Should the Workers Fight for Russia? (1928)

From the April 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the Great War there were many workers in this and other countries who would have agreed without a moment’s hesitation that a working class movement should not support a capitalist war, and who, again without hesitation, rushed into the war when it came. This war, they said, was “different"; this was a “defensive” war; the workers must defend their homes, their wives, their liberties.

Since 1918 the vague sentiment against war has grown up again, and we are asked to put our trust in the illusory determination of the organised trade unionists to stop another outbreak. But those non-socialists who are most emphatic in their refusal to support another capitalist war are frequently to be heard expressing their willingness to fight for Russia, and their approval of the Russian military preparations. Thus the Sunday Worker (February 19th), shows a picture of a handsome Russian soldier in full fighting equipment, and under it the words: “Soviet worker in the Red Army ready to defend the factories and land of his class.”

CAPITALISM THE ENEMY.

We tell the workers of each capitalist nation that support for capitalist wars, offensive or defensive, is not in accordance with working class interests, for the simple reason that “their” country does not in fact belong to them but to the capitalist class. The factories and land of England do not belong to the workers but to their masters, and the same is true of Germany, America and other countries. What the workers have not got they cannot lose. What then does it matter to them if "their” country, which isn’t theirs at all, is taken away from the English section of the capitalist class by another section? Win or lose, the workers are still workers, and the kindly interest taken in them by English capitalists is precisely the same in kind as that of American, German, or any other exploiters, i.e., the desire to make a profit out of them.

CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA.

So far the members and followers of (he Communist Party in this country would doubtless signify their agreement. But the next step in the argument is to consider whether Russian workers are in an essentially different position. Do the factories and land in Russia really belong to the Russian working class, and if not why should they defend interests which are not their own, but those of another class ?

Let us first take the land. In theory the land of Russia belongs to the State, as in this country all land is in theory held from the Crown; in fact the land belongs in Russia to the peasants as it belongs here to the landowners. Issuing decrees declaring that the land has been socialised is of no significance whatever except as an evidence of good intentions. The Soviet Government has not the machinery to carry out such decrees, nor the power enforce them. The consent of the peasants is unobtained and unobtainable, and the Government never did in fact seriously regard such a step as practical politics. No Russian Government would survive for a month if it endeavoured to dispossess the peasants of their land. They were the makers of the "revolution” and they would crush any Government which openly opposed their interests. Their seizure of the land preceded the Bolshevik coup d’etat and they will resist fiercely any change from Monarchists to go back or from Communists to go forward.

PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND.

Mr. Arthur Ransome (Manchester Guardian, 2nd March) quotes from Pravda an article on this question in which it is shown from official records that whereas there were at the end of the Civil War between 15 and 16 million separate peasant holdings there are now 25 million. Peasant proprietorship is growing, not declining.

There are, it is true, some Soviet Government model farms run on up-to-date industrial lines and intended to undermine the barbaric individualism of the peasants and their methods of cultivation. As a means of raising the standard of cultivation they have had some success, but as the basis of social ownership of the land and a socially organised agriculture they are negligible. Out of a rural population of some 116,000,000 (see Statesman’s Year Book, page 1227) only “about 500,000 workers, of whom 45 per cent, are permanent workers, are employed in the Soviet farms and their dependent enterprises." (See Weekly Bulletin of the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, 23rd February 1928). That is to say that less than one-half of one per cent, of the rural population are employed on these model farms. The value of the output of the State Agricultural Syndicate and the Sugar Trust is only 5.5 per cent, of the gross agricultural output in 1926-27. (See above Bulletin.)

The land in Russia belongs not to the working class but to the peasants. It is privately owned and controlled by them and cultivated on an individualistic basis for private profit. The Russian working class have no more direct interest in the defence of peasant proprietorship, than have the French workers in the defence of peasant proprietorship in France. Peasant proprietorship is economically backward and socially reactionary. As sellers of farm products, as purchasers of manufactured goods, as employers of wage earners or exploiters of the unpaid labour of their wives and children, and finally as owners of land, the interests of the peasants are in direct conflict with those of the working class and are directly opposed to the movement towards socialism. The Russian workers emphatically do not possess the land of Russia. Why. then should they fight to defend what is not theirs?

WHO OWNS THE FACTORIES?

Now let us consider the factories. Do the Russian workers own the Russian factories and workshops, railways and steamships, and industrial capital in general? The answer is plainly No! The Russian workers are wage-earners as in this country. Some are employed by Russian and foreign private capitalist undertakings, frankly carried on for profit. Others, as in our Post Office, are employed in State capitalist concerns, their general conditions of labour being governed as here by the general standard of living of the workers and by the need of the Government to pay; interest on borrowed capital and foreign credits, and to run the concerns at a profit on ordinary commercial lines. It has even happened that wages in the Russian State concerns have been lower than in outside industry. This, however, is due to special circumstances and is hardly likely to be more than temporary. It has been explained in Russian official quarters as being due to the willingness of State employees to take lower wages in order to build up capital reserves for the expansion of State industry. Workers in private concerns have, on the other hand, been directly encouraged to, stand out for higher wages among other reasons for the purpose of crippling their accumulation of reserves.

NO PROFITS WITHOUT EXPLOITATION.

Profit and interest only come from the exploitation of wage labour, and capitalism in Russia is no exception. That is not to question the sincerity or good intentions of the Bolshevik administrators of Russian capitalism. But whatever their intentions may be there is in essentials only one way of administering capitalism, that is in the capitalist way. The policy of the Soviet Government is dominated by the solid resistance of the peasants to any attempt at socialisation, by the need to produce manufactured goods cheaply and by the necessity of paying for the capital which they must borrow at home or abroad.

The peasants already complain of the fact that they are compelled to buy home produced manufactures at prices well above those ruling abroad. As their knowledge increases so they will press more and more strongly for the destruction of the State control of foreign trade, for the right to sell their products in the dearest market and the right to buy manufactures in the cheapest market. To meet this the rulers of Russia will in turn be compelled to introduce all the modern capitalist methods of speeding up in the endeavour to make their employees produce goods cheaply enough to compete with goods produced in Germany, England and elsewhere. The Russian workers are wage-earners like any others, living under capitalist economic conditions and exploited like any other wage-earners.

The issue of the Sunday Worker from which we quoted above gives very pointed evidence of this.

THE SHARE PUSHERS.

Under the heading “Big Chance for Investors,” it spreads the glad tidings that a Russian Government Railway Loan for £6,000,000 has been placed on the English market, offering a total actual return of over 11 per cent. The Sunday Worker says: “High yielding loans are usually not available for public subscription, especially with the security this offers. The profits on the railways last year would cover the loan four times.” Here we have our old familiar enemy capitalism in all its nakedness. The Russian workers have no more interest in defending Russian capitalism than we have in defending English capitalism.

But, we are told, surely the control of the Russian Government by the Bolsheviks makes a difference; as also the numerous and important improvements in wages and conditions of labour which have been introduced. Should the Russian workers not be willing to fight in defence of these gains?

THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALISM.

Let us clear the air, by stating one or two facts. First, it is evident from the more reliable accounts that the condition of the Russian workers is better than before the war, as measured by the amount of real wages. Second, it can readily be admitted that the “sympathetic” and enlightened administration of the capitalist system can bring certain definite but limited gains to the workers. For example, it is plainly better for the workers to be protected by Factory Acts than not to be protected, and probably better to be scientifically exploited by a Ford or a Cadbury than to be brutally and unscientifically sweated by some unintelligent early Victorian who has not realised that it pays to have healthy and contented workers. But while this may be admitted to be true that is no sufficient cause for the workers to sacrifice their lives. In the first place, the difference of degree is small and certainly not worth fighting about, and more importantly, the workers will not lose these small advantages by any action or inaction of theirs, because the motive is not at all the welfare of the workers. The changes in methods of exploitation are due to the development of capitalist industry itself. It is not kindness but necessity which compels the factory owner to raise the standard of living of the coolie when he takes him from his field work and introduces him into the more exhausting factory system. Russia, whether ruled by Bolsheviks or as an adjunct of a British-American Banking trust, cannot compete with foreign highly developed capitalist industry unless it gives its wage-slaves approximately the same physical standards and inducements to work. Carrying the argument to its logical extreme, the conquest of Russia by America, might result in the Russians being forced to accept the American more developed system of intensified exploitation based on the payment of those higher wages of which we hear so much.

A PEASANT GOVERNMENT?

There is of course the possibility that the Russian Government might come to be controlled by a peasant party, openly hostile to and ignorant of capitalist industry and its needs. (This is in Trotsky’s view the present tendency.) Should that happen capitalist industry and incidentally the care of the workers as profit-producing agents, would be neglected. This is no doubt the reason why Factory legislation, health and unemployment insurance, etc., are so backward in France with its largely peasant dominated parliament, as compared with Germany. But that danger in Russia would point to the need of the workers endeavouring to protect themselves against the encroachments both of the peasants and of the capitalist class and not to the fatal policy of lining-up under the national flag in the pathetic belief that they have an interest in defending their "country.” Their county, like our "motherland” and the German “fatherland,” belongs not to them but to classes with interests opposed to those of the working class. The chief enemy of the working class is the capitalist class and the task of the Socialist is to overthrow the capitalist system in Russia as elsewhere.

In conclusion, it may be as well to point out that this is in no sense a condemnation of the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 Our criticism was and, is that they claimed to be able to achieve the impossible. Certain definite tasks lay before them and have been achieved. They brought Russia out of the war, exposed the purely capitalist nature of the conflict to the workers in both camps, and hastened the building of capitalism in Russia at a time when there was no other party with sufficient experience or determination to tackle so great an administrative work. They cannot, however, by legislation solve the fundamental conflicts between contending classes in Russia. They cannot permanently make the working class content with the capitalist economic system, and it would be better that they should recognise before it is too late that if they remain in office the discontent of the workers will come to be directed against them.

Edgar Hardcastle

Free transport or free access? (1971)

From the July 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Should travel on London’s trains and buses be free? Not so long ago this would have been, and was, dismissed as absurd. But now the GLC — which since 1970 has been in charge of London Transport — is looking at the idea. So is the London Labour Party, and economists, transport planners, passenger action groups, Tories, Liberals and even businessmen are amongst its supporters.

Many claims are made for free transport: It will leave most people better off financially. It will help solve the traffic problem. If train and bus fares were abolished, its advocates say, more people would leave their cars at home or at parking places away from the centre and use instead the trains and buses. This would relieve traffic congestion and allow a better bus service, which would encourage still more people to use public transport. The number of cars on the road would fall, reducing pollution and the need to build roads through residential areas.

WHO IS GOING TO PAY?

Maybe, but where is the money to come from? “Free” transport is only free to the passenger at the time he travels. The cost of running the transport system has to be paid for even if no fares are taken. One way, since London Transport is now under the GLC, would be to finance “free” transport from the rates. But since most passengers will also be ratepayers might not people lose as higher rates what they gained as free travel? 

The advocates of free transport have an answer to this. They say that transporting people to and from work and the shops is unprofitable and has to be subsidised anyway and that fares-free public transport financed from rates or taxes could be the cheapest way of doing this if you take into account the present cost of the pollution, congestion and road-building caused by public transport’s great rival, the motor car. They also produce figures to show that the family man working in the centre of London would tend to gain from fares-free transport on the rates.

LOWER WAGES AND SALARIES 

But even if the saving from fares is greater than the increase in rates this does not necessarily mean that people would be better off financially. Fares are an important item in the cost of living and it is the cost of living which largely determines the level of wages and salaries. Whatever reduces the cost of living will tend also to reduce wages. This would apply equally if fares were abolished.

This is obvious in the case of civil servants and others who are paid a special “London Allowance” to cover the higher cost of housing and travelling in London. Free London transport would narrow the difference between the cost of living in London and the rest of the country and would lead employers to seek to reduce this extra payment.

Thousands of booking clerks and ticket collectors would be made redundant, swelling the number of jobseekers and helping to keep wages down.

A WAGE SUBSIDY FOR EMPLOYERS 

Those who claim that free transport would save people “considerable” sums of money are assuming that free services are an addition to wages. The opposite is nearer the truth: they are a hidden deduction from wages from which employers benefit the most.

If employers are to get a good day’s work they must pay their workers adequately. The wage packet or salary cheque must allow the workers enough to pay for the food, clothing, housing, travel and the other things they must have to keep themselves fit to work. If travel to and from work were free employers would no longer have to include in the wage packet any sum to cover travelling expenses. What to the workers would be a “free” service would to their employers be a wage subsidy.

VESTED INTERESTS

Free transport under capitalism has little to offer wage and salary earners, but it would benefit some sections of the business world. If travel were free throughout the London area it would be no more expensive to shop in the centre than to shop locally, so the big West End stores would gain. If the cost fell on the rates then landlords and property-owners would be subsidising the big employers. Car manufacturers and road construction firms, too, would lose from a reform that discouraged the use of the motor car.

Within the context of capitalism any campaign for free transport would become a struggle between these various vested interests. If free transport ever comes it will be to serve such interests and not for the benefit of the wage and salary earners who use public transport. Nor is there any reason to expect the quality of the service to improve if fares were abolished, precisely because most passengers are workers.

FREE ACCESS FOR ALL

There is nothing wrong with free transport as an idea. Far from it. Fares do restrict people’s freedom to travel; fare-collecting and ticket-issuing is a waste of manpower and machinery; transport in Socialist society will be run as a free service for people to use as and when they want to. But a distinction must be drawn between free transport as a reform within capitalism and free transport as part of Socialist society where all goods and services will be free.

Free transport under capitalism would be a deduction from wages and a subsidy for employers. Before people can benefit from it, the whole wages system must be abolished. The means of production must cease to be the class property of a privileged few and become the common property of the whole community. This, too, would create the framework within which the problem of the motor car and its pollution and destruction can be rationally tackled.

Once the means of production are the common heritage of all and are under democratic control, then the profit motive and the price system can be abolished. Wealth can be produced solely for people to use. People can have free access not only to travel facilities but to all the other things they need to live and enjoy life. Goods will not be priced, but will be available for all to take freely according to their needs.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Congo Nationalism (1960)

Editorial from the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Africa, it seems, is going to he in the news for a very long lime. The latest trouble spot is the Congo, where, after the attainment of independence from Belgian rule, there were riots which apparently involved murder and rape. One news agency has described Luluabourg, in Kasai, as like a “sea of flames.”

As a complication, the province of Katanga has declared its intention of remaining separate from the rest of the independent Congo. Katanga is an area possessed of tremendous mineral wealth—uranium, diamonds, zinc, iron, cobalt and copper are all there. Prior to independence, these resources were extensively worked by the powerful Union Miniere. If Katanga succeeds in asserting its independence, Union Miniere will probably be able to continue its operations; when this possibility became apparent, the company’s shares soared. The Congo as a whole has not for a long time been a profitable source of investment for Belgian capitalists and one of the few chances of recouping some of their losses lies in dealing with a separate state of Katanga.

The wealth of Katanga is vital to the Congo: it was intended that it should make the largest contribution to easing the new State’s economic difficulties. This is the sort of situation which has thrown up many a nationalist movement. Now, M. Tshombe has used the arguments of his rival M. Lumumba to work a double trick upon him —to build nationalism within nationalism. Even so, Katanga may have a hard time if it loses the services of the port of Matadi. If westward of Katanga there is a hostile Congo, M. Tshombe’s government may be forced to seek an outlet for the province’s commodities through the east coast ports of Dar-es-Salaam or Mozambique. Perhaps this is the basis of the rumours of a proposed alliance between Katanga and Ruanda Urundi.

The onlooking capitalist powers know that without Katanga, an independent Congo would be dangerously unstable. They also know that although this may suit some Belgian capitalists, it would not be acceptable to the other African states. Ghana is already showing a close interest in the dispute. Hence the concern of the United Nations and Mr. Hammerskjold’s warning of the danger of a war which may not he limited to the Congo.

All of this is sickeningly familiar. As the Congo struggles to establish itself among the other independent capitalist nations, so the problems of capitalism make themselves felt. The need to produce its goods as cheaply as possible and to sell them on the most favourable market —these will soon be the day-to-day concerns of the Congolese government and of any state of Katanga which may be set up. So also will the need to organise the most efficient exploitation of their workers. Already, the recent devaluation of the Congo franc is being interpreted as a measure to offset wage demands by the workers on the plantations. Doubtless, some of these workers will soon be organised into Congolese armed forces to protect the economic interests of their ruling class.

Much sympathy has been expressed for the victims of the riots and it is impossible to disagree with such sentiments. But this is not the first time that such things have been known in the Congo. It is only sixty years ago that the grisly excesses of the commissaries and agents of the Congo Free State were terrorising the natives. It is typically ironical that the victims of that savagery have not appreciated its futility and are consumed with the ambition for revenge. The Congolese, like so many others before them, have answered violence with violence.

The history of capitalism’s colonial powers is a horrifying story of brutal exploitation. Belgium has played her part in making that history. Yet the Congolese workers are wrong to believe that national independence is in their interests. As capitalism takes root in Africa, so will the social ailments of that system. The troubles in the Congo will probably be smoothed over but we know that they will be followed by others, perhaps somewhere else. For example, the Congo flared up just as the Nyasaland conference was nearing agreement in London. Where will the next eruption take place?

For this situation will last as long as the capitalist social system is in existence. The only way out is to establish Socialism, which will organise the world so that everyone, whatever their sex or colour of skin, has free access to the world's wealth and stands equally to the rest of humanity. There is no place for vicious exploitation in such a society.

That is the lesson for workers to learn, in Africa and all over the world.

Socialists and Day to Day Politics (1959)

Editorial from the May 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Other political parties are forever proclaiming their support for or opposition to some new proposal for changing the law. This is what day to day politics are made up of, and it is round these issues that elections are won and lost. The Socialist Party is unique in standing aside from that kind of contest. We fight elections solely on the demand for Socialism. We do not campaign for or declare our support of schemes of reform. We do not struggle to get this or that law amended or to prevent it from being amended.

Some workers who do not understand the Socialist case think that the Socialist Party’s attitude to reforms means standing aloof from the workers’ struggles. They are quite mistaken. It is a question of the Socialist being concerned with a different struggle, the fundamental struggle that has as its aim the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

The two aims cannot be combined. In order to achieve Socialism it is necessary to win over the workers of all countries to a recognition of the uselessness of trying to solve their problems by modifying Capitalism. What conviction would that message carry if the Party that preached it was at the same time telling the workers to postpone the idea of working for Socialism and devote themselves to working for reforms? Fifty years of Labour Party work for reforms has not brought Socialism one day nearer.

There is also a basically false idea behind working for reforms, the idea of rallying the supporters of Capitalism behind a proposal to reform Capitalism. To the Socialist, Capitalism is a class-divided social system; on the top side the owners of wealth and the means of producing and distributing wealth and under them the working class who produce the wealth. Any improvement that the working class may get under Capitalism they get at the expense of the propertied class.

The propertied class know this, hence their unceasing resistance to claims for higher wages; and every government knows this when it presses, as every government does, for “wage restraint.”

One factor there is that will move the propertied class to surrender some of their wealth. This factor is the growth of the Socialist movement. The Capitalists do not for long fear the leaders of reformist movements— they have been digesting them for generations. But when the Socialist movement grows in numbers, threatening the Capitalist class with the coming end of Capitalism, then the Capitalists will be anxious to make reform concessions, designed to gain a further lease of life for Capitalism by trying to entice the workers away from the Socialist movement. Paradoxical though it may seem to those who do not understand Capitalism, the policy of the Socialist, of standing uncompromisingly for Socialism, would incidentally induce the Capitalists to offer reforms, though their hope of thereby stopping the development of the Socialist movement would be an empty one.

Advertising: selling the system (1993)

From the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Statistics show that 85 percent of women have skin blemishes in one from or another . . .  All treatments at competitive prices" (advert in London Midweek).

"The ads have raised shamelessly corporate brainwashing to an entertainment art form" (unusually frank admission on Calgary Channel 7 TV).

Advertising is a central and indispensable feature of capitalism. Very obviously advertising aims to sell goods and services both to workers who collectively produce them and to capitalists who don’t but who have the money. Less obviously advertising seeks also to sell the system of which it is an integral part. In other words to convince us that to buy and sell things is the only possible way to run a society and meet our needs. Since capitalist industry is geared to mass production, time out for workers’ mass consumption is as much a necessity as their time in for production. We must be encouraged, even implored, to buy back what we produce. Need doesn’t count only purchasing power and the desire to purchase. Advertising offers itself as a means of efficiently creating consumers and controlling and consumption of products.

The goal of advertising has been stated as the creation of desires and habits. Desires are often not real needs, not things that enhance the quality of life, but "fancied needs", stupid but marketable items such as electric toothbrushes and expensive vacuum cleaners that get rid of invisible "bugs".

Advertising copy aims to make readers or viewers uneasy, to bludgeon them with the "fact" that decent people don’t live the way they do. Adverts constantly hammer away at everything that pertains to us: our bodily functions, our appearance, our self-esteem, and offer us something of theirs as an allegedly socially more acceptable substitute.

Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones. Advertising helps to make and keep us dissatisfied with our tasteless mode of life, discontented with the ugly things around us. There is something wrong with you, but help is at hand, the marketplace can offer you a solution to your problem. Not, of course, a complete or permanent solution because that would spoil the market for the next enterprising advertiser to minister to your other created wants.

S. Ewen, a pungent critic of advertising, writes:

"Advertising offers a commodity self; an appropriate popular, successful conglomeration of mass-produced breath, hair, teeth, skin and feet. Each portion of the body is to be viewed critically, as a potential bauble in a successful assemblage. You don't make friends, your commoditised smile ’wins’ them; your embellished hair, and not you. is beautiful."

In a society based on production for profit, not the meeting of need, advertising attempts to divert attention from what we can create and experience in co-operation with others anti towards what the market can supply us with at a price. We are invited to reject the possibility of an authentic life and to believe that we must accept a commoditised existence in the "real” world.

So there will be no advertising in socialist society, no market system to tell us what we want and sell things to us on its own terms. Production directly for use. for the satisfaction of self-determined but socially informed needs, will set the tone for the whole society. Advertising will be out. but information - fuller, fairer and without ulterior motive - will be in. We will want to know what society is capable of producing and we will want to know what people's needs are in relation to what society is capable of producing.

There is no reason why men and women should not be enthusiastic about, and therefore want to tell others about, what they can make or the services they can offer. Since time and effort are finite in any society we shall on occasion need some democratic mechanism to decide priorities. But such a mechanism w ill be a far cry from today's huckstering, class divided exploitative society. It really is time to see that capitalism has long passed its sell-by date.

Stan Parker

The Soul of Man (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few years ago I bought the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, which included an essay entitled "The Soul of Man under socialism". I was surprised to find that Wilde had political opinions as I was only familiar with Wilde the aesthete but this essay and his poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" showed his concern for the poor.

"The Soul of Man" was my first acquaintance with socialism and it was sometime before I became aware of the Socialist Party. At first I thought socialism meant the Labour Party (especially Tony Benn) but obviously now I realize how wrong this view is. Re-reading Wilde's essay shows that he equated socialism as a world without private property: "It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property". He doesn’t state that socialism is a world without money, but as he so rightly criticizes charily we can assume he meant that the capitalist system should not be reformed only abolished: "Their remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease".

Although written just over one hundred years ago it is remarkably apt for contemporary Britain as he says: "For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin. is the parent of modem crime". This is far removed from the Victorian values which we still hear about, as is "sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less".

Anticipating criticism of this view, he says that "no Authoritarian Socialism will do", meaning it can’t be forced on people and can only be achieved when the majority want it:

"Socialism, Communism, or whatever, one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the material well-being of each member of the community."

This is as good a definition of socialism as we will find.

It is not just material well-being that socialism can bring but what Wilde calls individualism.

He waffles on about this a bit and about art but basically what he means is that each individual will be able to live fully meaningful and interesting lives. Under capitalism, this is only possible for a minority, in socialism everyone can fulfil their potential:

"One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all".

By "Soul of Man", I think Wilde meant the personality or "spirit” of humans which can be developed fully without the constraints of capitalist society. With the ending of war, hunger, poverty etc we can take for granted the material things of this world and concentrate on "not in what man has but in what man is".

Wilde sees machinery as vitally important for this type of society as it can do most, if not all, of the work, "At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man”. Wilde predicts that as machines will do the work this will leave man to enjoy:

“cultivated leisure - which, and not labour, is the aim of man - or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight."

Whilst a socialist world may still require plenty of useful work to be done, it is true that machinery can help humanity. Instead of studying new ways for us to kill each other, scientists can concentrate on developing things which would improve the quality of life for everyone. He sums up this view' with: "The state is to make what is useful. The individual is to make w hat is beautiful”.

Defining the State

He defines the state as "an association that will organize labour and be the voluntary manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities”. To use the word state was a mistake as he didn't mean state as in government: "the state is not to govern”; therefore his "state" means humanity cooperating to provide what we need.

Despite certain reservations, this is still as a good an introduction to socialism, and is obviously still relevant today:

"They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not the solution; it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."

Nigel Green

Editorial: Cure for the fascist cancer (1993)

Editorial from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is it about the BNP that makes most of us so sick to the stomach to think of it winning even a single council seat?

The BNP stands for the politics of hate and division. They hate blacks. They admire the Nazis’ attempt to wipe out the Jews. They despise homosexuals. They are unthinking, prejudiced bigots. They are only ever going to appear attractive to the embittered and the frustrated.

But they are a symptom, not a cause. It is all too easy to condemn the BNP, the NF and the assorted rag-bag of fascistic know-nothing nationalists and assume that enough has been said. The fascists are merely the flies which congregate upon the dung heap. Swat them and the stench of what gave rise to them still remains.

The BNP are not the only nationalists. All parties which tell voters that The Nation must be safeguarded are nationalists. The BNP encourages thugs who stab workers because of the colour of their skin. The Conservative government has an army filled with thugs who kill workers because of the flag they march under. Every government of the profit system condones the slaughter of workers by workers in the name of nationalism in time of war. Who are they to condemn the BNP?

The so-called anti-Nazis of the SWP give their support to fascistic nationalists in the IRA. They oppose giving a platform to the BNP but cheer "freedom fighters" who would blow up children in the name of "national liberation". Give all of these nationalists, however vile their talk and their deeds, the freedom to expose their obnoxious views in public. Do those who seek to ban them believe that workers are so stupid as to fall for fascist nonsense when it is countered in public by clear and logical opposition?

The few hundred deluded wage-slaves from the East End of London who gave the BNP their moment of victory last month are the products of a hope-crushing system of society called capitalism. Under this system profits always come before needs. So, houses which could be built to the highest standard for all the people are in short supply. The workers of the Isle of Dogs compete around the trough of poverty, blaming each other for getting too large a share of the squalid housing on offer.

In a sane society, where production is for use and not profit, people would not experience the falling out over who is to live in the impoverished environment of the slums - these would no longer exist.

The BNP is a product of the utter failure of all of the reformist parties - Tory, Liberal and Labour (backed up at election time by the SWP) - to make capitalism tolerable for workers to live in. Hopes have been frustrated to the point that the poison of cynicism has been imbibed. The same reformist failure has led to the same result, on a much wider scale, in France, and it is happening now in Germany. When capitalism not only fails to deliver the goods (as it inevitably does), but fails even to deliver the expectation that its promises will be met, nobody should be surprised that fascism is in the air.

The colour of workers’ skins is of no importance. Workers arc exploited because that is the only way for profits to be made - we are not exploited because of the colour of our skin or the colour of our eyes.

Workers have no country. We have a world to win. Only by rejecting the myths of national and racial identity can the world be won by and for all of its inhabitants. As knowledge of the real cause of our problems (capitalism) and the real basis of our strength (class unity) develop, the wretched appeal of the fascists will evaporate and the air will once and for all be cleared of the stench which has given rise to it.

Socialism and Climate Change (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

That global climate change has been caused by the excessive emission of carbon dioxide, (CO₂) since the Industrial Revolution is now accepted by the worldwide scientific community and (as the attendance at the Paris international conference, COP 21) in December last year indicates) by the ruling political class of all countries as well. Though there are still important reservations and much follow up work will be required, the agreement at the Conference to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade (2^oC) above pre-industrial levels was a breakthrough regarding tackling the huge problem of climate change.

Stabilisation

However, it does raise the question of how the countries of the world are going to go about this formidable task. One practical approach worth recalling is that proposed by Socolow and Pacala (A plan to keep carbon in check, R H Socolow and S A Pacala, Scientific American, July 2006). The key features of this are shown in the figure which is a graph of carbon (i.e. CO₂), the dominant greenhouse gas derived from burning fossil fuel and released into the atmosphere over time. The straight line labelled BAU (business as usual) shows a fairly straight line increase from about 1.6 billion tons carbon per year (BtC/y) to 7 BtC/y* over the period 1956-2006 followed by a straight line extrapolation for the next 50 years. It is a basic assumption in Socolow and Pacala’s analysis that the level of production of goods and services will go on unabated and steadily increase as it has in the past. These emissions have led to a buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere from about 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to 375 ppm in 2006 to 400 ppm today and when it reaches about 500 ppm a rise of 2^oC is likely to occur.

What Socolow and Pacala address is how to use existing technologies to bring about a reduction in the amount of fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) used to power society and so limit the increase in global warming to 2^oC. In the first instance the objective is to hold emissions at 7 BtC/y for the next 50 years. The area, marked ABC on the figure, between the BAU line and this steady level is called the stabilisation triangle. Socolow and Pacala further divided the stabilisation triangle into 7 wedges, each representing the same amount of CO₂ emissions. (The wedge is a convenient unit because its size and time scale match what specific technologies can deliver). Socolow and Pacala identified 15 technologies each of which is equal to the task of removing a wedge of emissions of CO₂. They were careful only to use tried and tested not 'pie in the sky' technologies and excluded improvements that are currently taking place. The idea is that one of the 15 technological solutions is applied in a controlled manner to eliminate a wedge of CO₂ release.

So let us take for example one of the technological solutions proposed, carbon capture and storage (CCS). The process involves the capture of CO₂ from coal fired power stations in a liquid solvent, then compressing it before transporting it by pipeline for burial deep underground, i.e. putting it back where it came from. In the first year this would reduce power station emissions by 0.5 Bt of carbon. In the second year more plant is introduced and a similar reduction is made so by the end of the second year, 1.0 Bt of carbon from coal-fired power stations would have been diverted from the atmosphere. And so after 50 years the target of no increase above current levels from this source of CO₂ would have been achieved and a total of 25 Bt of carbon would have been prevented from entering the atmosphere. Socolow and Pacala’s work indicates that CCS plant would need to be installed at 800 large coal-fired power stations to achieve this target, a not inconsiderable engineering feat. The same approach can be applied to the other six wedges of CO₂ emissions. The outcome would be that over the next 50 years or so CO₂ releases/year would be held at the level of 7 BtC/y.

For this level of CO₂ release into the atmosphere, global warming as predicted by widely accepted climate change models, would continue to increase before levelling off at around 2^oC above pre-industrial levels. After this, to ensure this temperature rise would not be exceeded, further wedges would be required to drive down CO₂ releases.

Other technologies identified by Socolow and Pacala for eliminating a wedge of CO₂ release include:

●       Increase fuel economy of two billion cars from 30 mpg to 60 mpg

●       Replace 1400 large coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants

●       Increase solar power from photovoltaic electricity to 2000 Gw of installed capacity.

●       Forestmanagement. Reduce cutting of primary tropical forest to zero over 50 years. Reforest hundreds of millions of hectares in temperate and tropical zones.

●       Cut electricity in homes, offices and stores by 25 percent by making them more efficient.

●       Increase wind power to replace coal with 2 million * 1mw peak wind turbines

Since the proposal by Socolow and Pacala in 2006 the release of carbon has now increased from 7 BtC/y in 2006 to 9 BtC/y today. This does not alter the basic idea of the wedge concept. But it does highlight the years wasted when little action was taken and it could mean that 9 wedges would now be needed. However the wedge strategy remains an eminently practical approach to the problem but one that would require an enormous effort and an unprecedented degree of cooperation worldwide to bring about.

The Red Wedge

The question is: can capitalism deliver? Or more pertinently what could be done in a socialist society? In socialism a similar approach could be adopted to the one outlined above with one big advantage. On the advent of socialism a considerable reduction in CO₂ emissions would be obtained by ending the enormous wasteful economic activity and production inherent in capitalism. Principal contributors to this waste are the maintenance and preparedness of the armed forces and occupations and products handling money. The enormous sums of money spent on the military represent the use of land, facilities, machinery, materials and human resources to keep it in a constant state of preparedness for and participation in war. The Socialist Party's own publication From Capitalism to Socialism  provides a list of dozens of occupations and products for the financial system as diverse as accountancy, advertising, banking, income tax officers, VAT inspectors, stock brokers, stock exchanges, banknotes, armoured cars, gas and electricity meters, postage stamps, tickets and TV licences. Socialism would eliminate the need for these industries and thereby rapidly introduce a large cut in power generation and consequent CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere. This would serve to relax the onus on (i) the introduction of the mitigating technologies discussed above and (ii) enable the power generation required for the pent up demand for improved living standards in the developing world to be met.

Following Naomi Klein’s analysis of the politics of climate change (This Changes Everything,  2014) it is difficult to believe that capitalism will heal itself, notwithstanding the apparent success of COP 21. It is hard to disagree with her conclusion that the opposition of the hugely powerful companies with vested interests in fossil fuels will be too great for any government(s) to overcome.

To conclude, in the first period of socialism clearing up this mess left by capitalism would be a priority project. However it is certainly the case that despite the reduction in CO₂ emissions that would be brought about by socialism, the introduction of the wedge strategy would still be a necessary and formidable challenge, but surely one that would be grasped wholeheartedly in a sane, socialist world.

Finally to quote Socolow and Pacala regarding the future 'Critically a planetary consciousness will have grown. Humanity will have learned to address its collective destiny - and to share the planet'. Let us hope so.

Tony Gluck

*A billion tons is 1000 million tons. As in reference 1 the units of release are expressed as carbon not CO₂. One ton of carbon is contained in 3.67 tonnes of CO₂.

Figure: Carbon emitted against year

 

Obituary: Harry Morriss (1993)

Obituary from the September 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to report the death of Comrade Harry Morriss of our Bournemouth group at the age of 77. He was born in the area, in Christchurch, but during the war was sent to London to work at the Woolwich Arsenal in his trade of fitter. There he encountered the Party, joining the old Lewisham branch in 1945 before moving back after the war.

Later he emigrated to Australia and New Zealand and in the late 1960s and early 1970s was an active member of the Auckland branch. After his return to England he became a founding member of our Bournemouth branch. While in New Zealand he had been one of those who argued for the party to change its name to the World Socialist Party, which the SPNZ eventually did. Comrades in Britain proved more conservative: when Bournemouth branch initiated a poll of the membership on the matter in 1986, the proposition was defeated by a 3-to-l majority.

In recent years illness prevented Harry from being as active as he would have liked to have been. Our condolence's go to his wife Dorothy, a member, and the rest of his family.

What is democracy? (1993)

Editorial from the August 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In all probability the most distorted and misused word in common use today is the word democracy.

The attempt to make world-wide capitalism and political democracy compatible, is a major exercise in deception and futility.

Capitalism is a class structured society, divided between the working and capitalist classes, whose interests are always in a state of conflict (hidden or open) with one another. Strikes, lock-outs etc prove it.

The capitalist system is economically and politically organized so that the means of life—the natural resources, the industries and the wealth produced (goods and services) are owned and controlled by a minority, and not by all the people.

Those who own do not produce. Those who produce do not own. Obviously, the major social decisions are made to benefit the owning, capitalist class. Governments (who are the servants of the capitalist class) process these decisions. enforce them by law, and the working class does the leg-work to carry them out. The vote is incidental, because as yet the working class always votes in favour of capitalism. They have been so trained. All the current claims of a democratic society by both the rulers and the ruled are spurious. A free society is for the future—not of the present.

Meanwhile, there arc none so appallingly enslaved as those who think they are free.

The “public” does not elect the captains of industry, the generals of the army, or the judges of law and order.

Governments are always in the business of liberalizing or imposing restrictive laws, and the rights of the capitalist class always come first, which includes the right to make war. We live under a plutocracy—not in a democracy.

The age-old right of the few to exploit, expropriate. use and abuse human beings is never seriously challenged by most people; that the wages system exists proves this, and it is disgustingly healthy.

For a democracy to be meaningful, a necessary requirement is that the means of life are in the hands of society as a whole, and democratically controlled in the interest of everyone.That means being informed, involved and participating in the decision-making of all social issues. That’s when the vote comes of age.

A formula for success could be initiated by a politically class-conscious majority to capture political power—to transfer the means of life from private to common ownership—to dismantle capitalism and to establish a democratic society. That’s when a detailed social plan will appear, and the cynics and pessimists disappear.

A true democracy would not have a class structure, and would not exploit, expropriate and abuse human beings. There would not be the need to lie, cheat, thieve and prey upon one another; to rob, ravish, oppress the weak, cringe before the strong, prostitute for a pittance and traffic in all things—good and bad.

Isn't it high time to make democracy safe for the world and to replace the governing of people with the administration of things?

We have nothing to lose but our political ignorance, and a world to gain.

Disorderly house (1978)

Book Review from the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The House the Left Built: Inside Labour Policy Making 1970-1975, Michael Hatfield, (Victor Gollancz, £8.50)

After its defeat in the 1970 General Election, the Labour Party set about formulating a set of policies to ensure its speedy return to power. It eventually produced what Hatfield calls “its most left wing programme in thirty years”, and his book aims to trace the process whereby these policies came to be adopted. As a study of the day-to-day exigencies of capitalist politics, The House the Left Built is mostly unilluminating. It does reveal the unprincipledness of Labour politics and the lack of democracy in the Labour Party, but it is hardly worth paying £8.50 to be reminded of this.

The most interesting point to emerge from the book is the extent to which Labour’s “left wing programme”, — a commitment to more nationalisation and state intervention in the economy — is not a monopoly of the Labour Party but rather a policy common to all those who try to administer capitalism. In 1973, Wedgwood Benn wrote that various Acts of Parliament passed by the Heath government “constitute the most comprehensive armoury of Governmental control that has ever been assembled for use over private industry, far exceeding all the powers thought to be necessary by the last Labour Government”, and he spoke of Heath’s "Spadework for Socialism” (meaning state capitalism). Hatfield makes the point that the watershed to a major extension of state intervention was actually crossed under a previous Tory government, in 1962, with the creation of the National Economic Development Council and the National Economic Development Office. After noting that Conservative governments have, for instance, nationalised the electricity grid system and brought London Transport under state control, he says, quite correctly, that “Labour Governments have brought in nationalisation measures for reasons not dissimilar to those that motivate Conservative Governments: the rationalisation of inefficient and bankrupt private enterprise”.

The pet idea of the Labour “left” during the period reviewed here was that of a state holding company (realised as the National Enterprise Board), which was modelled on similar European institutions; they did not publicly acknowledge this, however, on the opportunist grounds that to do so might weaken their case against British membership of the Common Market. The main Continental model was the Italian Industrial Reconstruction Institute, which, among other things, wholly owns the car firm of Alfa Romeo. The IRI illustrates well the fact that state control is a method which capitalist governments of all tinges must be prepared to employ: it was set up in the nineteen-thirties by Italy’s Fascist government as a “temporary” salvage company when three of the main private banks were threatened with bankruptcy.

State ownership, whether through direct nationalisation or by the government acquiring large blocks of shares, is a way of running, not abolishing, capitalism. Workers who believe nationalisation to represent an alternative to capitalism should reflect on the fact that it does not alter the worker’s status as a wage-slave, and consider the possibility of Socialism. The House that Socialists Will Build will not be a jerry-built slum but a sturdy mansion constructed out of the best materials and on the firm foundation of common ownership.

Paul Bennett

The Old Bill and the new Tony (1993)

Ilustration by George Meddemmen.

From the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the traditions of British politics is that the Tories are in favour with the police, the prison officers and all aspiring hangers and dispensers of corporal punishment because they believe they take a strong line on Law and Order. Another tradition is that the Labour Party are not popular in those same quarters because they are soft on crime and criminals, in accordance with some theory that we live in a class-divided society and the penal system is there to protect the interest of the ruling class and keep the working class in their place.

So how do we explain the fact that Kenneth Clarke, in one of his last public appearances as a Conservative Home Secretary, was so frostily received by the Police Federation conference in May while on the following day his Labour shadow, Tony Blair, was rapturously applauded? Blairs speech was described by the Federation chairman as “superb"; one of the Federation officers thought he had come close to the ultimate achievement of a standing ovation. In contrast, Clarke was described by one policeman as “an arrogant, rude Tory snob”. Since arrogant and rude is how many people experience police behaviour we can infer that Clarke had dared to disagree with the delegates.

It was not through any penetrating analysis of the causes of crime and the role of the police in capitalism that Blair won his applause. What he did was to reassure the nation’s finest that a Labour government would be tough on crime and would give the police, who are feeling a trifle beleaguered at the present time, a lot of what they have been asking for but did not look like getting from Clarke. On one issue. Clarke seemed to be bent on making it easier to support allegations of misconduct by the police. Now this is a matter of—how shall we put it?—some delicacy, as hardly a week goes by without some fresh revelation about innocent people being stitched up by the police and clapped behind bars as a result—sometimes for very long periods.

As a barrister Blair might have been expected to recognize that, even by the corrupt and decadent standards of capitalism, something is seriously wrong with the police. After all, it is not beyond imagining that a shadow minister might one day find himself on the receiving end of planted incriminating evidence or apparently signing a confession to some heinous crime they haven’t committed. But no: he assured the massed ranks of the Federation that he is not in favour of tampering with the present set-up. Before they began clapping, the police heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The Old Bill

Then there was the matter of crime—or rather that bit of it which finds its way into police records. Year by year it goes up and up, no matter how many more police there are or how many new laws or how much harsher the penalties. Blair had to tread a wary path here—after all it is a Labour Home Secretary that he hopes to be and he has to think about his reception at the next party conference where some of the delegates may have felt police truncheons on their heads on the picket line or on a demonstration. So while he makes a passing acknowledgement that the extremes of poverty, unemployment and poor housing have their effect on crime—which even the police have recently come to accept—he modified this:

no one but a fool would excuse the commission of a crime on the grounds of the individuals upbringing.

And then, criticizing the current disarray in what is known as the criminal justice system he gave an implied promise which would not have come amiss from Thatcher herself:

It cannot be the right way to start by imposing a freeze on (police) recruitment.

No wonder they cheered him. And in case there were any lingering doubts about whether the Old Bill really do love the New Tony, Blair said he supported testing the side-handled batons as seen on TV when the Los Angeles police were shown beating up Rodney King—tests which Clarke had refused.

There is a simple answer to the question why the police should be so much keener on this prospective Labour Home Secretary than they were on the Tory who held that office. Blair has made no secret of his view that the Labour Party must be ready to make whatever changes or abandonments to its policies which are necessary to win power. He knows—he would be insensitive to his audiences in a way for which barristers are not famous—how strong are the prejudices which arise from that tradition about Tory strength and Labour weakness on Law and Order. So he makes adjustments. This twisting may infuriate some members of the Labour Party. If so, it is time they faced the fact that they support a party which stands for capitalism and that winning power to run this society does not come from holding to principles.

Home office

They might also learn that there is no evidence to support that prejudice about Labour being soft on crime. For example, the "short, sharp shock” (which really meant mindless brutality and repression) was to be applied in the detention centres that were the brainchild of the 1945 Attlee government. Labour was in power when the Metropolitan Police—for which the police authority is the Home Office—introduced the notorious, rampaging Special Patrol groups. A similar development in the prison service, again under a Labour government, was the MUFTI squads, which quickly established a reputation for fearsomely dealing with recalcitrant prisoners. One of the achievements of the ever- so-cultured-and-liberal Roy Jenkins as a Labour Home Secretary was the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which did not prevent terrorism but which did restrict many of the safeguards of the rights of people under arrest by the police. What it amounts to is that no Labour Home Secretary has ever shirked doing whatever capitalism has demanded of them.

That, after all. is the function of all the organs of government among which the Home Office is of first importance. The name, so comforting, is misleading because the Home Office is responsible for a massive coercive machine—the Law, police, prisons, control of “aliens” and the like. In its wilder moments it might see itself as the guardian of public morality and safety even if it is difficult to see people like Kenneth Clarke in that role. Anyone—like Clarke who gets the job of Home Secretary is supposed to be very close to becoming Prime Minster, except that there are plenty of examples of ambitious politicians—Rab Butler. Roy Jenkins. Leon Brittan are just a few—for whom the job was close to their political grave.

Youthful

But, no doubt, Blair takes a more optimistic view of his chances. There is no lack of media encouragement to him to do so. Christened Anthony Charles Lynton Blair he decided—like Anthony Wedgwood Benn—that plain Tony was a name much more voter-friendly. He rose through choir school, Fettes College and Oxford to became a barrister in 1976. He got into Parliament for Sedgefield in 1983, when Michael Foot was laying waste to Labour’s dreams of ousting the Thatcher government. His clubs—a nice thoughtful touch this—are not Brooks or Whites or the Athenaeum but Trimdon Colliery and Deaf Hill Working Men’s and Fishburn Working Men's.

Blair burst onto the political scene as a bright-eyed, irrepressible young debunk specialist on TV. Perhaps his boyish looks were considered too youthful to reassure the voters because recently Blairs manner has been more subdued and weighty, as would be expected from someone who wants to be minister in charge of arresting workers who break the law, locking up tens of thousands of them and keeping the numbers of immigrants at a level acceptable to the prejudices of the voters. That is why Blair has come up with that statement which although suffering from an in-built inconsistency is crafted to appease both sides of the argument about crime—he wants to be tough on crime and tough on its causes.

Blair would not be the first politician to evade his party’s policies while appearing to implement them. That is how he won the approval of the police and how he hopes to win the approval of the Labour Party, who will doubtless give it to him if they see that he attracts the votes. And then all he has to worry about is winning the approval of the voters, who remain vulnerable to so many kinds of trickery and deceit. Then this one-time choirboy can sing in the bath at Number Ten.

Ivan

The IRA bombing campaign (1993)

Editorial from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apart from a few genuinely looney lefties such as Red Action and those who produce Dead Leninism (or “Living Marxism” as they have the check to call it), the recent murders of working-class men, women and children committed by the IRA in their current bombing campaign in England have, rightly, been condemned by ordinary people, in Ireland as well as on the mainland.

Life under capitalism is difficult enough without having the additional worry of wondering whether you—or your children—are going to be killed by a bomb when you do your shopping or go for a drink. Making life worse under capitalism is all the IRA achieves by its bombing campaigns. But then terrorising the population is what terrorists set out to do.

As the physical force wing of Irish nationalism, the IRA does have a political objective: the establishment of an all-Ireland Republic. This, as the record of the regime set up in the South in 1922 shows, would be of no benefit whatsoever to workers in Ireland.

Despite so-called independence, mass emigration, unemployment, bad housing and a lower standard of living than on the mainland continued unchanged. In one respect things got worse. The power of the Catholic Church to interfere with people’s lives was strengthened though, thankfully, this has been changing in recent years.

Apart from this, the only difference was that government power passed out of the hands of the parasite Anglo-Irish landlord class into that of wheeler-dealer politicians of the likes of Reynolds, the present Irish Prime Minister, and Haughey, his predecessor. And the IRA is murdering children just to extend the rule of such politicians to the North of Ireland! Can political murder ever have been employed in pursuit of so utterly worthless an aim?

Most workers in the South know this anyway. They have no sympathy for the IRA or its political wing Sinn Fein and at election after election they have repeatedly repudiated its claim to be acting on their behalf. Without being socialists they know that changes to the political constitution make no essential difference to their lives and are certainly not worth killing anybody to bring about. Once again, ordinary people have demonstrated a higher degree of understanding than those who have appointed themselves to act on their behalf.

The only degree of support the IRA is able to claim is amongst a minority of those of Catholic background in the North of Ireland. Certainly, workers there have plenty to complain about— no job prospects, low incomes, bad housing, etc, etc—but they are terribly mistaken in imagining that a united Ireland would in any way improve their position.

They are suffering because they are property-less workers in a world where the means of life are owned by a privileged minority. Their problems are caused not by British rule but by capitalism; which Irish independence left intact. Just as ’’Irish Unity” would.

The solution to the problems facing workers in Ireland is the same as that to those facing workers the world over. We must organise together to replace capitalism everywhere with a system based on democratic control and the common ownership of the planet’s resources. The struggle for such a socialist society has to involve implacable opposition to nationalism, of whatever variety, whenever it rears its ugly ahead.

Here we go again? (1993)

From the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the mid-1970s workers had to be put up with double digit price rises and falling real wages. Is this coming back?

Among those with the least understanding of the capitalist system are invariably those who are appointed to “manage” it. This looks like being amply demonstrated in the coming months as the present Conservative government resorts to the ill-conceived trick of capitalist politicians of currency inflation. True, inflation of the currency in Britain has been accruing since the onset of the Second World War or thereabouts. but it looks likely to be given an added impetus.

With a Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PBSR) projected to run to around £50 billion, or over 3 percent of GNP (Sunday Times, 21 March), the government is looking for ways of financing its massive debt. The normal way to do this is for the government to sell gilts and bonds to private investors and institutions like pension funds. However, with such a huge government debt, which is currently consuming £17.5 billion in net interest payments, the government is wary of crowding out investment from the slump-ravaged private sector of industry. In the March budget Chancellor Lamont nodded in the direction of the obvious option of tax increases to wipe out some of the debt, but has made provision to finance it in another way—by printing money to pay for some of it.

Massive government debt

In the budget Lamont announced that the Treasury had dropped its “full funding" rule whereby all government debt in a financial year had to be fully funded by sales of bonds and gilts to investors. Now the government can resort to the practice of financing part of the PSBR through sales of 90-day Treasury Bills to the banks.

In this situation what is likely to happen is that a point will arise when the government is selling Treasury Bills to the banks at a time when the cash reserves of the banks are depleted and they don't have the liquid assets available to buy all the Bills the government wants to sell to finance its deficit. The Bank of England, as the bankers’ bank and the lender of the last resort, will in these circumstances passively make more currency available to them. They are then effectively in a position to buy the Treasury Bills offered for sale, and can thereby lend to the government. It is in this way that the Bank of England tends to make available enough cash for the banking system to be always able to lend the government the amount it requires. Through this rather roundabout manner an excess issue of notes helps to finance part of government borrowing and, ultimately, government expenditure.

Governments have previously gone in for this tactic and there is every indication that the Tories may do the same again. In the mid-70s in an earlier slump the Labour government under Wilson and Healey financed part of its budget deficit and helped to increase its expenditure in this way. During the financial year 1974-5 it inflated the currency by a post-war record of 17 percent, amounting to about £700 million worth. This additional £700m financed almost half its additional real expenditure for the year.

Rising prices

The temptation for the present Conservative administration is just as great. Re-elected with the mission of reducing the amount of tax taken out of capitalist profit, and with limits to the extent of genuine government borrowing, the printing presses may yet seem like an attractive option. There is an important additional reason for this in that the present government—like all the other post-war governments before them—do not realise that expanding the note issue beyond that amount warranted by increases in production and trade will cause price rises. The fact is that prices have risen wherever and whenever currency has been issued in excess; the note issue has risen from £450 million before the war to about £16,000 million now while the price level has increased almost thirty- fold.

Instead the government has continued to blame price rises on a multitude of erroneous factors including wage rises (when wages are themselves prices) and low interest rates (when interest rales are prices too). The government has also recently reverted to its previous idea that inflation is caused by increases in the level of bank deposits in the economy. In this theory bank deposits are viewed as money, and when deposits increase this is seen as having the same effect as an excess note issue.

However, this theory ignores several important factors, principally that when there is an excess note issue this causes an artificial bloating of monetary demand in the economy as a whole. Prices then rise in response to buyers offering larger amounts of money in the same way that, say, prices of accommodation and other things rise in holiday resorts during the summer season when holidaymakers arrive in large numbers. With an increase in bank deposits nothing of the sort happens. There is no artificial bloating of demand since bank deposits add nothing additional to it, being monetary transfers of demand rather than a spurious injection of it as with excess currency. So when the government resorts to blaming price rises on increasing bank deposits. as it surely will if prices take off once more, it will be again demonstrating its own ignorance of the subject.

None of this gives justification to the view of Chancellor Lamont that the government has defeated inflation. Since governments don't understand the causes of inflation and are periodically influenced by factors which make large-scale inflation look attractive, price rises are again likely to become centre-stage politically in the coming months.

Dave Perrin

The future for socialism (1993)

Editorial from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people on the left are bitterly disappointed. The past ninety-plus years of left-wing “successes” have left capitalism firmly in power. Labour governments did not enact socialism, but sought to reform capitalism and all too often were indistinguishable from intentionally pro-capitalist governments. The communist regimes had nothing to do with working-class power and socialism, but were monstrous tyrannies presiding over state capitalism.

Today many people on the left feel defeated. The Labour Left is marginalised and irrelevant because they are an embarrassment to the Smiths and Blairs who want their party of profit-system accountants to be just as respectable as the Tories. The Communist Party, ashamed of its Leninist past of echoing the lies of the Kremlin dictators, has given up the ghost. A few Trotskyist sects remain, spouting the old nonsense of the vanguard and insurrection—as if any workers in their right minds would follow these pastiche Bolsheviks in a new Leninist revolution.

It is quite obvious that all the old struggles of the Left have failed. But now is certainly not the time to give up on opposing capitalism. What we need is clearer thinking and more genuinely revolutionary organisation.

If ever Marx’s analysis was being proved correct it is now. This is no time to cast aside Marxian analysis.

Capitalism is in a global crisis. The international market is in a condition of anarchy which is beyond the control of governments or economists. As well as the increasing poverty and mass unemployment, the system faces widespread environmental destruction, numerous nationalist wars, the growth of the racist virus, uncontrollable urban violence and the existence of huge piles of nuclear and chemical weapons which are up for grabs to the highest bidder. If this is not a system in need of total abolition, then what else is there to do with it? Reforming capitalism is a waste of time.The only way ahead is out—to a new, untried social system.

Global production for profit must be replaced by production solely for use. The ownership of society's productive resources by the super-rich minority must give way to common ownership. The dictatorship of capital, which tramples relentlessly upon human lives, must give way to democratic control. These are not new ways of running capitalism. These are ways of running a sane society without capitalism.

Now, as ever, the socialist alternative cannot be imposed by leaders or legislated for gradually by reformers. The revolutionary act of overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism must be the conscious and democratic act of the working class: the vast majority of us who do not live on rent, interest or profits.

The Socialist Party exists to win a majority of workers for socialism. We are neither a vanguard nor a would-be government. We assert that the future belongs to the working class majority and that only world socialism offers the hope of democracy, security, comfort and dignity for all.