Land and liberty (2007)

Book Review from the February 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zapata of Mexico, by Peter E. Newell (Freedom Press, £9.50)

The Mexican Revolutionary War which began in 1910 saw political power transferred from a reactionary military dictatorship allied to foreign capital to the liberal constitutionalists of the rising national bourgeoisie. Zapata supported the overthrow of dictatorship but once this was achieved his Liberation Army of the South refused to disband until their primary objective had been fulfilled. That objective was the return of communal lands that had been appropriated by plantation owners during the period of dictatorship.

The new government refused to redistribute land and so fighting continued for the rest of the decade until Zapata's peasant forces, a people in arms, could no longer maintain a guerrilla war against the larger and better armed government forces.

Zapata resisted entering the politics of the national government, though he encouraged the tradition of direct democracy in the communities he fought for. At the height of Zapatista military success they conquered the country's capital. When Zapata was invited to sit in the presidential chair in the National Palace, he is quoted as saying 'It would be better to burn it, for I have seen that everybody who has sat in this chair has become an enemy of the people'.

Despite opportunity and popular support Zapata refused to install himself as national president. Though Zapata's political writings and speeches are restricted to the aims of the revolutionary peasant army it is thought that he was influenced by the ideas of Ricardo Flores Magón, a Mexican anarchist who was then publishing a newspaper from the USA. The Zapatista slogan of tierra y libertad - land and liberty - was taken from Magón.

However, the Casa del Obrero Mundial (House of World Workers), an anarcho-syndicalist industrial union founded originally by Magón, considered Zapatismo to be reactionary. They opposed the peasants politically and militarily until increasing industrial action led to the new liberal government proscribing the union. Many members subsequently switched sides. Zapata did use the examples of the new government’s repression of industrial workers as evidence of the counterrevolutionary nature of Mexico's new political leadership.

Zapata is not thought to have been religious, in fact he is said to have written 'ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny', but he deplored the anticlerical violence of the new liberal government which aimed to reduce the power of the churches. The banner of his 'Death Legion' depicted 'Our Lady of Guadalupe', a Mexican apparition of the Virgin Mary, above a skull and crossed bones.

Since the revolutionary war, inspired by the popular image of Zapata's heroism and virtue as a leader, rhetoric from anarchists to governments promising reforms have invoked the name of Zapata. Zapata has even appeared on banknotes. Newell's respected biography does not dwell on personality traits, military aptitude or leadership skills but describes the material history that produced Zapata, the revolutionary war and its outcome.

This republication of Newell's book of 1979 begins with a new introduction which relates Zapata to the contemporary Zapatista movement, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. The book contains a list of sources, references, bibliography and internet links and an appendix which discusses the land question in greater detail.

Piers Hobson

Reformist Roundabout (1980)

From the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The reformist roundabout never stops. Once you climb upon it the circular road ahead is endless. Bombs to be banned, “houses for all” to be built, “jobs for all” to be provided, pollution of the atmosphere to be legislated against, begging bowls for the starving millions to be handed around, battered wives to protect, police powers to be kept in check. The reformist’s work is never done, not for lack of energetic effort, but because the problems to be abolished bit by bit invariably multiply faster than reform measures. Like a nightmare in which the more you run the longer is the road ahead, the never-ceasing production of social distress caused by the present system leaves the reformist running faster and faster in order to stay in the same place. Read any copy of Socialist Worker or Newsline and you will be out of breath by the third page—Fight this, Smash that, Campaign against this, Demand that—the energy of the exercise is staggering. But add together the results of all this fighting and smashing and campaigning and demanding and the effect is rather less breathtaking: fifty policemen's hats knocked off, a number of jolly marches to Hyde Park and back and a few new recruits for the Labour Party. Is this really the way to change society?

In popular parlance, the reformer is the advocate of change, while the conservative stands for stability. In fact, most conservatives advocate some degree of change, as long as it does not alter the basis of the social system, and all reformists are conservative insofar as they only seek change within the structure of the present social system. Socialists do not oppose reformists because the latter want change, but because the change which we advocate is of a broader character.

Socialists oppose capitalism as a network of social relationships based upon the private ownership and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth. The system is one in which there are two classes: those who own the means of life, but have no need to work (the capitalist class) and those who, because they do not own the machinery of production, must sell themselves for a wage or salary in order to live (the working class). Capitalism is a system of exploitation whereby the profits accumulated by the capitalists are obtained by paying workers less than the value of the wealth they produce. This legalised robbery means that the wealth producers do not have access to what they produce, but must buy it from the exploiting class by spending their wages and salaries. As production under capitalism is for profit before need, if the capitalists cannot sell their commodities on the market people who need them must go without.

If people are homeless while houses stand empty, there is not in fact a housing shortage, but a shortage of money on the part of the workers needing accommodation; when millions starve, it is true that malnutrition could be eradicated tomorrow but for the need for food companies to make a profit; as the weapons of murder are set in readiness for the next war, this is not because people are inherently aggressive, but because under capitalism the protection of property is more important than life; whenever self-created tragedy afflicts the human race, the socialist is not to be found weeping in mournful despair, but ever more determined to convince the working class that the reason for the bloody mess is capitalism.

Such analysis is not to be found in the heads of the furniture re-arrangers of the capitalist system. Hopping from one problem to another, the reformist attends to the symptoms while leaving the cause intact. Cause and effect are terms of little meaning to the reformist. Not understanding what the system is all about, the reformist cannot understand just what sort of perverse game he is indulging in: pleading with the robber class to throw back to the robbed a few crumbs of wealth. Asking for a “fairer” slice of the cake, while leaving the bakery in the hands of those who do no baking is a game for mugs.

“Better something now than everything tomorrow”, says the defensive reformist. But can capitalism fulfil even the limited and second-rate “short-term” objectives that reformists have? The record of more than a century of reformism provides the answer. They were promising full or near-full employment in 1945, but we have not got it. Charities have been passing round collection boxes for a century, yet a main British charity, Oxfam, has recently had to admit that there are more starving people today than when they started. Decent homes for all workers has been on the agenda of every political party for a hundred years, yet in 1979 the Department of the Environment stated that there were 53,000 homeless families in Britain. (This is widely believed to be an underestimation.) Millions of decent people have chanted their wish to “Ban the Bomb”, but bombs are still very much with us. The so-called Welfare State, not a great provision at the best of times, is today being whittled away by cuts in state expenditure. True enough, children no longer go down the mines and the work- houses are less obvious institutions than they once were, but after a century of social reform, during a period when the capacity for producing wealth has increased considerably, is the present standard of life the best that we could have achieved?

The provision of legislative reforms is both limited and fragile. Furthermore, they serve an important political service for the capitalists who provide them. Reforms can secure social stability: when the rule of capital appears to be under threat the ruling class is “only too glad to buy a prolonged armistice at the price of ever-repeated concessions to the working people” (Engels). In short, reforms are often a means of buying off the working class. That is why, as working class consciousness grows, so the offer of reforms by the capitalist class will increase. When the working class, armed with the knowledge that all social wealth can belong to the community, are offered reforms they will tell the capitalists that half-loaves are not enough.

But what of the so-called revolutionary reformers, like the Socialist Workers’ Party, who claim that they only advocate reforms to demonstrate to the working class that capitalism cannot provide them? Like a muddle-headed driving instructor who teaches someone to drive by showing them how to crash into a brick wall and then says, “Now that I’ve shown you how not to do it, you will have no trouble knowing the correct way”. Demand the Right to Work, the SWP proclaims, in order to prove that there is no such right under capitalism. Then, according to the crackpot theorists, the unemployed will realise what is wrong with capitalism and start to organise for revolution. In fact, workers who support these daft tactical reform campaigns usually believe that they will get what they are demanding. The result is that capitalism is either reformed to their satisfaction (for the time being) and they become acquiescent wage slaves or else the reform campaign fails, they become disillusioned with politics and apathetic or, in some cases, turn to more sinister reform gangs like the National Front.

Socialists are not against reforms which improve the material existence of all or some workers. Indeed, socialists are neither for nor against particular reforms, but are uncompromisingly opposed to reformism. If, for instance, a reform could be passed making it easier for socialists to have access to the media we would be pleased; in that sense we would approve of the reform. What we would not do is join a campaign with non-socialists to ensure the legislation of such a reform, for by doing so we would be forced to support whichever capitalist party agreed to grant the reform to us. Reformism is a capitulation to the power of the capitalist class.

Those who want to re-arrange the furniture of capitalism tell us that it is utopian to seek change which is not slow and gradual. We reply that we are in a hurry; we are not content with the way in which capitalism has been reformed and there are no reforms which could be offered that will distract us from the clear road ahead; we have a world to win and those who will not join us stand in our way.

Steve Coleman

Scrag-Ends. (1916)

From the July 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lloyd George says that England can take every man off the land if required for fighting and get all agricultural work done by women. Lord Selborne says so many men have been already taken that the whole industry is endangered. Great minds think alike, we are often told—here, small minds differ.

The Christians are still busy praying about the war, not for peace, of course, but for more blood to be shed and that right quickly. So hurry up, my gallant youths, kill your enemies quickly, so that we can have all the dirty mess cleared up by Christmas Eve, and assemble once again in the old church to warble that sweet little ditty, “ Peace on earth and mercy mild."

In spite of the pleadings of the War Savings Committee we remain an extravagant people; last month several more reckless Old-Age Pensioners squandered their weekly dollar and starved themselves into “glory."

Mr. Asquith has been telling his constituents that it is only the knowledge that he enjoys their complete confidence which enables him to carry the stupendous burden of the Premiership. Well spoken, Herbert! You may beat David after all in the Swankers' championship.

“There are mills in which men are made to work 7 days a week for 12 hours a day, and in the 365 weary days of the year cannot make enough to pay their bills.”

The above is an extract from one of President Wilson's speeches and has reference to conditions in the U.S.A., but it could be stated with truth about all countries where capitalism exists, whether they are Free Trade or Protectionist countries: capitalism being the universal cause of working-class misery, the only remedy for that misery is the universal abolition of capitalism hence the S.P.G.B.

SKEWER.

Editorial: Violence and Fraud - and The One Ray of Hope. (1916)

Editorial from the May 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The few days previous to going to press have been full of moving incidents, none of which can be given the attention they merit owing to the little time and space available—and other things. A grave armed revolt in Dublin against English rule is raging at the time of writing. It is a revolt doomed from the outset, both because of the futility of its narrow nationalist aims, and the utter hopelessness of such a revolt against the mighty organised force of the political State. It is, apart from the fact that Socialism alone is worth fighting for, yet another illustration (if such were needed) that the organised Socialist conquest of the political power of the State is the only way, and that mere mob violence plays into the hands of the oppressor and strengthens the gyves that fetter us.

Such a revolt, however, is the natural result of centuries of alien oppression, which has forced the ideas of Irishmen into nationalist channels and blinded them to its futility. And it is at the same time a fitting commentary on the perfervid declarations of the British champions of "honour” and "righteousness” that "they” are fighting, above all, for the "rights of small nationalities”!

Contemporaneously with the above there have been secret sessions of Parliament, and following these have come proposals for body-snatching on a wider scale, and a renewed farce of "voluntary” enlistment for the married, even more farcical than those pilloried in our April issue. At first sight it was astonishing that proposals which had apparently been agreed upon were rejected by all sides as soon as put forward in open sessions, in favour of something even more drastic, but a closer inspection reveals again the deliberate fraud. The whole question has been staged again on an elaborate scale only in order to make complete conscription inevitable. And it has succeeded.

Nevertheless the role of the Labour Party has been particularly despicable. Many of its apologists have claimed that secret diplomacy was the cause of the war; yet they are the servants of State tyranny who actually demanded a secret session! Was it to cover their hypocrisy and enable them to argue, in favour of "Prussianism,” that military tyranny is necessitated by the grave needs of the situation about which they must not speak? Socialists will draw the obvious conclusion.

And what are the pseudo-Socialist organisations doing? Their conferences have just been held, and the brief news of their proceedings available at the time of writing sufficiently indicates their position. The letter of the National Council of the Independent Labour Party to the Zimmerwald International Anti-war Conference is significant. In it they say:

The Independent Labour Party neither condemns or condones the action of those who have voted the war credits. It realises that the pressure of circumstances in each of the belligerent countries, the different situations of the Socialist Parties, and the Parliamentary and military systems can only be fully understood by the comrades in those countries.

Such is their contempt for the fundamental principles of Socialism!

In the business of the Newcastle conference of the I.L.P. the same contempt is visible. The following weak resolution was proposed in connection with those prominent members who openly support and advocate capitalist murder for profit:

This Conference expresses its regret that certain I.L.P. members of Parliament have acted and voted in opposition to the declared policy of the Party regarding the war and Conscription, and instructs the National Council to inform these members of Parliament that a continuance of this opposition to the I.L.P. will make it impossible for the Party to support them at the next election.

On this there were some "brave words,” and then Mr. Ramsay Macdonald spoke :

He admitted that the man who was responsible for the recruiting campaign was responsible for the imposition of Conscription! (Cheers.) The recruiting campaign had encouraged the Government to undertake policies which could not be carried through except by Conscription. But he was not going to say that men who had participated in the recruiting campaign should be turned out of Socialist organisations. (Hear, hear.)

Whereupon the I.L.P. expressed its own rottenness by voting down even that mild censure of anti-Socialism and treachery, by passing to the "Previous Question” by an overwhelming majority!

Next, in view of the open flouting of every Socialist principle by the Labour Party, of which the I.L.P. is a part, and by the Labour Ministers that it supports, the expected also occurred. A resolution to reconsider the affiliation of the I.L.P. to this Labour Party of infamous memory was also defeated by an "overwhelming majority."

The anti-Socialist attitude of the I.L.P. on the war in particular has been exposed in past issues of this journal, but even the increasing hardship, the growing tyranny, and the ever more obvious anti-working class objective of the war advocates does not succeed in opening the eyes of the leader-ridden and reform-blinded rank and file of the I.L.P.

The so-called British Socialist Party is another case in point. By “British” many of them mean anti-German. And they are still falling to pieces. The more extreme war advocates, led by H. M. Hyndinan & Co., have seceded to form a “National” Socialist Advisory Committee. Is its advisory function to further advise the authorities regarding unpatriotic members? As was stated when we abandoned the S.D.F. twelve years ago owing to the ineradicable pro-capitalist nature of that body, it was hardly necessary to expose it because its inherent rottenness would kill it. And so it is proving. It propagates chiefly by fission. Indeed, it appears likely to continue to do so until its only remaining organised phase will comprise Hunter Watts and Hyndman as amateur auxiliaries to the organisation of Scotland Yard !

In direct contrast to all the above was the Easter Conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It was well attended both by delegates and members, the public also being admitted. But although a report is not available at the time of writing, the important point may be mentioned that there was not the slightest division on matters of Socialist principle. Regarding the attitude naturally and inevitably taken up by the Socialist Party in complete opposition to all capitalist war, and against every manifestation of capitalism as such, there was no difference of opinion and consequently no discussion, except on points of administrative work. This is a fact of which the Party may well be proud. But that the Party is most keenly alive to its responsibilities was proved by the interest taken in, and the sharpness of, the discussion on the Report of the Executive Committee a discussion which centred largely on questions of organisation and the correct procedure to be used in cleanly and democratically ridding the Party of any who may choose to play fast and loose with the principles of Socialism. The earnestness that prevailed may be gathered from the fact that an extra session of over four hours beyond the appointed time on the Saturday evening was required to conclude this discussion on the important problem of Socialist organisation.

In all respects the conference was a business meeting of Socialists; no electioneering claptrap was indulged in, nor window-dressing resolutions put forward. Indeed, it was clear that the Party regards itself in the most serious light as the nucleus of the revolutionary working-class, and is determined to keep its house in order and its principles free from all entanglement, so that it may adequately fulfil the historic role that lies before it.

This, then, is the ray of hope-that cheers us. And it is not idle to mention further that this cheerful confidence in the future of the working class in the midst of its blackest trouble was reflected even in the great gathering of members and their personal friends who filled the large hall of the Fairfax Halls on the occasion of the Social gathering of Good Friday evening. Never had the hall been so filled, and never with a more cheerful or kindly gathering. And so the new year of party activity opens with good hope. The Party faces the trying times to come absolutely united, fully conscious of the great difficulties to be faced, and of the great distance to be traversed. But it faces the future determined to prosecute the essential educational and organising work in the great class war for Socialism with the utmost intelligent vigour in spite of the difficulties and dangers that surround it at the present time.

Exhibition Review: 'Broken Lives' (2016)

Exhibition Review from the March 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Slavery Museum in Liverpool (housed in the Maritime Museum) is hosting a display on slavery in modern India. Most of the enslaved are Dalits, which means ‘broken, crushed, oppressed’; the former term ‘untouchables’ is objectionable. The exhibition, which mainly consists of factual information plus extremely moving case studies and interviews, is produced in partnership with the Dalit Freedom Network (www.dfn.org.uk).

There are perhaps fourteen million people in ‘modern slavery’ in India, which means one person in a hundred and constitutes 40 percent of the world’s slaves. Indian slavery often applies to children, and can mean everything from bonded labour (paying off their parents’ debts) to sex trafficking and domestic servitude. Boys and girls as young as five may be forced into child beggar gangs, or set to work in brick kilns. Under the Sumangali scheme, girls work in textile factories, in dreadful conditions and with little leisure time; some of the clothes they produce are for big Western corporations.

Perhaps the most appalling is ritual sex slavery, by which girls are ‘dedicated to a goddess’ as a Jogini, serving in a temple and then raped by a local power-holder when they reach puberty. After that they are available for sexual purposes to any man. Up to 80,000 women and children are enslaved as Jogini. Like child labour, this is illegal, but it still continues.

Behind all this of course are the poverty and despair of so many Indian families, the profit demands of big companies, and the ignorance and hypocrisy of religion.

Paul Bennett

Proud to be British? (1983)

From the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are you proud to be British? Do you stand up straight when they play the national anthem? Does your body stiffen with loyalty when the Union Jack is raised and the Queen waves to you from her Rolls Royce? Do you regard the British army as your army and Britain’s imperial history as your history? If so, you are suffering from that most nasty of diseases of the mind, known popularly as patriotism. It is known to afflict people of all ages, from gullible Boy Scouts to old ladies with blue hats who think that Churchill is still Prime Minister and that change is what you tip taxi drivers with.

The Patriotism Disease — otherwise known as nationalism — can affect people of all countries and even of regions which aspire to become countries. To be a nationalist you can hold a variety of political beliefs. Of course, the caricature of patriotism is to be found among the Tories. In his book. The Case For Conservatism, Quintin Hogg (now Lord Hailsham) wrote that

Conservative philosophy does lay a most particular stress upon the duty of loyalty and the sentiment of patriotism . . .  The nation, not the so-called class struggle, is therefore at the base of Conservative political thinking.

And it would be hard to find a more base example of ignorant nationalism than that exhibited at the Tory Youth rally, just before the June general election, when "the sentiment of patriotism" was summed up by the Tory Commissar for Entertainment, Kenny Everett, who shouted to his audience, "Let’s bomb Russia” and was responded to with loud cheers of nationalistic thuggery.

But when it comes to blinkered nationalism the Tories do not by any means have a monopoly. Indeed, capitalists who support the Conservative Party tend to favour greater international links between the different countries of the world. In general, they favour a world market which is not interfered with by tariff controls or political boycotts. The investors in the multinational companies are certainly not fooled by the rhetoric of their own nationalism: they will invest wherever they can make a profit. It is, in fact, the Labour Party, which poses as an internationalist organisation, but which advocates politics of economic nationalism, such as import controls and a return to pre-EEC trading practices. The Labour Party was the first party in the history of British government to pass the type of racist immigration laws which were designed to keep Kenyan Asians out of Britain. In 1976. Labour's leader. James Callaghan, declared that

I have never wavered from the view that a small, highly-populated country like Britain had to limit the number of immigrants it could absorb into its culture.

Neil Kinnock, the latest opportunist to walk the tightrope between the rhetoric of internationalism and the practical politics of national chauvinism, has said that 

. . .  we must show that we have positive policies which are based upon the implacable requirement that the interests of the British people must predominate. (Guardian, 18 July 1983)

What sort of narrow-minded nationalism is this in a world where over half of our fellow human beings are destitute and eight hundred millions of them are starving? Are we to check that they are "British people" before we think of positive policies to end their, and our, common poverty?

Needless to say, the plague of patriotism is alive and well within the Communist Party of Great Britain. In their pamphlet, Time To Change Course we are informed by the bogus communists that:

It is the British ruling class which . . .  is revealed as the traitor to the nation. It is the Communist Party which stands out as the real champion of the nation.

Which nation they champion we are not told, but the nationalists of the Kremlin have been known to buy up a few thousand surplus copies of the Morning Star each week.

Now, let us move on to the chronic patriotism ward and visit the National front as it lives its final hours. Once the movement which was going to elevate skinheads to the House of Lords and sweep the polls in a bid to rid Britain of non-Anglo-Saxons (Norway was expecting several million descendants of the Vikings to be repatriated), the NF is now just a gang of windbags in bovver boots who sit in rooms above pubs fantasising about the victory that never was. In the mid-1970s they published a pamphlet called Britain: World Power or Pauper State? in which they saw birth control as a plot to reduce the numbers of “the British race":

While in Britain . . . we persist in the absolutely insane policy of discouraging a high birth-rate, there is not the slightest hope that we will be able to send forth enough of our sons and daughters to populate the great empty acres that our ancestors won for us. There is no movement more dangerous to the survival of the British people than so-called family planning . . . Any intelligent assessment of the consequences of this trend must lead to the realisation that it points to the rapid enfeeblement and eventual eclipse of the British race.

It is not only from the politicians that such nationalistic rubbish comes forth: the media persistently refer to “us” and “our” when they are reporting about British business or British militarism; in schools we are educated to look at history from the angle of British ruling class interests; on the sporting fields, nationalism is used to persuade workers that "our” team must be supported against "theirs”; the churches spread the propaganda of “Queen and Country”. Even if you want to travel from one part of the world to another you must carry a card stating that you are "British”, even if you do not choose to attach that label to yourself.

Well, what is Britain? It is a geographical entity — an island — a spot on the map of the world. In this area called Britain there is land, there are natural resources, factories, offices, farms, mines, docks, buses, trains; who do they belong to? In Britain today approximately 400,000 people (one per cent of the population) own 25 per cent of all accumulated wealth. The poorer 80 per cent of the population own 21.9 per cent of accumulated wealth in Britain. The richest 10 per cent own more between them than the poorest 90 per cent. Only 7 per cent of people in Britain own any marketable shares in British wealth. Britain belongs to a minority of British people: to the capitalist class who own and control the means of life. The same is true throughout the world, although the form of ruling class power is different in the state capitalist countries like Russia and China.

The vast majority of people in all countries do not own the means of wealth production and distribution and are forced to sell their labour power for a wage or salary (a price) in order to live. As workers, the majority of people do not have any country. Workers of different countries have more in common with each other than they do with their native capitalist rulers.

It is time to destroy the socially created barriers which divide the world into nations. The world now is not the vast, relatively unconquered planet of the sixteenth century when nation-states first began to flourish in Europe. We are now living in a global village. Capitalist trade, and the technology of mass communication which has been created to facilitate it. have made worldwide production and distribution networks a thing of the present. Socialists do not need to dream of a future worldwide production system — capitalism has brought that into being and has then hindered the benefits which can be gained from it by maintaining the fetters of nationalism. Natural boundaries are no longer a barrier to travel; cultural interchange has ensured that Japanese workers can watch the latest happenings down Coronation Street while British workers are sampling the delights of Indian cuisine. It is noticeable that when astronauts in space take photographs of the earth there is not a red-coloured area called the Russian Empire or a label on a part of Ireland which says that it is British. These divisions are socially created and can only be socially removed by putting an end to the outdated social system of capitalism.

It is the socialist contention that human beings, wherever they are from, are much more similar than they are different. All of us have certain needs and socially produced desires which, by co-operating as humans, we can satisfy. Socialism, which can only be established worldwide, presents the possibility of people from different backgrounds and with different cultures (many of which they may want to retain in a world socialist society) combining our abilities to jointly provide for our common needs. To do this we must socialise the means of producing and distributing wealth by placing them in the hands of the democratically organised world community. Within a socialist society decisions will be taken at various geographical levels, depending on the nature of the decision to be made. Whatever difficulties the organisation of world society, based on production solely for use, will create, it will be a far more harmonious society than capitalism can ever possibly hope to be.

World socialism offers a temptation to the political imaginations of those whose minds have been narrowed by the ideology of nationalism. But the idea of establishing a world society is more than a nice idea to nod your head at. Ending capitalism, with its national frontiers, is a matter of urgency because every frontier has an army and every army has possession of lethal weaponry and that weaponry threatens to destroy us all, patriots and world socialists together. There is no way to obtain a world without war without creating a world which is united by the common interests of its inhabitants and there is no way to achieve such an identity of interests except by establishing socialism.

Steve Coleman

What's Right and Wrong (1968)

Book Review from the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Secularisation And Moral Change by Alasdair MacIntyre, Oxford University Press, 12s.6d.

A Short History of Ethics by Alasdair MacIntyre, Routledge Paperback, 15s.

What's right? What's wrong? At some periods in history these questions called forth firm, confident, even unanimous replies. Today there is a lot of uncertainty about even the most basic moral ideas. These two concise and useful books help us to understand why.

Secularisation And Moral Change begins by quoting Engels' prediction that the working-class, mainly indifferent to religion but still vaguely respecting it, would abandon even the remnants of belief and become solidly atheistic. MacIntyre has no difficulty in backing up his view that this prediction has not yet been fulfilled to any great extent. “The English working-class today is on the whole not strikingly more secularised than it was” when Engels wrote. A great deal of de-Christianising had taken place prior to Engels' observations, and this MacIntyre correctly identifies as due to “the destruction of the older forms of community, in many cases rapidly, and in particular the destruction of those features of them to which religion had given symbolic expression."

The development of capitalism and the cities gave rise in ethical theory to the dominance of the "secondary virtues"—virtues (like fair play, tolerance, a gift for compromise) which are only indirectly related to human ends. The view that “moral decline” is a result of Christian decline is false:

It is not the case that men first stopped believing in God and in the authority of the church, and then subsequently started behaving differently. It seems clear that men first of all lost any overall social agreement as to the right ways to live together, and so ceased to be able to make sense of any claims to moral authority. Social change and with it moral change is chronologically prior to the loss of belief effected by intellectual argument, except where a very small minority are concerned.

Today the spread of atheism is inexorable, but much slower (in Britain) than Engels expected. It is significant that the churches have a particular hold on people through christenings, weddings and funerals. Birth, love and death were in former times “explained” by the Church. Today this explanation is like the salt which has lost its savour, but no new system of attitudes and rituals has arisen to replace it. This is not surprising. The atomisation and shattering of community (and the education) which result from capitalism forbid the existence of any widely-accepted and consistent view of the world in terms of human values. Hence, the staying- power of Christianity MacIntyre attributes to the lack of any alternative.

The churches are trapped between introversion and assimilation, between escape and dilution. On the one hand there is what MacIntyre calls “enclave Christianity,” which will “provide a retreat from the conditions of urban secular life, and contribute nothing to urban secular life.” The other pole is that Christianity itself becomes secularised. Modern religious leaders, would love a theology of the secular, but all they have is a secular theology.

And MacIntyre makes short work of milk-and-watery Woolwich-type modernism. He points out that it is meaningful to say “Obey the spirit, not the letter of the law” only when there is a letter of the law. It is pointless to advocate a morality in which rules have been replaced by a principle of intent such as “love”, because when denied reference to specific prescribed courses of action, these labels are emptied of meaning. There can be no morality without rules.

MacIntyre argues clearly and rationally, and his analysis is firmly in the Marxist tradition. One grumble: he clings to the myth that there is a modern middle class. A Short History of Ethics is a more comprehensive work: not so much a sketch, more a standard textbook. It gives a fair outline of developments in moral thinking, a clear criticism, plus some very interesting observations on the relationship of morals to social change.

MacIntyre never forgets the historical and social aspects of ethics. Neither does he fall into the opposite trap of some lazy-minded “Marxists,” who delight in the unscientific game of finding a one- to-one correspondence between economic events and ideas, or who point out that such-and-such a viewpoint is in the interests of such-and-such a class, and think that this frees them from the need to evaluate that viewpoint logically.

He attacks the view of the field of moral philosophy as “the language of morals” pointing to the untranslatability of the chief moral terms of Ancient Greece. In a harmonious society virtue and happiness are closely linked concepts, but in a society like modern capitalism these concepts are independent, even antagonistic. So we get a division of opinion into those who advocate personal advancement and those who favour moral goodness. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” versus “Let justice be done though the heavens crumble.”

In England the rise of individualism meant:

That all the links between duty and happiness were gradually broken. The consequence was a redefinition of the moral terms. Happiness is no longer defined in terms of satisfactions which are understood in the light of the criteria governing a form of social life; it is defined in terms of individual psychology. Since such a psychology does not yet exist, it has to be invented. Hence the whole apparatus of appetites, passions, inclinations, principles, which is found in every 18th century moral philosopher.

MacIntyre apparently thinks that lack of consideration of the role of morals in the socialist revolution is a gap in Marx's theory, but he points out:

Marx resembles Hegel and the English idealists in seeing a communal framework as presupposed by morality; unlike them, he sees that it no longer exists; and he proceeds to characterise the whole situation as one in which moralizing can no longer play a genuine role in settling social differences. It can only be an attempt to invoke an authority which no longer exists and to mask the sanctions of social coercion.

Steele.

Patrick Pearse (1968)

Book Review from the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Best of Pearse edited by Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Liam O Reagain, The Mercier Press, Cork, 10s.

This book is a collection of the writings of Patrick H. Pearse who was executed by the military representatives of the British ruling class after the collapse of what has come to be known as the Easter Rising, in Dublin in 1916.

Pearse practised at the Bar for a brief period and is reputed to have originated the IRA tactic of refusing to recognise British Courts. Useful though such heroics, and their inevitable tactical offsprings, proved to the British Authorities (and later the N. Ireland and Eire governments) in creating “gaol battalions” of the IRA, it is not for this that Pearse is remembered.

Nor is his claim to fame to be found in his writings as a teacher and educationalist (some of which are found in this collection) though, in the latter capacity, he proved capable of observing the perverted purpose of education in the hands of the State—albeit that the “State” for Pearse was the English State and not the state of capitalism.

Pearse’s real claim to a place in Irish history was his execution by the British military after the abortive 1916 Rising. Also executed were the six other members of the Provisional Government of the proclaimed Republic, among whom was James Connolly.

Connolly (and the digression is deliberate) was a former member of the British Social Democratic Federation and was prominent in the maelstrom of controversy that shook that organisation immediately after the turn of the century. Out of that controversy was born the first of the Companion Socialist Parties (the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain) and the almost defunct Socialist Labour Party, of which Connolly was a prominent member.

Among “left-wing” organisations in Ireland and similar organisations of Irish emigrants in Britain the name of Connolly is revered as the “Lenin of Irish Socialism”. Despite the fact that Irish Capitalism, in the post-Connolly era, did not develop Russia style, the analogy is a good one—insofar as both Lenin and Connolly made effective contributions to the confusion of the working class by overlaying the simple case for Socialism with complex issues of concern only to the nebulous interests of capitalism in their respective countries. Since Connolly’s contribution in this respect was almost exclusively restricted to Ireland, where it is linked with the rabid nationalism of Pearse, we felt that somewhere in these writings we might unscramble the mystery of their association.

Apart from an insipid playlet and some mediocre poetry the collection contains a number of essays, often repetitive, in which Pearse deals with Nationalism, Education, Literature and Freedom. In a style reminiscent of the later ‘heroes’ of Hitler’s National ‘Socialism’ he declares his faith thus: The Irish political leaders

have conceived of nationality as a material thing whereas it is a spiritual thing. They have made the same mistake that a man would make if he were to forget his immortal soul. They have not recognised in their people the image and likeness of God. Hence the nation to them is not holy . . . a thing so sacred that it may not be bought in the market places at all or spoken of where men traffic.

Here, as with Connolly, is the failure to recognise that the very thing he edifies, the national state, is the political creature of that system whose effects he vilifies, capitalism. Again, in dealing with Freedom and Education, Pearse proves himself an observant reporter of effects but wholly off-course when it comes to cause. Thus, in The Murder Machine he imputes to the “English education system in Ireland” the fact that:

The modern school is a State-controlled institution designed to produce workers for the State.

and he quotes Professor Eoin Mac. Neill in comparing the same “English system in Ireland” with “slave education” designed not to make children “strong, proud and valiant, but to be sleek, to be obsequious, to be dexterous . . . to make them good slaves.”

The fact that the “English system of education” in Ireland was the same as it was in England, or anywhere else in the world of capitalism, a system designed to equip working class children for their adult role of wage slaves, was missed as was recognition of the fact that the great majority of “the English” had as little freedom and prosperity as their Irish counterparts. That, in fact, the common enemy of the great majority of Englishmen and Irishmen was the system of international capitalism.

As we struggled through this windy prose we were tempted to wonder what was Connolly's reaction to Pearse’s naive outpourings and then we remembered that his reaction was to become Pearse's comrade-in-arms.

The Best Of Pearse is artless, ignorant and its presumption to wit, monotonous—except, perhaps, when Pearse feels “sure that political economy was not invented by Adam Smith but by the devil”!

Richard Montague

Latin America (1966)

Book Review from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Atlas of Latin American Affairs by Ronald M. Schneider and Robert C. 'Kingsbury, Methuen, 7s. 6d.

There is more to Latin America than the popular conception of Carmen Miranda girls, dictators and brawling footballers. Schneider and Kingsbury say that it is an " . . . area whose importance has only recently been recognised in the United States as well as in Europe.”

And well it might be. By 1959 Foreign investment in Latin America came to almost $14,000 million, three-fifths of it from the United States. There is oil, bauxite and copper there, as well as many other valuable minerals—and, of course, the cattle of the .Argentinian Pampa as well as Cuba's famous sugar.

The continent has had a violent history. Once largely ruled by Spain, it began its movement towards independence, with all the customary misleading propaganda, at the beginning of the 19th Century, canonising the names of Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar.

Political change did not, however, reach down to the toiling people; they continued to scratch their living from the hot earth while the power struggle went on between the big landowners, the church and the army. These are still powerful elements in the politics of Latin America, sometimes challenged by industrial and commercial interests.

The United States has sufficient strategic interest in the area, apart from its economic usefulness, to make it keep a steady eye on Latin America's turbulent affairs. Washington at present aims at keeping popularly elected governments in being there—provided they accept their place in America’s sphere of control.

This is the background to the Cuba crisis, to the cynical diplomacy and to the busyness of the CIA in Latin America.

This book, the latest in the Methuen series, presents some of Latin America's history, economy and politics in an acceptable and easily digestible form. It is a paperback and small (127 pages), but it does a useful job.

Ivan

African Unions (1966)

Book Review from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

African Trade Unions by loan Davies. Penguin African Library, 5s.

As capitalism develops it brings into being the working class—that social group made up of those who depend on their wage or salary to live. In Africa capitalism dominates society, even if many are not yet wage-workers or cash crop farmers. Primitive production for use is being replaced by production for sale on the world market. Wage-workers in fact only make up a small part of the working population.

The proportion of wage-earners ranges from 25 per cent in the Congo to four per cent in Nigeria and the former French West African territories.

In Britain the comparable figure is over 95 per cent. Many of the workers in Africa are migrants who move between working for wages and working their tribal lands. This depresses wages to a minimum level, sufficient to keep an unskilled, single male worker. In some places, however, a permanent urban working class has come into being and this is the trend. In the Katanga copper mining area, for instance, there are second and third generation wage workers.

As can be imagined trade union organisation in these circumstances is difficult. Despite this trade unions, of varying degrees of permanency and effectiveness, have appeared. Nearly all have been associated with the nationalist movements. Not that, of course, independence has made much difference. A new privileged bureaucratic and commercial caste has appeared and the unions have been under pressure or turned into mere state agents for increasing production. One of the Ministers of Labour in what was Tanganyika has put it this way:

The union is required to educate wage earners in the need for harder work and the need for discipline and efficiency at the place of employment.

In all countries the new independent governments have come into conflict with the workers and their unions. Strikes have been outlawed or suppressed. Thus Ghana in September, 1961, suppressed a strike of dock and harbour workers and in 1964 a general strike broke out in Nigeria. This shows that nationalism is not in the interests of the world-wide working class.

Ioan Davies’ book is well worth the five shillings.

Adam Buick

Free speech in Belfast (1966)

Party News from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The activities of the World Socialist Party in the North of Ireland are being hindered i by a ban on political meetings within a 15-mile radius of Belfast imposed by the government there. The Sunday evening outdoor meetings at the City Hall have had to be abandoned. Instead the WSP is running a series of meetings at their Head Office (53 High Street, Belfast) under the title “Free Speech Forum”. At these meetings other political groups are given a chance to express the views that the government ban would otherwise prevent being heard. The ban has been imposed as a result of religious sectarian incidents sparked off by the hooliganism of the Rev. Ian Paisley and his followers.

Imperialism and Revolution (1930)

Book Review from the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Imperialism and World Economy,” by N. Bukharin. Martin Lawrence. 6s.

This work was written by Bukharin in 1915, and its references to statistics are largely out of date. But the essential arguments are in the main true to-day. The development of Imperialism in its economic aspects, has been treated in many books, such as John A. Hobson’s "Export of Capital” and also his work on "Imperialism.” Bukharin’s book covers much the same ground.

The discovery of raw materials in the backward parts of the world, together with a supply of cheap labour close at hand, gave a powerful impetus to the modern capitalist and banking company to invest abroad in search of a higher rate of profit. The rapid rise of large scale machine industry enabled the manufacturers to produce more than could be sold at home and a far-flung Empire provides a ready market for the goods.

Bukharin says little of the modern development of industry in the colonial and "backward” countries, resulting in a continual shrinkage in the world market.

The growth of trusts, cartels and monopolies is well sketched by Bukharin, much of his material being gathered from Hilferding’s “Finance Capital.” Bukharin shows how war results from the struggle for markets and for sources of raw materials. The last chapter indicates how greatly Bukharin counted on a revolt of the. workers at the end of the war, but nobody who saw how easily the workers were gulled in the developed capitalist world had any grounds for believing that world revolution would result.

The Communists condemn Bukharin’s book because he does not support the idea that the system is collapsing quickly. Bukharin bitterly opposed Trotsky, Zinovief, Radek and other leaders who-built up an opposition group in Russia, but Bukharin afterwards joined the opposition himself and held that Capitalism’s "collapse” was not in sight.

The present-day "intellectuals” of Communism criticize Bukharin’s book, alleging that he ignores colonial uprisings and internal conflicts. These "slogan merchants” ignore the fact that Lenin in his introduction to the book had no fault to find with it. The colonial revolts on which Communists based their hopes are largely beginnings of a struggle for national independence on the part of native employers and their allies and are not working class struggles for emancipation.

Modern Imperialism is a developed stage of capitalism rising out of the growth of productive forces in the hands of an exploiting class and the only way it can be abolished is by the working class struggling for, and establishing, Socialism. The Colonial revolts that were going to smash Imperialism become in the long run movements to build Capitalism in "backward” lands.

The chief fault with Bukharin’s manner of writing is that his language is not simple, and he lacks the power to make his points clear and plain.

Adolph Kohn

Air Sick (1985)

From the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the wake of the Air India crash off Ireland, the Tristar accident in Dallas and the Japan Airline disaster, the victims lying in the makeshift mortuary of hangar no. 7 at Manchester Airport last month brought the total number of dead from air travel accidents this summer over the thousand mark.

Everyone hopes they can avoid just such a tragedy. But is luck all we have to rely on? Is our fate totally out with our control as one aviation specialist would have us believe: "God was not with that flight”? As the Chairman of the British Airline Pilots’ Association said:

. . . we have had a string of survivable accidents on all types of aircraft in which we believe the effects of smoke and fire have been critical for the people trapped in the fuselage . . .  a lot more people have died in these incidents than should have done.

(Guardian 29th August 1985)

So what factors are within our technical capacities; what safety measures are there available?

FUEL: ICI have developed a fuel additive which will prevent misting and so lessen the flammability of fuel. But to do this took seventeen years of research and ICI are waiting for funding before developing the lifesaving additive. Although undoubtedly safer, there is no guarantee that it will even be used—some airlines still use JP4 gasoline rather than the less flammable Jet A kerosene. A study by Cranfield Institute of Technology shows that, on average, five times as many passengers will be burnt to death before they can escape, if JP4 is used. JP4, though, is cheaper. (Flight International 14th September 1985)

MATERIALS: Most deaths in aircraft fires are due to the inhalation of toxic fumes from the combustion of the foam inside seats. Airlines have been slow to introduce new, safer upholstery, as regulations will require by 1987. The cost to the airline is $200 a seat, and will give passengers an extra ninety seconds to escape. Of course, even safer materials are available, but they are found only in the Space Shuttle as the cost of replacement by the airline companies is too large. (Newsnight, BBC 2, 22nd August 1985)

WEIGHT: “Every gramme of structure (is) a gramme of commercial payload lost” (The Safe Airline - J M Ramaden, 1976). Therefore light aluminium alloys are used for the aircraft body although they have very poor heat resistance. This argument has long been used by the airlines to counter the requests for more, or improved, safety equipment.

The standard Boeing 737 flight has one hundred and fourteen passengers in nineteen rows. A charter flight — like that which crashed at Manchester — packs in an extra three rows, giving three inches less of space for each person. The Air correspondent for BBC News asks,

Why were 130 of those souls crammed into seats spaced just thirty inches apart? . . . The answer, of course, is that the average passenger represents 140 lbs of high-value merchandise, and that if you can compress three additional rows of seats designed to provide comfort for one hundred and fifteen people, it means you can earn another £600 or so on a Mediterranean flight. Multiply that by ten aircraft making a couple of round trips a day during the peak summer and winter holidays, and you come out with substantial earnings approaching an additional million pounds a year. (The Listener, 5th September 1985)

So it is simply a case of the inexorable law of capitalism — payload and profits come a long way before safety. As David Vearmount of the Civil Aviation Authority said, "Airlines don’t mind applying the safety rules as long as all their competitors do so”. (Flight International, 14th September 1985) 

Considering the controversy that has surrounded the use of the emergency exits in the Manchester crash, it is important to note that British Airways are intending sealing two exits on their 747 Jumbo jets in order to increase seating capacity. (In case you had forgotten, BA are the airline that once claimed to “take more care of you”).

The risk, then, is quantified by the airline. Each passenger effectively has a price on their head — doubtless down to two decimal places. Under the facade of efficiency that is the accountants’ balance-sheets, the benefits of cost savings on cheaper fuel, or lighter planes, or more passengers is weighed against “acceptable” risks to safety:

It is on the definition of just what is an acceptable risk, however, that pilots and operators have some of their most bitter arguments, and many safety-conscious but disillusioned pilots have, perhaps unfairly, echoed Nevil Shute’s bitter comment, “of course operators are all for safety - just as long as it doesn’t cost them any money!” . . .  an airline may accept a risk, because to lessen it would put one or more particular departments over the allotted budget; while if a crash occurs, it is not the operator who foots the bill, but the insurer, (Pilot Error - A Professional Study of Contributory Factors, Ronald Aupt (Ed), 1976)

The definition of acceptable risk is rightly troublesome — whose risk is it, to fly (as passengers or crew) in a plane that could be safer? But who accepts the benefits?

The simple inequality, based on an inequality of ownership and control, explains why the interests of consumers (like the passengers flying on holiday) and of producers (like the cabin crew), are ignored in order to meet these needs of the minority class of owners, who don’t need to live on wages or salaries, and certainly don’t live for package flights to the Med once a year.

And as the bereaved families picked up their lives again, they were already being hounded by lawyers from America, who can get higher rewards — and a higher cut — from suits filed over there. One was reported to have booked into a hotel near Manchester Airport within 48 hours of the crash, fresh from a killing at Bhopal and now "ambulance-chasing” in Manchester. Definitely business as usual.

Brian Gardner 

History of anarchism (1993)

Book Review from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. By Peter Marshall. Fontana. £9.99.

Peter Marshall's monumental history of anarchism from ancient Greece and ancient China to today is now available in paperback. The ideas covered—anyone opposed to the state, from whatever angle— group together people with widely divergent, not to say incompatible views: from anarcho-communists like Kropotkin who stand for common ownership and no money to anarcho-capitalists like Ayn Rand and Proudhon who want to abolish the state so as to allow the market economy free rein.

If the anarcho-communists feel confortable being grouped with these latter under a common title, we wouldn’t. Which is why we are dubious about the unindexed statement on page 495 that “some claim that the tiny Socialist Party of Great Britain is anarchist in inspiration"—even though we have always held that the state, as the public power of coercion composed of police, prisons and armed forces, will be abolished in socialism.

Adam Buick

Malcolm Xploited (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hotter than 

a cross of fire 

hip refurbished 

black messiah 

hanging on 

the whitest walls 

for the biggest 

buck of all. 

                           Dave Bishop