Solidarity, the Market and Marx (1973)

The following is cut and pasted from the Socialism or Your Money Back blog.

In 1972 Solidarity published under the title Workers Councils and the Economics of A Self-Managed Society a long article originally written in 1957 by Cornelius Castoriadis (Paul Cardan).This pamphlet painted a picture of factories and other workplaces being controlled by elected Workers Councils in the context of the continuation of the money-wages-profits system. Thus, in a given factory, the workers would elect a Council which would decide on the level of wages, the price of the product, the amount of profits to be re-invested, etc. This was Solidarity's conception of"socialism"; a view that the struggle today is over "decision-making authority" in society rather than over the ownership and control of the productive resources by which society lives. It was the completely impractical idea of direct workers' control of a capitalist economy.

If Solidarity had also envisaged the end of the whole money-wages-profits system this would have been socialism. But then "workers council" would have been a misnomer since socialism, being a classless society, involves the disappearance of the working class just as much as of the capitalist class. "Democratic councils" would have been a more appropriate term. A society where the means of production belong to everybody and run by democratic councils, that's socialism .

One network of former SPGB members – those based around a journal called Libertarian Communism, who were critical of the Party’s revolutionary strategy and attracted by ‘council communist’ ideas – created an organisation called Social Revolution that became involved in the Solidarity group and merged as Solidarity For Social Revolution. Some years later a number of these activists were also involved in the foundation of the Wildcat council communist group and one of its successors, Subversion.

SOYMB posts an article by an SPGB member's critique of Solidarity and Cardan as a follow up to the previous blog-post .

SOLIDARITY, THE MARKET AND MARX

In 1960 a group of ex-Trotskyists calling themselves 'Socialism Re-affirmed' began to publish a journal called Agitator, changed after a few issues to Solidarity. Solidarity modelled itself on another group of ex-trotskyists in France running a journal Socialisme ou Barbarie. In 1961 Solidarity, Socialisme ou Barbarie and similar groups in Belgium and Italy published a joint manifesto entitled 'Socialism or Barbarism'.

This represented a considerable advance beyond orthodox Trotskyism. The concept of 'socialism' being established by a vanguard party mobilising the masses during an economic crisis was abandoned. Instead, declared the manifesto, it "will only be achieved through the autonomous and self-conscious activity of the working masses". Capitalism was said to have acquired the ability to iron out slumps and booms and to ensure a slow but steady rise in living standards. So, in this view, the basic contradiction of capitalism was no longer economic, but was between order-givers and order-takers. The bureaucrats who managed capitalism were always trying to reduce the workers to cogs, to treat them as objects, but the workers were always resisting this. Out of this struggle, said the manifesto, 'socialist' consciousness would arise in the form of a demand for "workers' management of production".

In fact this was how Solidarity (and the others) defined 'socialism'. In one sense they had gone beyond Trotskyism which saw 'socialism' as the management of production by a 'workers state', i.e. a State controlled by a vanguard party purporting to represent the working class. But in another sense they had not. For 'socialism' was still considered as an era of 'workers power' between capitalism and communism, as a 'transitional society' in which money, wages, prices, etc would continue to exist:

"All revenue derived from the exploitation of labour will be abolished. There will be equality of wages and pensions until it proves feasible to abolish money" (para 27).

This idea of 'equal wages' can be found in Lenin's State and Revolution and in fact Solidarity's concept of 'socialism' is taken from this pamphlet of Lenin's. The main difference being that 'workers power' was defined in terms of the government being controlled by a central assembly of factory-based Workers Councils rather than by a vanguard party.

At one time Solidarity never hesitated to say that by 'workers power' (which is still the subtitle of their journal) they meant "a Workers' Council Government", the phrase used in the 1961 introduction to the 'Socialism or Barbarism' manifesto. In the 1969 introduction, however, this was changed to "the rule of the Workers' Councils", reflecting the anarchist influence which Solidarity had in the meantime come under. Dropping the claim to stand for some kind of government did represent an advance in Solidarity's thinking. 'Workers Power' was now re-defined to mean, in the words of a basic policy statement As We See It issued in 1967, the "democratisation of society down to its very roots". Not that this made its conception of 'socialism' any clearer. When in 1972 this statement was amplified in a pamphlet As We Don't See It readers were referred for more details of Solidarity's idea of 'socialism' to another Solidarity pamphlet issued earlier that year called The Workers Councils.

This pamphlet is an edited translation of an article which originally appeared in issue No.22 of Socialisme ou Barbarie in 1957 under the title "Sur le Contenu du Socialisme" (On the content of Socialism). It is in fact a blue-print for 'workers self-management' of a market economy. Cardan (alias Chaulieu) who wrote the article is clearly in the same tradition of so-called 'market socialism' as Tito, Liberman, Ota Sik, etc, in East Europe, the main difference being that he wants such an economy to be controlled by Workers Councils while they want it controlled by a bureaucratic State (maybe in conjunction with 'workers councils').

Nobody who has read the original article can deny that Cardan was an advocate of so-called 'market socialism'. Solidarity themselves clearly found this embarrassing because they have edited out its more crude manifestations. In their introduction they apologises :

"Some will see the text as a major contribution to the perpetuation of wage slavery - because it still talks of 'wages' and doesn't call for the immediate abolition of 'money' (although clearly defining the radically different meanings these terms will acquire in the early stages of a self-managed society)" (p.4)

and, again, in a footnotes :

"All the preceding talk of ‘wages', 'prices' and 'the market' will, for instance, undoubtedly have startled a certain group of readers. We would ask them momentarily to curb their emotional responses and to try to think . rationally with us on the matter" (p. 36).

But Cardan did not speak only of 'wages', 'prices' and 'the market'. He also spoke of 'profitability' (rentabilité) and 'rate of interest’ ('taux d'intérêt'). This was evidently too much even for Solidarity's curbed emotion since these words nowhere appear in the edited translation.

It is very revealing to give some examples of the way Solidarity has toned down the 'market socialism' aspects of Cardan's original articles :

Original: shops selling to consumers (magasins de vente aux consomateurs) .

Solidarity’s version : stores distributing to consumers (p. 24).

Original: The market for consumer goods (le marché des biens de consommation).

Solidarity’s version : consumer goods (heading p. 35).

Original: This implies the existence of a real market for consumer goods (ce qui implique 1'existence d'un marché réel pour les biens de consommation).

Solidarity’s version: This implies the existence of some mechanism whereby consumer demand can genuinely make itself felt (p.35)

Original: Money, prices, Wages and value

Solidarity’s version: 'money', 'wages', 'value' (heading p. 36)..

In fact Cardan envisaged a market economy in which everybody would be paid in circulating money an equal wage with which to buy goods which would be on sale at a price equal to their value (amount of socially necessary labour embodied in them). And he as the cheek to claim that Marx also held that under Socialism goods would exchange at their values. Before going on to refute this we must draw attention to two other phrases which occur frequently in the original, namely 'gouvernement' and 'parti ouvrier socialiste' (socialist workers party), which are nowhere to be found in Solidarity's version. 'Government' becomes 'Council (of the Central Assembly of Workers Councils)', while 'socialist workers party' becomes 'libertarian socialist organisation' !

But - and this brings us on to a discussion of whether or not Marx thought socialism would be a market economy - the best change is towards the end. The original article says (of 'socialism' as a transitional society between capitalism and communism) :

"In their essence these views absolutely coincide with the ideas of Marx and Lenin on the subject. Marx only considered one kind of transitional society between capitalism and communism, which he called indifferently 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or 'lower stage of communism’ ... Lenin's view, in State and Revolution, were only, in this regard, an explanation and a defence of Marx's view against the reformists of his time" (translated from the French).

In the Solidarity pamphlet this becomes :

"In their essence these views closely co-incide with Marx's ideas on the subject. Marx only considered one kind of transitional society between capitalism and communism, which lie called indifferently 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or lower stage of communism..." (p.57)

No mention of Lenin! Which is unfair to Marx since it is with Lenin's views on this point and not with Marx's that Solidarity's position coincides ('absolutely' or 'closely', take your pick!).

For Marx never spoke of socialism as a 'transitional society' between capitalism and communism (indeed he never spoke of a 'transitional society' at all); and he did not use the phrases 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and 'lower stage of communism' indifferently. What he did do was to speak of a 'political transition period' between capitalism and 'the lower stage of communism' ; it was the words 'socialism' and 'communism' that he used indifferently. 'Socialism' as a transitional society between capitalism and communism (or socialism) characterised by 'workers power' and equal wages, which Solidarity has inherited from its Trotskyist past, was one of Lenin’s distortions of Marxism.

Marx himself always made it clear that socialism/communism, even in its lower , meant the abolition of the market ('commodity production') and, in the Poverty of Philosophy and Value, Price and Profit he specifically singled out the idea of a society of 'equal wages' for derision. For him socialism/communism was a society in which production would be democratically planned by the community (the State as a coercive instrument having disappeared immediately socialism/communism was established) solely arid directly to satisfy their needs. Writing in 1875 Marx had to concede that, in the early stages, consumption would have to be rationed (he suggested this be done by means of labour-time vouchers, but specifically said that these would no more be money than a theatre ticket was), but eventually all goods and services would be free for everybody to take according to need. Today, nearly a hundred years later, this stage could be reached very rapidly once socialism/communism had been established.

Solidarity, in advocating a self-managed market economy, is not advocating socialism at all, but some unrealistic blueprint which would never work - either because if the working class had reached the degree of consciousness needed to establish it then they would establish real socialism instead or, if they hadn't, then it would degenerate into some kind of state capitalism. However, it is significant that, as we have shown, Solidarity should feel guilty about advocating a self-managed market economy rather than a moneyless socialist society. In time maybe they'll have the intellectual honesty to repudiate their previous views on this, as they have done on the concept of a 'workers council government'.

Some members and ex-members of Solidarity have already come to do this and, faced with the dogmatism (or rather Cardan-worship) of the others on this and other issues have left. For instance, a document issued by four ex-Solidarity members in Aberdeen entitled Revolutionary Politics and the Present Situation refers to workers' self -management of production as involving “the abolition of the production of exchange values and the production of use values" (instead) . Another breakaway group The Oppositionist in its October 1972 issue, calls for the abolition of the wages system :

"The Socialist Revolution is a complex and many sided struggle to eliminate the wages system itself. We do not advocate workers control of production whilst striving to retain the market economy of capitalist production. Without the destruction of the market the ramifications of capitalism would grow stronger not weaker . . . Workers cannot control production and retain the wages system” .

Another document, issued in London, entitled a Critique of Cardan calls for the abolition of commodity production and wage labour and describes socialism as "a system where men can have full control over social wealth in common, for use, and so control their own natures” and says "it is also about a completely different kind of production; for the sake of useful consumption of the society as a whole, not for the creation of commodities”.

Unlike Solidarity these groups are coming to adopt real socialism as their aim, though in fact it was Solidarity's rejection of Marxism rather than its 'market socialism' that caused them to split off.

Solidarity has published a number of texts by Cardan critical of Marxian economics. theory of history etc, and would now no longer claim to be Marxist. Actually these weren't criticisms of Marxism but rather of the crude economic determinism that passed for Marxism in the Trotskyist and ex-Trotskyist movement. As such they were Cardan's repudiation of his own past.

At the same time Solidarity tended to move away from the view that the struggle for 'socialism' was primarily industrial and came to see it as a many-sided struggle to change all aspects - education, sex, as well as work - of social life. Apart from the fact that their aim wasn't socialism, this represented an advance on their former views which had tended to idealise the factory worker and to see the experience of factory life as the generator of 'socialist' consciousness. This was mistaken because socialism is not just an economic change; it is a total revolution in social relationships. So that movements outside the factory (such as protests against sex discrimination, war or pollution) have just as much chance, with socialist intervention, of generating socialist consciousness as the factory struggle.

Unfortunately, Solidarity's internal critics have not realised this and, regarding this change of emphasis as part of Solidarity's rejection of Marxism, have reverted to idealising the factory struggle and relegating the other struggles to a secondary status. In fact the Liverpool-based Workers Voice (though in fact not a Solidarity breakaway), with its detailed descriptions of particular factory struggles, reads like Solidarity did ten years ago - including talk of the need for a workers party and for workers to have their own state power. The Aberdeen group’s document quoted earlier states that in its view the main area of struggle remains the factory, with the implication that it is from this struggle rather than that of "movements outside the factory" (such as those against pollution or for sexual liberation) that socialist consciousness will arise. The supporters of the American journal Internationalism (now World Revolution) in this country take a similar view.

Internationalism also reverts to economic determinism in making the rise of socialist consciousness depend on an economic crisis, though they are reasonably clear on what socialism/communism is (even though they do unnecessarily distinguish the two) :

"While under capitalism use values are only the material form of exchange values, and commodities are produced for sale, under socialism production cannot be limited by the requirements of profit, of capital accumulation, but must be determined by the needs of the human community. The consumption of the working class cannot be limited by its wages or the value of its labour power, but will be determined by its needs and technical capacity of the productive apparatus which it sets in motion. The elimination of wage labor, of production based on the law of value, is not a task for some future or higher stage of socialism, but the immediate task and content of the proletarian dictatorship. It is only on this foundation that the movement towards that higher stage of communism of which Marx speaks, the stage characterised by the formulation 'to each according to his needs' can begin" (Internationalism, Political Perspectives, pp.9-10)

But all these groups still have a hazy conception of who the working class are, tending to confine it, or at least to make the most important part of it, the industrial proletariat, whereas in fact it is composed of all who depend for living on selling their ability to work, irrespective of where they work or of work they do.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialised production and class monopoly of the means of production, which manifests itself as working class discontent with its general conditions of life, not just its work experiences under capitalism, A failure to recognise this is the one great weakness of these ex-Solidarity groups. If they did, they would also realise that socialism is not just concerned with emancipating workers as workers (i.e. wealth-producers) but as human beings (i.e. as men and women). It would also give them a clearer conception of socialist society. Socialism aims not to establish "workers power" but the abolition of all classes including the working class. It is thus misleading to speak of socialism as workers ownership and control of production. In socialist society there would simply be people, free and equal men and women forming a classless community. So it would be more accurate to define socialism/communism in terms of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interest of the whole people.

Nevertheless; the emergence of these groups calling for the abolition of wage labour and commodity production once again confirms that capitalism continually throws up socialist ideas.

Adam Buick. April 1973

Editorial: Take A Deep Breath (2002)

Editorial from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

As technology advances it has an impact on many facets of human existence. For example, people now live a lot longer than they did, at least in the 'advanced' capitalist states where access to reasonable levels of medical care is highest. But there are some anomalies, individual trends which seem to buck the prevailing tendency. In healthcare, one of these has been the tremendous rise in cases of asthma over the last century or so.

According to the Independent on Sunday (17 February) the Westminster Hospital in London admitted its first asthmatic child in 1910, whereas today one in seven children have asthma in Britain and over five million people in the UK are currently undergoing treatment for the condition. It kills at least 1,500 people in the UK every year and costs the NHS £850 million on an annual basis.

This situation is far from unique to Britain. The story is similar in other countries, and Australia, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore fare even worse than Britain. This had led to a concerted effort from medical researchers to try and determine the cause of this tremendous rise in the number of cases.

Several theories have been put forward, some of them reinforcing one another. The most common has linked asthma with modern carpeted homes, replete with central heating. This is because this environment is an ideal breeding ground for dust mites, the droppings from which cause allergic reaction (including asthma and rhinitis) in a large proportion of the population. However, a recent study by researchers at the University of Southern California has discovered another culprit, the influence of which had long been suggested but never proven – pollution from cars.

The study compared asthma rates with pollution levels, taking into account exposure amongst children to polluted air. It found that the children most likely to develop asthmatic symptoms were those living in areas of high pollution who played sport at least three times a week (children engaged in physical activity of this type draw air into the lungs typically at a rate seventeen times the usual rate). The chief culprit is low-lying ozone, which is a poisonous form of oxygen formed when sunlight interacts with pollutants created by some factories and, crucially, the internal combustion engine. The study showed that rhesus monkeys exposed to the same levels of pollutants as Los Angeles schoolchildren developed asthmatic symptoms at a similar rate.

Those most likely to develop asthma will typically live in centrally heated and fully carpeted houses, typically with a cat or dog, have parents who smoke (and whose mother smoked during pregnancy) and crucially, will be subject to ozone pollution. Indeed, the study found that pollution was a greater cause of asthma than any of the other contributory factors.

A problem such as this is serious but it will not be reversed overnight as the factors that have gone to bring it about are fundamental to modern processes of production and distribution as they have been built up by industrial capitalism. However, the market economy has little if any incentive to do anything about this situation at all. Some of the most powerful interests in global capitalism are the oil and petroleum companies together with the car manufacturers. As yet (and probably for the foreseeable future) there is not a lot of profit to be made by the production of hydrogen cars or cars that run on electricity. Sales of internal combustion engine vehicles continue to rise across the globe and as long as that continues the owners and controllers of the means of transportation will be happy. So the internal combustion engine will stay, even if it does go a fair way towards disabling the lives of a significant and increasing proportion of the population.

Of course, a sane society would attempt to tackle the problem now, freed from the constraints of profit and the domination of vested interests. But as we live in a far from sane society it is patently not going to happen. Unfortunately, asthma is here to stay for now. And equally as unfortunately, the alternatives to its principal cause will remain as side shows on Tomorrow's World, as apparently bizarre and utopian as the notion that we could organise our affairs without profits and money.

Jeremy Flogs a Dead Horse (2015)

From the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday 9 July, I attended a public meeting in Birkenhead Town Hall where Jeremy Corbyn delivered a speech as part of his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party. The meeting attracted some 250-300 people, male and female, young and old alike. Outside all I had seen were a handful of sellers of The Socialist and leafleters for the People’s Assembly and a Socialist Appeal campaign for ‘Red Labour’. Although I arrived with five minutes to spare, inside the vast majority were already seated. With hindsight, this was the first clue this wasn’t as independent a ‘public meeting’ as first appearances suggested. As the platform warm-up speakers progressed, it became clear that the platform were the rabble-rousers and we, the audience, were the chorus line. Our chorus? Enthusiastic applause on cue. This seemed more like a Labour members’ and trade unionists’ rally and the absence of comedian Mark Steel (who was billed) didn’t seem to matter. 

Without Mark Steel, it was altogether less humorous, with trade unionists and a Labour councillor speaking before Jeremy pushed some left-wing buttons. He was in CND, he was against austerity, he supported the trade union link with Labour and was leading the Stop the War Coalition. His tones were reminiscent of a less inspiring Tony Benn, but actually less contemporary. Corbyn had been in the Campaign for Labour Party democracy since its inception in 1970, it seemingly never occurring to him to stop flogging a dead horse. He also raised issues from his constituency in London, not something of interest to the Birkenhead audience.

His supporters were keen to talk him up, but he himself wasn’t so much, for Labour party leaders and followers this isn’t always effective. His conclusion was interrupted loudly by a lady from the Woodcraft Folk. ‘Span the world with friendship, Jeremy’, something about as inane as children’s programme My Little Pony’s slogan ‘Friendship is Magic’. Questions followed the standing ovation, but the level of support made meaningful discussion pointless, so I left early.

DJW

Stalin the God and Stalin the Gangster (1956)

Illustration by Robert Barltrop.

Editorial from the April 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the Stalin legend is ended, struck down by the hands that built it up. Three years after his death Communist Party leaders of all nationalities who fawned on him and grovelled at his feet in his lifetime, and who slobbered hysterically at his funeral, vie with each other to speak ill of their dead hero. They now make charges that he was cowardly, conceited, ignorant and stupid, cunning and brutal, and his supposedly benevolent guidance of his admiring and loving people nothing but a betrayal of Communist ideals, a bestial reign of terror under which no voice of protest could be heard and no man of integrity was safe against arbitrary execution.

One thing we must, however, not forget. If the faction that wants to belittle Stalin carries the day we may expect the anti-Stalin campaign to be as richly ornamented with new lies as was the old campaign to build up the Stalin myth. History will be re-written again with no more regard for truth.

For the venal and sycophantic second-line leaders it is a cruel dilemma. While the dictator lived the drill was simple,. Since he was all-wise, when he turned they all turned; and fell over each other to praise his every tortuous twist of policy,. But, as has happened throughout history, the dictator's death launches his  immediate circle into a bloody struggle for power, and the minor leaders and their followers suddenly have to make up their own minds which faction to support. So the British Communists are now anxiously disputing about the line they ought to follow,. This is the eventual fate of all organizations built up on leader-worship and Socialists can view their agonies with equanimity. The Communist Party has never been a force for Socialism and its disruption could only be a gain to the working class.

The way they reported the outbreak of the latest campaign against the dead Stalin is characteristic of their behaviour through the years of his rule. They always kept up the fiction that Russia, which they lyingly described as Socialist, was freely open to reporters and visiting delegations to see what they liked and tell what they saw. Yet in the issue of the Daily Worker of 17 March, 1956, when they summarised two agency reports of the string of charges levelled at Stalin by Khrushchev at the conference of the Russian Communist Party, they gave it non-commitally under the heading "Stalin: A Strange Story," and had to admit that "up to the time of going to press, no confirmation had been received of either story from the Daily Worker correspondent in Moscow, or from any Soviet news agency." But the speech was delivered as long ago as 25th February! Why did not the correspondent report it? In the first place it was delivered at a "private session." Why private? Why did the self-styled "democratic" Russian Communist Party exclude from its conference its British Communist brothers? And as other correspondents soon heard about the speech why did not the Daily Worker send on what was by then common talk in Moscow? Again what was the correspondent doing in all the years of Stalin's life never to have reported the truth about his rule?  

From one angle the British Communists' behaviour is more excusable than that of the non-Communists who visited Russia and sent back glowing report that now appear as grossly misleading. For, after all, implicit obedience to the Leader was the Communist Party's one and only article of faith. No such excuse can be made for the other visitors to Russia, including Bernard Shaw. Many of them smothered the truth for other reasons, above all out of ignorance: not understanding Socialism they needed no persuading that the monstrous State Capitalism of Russia was its opposite, Socialism.

Of course the open defenders of Capitalism will rejoice at the demolition of the Stalin legend and will use it to besmirch Socialism, but Socialists will not be dismayed. This is not a new obstacle to Socialist propaganda but one that Socialists have had to deal with throughout the years of pretence about Russia under the Communists. The harm to the Socialist movement was done at the beginning when Communists first put over the lie that the Russian regime is Socialism. And though the Labour Party will also now use the issue to discredit the Communist Party let it not be forgotten that many of the leaders of the Labour Party in the period since the Communist dictatorship was set up have also given their support to the basic falsehood of Socialism in Russia.

From now on it will become more and more obvious how right the S.P.G.B. was to see in the Communist seizure of power, not the birth of Socialism but the unfettering of the development of Capitalism in Russia. This was true when Stalin was alive and honoured and is still true now that he is dead and dishonoured. 

My Election Contest With Jeremy Corbyn (2015)

From the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our candidate who stood against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North at the general election looks at his politics.

After seeing off the challenge of the Socialist Party at the general election, Jeremy Corbyn clearly feels himself invincible, taking on all -comers and challenging for the leadership of the Labour Party. To some he is the left-wing rejuvenator of true Labour values; for others, he is the lunatic left and ultimate Islington socialist.

Often at hustings in previous elections, I had found myself clearly more radical than the cautious Labour candidate, as they tried to control expectations, and put forward achievable demands. Against Jeremy Corbyn (along with a fairly radical Green candidate, and a Tory smart enough to talk to the needs of the constituency), this wasn’t the case. It would often depend on who got their turn in first, to put a radical anti-capitalist analysis of the problems of health care, housing, mental health or education.

One event illustrates this neatly. We were asked for a song that epitomised our campaign. After deciding that my own preference, Slayer’s ‘War Ensemble’, wouldn’t quite cover it, I fell back on what I knew would be most Socialist Party member’s preference: John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. As it happened, I was asked before Corbyn was, and he would have chosen the same song.

Throughout the campaign, people asked me why we were standing against Jeremy Corbyn, since ‘he is a socialist.’ I wrote a letter to the local press, pointing out that whatever he stood for, he would still a member of a party that explicitly supports capitalism. The last sentence, that a vote for Corbyn was a vote for poverty and unemployment was mysteriously excised by the paper (surely not for reasons of space). I noted several times that despite his opposition to nuclear weapons, and the fact that he would vote against it, a vote for him would (in effect) be a vote for a Labour Prime Minister committed to replacing Trident.

He clearly takes some pride in his rebellious voting record. Normally, as befits a comfortable incumbent who is certain to win, he was able to shrug off my barbs and jibes (indeed, he affably accepted that our campaign was happening and never himself asked why we were standing against him). When, however, I mentioned our Party’s democratic policy of binding mandates for delegates, he took umbrage at the idea of MPs voting as instructed. The fact that his party is not itself democratically organised does at least excuse his position.

He is certainly a passionate advocate of the needs of the poor: throughout the campaign he would come back to the notion that children should have warm dry beds to sleep in; he raised the issue of the horrific drowning of economic migrants in the Mediterranean (instead of merely focusing on local bread and butter issues); he linked mental health issues of poverty and exploitation. It was clear he knew his patch well, and, again, gazumped me by rattling off the same facts about Islington that I’d spent my time researching and learning. The problem, though, is not his analysis of the problems of capitalism, but his approach to trying to resolve them.

An example: at one hustings a very local matter came up. It was a detailed and specific question about the renovation of a council estate in Islington, and the apparent withdrawal of councillors from liaison with the tenants and their proposed designs. I hadn’t heard of the matter, even in the local press, and didn’t know the facts. My cold reading of the matter was that it was probably down to public administration law, and the nature of state property as private property of the council. Corbyn, who mercifully answered before me on this one, confirmed as much, noting that the tenants’ interests had to be balanced against the overall needs of Islington’s property estate.

When it comes down to it, he is better described as a statist, rather than a socialist (in our terms). He believes in state action: laws to reduce knife crime; public ownership of the NHS rather than private ownership; controls on rents and security of tenancy; expansion of council housing, etc.. He confirmed as much after the election, describing the Miliband manifesto as ‘basically good’. Indeed, a look at his Labour leadership campaign manifesto shows that he is far from being the frothing radical the right-wing press love to depict him as. In his response to Osborne’s July budget, he wrote: ‘I am calling for a people's quantitative easing – and asking my fellow candidates to join me in that call… The Bank of England must be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects.’ Put another way: his leadership would be just Harold Wilson warmed up.

The real source of his radical image is his persistent stance on foreign policy. First, backing dialogue with Sinn Fein back in the 1980’s, and nowadays being at the forefront of campaigns for the Palestinians. Indeed, one clear point of attack from some within the Labour Party has been the meeting he addressed where he welcomes ‘our friends’ from Hamas and Hezbollah. When questioned about that on Channel Four news, his response was to aggressively pushback, and try and get the issue back to resolving the Israel Palestine conflict. There’s no doubt that he is a passionate advocate for peace, but also, clearly, a practical politician willing to work with the existing ruling groups, but he is clearly in hock to the dismal ideology of nationalism and national liberation.

The right wing press has gone mad over him. Some Tories, taking advantage of the Labour Party’s new open primary system of electing a leader, where anyone can pay three pounds to become a ‘Labour supporter’ (and sign a declaration that they are not a supporter of any other party) and get to vote, gleefully announced that they would join up and vote for Corbyn, because he will take the Labour Party into the wilderness for decades to come. The reality, perception aside, is that Corbyn is simply a traditional Labour MP, who puts forward the case for state intervention in a capitalist economy. The only thing he does differently, is that he believes in putting the case openly, instead of pitching to a marketing strategy in order to win power to make reforms on the quiet.

He is a decent, intelligent and committed politician, but he wouldn’t have survived in politics so long without a certain amount of steel. If he surprises everyone by winning the leadership, he could surprise the gloating smooth-faced Tory mockers by actually winning a general election. The biggest, surprise, though, would be just what a staid, unradical government it would be in reality. There would be noise, but the detail is clear, he would have to work within the possibilities of capitalism and its overall profitability. We’ve seen it before in the 1960s.

If he does triumph in the leadership election it will be because the process of installing increasingly sophisticated party and electorate management policies by the Labour leadership have run out of steam, and the desires of workers (however misinformed and locked into the logic of markets) will have forced their way into the halls of power. The media and party managers cannot paper over the lived experience of millions in this country who feel they have no voice nor control.

If he does become Prime Minister, I’ll be telling people it’s all my fault, until then, I’ll continue doing my best to stop him.

Bill Martin

A Movement for Real Change? (2004)

From the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The anti-globalisation movement is probably the most widely-supported grassroots campaign in the world today. It is not just a matter of thousands attending demonstrations in cities such as Seattle and Genoa, to protest against increased commercialisation and capitalist clubs like the World Trade Organisation, only to be met with the vicious attacks of riot police. Nor is it just the meetings of the World Social Forum, held for instance in Porto Alegre and Mumbai, where people have come together to discuss what is wrong with the world and how to change it. Rather is it an amorphous grouping which includes movements for land reform in Latin America, independence for West Papua, opposition to the spread of McDonalds and Starbucks, and much more. It includes many who reject the concentration of wealth and power which currently exists, some who want fairly mild reforms of the present world system, and others who see themselves as advocating root and branch change.

   

As the above suggests, it is a movement that is hard to pin down and impossible to characterise in a few words pin down and impossible to characterise in a few words. A common criticism that is made, however, is that it is clearer what it opposes than what it stands for. Expressions such as ‘anti-globalisation’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ are all very well, but they clearly prompt the question: pro-what? A recent attempt to confront this issue head-on is Paul Kingsnorth’s book One No, Many Yeses (published by the Free Press). Kingsnorth spent nine months travelling (to South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, West Papua, United States, Italy), participating in protests and talking to others involved in them, trying to find out the reality of the anti-globalisation movement.

   

His report on his visit to South Africa will be a revelation to any who thought that the end of apartheid would automatically mean a much better deal for black South Africans. Instead, under the African National Congress government, electricity cut-offs, rent hikes and evictions have all increased, and the poor have been getting poorer. Since 1996, the ANC has adopted a ‘neo-liberal’ economic policy, involving large-scale privatisation and opening of the doors to the effects of globalisation.  Kingsnorth’s conclusion is that ‘political freedom without economic freedom is meaningless’. It is certainly true that just having the vote and an end to racist laws do not make people free, even if ‘meaningless’ is an overstatement.

   

The book’s title refers to the idea that there is no single answer to the problems confronting people: ‘no one system can integrate the needs of all the different people in the world, who all want different kinds of things.’ So a landless person in Brazil wants land, an opponent of corporate power in the US may want to stop the building of yet another Wal-Mart superstore, a West Papuan wants rid of the Indonesian occupation, a Zapatista in Mexico wants power to be devolved as far as possible to ground level. These demands are not incompatible as long as they apply in different places.

   

As for the view that the anti-globalisation movement is essentially negative, Kingsnorth relates the contribution of Lori Wallach at the 2002 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Wallach, who has been active in exposing the WTO, claims that they are not an ‘anti’-movement, unlike their opponents:

“We’re for democracy, for diversity, for equity, for environmental health. They’re holding on to a failed status quo; they’re the antis. They are anti-democracy and anti-people. We must go forward as a movement for global justice.”

Yet even this is extraordinarily vague as to what being for democracy and equity and so on really involves, what the concrete aims are and how anyone might organise to achieve them.

   

The Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico are often viewed as a model of what can be achieved. While they are definitely a departure from the corruption and toadying of establishment Mexican politics, they do not offer a solution that people throughout the world should look to since their aims remain set within a framework of wage labour and government. The forces of globalisation will undermine any efforts to improve things at a national rather than a world level.

   

In his final chapter, Kingsnorth reflects on the movement he has been investigating, ‘a movement of people who feel cut off’. It is a revolution that is already taking place, he says, one that stands for redistribution and autonomy, one that rejects any model consisting of leaders and followers. Essentially, it is a revolution about power, concerned to wrest it from elites and decentralise it, not hand it over to new rulers. One aspect of this is a very encouraging opposition to leadership, a welcome scepticism towards the ‘old left’ in general and the SWP in particular.

   

The principles that Kingsnorth puts forward include: genuine democracy, as opposed to the dictatorship of markets or governments; cultural etc. diversity, as opposed to the bland forced universality of capitalism; decentralisation of decision-making, rather than its concentration; self-determination and autonomy, not passive consumption; access to common land and resources, not private control. This is promising as an initial list; but then come his proposals (not ‘half-measures’, he claims) for how to bring all this about. Abolish the WTO and IMF; constrain the global financial system; restrict the behaviour of corporations; democratise the United Nations; stop the private monopolisation of public resources such as land and water; start a global conversation about where we want the world to go. It is a time, he says, to be bold, to call for everything we want rather than gather crumbs from the table.

   

Unfortunately, like the movement he chronicles, he is nowhere near bold or imaginative enough. His thinking is stuck very much within the blinkers of capitalism, since plainly in his vision there will still be companies (which means private ownership of the means of production, and production for profit), banks, shares, countries and all the other paraphernalia of property society. Applying some of Kingsnorth’s ideas more consistently, however, would lead to more radical conclusions. Re-think the commons, he says: ‘Everything which provides a common good for people as a whole, should be bound in by strict rules guaranteeing public access and preventing private incursion.’

   

Let’s apply this to all the means of production: let them all be owned in common and used for the good of people by means of production for use. There will be no need for rules to guarantee this in a socialist society based on cooperation and democracy, where decisions are made at the most appropriate level. This is not the kind of ‘one size fits all’ solution that the anti-globalisation movement objects to, since socialism need not be exactly the same everywhere and at all times, though plainly its basic principles will not vary. And when it comes to it, all the various demands made by the movement that Kingsnorth discusses result from a single cause – the existence and spread of global capitalism – so a single solution is to be expected. That solution is socialism, the single ‘yes’ that counts.

Paul Bennett

Economics (1980)

Book Review from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Economics, Politics and the Age of Inflation, by Paul Mattick, Merlin Press. £2.40

It is a great pity that Mattick's style of writing is so long-winded and convoluted since he has a thorough knowledge of Marxist economics and is one of the few, along with us, to define socialism as a classless, moneyless, wageless, stateless society.

This book is a collection of six articles written between 1973 and 1978. The first three repeat the arguments of his book Marx and Keynes. Since this has already been reviewed by us (Western Socialist, No. 2 1972) there is no need to go over this ground again here, except to criticise Mattick's vague use of the word inflation. Sometimes he uses it to mean over-issuing money, sometimes to mean rising prices and sometimes even to mean the reasons which, in his opinion, have led governments to pursue inflationary money and price policies.

This, combined with his style, makes the first three articles difficult going. The next two on state capitalism are excellent, bringing out well the differences between state capitalism and socialism:

Under state-monopoly capitalism, as under capitalism in any other form, the task of the proletariat remains one and the same, namely, the abolition of capitalist relations through the elimination of wage labour in a classless society (pp. 89-90)
But according to socialist theory, the state is an instrument of class rule, and therefore in a classless socialist society it should become superfluous. Those central authorities still necessary would perform only technical and organisation, not state, functions and would remain dependent on the decisions of the producers (p. 98).

Mattick also denies that the Russian revolution was a socialist revolution and proclaims that "to abolish capitalism, the first task is to make Bolshevism a thing of the past once and for all" (p. 113). The final article is an interesting analysis of the depression in America that followed the 1929 Stock Exchange Crash.

Adam Buick

Marx on Colonialism (1970)

Book Review from the September 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, by Shlomo Avineri. Doubleday, New York. 19s.

In recent years there has been a steady flow of English language re-issues of and commentaries on the works of Marx and Engels. This new work, edited by Shlomo Avineri, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, covers a range not attempted before in a single volume. About 400 pages consist of articles by Marx (including some written by Engels at Marx's request) on China, India, the Middle East and North Africa, preceded by excerpts from The Poverty of Philosophy, the Communist Manifesto, The Critique of Political Economy, and Capital, and followed by some relevant letters written by Marx and Engels.

Some idea of the wide scope of the articles is indicated by the fact that it takes in the Chinese Opium wars, the Crimean War, Turkey, British rule in India, the Anglo-Persian war of 1857, the Indian Mutiny, French and Spanish colonialism in North Africa, the British intervention in Mexico. (Part only of this range was covered in Marx's Eastern Question, edited by Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling which has just been republished by Frank Cass at £9.90). Most of the articles in this new book were originally published as despatches to the New York Daily Tribune between 1853 and 1862.

The articles were well-informed and hard-hitting and the readers of the New York paper will often have gained a better insight into what was going on than would readers of the English Press or English history books.

Here is the opening paragraph of an article published on March 10, 1862:

The Blue Book on the intervention in Mexico, just published, contains the most damning exposure of modern English diplomacy with its hypocritical cant, ferocity against the weak, crawling before the strong, and utter disregard of international law. I must reserve for another letter the task of forwarding, by a minute examination of the despatches exchanged between Downing Street and the British representatives of Mexico, the irrefragable proof that the present imbroglio is of English origin, that England took the initiative in bringing about the intervention, and did so on pretexts too flimsy and self-contradictory to even veil the real but unavowed motives of her proceedings. The infamy of the means employed in starting the intervention is only surpassed by the anile imbecility with which the British government affect to be surprised at and slink out of the execution of the nefarious scheme planned by themselves.

Marx dealt in several articles with the wars fought to force the Chinese to admit the massive importation of opium, to the profit of respectable English merchants. Marx quoted from an English writer about the harm done to the Chinese.

Why, the slave trade was merciful compared with the opium trade. We did not destroy the bodies of the Africans for it was our immediate interest to keep them alive; we did not debase their natures, corrupt their minds, nor destroy their souls. But the opium seller slays the body after he has corrupted, degraded and annihilated the moral being of the unhappy sinners . . . 

If you turn to England in the Nineteenth Century a popular history book by C. W. Oman, Oxford Professor of History, published in 1913, you will find nothing about the opium trade. Instead Oman tells us:

The second struggle in which we became involved was a quarrel with China in 1856. The Governor of Canton acting with the usual stupid arrogance and obstinacy of Chinese officials, had seized a vessel flying the English flag, and refused to apologise for his act. This led to an expedition against Canton and ultimately to open war.

Much has been written of the building of railways and irrigation works in India under British rule, but Marx pointed out that this was a later development only after great harm had been done by the British overlords.

An Oriental government never had more than three departments: finance (plunder at home), war (plunder at home and abroad), and public works (provision for reproduction). The British government in India has administered Nos. 1 and 2 in a rather philistine spirit and dropped No. 3 entirely, so that Indian agriculture is being ruined.
The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, transitory interest in the progress of India. The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it. But now the tables are turned. The millocracy have discovered that the transformation of India into a reproductive country has become of vital importance to them, and that, to that end it is necessary above all, to gift her with the means of irrigation and of internal communication.

Shlomo Avineri's introduction to the book discusses the problem, of which Marx was aware, that "stagnant Asia" did not fit into his European-based conception of evolution through feudalism and capitalism to Socialism: hence Marx's concentration on the impact of European capitalism on Asian countries rather than on the possibility of their own self-development. However, Avineri does not face up to the fact that capitalism is now established not only in japan and India but, in its State capitalist variant, in Russia; with China following the Russian road.

He discusses Marx's view that the total income received by British capitalists from British rule in India was less then than the cost to the British government of the Indian administration, so that in effect colonial rule was no more than an indirect way of subsidising a section of the British propertied class at the expense of the rest. He supports Marx's view on this as against Lenin's.

Edgar Hardcastle

Russia's Tolpuddle Martyrs (1978)

From the May 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Guardian of March 3 devoted a lot of space to a report about some stirrings among would-be Russian trade-unionists and to a leading article and a letter on the same subject. Obviously the paper considers the matter to be of some importance and—who knows?—for a change they may have got something right.

The cause of all this was that there is now emerging a new kind of dissident, namely ordinary workers demanding genuine trade-unions. The majority of dissidents up to now, it seems, have been 'intellectuals' of the Solzhenitsyn type demanding freedom to write and speak what they wish, this being of course a rather more nebulous aspect of democracy than the freedom to organise trade-unions with the power to strike for better conditions. The new tendency is certainly to be welcomed by socialists, even though apparently only a minute proportion of the Russian working class is at present involved. Nobody can deny the heroism of the dissidents who have taken on the might of possibly the most oppressive dictatorship in history and who, in many cases, have suffered grievously in the process.

Gangsters
In the early days of British capitalism, membership of trade-unions could be dangerous and heroic workers, like the Tolpuddle martyrs, suffered the British equivalent of banishment to Siberia, namely transportation to Australia. In 1978, however, more refined punishments are available to the ruling class and the heading of an article by Simon Hoggart—Insane to Complain—shows what happens to Russian workers who, sixty years after the fall of the Tsarist tyranny, are brave enough to complain about appalling conditions of work, including such "delights" as outrageously long periods of compulsory overtime and being forced to work in coal mines with a horrendous record of fatal accidents. The dictatorship over the proletariat now finds murderous psychiatrists to rule that workers who want to combine in order to fight against such conditions are, by definition, insane. And the treatment appropriate to such "insanity" is to be confined to prison hospitals, there to be forcibly treated with unending doses of mind-shattering drugs until the offenders change their minds about the condition of the proletariat in Leninist Russia. The whole thing is, of course, like some nightmare science-fiction, and it is clear that the gangsters, who have the nerve to call themselves socialists and communists, have decided not to wait till 1984 to bring about their Orwellian society.

The leading article in the same issue of The Guardian is headed "Russia's Cruel Union Farce" and rightly stresses the fact that the International Labour Organisation have actually always recognised the so-called trade-unions run by the Russian state as being of the same calibre as the trade-unions in countries like Britain. (It is true that trade-unionists here do not sufficiently avail themselves of their power and leave matters far too much to so-called leaders, but that of course is another subject.)

The ILO is a body under the auspices of the United Nations which has withheld recognition from state controlled trade-unions as in Franco Spain or Chile, but with the normal display of double standards which has been part of the scene for many years now, the same criteria have not been applied to Russia. Indeed, it may even be that there are some bemused people who imagine that somehow Russian workers are different from their counterparts in England, and do not have to resist exploitation. These are the same kind of people (and liberal papers like the Guardian fall neatly into this camp) who argue that African workers do not need the same kind of democracy as their European brothers. However, it is not likely that anyone would seek to show Russian workers are somehow different in kind from their brothers in the neighbouring workers' paradise, Poland. But some of the news that has come out of that country, over the last decade or so, has thrown a lurid light on the position of the working class in that ludicrously named People's Democracy.

Intolerable act
Some years ago, the then Bolshevik boss of Poland, Gomulka, decided on a dramatic rise in the prices of foodstuffs without any comparable rise in the workers' wages. This intolerable act resulted in serious riots, particularly among the dockers in Poland's Baltic ports, like Danzig (Gdansk). The tyrannical Polish "communist" party was quick to reply. It sent in the tanks and hundreds of dockers were killed. It is worth noting at this point that this same Gomulka was not a hardliner by reputation, but on the contrary was the leader who had come to power by defying Russia in 1956, showing that if you have a situation consisting of a dictatorship over the proletariat in any country, then repression is the order of the day, no matter who is in charge. Gomulka was superseded as a result of these events by the present boss Giereck, who had learned so little from them that only a year or two age he tried the same trick which resulted in, amongst other things, the workers of Warsaw tearing up the railway lines and those of the industrial town of Radom showing their loyalty to their communist government by burning down party headquarters. Unfortunately it is quite obvious that a lot more suffering of this nature in Russia, Poland, China (not to speak of Chile etc., of course) will be needed before the workers in these countries can at least get some semblance of trade unionism. And there is precious little that socialists in places like Britain can do, other than admire the necessary heroism of the oppressed workers in these other countries.

L. E. Weidberg

Those Aliens! (1907)

A Short Story from the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

WILL: (to George, who is discovered reading the Daily Distress): Hello! looking for a loser?

GEORGE: No. I'm reading about those confounded aliens. Those foreign bakers are allowed to come over here and they immediately start agitations and strikes as though the country belonged to them. Taking the bread out of our mouths, I call it.

WILL: Why, you're a funny chap. You grumble if they work cheaply, and you grumble of they try to better their lot. I suppose the fact is you hate them, and they could do nothing to please you.

GEORGE: Who can help hating the beggars when they take our jobs away from us. Why don't they go back to their own country?

WILL: Look here, George, the foreign workman has no more a country of his own than you have: his native land, like yours, is the property of a master class and the worker has not even burial space of his own.

GEORGE: That's an old tale.

WILL: But can you deny its truth?

(George does not answer)

WILL: Do you know that the number of English who are abroad is much greater than the number of foreigners in England; so would you not be much worse off if all the English came back to compete with you in place of the foreigner? Your policy for every man to be compelled to remain in his native land is suicidal on that score alone.

(George scratches his head).

WILL: And are you aware that in history the unmixed races, those people who are cut off from the world as you would have us to be, remain primitive or become degenerate; while the mixed races, those roaming wide areas, are vigorous and progressive?

GEORGE: But why is it, then, that there are so many unemployed and pauperised in England of the alien is not the cause?

WILL: My dear fellow, they've got unemployed and paupers in every capitalist country: and they exist, not because of aliens, but because of capitalism.

GEORGE: I don't see that.

WILL: But you ought to. Let me make it plain. In the first place each western nation is divided broadly into two great groups or classes. One group owns the land, railways, mines, factories, machinery and buildings - in fact this class own all the means for producing wealth. The other group or class, on the contrary, do not own property, all they possess is their power to work which they must sell to the owners of the means of production, or else starve. The propertied, ruling section we call the capitalist class: the propertyless, enslaved section we call the working class. Is that clear?

GEORGE: Oh, yes. I know which is my lot!

WILL: Good! Now this capitalist class want to get as much labour as they can out of the workers with as little expenditure of wages as possible. Hence a conflict of interests. Hence the the capitalist class will employ Chinamen or even gorillas if they are cheaper and can work as well as their own countrymen. Hence the propertied class are ever seeking and introducing new inventions, machines and methods by means of which more can be produced with less spent in wages. You can now see, George, that the master class, being able to supply the markets and get their profits with the aid of proportionally fewer employees, cut down their wages bill and create the unemployed. Hardly a day passes without some new invention or process displacing some of the wage-earners. It is not the alien that causes the unemployed, but it is the ownership of the means of production by a class who use every improvement in them against the workers. The more wealth can be produced today, the fewer workers do the ruling class need to employ. The wealthier the country under capitalism the poorer and more miserable are the workers in proportion. Capitalism, by making the workers disinherited and outcast in Society, is the cause of unemployment and pauperism, whilst the despised alien is in reality simply a fellow sufferer and a brother.

GEORGE: But how would your Socialism alter that?

WILL: Socialism would alter it by making the working class the whole nation; by using the working class capture of the political power to turn all the means of production into the collective, democratically controlled, property of the people. Improvements in production, new inventions, or an increase in the number of workers would then, instead of, as now, throwing numbers of the working class out of work to starve, increase the wealth and decrease the toil of all. The workers will have come into their own and be no longer outcasts in the world their labour has created.

GEORGE: I see. A co-operative commonwealth. That certainly is worth working for.

WILL: It is, indeed, the only thing worth striving for. and I hope you'll join us: always remembering, though, that the foreign worker is really our brother, for our interests are the same, and our enemy is the same. We have not to fight one another, but to aid each other in conquering the common enemy, the capitalist class of all countries. With the ruling class, patriotism is the mask of self-interest: with the working class it is the brand of utter ignorance. Let us be international.

F. C. Watts 

Shop talk (1984)

A Short Story from the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the town of Inverness a talking checkout machine was recently introduced in a blaze of glory by Your Caring, Sharing Co-op, which should be more accurately described as Their Profit Making Co-op. Computer technology is zooming ahead at such a fantastic pace that it is difficult to keep abreast of all the improvements. Clive Sinclair, the current whiz-kid of the computer market, has predicted that new robots will soon be on the go performing all sorts of mental acrobatics.

After the recent case of the supermarket check-out girl who was fired for intolerably bad temper towards the customers on Monday mornings, the logical desire for any supermarket owner is a machine which replaces workers (and therefore saves wages) while at the same time is constantly pleasant to the punters whom it is relieving of their cash. However, since even the most sophisticated machine is fallible, there is a prospect of one of these devices having a brainstorm: "Good morning madam, and what little delicacies do we have here?  . . . ah, yes, cold meat 75p . . . wholemeal bread 50p, better than that adulterated white stuff . . . smarm . . . nice little table-wine at £1.99 . . . sure to impress your husband's boss when he comes to dinner. (Not to mention the refuse collector when he clocks the fancy label) . . . please pay the girl at the till. Thank you and good day . . . Krrrrrkkkk . . . fizzle.

C'mon grandma, hurry it up, we haven't got all day. Let's get these pathetic morsels tallied so we can get onto the real spenders . . . right, two ounces of spam (Yeeugh!) 20p . . . a solitary carrot 5p . . . 1 lonely onion 5p . . . 1 small loaf 25p . . . my, we're really living high on the hog aren't we? . . . 1 tin of Crappo dog food 35p . . . wait a minute, I'll bet you don't even have a dog, you're eating the bloody stuff yourself right? . . . C'mon own up. Hey, stop that snivelling woman, pay up and get out. No, not through the plate-glass door, open it first. That's right, now step out and . . . Gotcha! Security man, grab that old bag, she's got a tin of sardines that she forgot . . . er . . . didn't pay for. Good! the arm up the back, now the quick frogmarch into the manager's office to wait for the police . . . hee . . . hee . . . heeeeeerrkkkk . . . 

And the next one please. Hmm, what have we here? cornflakes 55p . . . You know, a top nutrition expert called Michael Van Straten is on record as saying that there is almost as much nutrition in the box as there is in the cornflakes. Butter 50p . . . sausage 70p . . . have you ever seen how they make sausage? almost no limit to the fat content . . . wouldn't like to see your arteries . . . Frozen chicken £2.75 . . . wonder how much water's been injected into our ex-feathered friend to boost the weight, (and the price) . . . In fact, have you ever stopped to consider why it's necessary to have prices at all? Here we are living in a world which produces food, clothing, and shelter in such abundance that everyone could have the very best instead of all this third-rate rubbish. And the beauty of it is that the amount of time actually needed to produce this wealth could be reduced to a few hours a day with all the extra available people released from non-productive jobs such as there girls operating the tills, and the manager, rushing over to pull put . . . the plug!? . . . Don't touch the . . . . . . . "

Tone.

Greasy Pole: Liam Byrne Out Of The Shadows (2015)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will not be found on the notice boards in any of Iain Duncan Smith's Job Centres nor in the Situations Vacant column of the popular press but a needy job-seeker may be interested in the Labour Party's search for someone to perform the miracle of reviving their hopes as a validly contesting political party. One who has yet to expose all his talents for this is Liam Byrne who offers a CV which, although defiled by his failure to get things right, includes an impressive history of governmental jobs. Between 2010 and 2013 he was Shadow for four ministerial posts, including the prestigious Chief Secretary to the Treasury. And before then, between 2005 and 2010 he was in charge at eight ministries. Whatever stress he experienced in those jobs his reputation, with one or two embarrassing lapses, endured pretty well. In A Journey Tony Blair described him as one of the '...smart, young professionals' he was able to encourage into Parliament and onto the Greasy Pole. When Blair escaped from those nightmare days of Labour staggering towards the end, management of the dismal chaos known as the British economy passed to Alistair Darling and Byrne was promoted to Chief Secretary. In his account of those times – Back From The Brink – Darling cherished his memory of Byrne: 'I assumed at first that this was the latest No. 10 attempt to keep an eye on me. I was wrong. Very quickly, Liam became a staunch supporter of my argument against the simplistic “investment versus cuts” narrative. He worked hard to build a credible plan to cut the deficit'.

Immigrants

But overall Byrne's record is not unblemished. In November 2006 he oversaw a retrospective change in the Immigration Rules designed to ensure that those who had come here under the Higher Skills Migrant Programme were prevented from staying unless they could show that they had earned at least £32,000 a year and had a 'good knowledge' of English. This 'moving of the goalposts' was denounced by the Parliamentary Joint Commission on Human Rights as 'clearly incompatible' with the existing legislation and it was overturned on appeal. The whole affair would not have sat easily with Byrne's constituency of Birmingham Hodge Hill and its predominantly Asian inner city. The area is classified as having a 'high percentage' of people dependent on what Duncan Smith calls 'benefits' and a housing situation which rates it as one of the highest in West Midlands for 'Multiple Deprivation'. This grim picture did not deter Byrne from claiming the maximum MP's allowance while he moved from one luxury London flat to another – one of which cost £2400 a month in rent – while he looked for somewhere more permanent. During the summer recess he used hotels and claimed £400 a month for food and for service dinners.

Instructions

In 2006, when he became Minister of State at the Home Office Byrne decided that his staff - his civil servants – would need some firm and comprehensive instructions on the essential details of an efficient organisation. He composed an eleven-page document which he later took with him to other ministries. To begin with, his room should be cleared before he got there in the morning. All briefings should be in large 16 point font. 'Never put anything to me unless you understand it and can explain it to me in 60 seconds'. Among the rules are some which pointedly reveal much about the true function of government as required by the elements of capitalist society: 'Money is the root of all progress. Finances are a vital part of the initiation conversations'. And when it comes to an expression of the contempt in which the working people of capitalism are held he orders that 'Key messages must be set out in 'big speeches' and repeated at every, repeat every, opportunity'. Which brings us to the passage about the comforts and security which the minister needs: 'I am' he informs them 'addicted to coffee. I like a cappuccino when I come in, an espresso at 3 pm and soup at 12.30 – 1 pm.' One MP described it as 'a briefing note for slaves'. In defence a spokesman for Byrne countered that he is '...a highly efficient minister but has become more flexible since then. Some days, he has his soup at 1.30pm'.

No Money

In the coalition after the 2010 election Byrne was replaced at the Treasury by the Lib Dem David Laws. In a clumsy attempt to make light of Labour's rejection Byrne left a brief note: 'I'm afraid there is no money. Kind regards-and good luck'. But Laws was not amused and publicised the missive so that it was widely interpreted as derisive and contemptuous – which left Byrne 'haunted' by his mistake offering a 'friendly word' to his successor in their 'first day in one of the government's hardest jobs'. Among all this posturing a number of significant facts were neglected. Byrne was not the first Minister at the Treasury to act in that way and it had even become something of a tradition; for example the Tory Reginald Maudling told his successor James Callaghan that he was '...sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock'. And David Laws lasted only 17 days at the Treasury after being exposed by the Parliamentary Standards and Privileges Committee as responsible for '...a series of serious breaches of the rules, over a considerable period of time'.

Changes

In January, anticipating the election, Byrne conducted a coach tour of supporters through Essex, where he grew up and which then threatened to be UKIP territory. His theme was clear: 'Ed (Miliband) has very firmly put young people at the core of our election campaign... right now (this country) needs young people's creativity and optimism as never before...' But then came the election and soon afterwards, on 14 June 2015 in The Sunday Times he was promoting a different line, in a different tone: '...we must be the party of older voters, not just the young... Labour faces a demographic timebomb unless we transform our standing with older voters... if the next Labour leader does not connect with older people – especially older women – then quite simply we will lose again... Let labour's changes begin'. How often have we suffered this same message from some desolate Labour politician, when their intention is to maintain this same callous way of life?

Ivan

Obituary: Charles Lestor (1953)

Obituary from the January 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

I first met Charlie Lestor over 30 years ago. I was still a kid, he was a mature and impressive man. His effect on the eager audiences of the post 1914-18 war was electric.

He had just arrived in this country after 20 years in Canada and the U.S.A. His Canadian style, accent and rig made him remarkable enough; his address to the large audiences of unemployed ex-servicemen was extraordinary. When most of the I.L.P. and Communist "Unemployed organisers" devoted their attention to personal invective against individual ministers; or the usual temporary nostrums for increase of the dole, or (much more) prevention of its decrease. Lestor never failed, in my hearing, at least, to go straight to the root of the matter.

He just could not speak to an audience without dealing with the capitalist system. From that day to this, I have never wavered in the opinion that of all the speakers I have heard, Lestor, in those days, was out on his own as a powerful exponent of Marxian economics in a popular trenchant style.

In clipped and rugged American terms, without a word wasted, he would grip a large audience from the first phrase and proceed to build up a rigorously logical exposition of surplus value.

"There's no sentiment in Business," "that profit is wrung out of the hides and carcasses of the working-class," "those wages amount to just enough fried fish, chips and beer to keep you working."

These and similar phrases were as typical of Charlie Lestor as the shock of hair, the bushy eyebrows covering the twinkling eyes, and the missing index finger on the waving hand. Tanned by the prairie suns and the Yukon snows as at home in 'Frisco or Winnipeg as in Stepney or Hyde Park, he was a modern cosmopolite, a man of all countries and all trades.

"I'm the laziest cuss under the sun," he would blandly inform his audiences, omitting to mention his jobs as gold-miner, farm-hand, Blacksmith, printer and Editor of the largest Trade Union paper in Canada. Many will remember his broadcast in the B.B.C. programme of his part, as the-cook-who-could-not-cook in the record drive of many thousand head of cattle to Chicago from the West.

For many years I lost touch, but immediately remade his acquaintance on joining the S.P.G.B. in 1939. Much water had flown under the Bridge, the years were beginning to take their toll. In the bitter weather of 1941 it was Charles Lestor who attended regularly at the Gloucester Place office of the Party, in a Balaclava hat, sometimes with frost on his eyebrows, to give instruction and counsel to young members in between air raid warnings. Subsequently I read through the minutes of those talks which covered a wide field of History, Economics and Current Affairs. Those fortunate enough to attend obtained a practical background of knowledge which affected their whole lives.

In 1945, the post of full-time propagandist fell vacant. At an age when most men ask nothing more than their carper-slippers Lestor applied and was appointed. As Central Organiser of the Party at the time I went over to see him in N.E. London, and made sure, as it was snowing heavily, that he had some reasonably warm equipment for the bitter trip to Glasgow that night.

He invited me to spend the day there, which passed discussing International politics, the Peace, Education, music and Omar Khayyam.

The years passed rapidly by, and many were the demands of the Party on Lestor's services. I cannot recall one occasion when these were refused or denied. Whether the meeting was large or small, far or near, early or late, he accepted as a matter of course.

As time marched on, it became apparent that even a man as vigorous, tough and energetic as Charlie Lestor could not beat Anno Domini indefinitely. Still the indomitable spirit refused to give up. In weather when he should have been indoors at home, he was regularly at Lincolns Inn and Tower Hill. The once powerful and strident tones which would ring out like a blast across a large audience, were sinking into an almost inaudible whisper.

Never did his sense of humour desert him, his remarks were now often punctuated by a quiet chuckle. He tended in later years, to an exaggerated optimism with regard to Socialist which other well-known Socialist speakers have also expressed.

During the Party's tenure of Rugby Chambers he once remarked to me "When you've stopped learning, you've stopped living." Surely that explains the astounding tenacity with which he stuck to his efforts as a Socialist propagandist, for so long.

He was always anxious and ready to try and learn. He had the Socialist's humility to knowledge. A busy life-time of effort on behalf on Socialism has assured for him the only sort of immortality which Socialists know, a permanent place in the memories of his fellow-warriors against Ignorance for Happiness.

Horatio