure. Girard and Perry describe how the National Secretary and the NEC have the power to expel any member and how this has been widely used over the years. This contrasts with the position in the SPGB where a vote of the entire membership is required before anyone can be expelled.

In covering the period after De Leon's death in 1914 this booklet is a useful complement to Stephen Coleman's 1990 biography of Daniel De Leon in the Manchester University Press's "Lives of the Left" series.

Adam Buick

Science versus spoon-benders (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

I didn't much like science at school. It was my brother who took things to bits, not me. Mathematics was the worst, and afterwards an almost lifelong phobia. Physics was almost as bad as Maths. Chemistry was only interesting when something exploded. Biology seemed designed specifically to put me off my lunch. Science for me was just another cross to bear in a Christian school. 

Fortunately we find ways of justifying our little ignorances to ourselves. I accepted the ancient and venerable "two brains" theory of learning, according to which you either have a scientific brain or an artistic brain. There was no point trying to learn science if you didn't have "that sort of brain", and anyway it was better not to have "that sort of brain" because then we wouldn't be us, and goodness but weren't we interesting people! We were all artists in those days, naturally, and everyone knew that scientists had no imagination and no creative talent. Apart from Tom Lehrer, the singing mathematician, that is, but we'd allow them one. We decided that science was clever the way a performing poodle is clever, good at a few tricks but not really genteel company for dinner. And this wasn't just my snobbery. Post-war Britain just couldn't seem to turn out scientists, its very culture was against it. Nobody wanted to do science because it was work as in "manual work" not as in "work of art". Everyone in the sixties wanted to be a beat poet, even the snotty little kids like me. Harold Wilson tried to do something about the huge bias in education towards the Humanities (the very name suggested that scientists were inhuman). Britain was up to its shins in philosophers and therapists, and no-one to mend the roof or rewire the sitting-room. My local LETS scheme is still the same today. But while Wilson talked thrillingly of the "white heat of technology", everyone continued to regard science as a good thing for someone else to learn, and his new science-oriented Polytechnics turned out to be dustbin colleges for those who couldn't get into a real University.

Was god an astronaut?

In my late teens Britain was swept by a “revolutionary” new theory, propounded by a best-selling author, to the effect that God was an astronaut. In book-after-book the theory expanded, multiplied, made ever larger claims and sold ever more copies. Everyone, it seemed, had read these books. Everyone, it seemed was talking about them. Conventional science, astonishingly, was silent.

Like the excellent scientist I was, I ignored the text, looked at the pictures, read the captions and the blurb on the back cover, and concluded that it must all be true. He'd gone to a lot of trouble after all, so he must know what he's talking about. The phrase "don't believe everything you read" came back to me, but really, how was one to tell? Even supposing I read every word properly, how would I know whether it was right or not? Who was I to criticise? You needed to be a scientist to criticise.

Eventually, at last, it had to happen. The scientific community wearily responded. The BBC flagship science programme Horizon finally dealt with Erik von Daniken's theory. In fact it destroyed his case so comprehensively that even I, the eminent believer, had to laugh out loud. I'd been had, big time, and so had everyone else. Maybe I should have been annoyed at having my time wasted, or being made a fool of, but I wasn't. We can forgive any sin if it's entertaining.

It made me think of other times when I'd been conned, or baffled, usually both, by some fantastic claim. Uri Geller, the mind-control and spoon-bender, had me and my friends stroking teaspoons. We read assiduously the Arnall Bloxham tape transcripts of people regressing into past lives, serialised prominently in that most august periodical the Sunday Times, and were astounded when Bloxham admitted he'd cheated. At school we tried using Ouija boards to try to get in a quick communication with the hereafter before Afternoon bell. After much tumbler wrestling we got a name, Bill, and a date, 1780, and we went around in awe for a week. I didn't think of myself as gullible, or even ignorant. After all, the world was an amazing place and anything was possible. I could criticise a poem but not a proposition. School didn't arm me for that, despite the pickled frogs and the fizzing chemicals.

"Scientific Socialists"

By the time I encountered the Socialist Party I had already learned how to criticise society for myself, and I understood the importance of reason, but I was nevertheless startled by the party's description of their “scientific socialism”. I envisaged a whole population in lab coats. A scientific socialist to me was a party member who knew the Periodic Table. But it was explained to me that it was the "method" that was "scientific", not the membership. This meant nothing to me. They weren't saying simply that the case for socialism was a logical one. It was more than that. Any stupid idea can be expressed in logical terms. What was “scientific” was not so much the argument itself but the means by which the argument was first thought out, the habitual mode of thinking of the individual. And the scientific method which socialists follow is both open-minded and sceptical, willing to embrace or drop an idea depending on the evidence, willing to change the theory if the evidence demands it. Carl Sagan described it well:

"Science is generated by and devoted to free enquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge."

Those who criticise our rejection of religious beliefs do not perhaps grasp this "scientific" nature of the case for socialism, that it is rooted in the real world of hard facts and reliable evidence, and so must people be if the world is to see any real progress. But we don't particularly have it in for the God squad, because they're not the only mystery merchants out there spreading fog and confusion wherever they go. There is a plethora of pseudo-sciences to choose from if virgin births and original sin are a bit hard to take and Buddha is uncool. In my area recently there was a spate of UFO sightings, and the local press had a fun-filled week out of it. Judging by the number of sightings, I should have been abducted for experiments long since, with the rest of the town. No aliens have called, however. They probably watched one episode of Eastenders and decided not to bother with homo sapiens.

According to a report in Cultural Trends, in the past five years the market for "new age" and occult books has grown by 75 percent. As Catherine Bennett observed in the Guardian a while ago:

"neither incoherence, nor ignorance, nor overwhelming implausibility is any impediment to publication. These books are not going to face scholarly competition, but sell in a dedicated drivel department, along with feng shui, astrology [etc]" (31 October 1998).

She deliciously strips bare the pretensions of one particularly awful offering from Channel 4, called Quest for A Lost Civilisation. Graham Hancock, the best-selling writer, is firmly in the von Daniken tradition:

"Hancock's principal strategy is to exploit his readers' ignorance, dazzling them with irrelevant sums, flourishing spurious connections . . . He asks big questions, rushing on before you realize he hasn't answered them."

She concludes, correctly, that publishers don't give a damn about truth so long as they sell books, and attacks the scientists who, by remaining "mute with distaste" actually do the von Danikens a big favour. And she is right. Very few scientists seem worried about what the rest of us believe. Undoubtedly, scientists have themselves to blame if nobody understands what they're doing. In increasing desperation, Horizon has devoted no less than three programmes in the past year to unravelling Hancock's nonsense, such is the demand for fake science in a fantasy-filled world. Yet still scientists seem to think they can ignore reality, rather like Archimedes thought he could rudely ignore the Roman sergeant with the drawn sword.

Common sense rules 

But it's not all their fault, and it wouldn't kill us to be a little more scientific in our thinking when considering the world around us. Surprisingly, it's not that difficult, if one observes a few basic rules, most of which are common sense. That these rules can be applied to politics as much as science will be illustrated in the course of description. This list is probably not exhaustive, (10 seems a suspiciously round number, for one thing) and I invite readers to send in their own suggestions.

1. First of all, don't believe a complicated explanation if a simpler one will do. 

This rule, known as Occam's Razor, would really dismiss von Daniken instantly. After all, it is simpler, and fits all the facts, to believe that astronauts did not land on Earth in prehistory than to believe that they did. Lack of hard evidence for UFOs can be, and often is, enthusiastically ascribed to a huge government cover-up, but conversely, and more simply, it could be ascribed to the fact that UFOs don't exist. In politics too, conspiracy theories are seldom the simplest explanation for anything, even if they appeal to some people's penchant for paranoia.

2. A second rule would be: never believe anyone who will profit by lying.

This lets out every politician, I fear, as well as best-selling authors. By the same token, if one applies this rule to the Socialist Party, which has no plans to take power for itself now or in the future, its statements are automatically rendered more reliable than those of Trotskyist groups with a vested interest in being leaders. That doesn't mean we're always right, just that we have no particular reason to lie about it.

3. Exceptions don't prove rules, despite the saying, they break them.

The term "prove" in this expression is related to the Italian "provare" which means "test" or "try out", which explains how this sensible maxim has acquired a modern, nonsensical meaning. As an illustration of this rule, if some societies are known to be peaceful, it destroys the claim that humans are basically aggressive and warlike. If a majority of people are poor in capitalism, it destroys the claim that capitalism is in the common interest or that it is a "good provider".

4. Even if the structure is logical, the basic assumptions may not be.

As an example, capitalism is a supremely logical structure, based on the assumption that resources are limited but wants are unlimited. When one examines this assumption critically there appears no justification for it at all, and the entire structure sinks like a Monty Python castle built on a swamp

5. Beware of the sleight-of-hand known as special pleading, which is essentially a sales tactic.

Emotive arguments are a good example of this, and very common in politics, where it is hard not to be emotional sometimes. I recall a woman defending the Peace Camp at Greenham Common thus: “Something that feels so good just can't be wrong.”

6. Don't be bamboozled or "blinded by science". 

Carl Sagan relates how, when discussing with an Egyptologist the theories of Velikovsky (who had been excitedly compared to Darwin and Einstein by the popular press), he had remarked that the ancient history looked impressive whereas the physics was nonsense, whereupon the Egyptologist responded in surprise that he had thought precisely the reverse. Even scientists can temporarily be taken in. Anything emanating from government experts, especially economists, needs to be treated with caution.

7. An idea is not a valid theory unless a way exists of disproving it (falsification). 

Hence, the argument that God exists is not a valid theory, whereas you can disprove the case for socialism by showing, for example, how material abundance is impossible to achieve.

8. A test result is not valid until and unless it can be recreated. 

One recent sensation was the achievement of "cold fusion", another was the transmission of light at 4.7 times the speed of light. Neither have been successfully repeated. Governments which claim economic success once are certainly just lucky, and are unable to repeat this success later, when conditions have altered.

9. A theory which cannot predict anything is worthless.

If the Socialist Party's analysis was incorrect, its predictions would also be. However, we have a surprisingly good hit rate over the past 100 years.

10. The most obvious (but most often broken) rule is that if the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.

You don't need to be a scientist to know that, but you need to think like a scientist to stick to it.

Will reason win?

Socialists try to apply these rules to society, and expect to have them applied to their own case. Perhaps we are not always as rigorous as we should be. Perhaps you aren't either. So if you think you can disprove all, or part, or a bit of our case, go right ahead. We'll listen. If you find a flaw we'll have to change our ideas, and if, by the same token, we find a flaw in your thinking, you'll have to change yours. That is how the scientific method works. It doesn't mean you won't ever fall for a con, or make a mistake, but it makes it much less likely.

The world is as full of superstition and silly ideas as it was in the Middle Ages, but it is far richer in knowledge. Whether the scientific method prevails in the future is open to question, for it has failed in the past to rescue societies from decline, and the ideology of capitalism is reinforced constantly by a battery of propaganda and mystification that are a perpetual obstacle to clear thinking. The battle is ongoing, and will continue in this new century, and reason will either win or it won't. The last word ought to go to that supremely humanitarian scientist and visionary, the late Carl Sagan:

“Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other's company; we care for one another. We cooperate. Altruism is built into us. We have brilliantly deciphered some of the patterns of Nature. We have sufficient motivation to work together and the ability to figure out how to do it. If we are willing to contemplate nuclear war and the wholesale destruction of our emerging global society, should we not also be willing to contemplate a wholesale restructuring of our societies?”

Paddy Shannon 

Comical revolution (2014)

Book Review from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Revolution Will Be Hilarious. By Adam Krause, New Compass Press, 2013

The cover of Adam Krause's book features the unlikely combination of Lenin and Groucho Marx. Groucho would be uncomfortable with being in such proximity to Lenin whose regime announced 'without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds, let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood'. Groucho observed about capitalism 'the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.'

Krause opens his book with a scene from Woody Allen's film Stardust Memories but the more appropriate film would be Annie Hall where Allen places comedy in the service of the radical left:

'Allison: I'm in the midst of doing my thesis on Political Commitment in Twentieth Century Literature. Alvy: You're New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, socialist summer camps, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, strike-oriented. Allison: That was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype. Alvy: Right, I'm a bigot, I know, but for the left.'

George Carlin and Bill Hicks have used their comedy to question the way we live and posit an alternative to capitalism. Carlin's lines like 'that's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it' and Bill Hicks's statement 'It's not that I disagree with Bush's economic policy or his foreign policy, it's that I believe he was a child of Satan sent here to destroy the planet Earth' contribute to developing class consciousness.

Krause cites the role of the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear as a character that can speak the truth to authority without fear of reprisal. A different Shakespearian reference could be the role of 'working class' characters in Henry IV Part 1 such as Poins, Bardolph, and Peto who 'hang out' with Falstaff and Prince Hal (the future Henry V) in taverns drinking, whoring, and engaging in tomfoolery and even robbery. Here, the class boundaries are blurred in a revelry of youthful rebellion paid homage to in Gus Van Sant's film My Own Private Idaho.

Krause cites Emma Goldman's popular misquote 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution' although it is never clear from Krause's book what this 'revolution' is. Krause does not mention socialism although he refers to William Morris's novel News from Nowhere. Krause's 'three favourite Marxists' Groucho, Harpo and Chico hilariously send-up militarism and nationalism in the film Duck Soup which is also used in Woody Allen's film Hannah and Her Sisters as motivation for a character to carry on with life.

Socialists expect the aftermath of 'revolution' to be as Guy Debord writes in Theses on the Paris Commune: 'the Commune was the biggest festival of the nineteenth century'. Krause concludes that 'the revolution will be hilarious. Seriously' but during his book he forgets EB White's advice 'humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind'.

Steve Clayton

Practical politics. (1920)

From the February 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have often been told that they are not practical, that their ideas are of a visionary character, and that they lack knowledge of political affairs. Let us see how far this stock argument of the "anti" is correct.

In the sixth clause of its Declaration of Principles the Socialist Party states: " . . . the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers . . . " That is to say that Parliament, which passes the laws, the Cabinet, which frames them, the officials at Whitehall and elsewhere who execute them by giving orders to generals and judges, who in turn direct soldiers and policemen, all have one common object, which is to 

PROTECT PROPERTY!

We see this illustrated nearly every day of our lives. Take up any paper and you will find how this or that unfortunate member of the working class has been run in for taking, by "direct action," something which did not "belong" to him. Let any considerable body of workers strike, and immediately troops are despatched to the scene of action. Why? Because strikes mean hunger, which in turn leads to attacks on property. Finally, let any foreign group of capitalists threaten "our" trade, "our" empire, or "our" country, and forthwith the same troops are sent, not by the hundred or thousand, but by the million, to defend that which, to "our" masters, is dearer than our lives, i.e.,

THEIR PROPERTY.

And this property is all the product of the workers' labour. Whether it be acres of land, picks or ploughs, ships or railroads, factories or machines, shops or goods for sale, all are taken from the workers, all are owned and controlled by the master class for the purpose of wringing still more wealth from the sons and daughters of toil.

Is there anything fanciful or far-fetched about this statement? Does it not rather reek of reality at every turn? Let us, then, proceed to examine the following:

"The working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government . . . in order that this machinery . . . may be converted . . . into the agent of emancipation . . . "

This is the Socialist policy in a nutshell.

In the first place the workers are accustomed to organising for defence. Trade unions to-day comprise something like a quarter of the adult population. In fact, the amount of organisation existing is worthy of a better cause. We suggest that a change in tactics from mere defence (varied by surrender on important occasions) to a vigorous attack is necessary. And the proper place to deliver an attack is against the enemy's weakest spot—the ballot box. It is not enough to strike—the bosses can sack you and starve you! It is not WAR to start a little street-corner insurrection, in which only the workers' blood is shed and a capitalist can only get hurt by accident! These, of all policies, are the least practicable. 

But

SEIZE THE POLITICAL MACHINE!

That is the source of the masters' strength. And it is to control that for which they most need your support! It is for that they tell you all kinds of lies, make all kinds of false promises, and employ the most cunning scoundrels the country holds. Don't be deceived by the fact that a vote is simply a piece of paper. So is a bank note or a police summons! But behind the paper is the power! Capitalists are practical men; they don't ask you to vote for fun. They know that when the workers cease to vote for them and send to Parliament, instead, the representatives of a revolutionary class, the game will be up. It will be the turn of the "respectable people" to turn rebel—if they have the guts. The worst they are likely to achieve, however, is to bribe a few fools to do their dirty work for them; but the machinery of government includes the armed forces of the nation. The workers supply the guns and all the equipment of the fighting forces, in addition to the personnel of the rank and file. All that is necessary, therefore, to control those forces is the organisation of the workers themselves

AS A CLASS

for that purpose. Is there anything impossible in that?

This organisation once established can only have one object, i.e., to abolish the monopoly of the wealth taken from the workers by the masters. It will convert into common property the means of production, i.e., land, factories, railways, etc., and thus impose upon everyone the necessity of work and the freedom of all to enjoy the fruits of their common labour. No one will be able to live on rent, interest, or dividends, a life of idleness. None, on the other hand, who are willing to work, will stagnate in the half-starved ranks of the unemployed. The organisation of the workers will proceed to control industry. Again we challenge contradiction when we assert that this is the only practical solution of the workers' problems.

The various parties of the master class—Tories, Unionists, Radicals, etc., have long ago established their privileges, and now spend their time in retaining them. This they do by interesting the workers in every piece of legislation, etc., which they, the masters, from time to time consider necessary. Taxes on imports, taxes on land, taxes on incomes, more efficient State control of this, that or the other; all these measures are dressed up

IN THE GUISE OF REFORMS

for the benefit of the workers in order to gull them into voting their masters into power. In opposition (so called) to these parties stands the alleged Labour Party (or hotch-potch of parties) which differs from them only in the fact that its programme of "reforms" is more "advanced"—that is to say, it is calculated to more thoroughly organise capitalism and deceive the workers. None of the Labour Party's proposals differ in this from the Single Tax and other "progressive" nostrums! Every measure proposed by non-Socialist parties reveals, when closely analysed, some other attempt on the part of some section of the masters to increase or protect their revenue in some way. In no case will it be found that the workers benefit in any way. Parties are the expression of interests. The "practical politician" will be hard put to dispute this. Turn for yourselves to history and see for example how the landed Conservatives struggled against the rising manufacturing Liberals. Where is the party of the workers?

It can only be a party which

FIGHTS THE MASTERS!

It cannt be a party, which, like the "Labour" Party, joined the Coalition of Capital when it saw jobs given away and only left it to get into a position to bargain for more! This sort of thing may be "practical" for job-hunters: it is of no use to revolutionary workers. The Socialist Party, therefore, wages war on all other parties, and calls upon the workers of this country to muster under its banner.

Eric Boden

Not much to argue with here (1996)

Book Review from the August 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War by David W. Petegorsky with a new introduction by Ivan Roots (Alan Sutton £14.99)

Anybody interested either in the revolutionary history of England during the seventeenth century or the origins of socialist ideas will not be properly educated until they have read this book. First published in 1940 by the Left Book Club, it has been hard come across secondhand copies of this key work, so this re-publication is to be welcomed, even if a price of fifteen pounds for it in paperback is not.

Gerrard Winstanley can well be described as England's first articulate socialist. The importance of this book is the detailed attention it pays to the precise nature of Winstanley's ideas and those of other Digger who were pioneer socialists. The ideas are placed within the context of the extremely turbulent intellectual climate of the revolutionary years, during which two elites battled for state power, throwing up all kinds of radical constitutional, religious and economic ideas in the course of their struggle. Whereas the Levellers, who were also radicals for their time, saw the first English revolution as a springboard for the creation of political equality (a case they argued for unsuccessfully in the Putney Debates), the Diggers sought social equality, fusing economic and political objectives as all socialists must.

Winstanley and his Digger comrades clearly stood for a society in which all goods would be held in common, with free access for all to the common store. Winstanley explicitly rejected money, the rule of government and (despite his use of religious metaphors) belief in churches or omnipotent gods. Ivan Roots, in an introduction which adds little to the original book except for some brief information about who Petegorsky was, is right to place Winstanley as a materialist. Indeed, there is not much said by the Diggers which socialists today would want to argue with. The difference is that they were advocating what could them have only been a utopian strategy, which they attempted to implement and were persecuted for so doing, whereas now capitalism is ripe for being replaced by a new system of social organisation. We who seek to bring it about have good reason to remember Winstanley and the Diggers. We have good reason also to admire the remarkable account of Petegorsky who, unlike so many left-wing historians who dwell only upon the more plodding gradualism of the Levellers, recognise the particular significance of the Diggers and provided us with a unique insight into the movement and its revolutionary ideas.

Steve Coleman

Classic Reprint: Education for living? (1985)

A Classic Reprint from the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

"What's this got to do with engineering?" Instead of waiting for an answer, he is staring sullenly out of the window near the back of the classroom. It would be possible to ignore it and carry on with the talk on The Cause of Two World Wars, which you have just started. Not all of them are paying attention yet; but even among those who are, some are smirking at the question. You are conscious of the fact that the employers of this eighteen-year-old apprentice would be pleased to hear him talking like this. They release him for one day a week to attend school; and they begrudge any time which is not spent in learning his trade.

Some of those who are smirking are dressed in leather jackets and bright blue jeans. They couldn't care less whether they are wasting their time or not. At least, school is a skive from work. But his question threatens to side-track the subject of the lesson: and that appeals to them. This youngster, Wilkins, on the other hand, has a conventional haircut and wears sports jacket and flannels. He is bright too, so that any attempt you might make to explain the relevance of the subject, or the importance of their Liberal Studies period in general, will be seized upon and turned into an argument. On balance, you decide that it would be better to keep him silent, and hope that the subject will engage his interest eventually.

While you have been weighing up the pros and cons, there has been a pause of almost five seconds, so that even the youth in the far corner who has been reading the Daily Mirror more or less covertly is now listening for your answer.

"Nothing at all", you say, with a smile that signifies total confidence in what you are doing,

Wilkins snorts contemptuously out at the view.

"If you look at these maps, you can see that Germany did not even become a nation until the end of the last century, whereas Britain and France . . . "

"I mean—what do we want to know about History for?"

"Yeah! That's in the past."

Even a quiet fat lad at the front is muttering something similar, so that you can sense that it is going to be a waste of time while they are in this mood. They are not usually as bad as this. Perhaps it would be better if you let them get it out of their systems. "All right. Let's put the lesson on one side for a minute. You think you should come here just to learn engineering and nothing else, Wilkins, is that it?"

"Well, that's what we're going to be, isn't it?"

"Yeah! What good's this stuff to us? Last week it was art, or something. And we heard all about the stars, and biology and that. How's all that gonna help us to get a good job?"

It would be taking an unfair advantage to press this small, pimply-faced boy to explain what he imagined as a good job. The youth in the corner has gone back to his newspaper; but you can afford to ignore that too for the moment. "I'm well aware that you are going to spend the best part of your lives working—whether you want to or not. But is that all life is—eat, work and sleep? By the time you are forty, and you've got whatever job you're going to get—what then? You've got to have some other interests." There is a dirty laugh from the middle of the room; it is taken up with gusto by the rest. You smile faintly, waiting for them to subside, and then say, "Yes—but even that wears a bit thin over the next twenty years, you know. If you've got no interest in the world around you, no knowledge of what's going on, life's a pretty dreary business. Look at Robinson", you say with mock enthusiasm, pointing to the youth with the newspaper. "He's keeping up with world affairs, you see—reading his newspaper."

Robinson goes red, folds up the paper and says, "I was reading the cartoons", anxious to disclaim any suggestion that he was doing anything intellectual.

"We don't want none of the egg-head stuff. It's a load o' junk", says pimple-face.

"How do you know?"

"I don't wanna know", he says, getting angry. "If that lot at the top go for it, then it's crap as far as I'm concerned."

"What are you trying to make us all", Wilkins sneers, "—good citizens?"

If you weren't a socialist, this one would be a gift. You could talk with all the reformer's enthusiasm about better opportunities for everybody, steady social improvement, increased and enriched leisure for all, and the responsibility of every citizen in forming this brave new world just round the corner.

As it is, you know what Wilkins only feels in his bones, that life in this system of society never works like that, because capitalism needs more restrictions and more repression and more waste the more surely freedom and abundance become possibilities. This is the root cause of Wilkins' sceptical and truculent attitude. He can't see why, but already, at eighteen, he has sensed that there is no way out. Some of the others despise it all, and try to live for kicks, as far as apprentices' wages will let them. He has tried to use his intelligence by putting his faith in the only positive value he can see—work.

"I'm not trying to make you anything, Wilkins. I'm not even trying to make you into an engineer instead of a human being, which is what you seem set on becoming. If you want to be nothing else but an appendage to a machine, that's up to you; but don't try to kid me that it's a full life."

Wilkins is silenced; and the others partly take their cue from him. Instead of attacking now, they ask questions and listen to the answers. But as you go on, showing them bit by bit that the realms of the arts and sciences and world affairs are not simply for the capitalist class (without naming it), a sense of uneasiness grows in inverse proportion to your success. You know that, to them, you represent Authority, one of Them, and that the more reasonable you are, the more they like you and take your judgements on trust, the more you are reconciling them to authority, to the status quo, to the idea that a decent life is possible inside capitalism. What can you do to open up their minds to the influence of knowledge and ideas, without dissipating the sceptical and critical attitude which is their only safeguard against the prevailing climate of hypocrisy and deceit?

"What you say doesn't add up, though, does it?" Wilkins says, putting both hands flat on his desk. "Why do they keep getting steamed up about 'We must export more' and 'We must protect British interests abroad' if that's what caused the last two wars, in the end. If they know that, why do they keep on with it?"

"All right—why do they? It's a good question."

S Stafford

Reprinted from the Socialist Standard

September 1965

The Virtues of Reflection (2000)

Theatre Review from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Candide. National Theatre.

One of the characteristics of turn-of-the-millennium capitalism is that people rarely reflect about life. True a lot of people will wonder about how they are going to survive in the next few weeks and months, whilst most of the rest of us will worry about coping with the stresses and strains of everyday life. But such actions are a million miles away from what I have in mind. I'm thinking about standing back from the ordinary and the commonplace, and trying to look at the world, and the lives that people live, in a larger, more objective way.

I had occasion to think about such matters at the end of Candide, the wonderful musical—music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics Richard Wilbur, book adapted from Voltaire's famous novel, by John Wheeler, in a new version by John Caird—which has been marvellously revived by the National Theatre. As I wandered out of the Olivier Theatre after a second visit, I couldn't but become aware of the favourable audience comment. "That was marvellous," said someone. "Wasn't that wonderful?" said someone else, rhetorically, and when I joined the queue for a drink just about everyone seemed to be saying much the same thing. But no-one was prepared to offer anything more substantial. No-one sought to justify why it had been wonderful or marvellous, or whatever, and when I joined my three companions to drink our cups of tea, the conversation quickly moved to other matters.

Voltaire, were he to be about to witness such things, would probably have been amused, but saddened, by the audience's reaction. By inclination an amateur philosopher, he cast a sardonic eye on the musings of the world's supposed best thinkers. And he would have been no doubt registered, with deep irony, that although by the end of the 20th century the human race had unlocked many of the secrets of Nature, and deployed the resultant knowledge in ways that would barely have been conceivable when he was alive, most people seemed still locked in an almost prehistoric mindset.

Voltaire published Candide in 1759, and like all works of literature it can only properly be understood in the context of ideas of its time. Voltaire was a sceptical, Enlightenment figure, and Candide examines two ideas which were prevalent at the time. One was Optimism, a crude extrapolation based on Leibniz's "Principles of Sufficient Reason". The other the idea of Rousseau that in the state of Nature people are naturally good: a notion which seems to suggest a genetic predisposition to goodness, rather than goodness being learnt.

Leibniz held that since god could have created any kind of universe, the fact that he chose the universe we now inhabit can only mean that since god is good this must be the best possible universe. It follows that, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds", a uniquely optimistic point of view which is elaborated by Dr Pangloss in Candide.

Not that Voltaire was an Optimist. Indeed the terrible earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 which had killed tens of thousands of people, many of them whilst sheltering in the cathedral, had persuaded him that not only was Leibniz's theory incorrect, but that such events challenged belief in the existence of god and any necessary coincidence between god the creator and god the source of goodness. And if "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds", the consequences of all human actions is already determined, and with it the possibility of morality based on choice.

The wild, helter-skelter adventures of Candide, a student of Dr Pangloss, are at the heart of Voltaire's novel. And by the end Candide has learnt that neither goodness nor malevolence are natural or predetermined. At the end Candide migrates to a hospitable location which he describes significantly as "Like Eldorado but without the gold". Voltaire, the humanist, lays before us a tale characterised by war, pillage, arbitrary cruelty, rape, starvation and deprivation. The corrosive impact of religious certainty tied to metaphysical justifications in a class-riven society are examined, and rejected. Rather Voltaire suggests that we attend to the facts of the case, in a spirit of co-operative endeavour, and seek to the best we can for all humanity.

Yet on the evidence of my two visits, contemporary audiences have been so successfully taught by the ideological apparatus of society as not to wonder about the lessons of Voltaire's tale for themselves. Could they, too, be the unwitting victims of thousands of present-day Dr Panglosses? Have they so lost the capacity to reflect that whilst recognising the absurdities of the 18th century beliefs which Voltaire parodied, they might also unwittingly believe that "All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds"? What irony that we can even pose the question.

Michael Gill

Educating the workers? (1999)

From the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

As this journal has always pointed out, world summits and conferences are as notorious for the verbal rubbish arising from them as they are for highlighting the inadequacies of capitalist society and all attempts to reform it.

Remember, if you will, the Food Summit in the 1970s, at which Henry Kissinger announced to the world that global hunger would be eradicated within 10 years! Today the number of humans starving around the world is double the 400 million figure that enraged those delegates of 25 years ago.

Almost 10 years ago, there was another great meeting of the well-intentioned. This one was in Thailand and organised by the World Bank and various UN agencies, and called to debate the issue of education. To cut a long story short, the delegates of the 150 countries represented at this gathering were so appalled at the state of global education that they signed up to a plan to establish universal primary education by the year 2000. A good idea, you may think, but with months to go before that deadline, the world still has 125 million children out of school, 150 million who will drop out of school unable to read and write, with these figures being set against a world adult illiteracy rate of 20 percent, or 875 million adults.

The recent Oxfam report Education now: break the cycle of poverty, which hits at the shortcomings of the latter makes interesting reading, particularly for critics of New Labour, fond of juxtaposing Blair's education policies with children saving Walker's crisp packet tokens to exchange for school books.

The report reveals that there will be no real commitment to universal primary education until the year 2015, and even then there will still be 75 million children out of school with the proportion in sub-Saharan Africa actually higher than now, and that the cost of educating every child now out of school is $8 billion—which is about 4 days' global military spending, or Europe's pet food bill for 4 months.

While OECD countries spend an average of $4,636 per year on each child's education in the developing world the figure is $165. And while Britain, whose annual education bill is some $3,553 per child, is far below the OECD average, it is still 130 times more than is spent on a child in Zambia.

Oxfam is keen to point to the benefits of universal primary education, stating that it not only improves life, but that it increases democracy and enhances a country's growth. They have observed that every year spent in school decreases the risk of child death by 8 percent and that in sub-Saharan Africa the completion of primary education increases a farmer's output by 8 percent.

The report insists that human capital is vital for growth and for integrating the developing world's imported technology where there is little relevant infrastructure. It further points the finger of blame at organisations such as the IMF and World Bank, whose structural adjustment programmes often mean a country has to cut back on education spending as prerequisite to the securing of a loan, and that the concurrent debt burden means a lesser chance of spending on education.

There is a blatant cycle of disadvantage woven into the poverty-education equation, a kind of Catch-22. Poverty means less education which results in further poverty and accompanying poorer education. Oxfam's solution, involving total reform of the Heavily Debted Poorer Countries Initiative through the implementation of a "human development window" that would offer the incentive of debt-relief to governments prepared to invest four-fifths of savings in poverty-reducing initiatives. Oxfam suggest the debt burden could be shored up with more carefully thought out aid programmes. At present only 2 percent of the aid programme provided by the West is put into education. If this figure was raised to 8 percent, then $4 billion could be invested in education, or so the projection runs—incidentally this is also Europe's annual ice cream bill.

Moreover, Oxfam would like to see reform of IMF and World Bank programmes, with the ring-fencing of education funds. The former would be most opposed to Oxfam's suggestions, not least because of its commitment to structural adjustment programmes and because of its reluctance to aid that might be diverted away from school books and into military projects.

There is a lot the average socialist could argue in favour of improved education standards throughout the world, taking on board much of what Oxfam argues. Even less-liberal economists cite rates of return on investment as a chief incentive. But is a more highly educated global working class really in the interests of capitalism, as already suggested? Only if those workers' newly-acquired skills are going to be exploited for profit. The capitalist class won't want to educate workers more than they have to, if this means eating into their profits. It's a fair bet the education issue in the years ahead is as welcome in the US, for instance, as the idea to set up an International Criminal Court, or to vote in favour of access to food being a basic human right at the UN.

This is not simply socialist cynicism taken to the extreme. Capitalism is a filthy and rotten and decrepit social and economic system, whose apologists will stoop to any level to ensure their profits are never threatened. If this means starting a war, destroying crops from above with poison sprays, overthrowing a democratically-elected government, then so be it—there is no shortage of evidence to support this. Likewise with global education. The real winners in the long run from education can only be the working class.

John Bissett

Cooking the Books: The other Adam Smith (2005)

The Cooking the Books Column from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gordon Brown grew up in the Scottish seaside town of Kirkcaldy where his father was a minister in one of the local kirks. Adam Smith was born there in 1723, though his father was a customs official. In February, at Brown’s invitation, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, visited Kirkcaldy to deliver a lecture on Adam Smith.

Smith’s Wealth of Nations was, said Greenspan, “one of the great achievements in human intellectual history”. Smith’s view that capitalists should be allowed by governments to pursue profits unhindered since, “led by an invisible hand”, this resulted in the “public good” being promoted had, he argued, became “the sole remaining effective paradigm for economic organisation” (Times, 7 February).

That’s the side of Smith that is promoted by free-marketeers such as the Adam Smith Institute. But that’s only one side of his theories. Do the free-marketeers – does Greenspan – know that the Wealth of Nations opens with a declaration that useful things are produced by labour: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes”? Or that Smith went on to expound a labour theory of value: “Labour is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities” (Book I, chapter V)?

Smith even went so far as to identify profits as deriving from the value added by workers in the process of production:

“As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials . . . The value which the workmen add to the materials . . . resolves itself . . . into two parts, of which one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced” (Book I, chapter VI).

Smith’s labour theory of value was refined by David Ricardo and used by early critics of capitalism to argue that the capitalists were exploiters who robbed the workers of a part of the product of their labour. Marx took over and further developed this labour theory of value as the basis for his analysis of capitalism which saw the capitalists’ pursuit of profit as seeking to extract a maximum of unpaid labour from the working class.

The “public good” which Smith argued was promoted by letting capitalists pursue profits was an increase in the total amount of wealth in existence. Marx didn’t deny this, but argued that under capitalism this increase was inevitably unevenly divided: more went to capitalists as accumulated capital than to the actual wealth-producers as increased wages (if that). What Smith’s “invisible hand” did, if you like, was to build-up in this way the material basis for a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control. Which is the “sole effective paradigm” for ensuring that the productive forces built up under capitalism can be used for the benefit of all.

Acting Dreddfully (1995)

Film Review from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Judge Dredd (15)

In the America of the twenty-second century most of the land has been laid to waste by radioactivity and the population is caged up in huge Mega-cities. The market economy is decomposing under the impetus of social disintegration and lawlessness, and Mega-city One, along America's eastern seaboard, is in a state of near chaos. Keeping a semblance of control are the Judges who patrol the streets—police, judges and executioners rolled into one. Most feared among these is Judge Dredd. "I am the law" is one of Dredd's phrases, and few of the assorted punks and criminals roaming the streets would argue.

The character of Dredd, along with much of the plot and the scenario of Mega-city One, has been adapted for this Hollywood blockbuster from the comic strip of the same name in 2000AD, probably Britain's most successful sci-fi comic. But it does not transfer to the big screen as well as it might. The influence of Hollywood is stamped all over it, sometimes for good but mostly for bad. The special effects are tremendous, but if you're looking for a credible plot or some of the futuristic social commentary for which 2000AD has been famous, look elsewhere. Violence, mayhem and glorification of the assembled Hollywood "stars" present is what this film is really about, sadly like so many others these days. Sure, 2000AD has always been a violent comic, but there was a bit more to it than just that, and Dredd's strip was no exception.

Unfortunately, little is shown of the social background to Dredd's capers—so vital to the original comic strip. The graffiti wars, the banning of stimulants like sugar and chocolate, the mass unemployment, the shoddy consumerism and meaningless of life don't get a look in. Perhaps they're a bit too near the bone for the folks back in the US to stomach. Instead we are with Sylvester Stallone parading around as a super-hero once more. But even this is rendered laughable by his obvious inability (once again) to speak his lines properly. At some points his facial contortions are such when he is barking out orders as to suggest he is about to break wind in spectacular fashion. But, of course, we know that super-heroes don't do that, do they?

DAP

Armistice reflections (1927)

From the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is Armistice night. I have just come home through London along with a portion of the joyful crowds who are going to celebrate. But what are they celebrating? It cannot be the end of wars since expenditure on armaments still grows, and the "East" and the "West" harries the imaginations of diplomats. Is it a victory they would celebrate? But here a million unemployed, and the miners are marching on London to remind legislators that hunger is abroad in the coalfields.

As I travelled on 'bus and tube my mind wandered over the events of the war and since. The petty squabbles of war "leaders," military, naval, and political, who each tried to keep a grip on the shoddy coat of glory; the nobleness of purpose with which each saddled the other with incapacity. I tried to think of a leader who possessed the military virtues we were taught to revere when we were children—and I failed to think of one. Even the modesty of Lawrence is lost in a crowd of full-dress photographs taken in the waste places of Arabia. A few short years have stripped the idols, one by one, of the gilding a venal Press and a hypocritical platform painted on with such a lavish hand.

The enemies of wartime have again become the joint partners in the plunder of peacetime. German, Austrian, Italian, French, American and English shareholders are indiscriminately mixed in the giant companies and trusts that take from the workman of different lands all that he produces above the pittance that pretends to keep him.

While the crowds passed before the Cenotaph to-day those who had grown wealthier out of war and peace swept in their luxurious cars to the palaces built out of the blood and toil of slaves. Behind all the mockery and cynicism lie the devastated homes, the cheerless hearths, of millions of the poor. The hollow shams at the top and the bitter misery at the bottom; the trickery and the illusions; the romance and the reality.

The tragedies of the war existed not only in the deaths, the mutilations, and the sorrows of the bereaved, but also in what lay behind much of it. Imagine the feelings of those forced, by fear of a white feather or by conscription, who went to battle without enthusiasm but with much dread. They had to endure the manifold hardships without the inner fire of a cause worth while to sustain them. Of such were many who are buried in nameless graves.

Most of us, particularly the more imaginative, when not drunk with enthusiasm or liquor, suffer the nameless dread of mutilations or death. Thousands, nay millions, went through this agony during those terrible years. Of the young and the old of many countries eight and a half millions were killed , twenty-one million wounded. This country alone had a million dead to mourn for and two millions wounded.

But what are the celebrations for? What have the millions died for? Why do many an old couple sit by the fire dreaming sadly of what might have been? Oh, sordid reality! Oh, cold, comfortless truth! Because one group of money bugs wanted more profit than another! For this the flower of youth was trampled and destroyed by the iron heel of war. And even now, while the horror and dread of those days still stirs restlessly in the mind, like the remnants of the spell of a nightmare, the nations of the earth are still hotly pursuing each other in a headlong race to more terrible wars still, though the wiser ones foresee that the end is not worth the price, in wealth and prestige, that will have to be paid.

And those who so easily sent our loved ones to their graves are niggardly in payment to the mutilated and the dependants. They groan of the height of the taxes, and tell fairy tales of the wealth of the pensioners. They would have us believe, as they orate at their many-coursed dinners, that they are really too poor to stand the strain. When unemployment was widespread before the war it was said that the country was too poor to maintain the human scrap heap of industry. Yet, on the war alone, this country was able to throw away wealth to the amount of over six thousand million pounds in four years! And this while millions of the population were entirely withdrawn from productive work.

And to-day those who might ponder over these things and be dangerous to the powers that prey have their emotions diverted into safe channels. They are given a few cenotaphs, a few processions, a turgid mass of hypocritical sentiments. They mourn by cold monuments and return to work sad, but satisfied.

What a civilisation! What a tragedy!

Gilmac.

My road to Socialism (2005)

From the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this strange system that received opinion holds to be democratic, who gets to be represented and to what degree? When I was living in "The People's Republic of South Yorkshire" I wasn't the right age to vote, but given the chance I would have succeeded in backing the winning candidate (the only time in my life), little realizing that although he would have been my representative in Parliament he would have represented me very little.

Later, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, being over 21 at last, I got my chance to put my X and did so feeling that now I could make my mark. What an exhilarating feeling, to be able to make a difference! With hindsight it's easy to see I was wrong in two ways; (1) that a vote for Labour would count for anything in that constituency, and (2) that, even if my choice had been elected, he would actually represent any of my core principles.

But I kept on hoping and putting my X (my democratic responsibility) whilst actively demonstrating how I thought the world should be - in Grosvenor Square (US Embassy) against the Vietnam war, at the South African Embassy against apartheid, in Trafalgar Square with CND - you name it, I was there. All this whilst studying for a degree so I could get a good job. Big trouble with the Principal for trying to recruit a few fellow students at my 'seat of learning' into a students' union. How terrible, we would have had access to cheaper books and tickets to concerts.

The 'good job', teaching, spanning a good number of years, led to more militancy. Must show solidarity, join the union, march for better conditions, withdraw participation in voluntary activities, work to rule. Life seemed to be one long struggle for the things I believed in. Meanwhile, a move to Kent and maybe I could try 'strategic' voting. Could I help to keep a particular candidate out rather than failing consistently to get mine in?

In the job (sorry, profession) a 'restructuring' of the pay scales and an apparent promotion yielded an actual pay freeze. Forget the 1250 hours that had been negotiated and hard won; now the schools started 'opting out' and going 'Grant-Maintained' (even the decent canteen grub took a knock with privatisation). This led to newly qualified teachers being interviewed for posts asked such loaded questions as "How late in the evening are you prepared to stay on the premises?" and being given the kudos of an 'acting-up' post for a year in the wild hope of a salary increase the following year for work already done.

Glad to be out of that rat-race. Lots of very happy and satisfying classroom experiences; as for the rest of it.... Now I'm an 'ex-pat', an 'economic migrant' with no vote and no representation in my adopted country. I am my own representative, wholly responsible to myself and my community. Moreover, I have come to the full realization that I have shed my last skin and can confidently say I know what it feels like to have emerged as a fully-fledged socialist.

Janet Surman