Circuses as well as bread (1995)

Book Review from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Le communisme n'a pas encore commencé by Claude Bitot, Spartacus, Paris 1995.

This book, whose title translates into English as "Communism hasn't yet started" presents an interesting analysis of the working class movement over the last 150 years. As it is unlikely to be translated into English we summarise in the next five paragraphs the book's arguments, before adding our own comments.

Communism (or socialism, as we would normally call it) was not really on the agenda in the 19th century, because conditions were then not yet ripe for its establishment. In fact, if a communist party had come to power in 1848 or if the Paris Commune of 1871 had lasted the outcome could only have been some form of state-run capitalism.

Marx and Engels eventually came to realise this and then placed their hopes not on an immediate seizure of power but on the gradual development of working-class consciousness and organisation leading to the conquest of political power by a party enjoying majority support. But this didn't work either, as the Social Democratic parties which did emerge were not really socialist parties, but the left-wing of the bourgeois democrats. They expressed the aspiration held by most workers for better conditions within capitalism. The trade unions were similarly an expression of the workers desire to reform rather than end capitalism. Both helped integrate the working class into capitalism ideologically.

The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was also a false hope. Russia on its own was clearly not ripe for socialism. Some Bolsheviks. including Lenin, realised this; which was why they relied on a socialist revolution occurring in the West, in Germany in particular, to save them. This was a miscalculation; which should have been obvious. Only a small minority of the workers in Western Europe were revolutionary. Most weren't, as was demonstrated by their actions. For instance, a majority didn’t even vote for left-wing parties. In fact most of the workers in Russia weren't socialist-minded either; they wanted peace, workers’s control, etc., which was understandable enough, but still amounted to wanting a better deal under capitalism rather than socialism. The end result was (as Lenin himself described it) state capitalism, and the eventual emergence of a new ruling class in the form of a state bourgeoisie.

The reason for the failure of these three different attempts was that capitalism had not yet reached the end of its historical cycle. It was still able to expand production and so offer reforms and increases in living standards. At the same time it was able to ensure that workers did not use their increased free time to develop their socialist education (as Marx had hoped). Capitalism supplied them with circuses as well as with bread.

Capitalism, says Bitot, has now reached the end of its historical cycle. It can no longer offer reforms and improvements; in fact there haven’t been any since the early 1970s. Nor are there likely to be any; on the contrary, conditions can be expected to get worse. This, says Bitot, will generate a socialist consciousness— this time, a majority socialist consciousness—which will put the Communist revolution back on the agenda. This time for real.

An obvious criticism springs to mind. In making both reformist and revolutionary consciousness a mere reflection of economic conditions (capitalism's ability or inability to expand production and offer improvements) Bitot is clearly being too determinist. But on another point— the implications of a majority socialist revolution—he boldly goes where no previous "left communist” has ever dared go before, by raising the prospect of a relatively peaceful overthrow of capitalist rule rather than the prolonged and bloody civil war they all still cling to.

If millions and millions of workers have become socialist, he writes, we can envisage what will happen;

"in reality, internally divided, on the point of breaking up, the existing power will be ready to capitulate, which will make it not too difficult to knock down. What will be the precise form of this overthrow? Obviously no one can know in advance. But what it is already possible to glimpse is that the capture of power will take place relatively without violence. No doubt the power will be tempted to install a dictatorship, but will it still have the strength, undermined as it will be from the inside? . . . A minority can be crushed in this way, but this can't hold back for long on immense majority determined to see things through; in the long term the power will be obliged to give up.” (pp. 241-2).
 
"Some Marxists continue to be inspired by these revolutions of the past and so urge extreme violence against the power, revolutionary civil war, as the only ways possible, while condemning in advance as 'opportunist', 'reformist', the more peaceful ways of capturing power which Marx himself envisaged for certain advanced countries of the time." (p. 242).
   
"If the revolution still has to pass through a fierce civil war (apart from being the equivalent of a third world war) this would only prove that conditions weren't ripe. The future revolution will take place with a minimum of violence since by becoming the movement of the immense majority it will have radically altered the relationship of forces to the detriment of the tiny exploiting minority, desperately seeking to maintain an exhausted and outdated economic system." (p. 243).

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Allocating Resources (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since it was published in August financial journalists has been commenting on a paper put out by the US fund management firm Sanford Bernstein entitled 'The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing is Worse than Marxism'. If passive investing is worse than Marxism it must be really bad! But what is it? It’s when those investing money on the stock exchange, generally for others, invest it in a fund that passively tracks an index such as the FTSE 100, rather than actively picking stocks and shares themselves.

According to the paper, this impedes ‘the efficient allocation of capital’. Under capitalism investment (and so what gets produced) tends to flow towards those sectors of the economy with the highest rate of profit. The argument is that if those in charge of investing money-capital chose to invest only in companies included in an index without checking whether there are more profitable companies that are not included, then capital is not being invested in the most ‘efficient’ way.

The assumption here is that allocating productive resources according to what brings the highest monetary profit is the most efficient way to decide what should be produced, and when and where.

Socialists challenge this on the ground that, from the point of view of satisfying human needs, it misallocates resources. It leads to short-term projects being given priority over more useful longer-term ones. It leads to booms that inevitably end in an economic slump when production actually drops. It leads to financial bubbles. And, given the unequal distribution of income built-in to capitalism with profits being shared by a rich few and the income of the rest of us being restricted to our wage or salary, it leads to the wants and whims of the rich being given priority over the needs of the rest.

But where does Marxism come in to this? It wouldn’t if the apologists in America for unrestricted capitalism hadn’t spread the lie that anyone who advocates government intervention is a ‘socialist’, even a ‘Marxist’, whether they consider themselves one or not. Most in fact don’t. After all, capitalism could not exist without the help of the state.

According to the Irish Times (6 September), the paper argued: ‘Capitalist economies rely on the market to allocate capital, whereas Marxists attempt to “optimise the flows of capital” by central planning.’

Certainly some who have called themselves Marxists have advocated that the government should allocate ‘capital’ in a planned way, but this wasn’t the view of Marx himself. He did of course favour the planned allocation of resources to directly meet human needs, but of resources as such (materials, energy, etc) not in the form of money-capital.

He was quite explicit about this. In Volume Two of Capital he wrote:

‘If we conceive society as being not capitalistic but communistic, there will be no money-capital at all in the first place’ (chapter 16, sec" on III) and that ‘in the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated’ (chapter 18, sec" on II).

To the extent that Marx may have believed in ‘central planning’ it would have been of actual resources and not of the distorted reflections of them in capitalist society as money-capital.

Obituary: Harry Hayden (1992)

Obituary from the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Harry, who died in July at the age of 88, joined the Party in 1932 after an association with the No-War Fellowship. After serving his apprenticeship he spent his working life as a lighterman on the Thames. During the 1930s slump he was unemployed and the resulting hardship left an indelible impression on him, as it did on many other workers who suffered during that period. He was a conscientious objector in the war, but was ordered to continue in his job as a lighterman.

During the post-war period he served on a committee representing lightermen which issued a journal warning of the redundancies that would result from the Devlin Plan for the reorganisation of the docks during the 1960s. Several of his fellow lightermen of those days attended his funeral.

Harry had a vast knowledge of both the history and geography of the Thames and in his youth was an accomplished sculler. He was well read in history, literature and the works of Marx, and gave classes in Marxist economics for the Party. He assembled a splendid collection of the works of Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Kautsky and William Morris which he donated to the Party. He was well versed in classical music, opera and literature. He can aptly be described as an educated and cultured member of the working class.

Having lived through the 1930s slump he took the view, when the question of capitalist economic crises came up for discussion in the Party, that the tendency was for world slumps to worsen. He steadfastly stuck to this view throughout the post-war period always maintaining the longer postponed the worse it would be. His passing results in a further diminution of the number of Party members who joined in the 1930s. We extend our sincere condolences to his family.

T. L.

Confusions of the Left (1987)

Book Review from the January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anthony Wright. Socialisms: Theories and Practices. Oxford University Press (Oxford. New York, 1986).

The title of this work is significant for the author argues that there must be a rejection of a single "correct" meaning of the term socialism for many interpretations are possible. Wright claims that those who deny the pluralistic perspective have embarked on a course which is "illegitimate, its basis flawed, its consequences damaging". However, far from clarifying the meaning of socialism, this book merely adds to the general confusion associated with the term.

It would appear, according to Wright's argument, that any claim to be "socialist" would be "legitimate". However, he argues that in Britain there is no political party with a "Marxist basis” (thus excluding discussion of the Socialist Party), and concentrates instead on the 1LP and the Fabians which he sees as the main school of "reformist socialism" in Britain.

Wright sees the Russian revolution as a turning point which led to Marxism becoming "Marxism-Leninism, with few prepared to quarrel about the hyphen”. Yet the term, Marxism-Leninism, simply adds to the general confusion since politically it has no meaning, or at least not for those with any understanding of the politics of either Marx or Lenin. Wright's insistence that Russia proved that there could be different interpretations of socialism depending on the social conditions, seems to assume that socialism can be anything at all. In fact, Russia, since the revolution, rather than establishing socialism, has seen the development of capitalism - state capitalism - with the state as owner rather than private individuals. Lenin himself referred to state capitalism in the context of Russia and Wright might have done well to have read Lenin more closely.

According to Wright "the world is full of socialisms" and the plethora of definitions he presents us with is certainly confusing. Because the author rejects the idea of a single “true" socialism, or socialist tradition, he can therefore include discussion of many strands of left-wing thought which call themselves socialist.

Wright has a tendency to slip into cliche at the expense of argument. So, for example, he claims that Lenin was "socialist of the deed and not of the book" and. having provided a thumb-nail sketch of Marx, writes him off as having left "a profoundly ambiguous legacy". Similarly the 1945 Labour government is described as a "vindication of the viability of a democratic socialist strategy" an observation that is merely stated, not argued for.

Wright argues that history has shown that the working class has abnegated its responsibility for establishing socialism and that this has now become the function of the "party”. And here we can see clearly Wright's affiliation to Leninism rather than Marxism. But new confusions soon occur. Wright does not think that racial, ethnic, religious and sexual conflicts have a class basis. As a result he says that the need is now to build a "socialist movement of persuasion and reform capable of making a wide appeal to people of different social classes". Thus in addition to the plethora of "socialisms", we now have a plethora of social classes. Of feminism he writes

It is a major achievement of feminism not merely to have identified the limited stereotype of socialism's traditional actor (male, manual, muscular) but to have identified the limited character of the wage-labour-capital relationship that underpinned it. Feminism has extended and enriched the definition of the socialist project, from "work" to "life", and has extended the range of possible socialist actors in the process, (p. 115)

But such an attitude expresses the limitations of the "socialisms" that Wright discusses, rather than the limitation of socialism as such. The Socialist Party has always had a concern not just with "work" but also with "life". And while we recognise that there are certain problems experienced by women in capitalism, those problems cannot be separated from the context of the class society in which they occur. Also, to focus on the particular problems of one section of the working class at the expense of the common problems experienced by all workers may result in divisive antagonisms between workers.

Wright dismisses Marxism with the self-contradictory statement that "every Marxist state is a dictatorship" and opts instead for what he calls "welfare capitalism" claiming that it can deliver what socialists have traditionally stood for, if the capitalist system is milked for what can be got out of it. But to adopt such a strategy would amount to accepting the crumbs of capitalism instead of seizing the banquet for socialism.

Socialisms: Theories and Practices ought to be retitled "Confusions of the Left: Claims and Counterclaims". There is a tendency for ever more absurd statements to be made such as: "there is a whole range of Marxisms". This is only true if we accept uncritically the claims of those who profess to be Marxists, or indeed socialists.

Wright concludes by observing that those who refuse to acknowledge "credible socialism" or socialism of a "realistic" kind, have not learned from "political and economic experience". Of course this begs the question of how we are to interpret that experience and what lessons are to be learnt from history. Socialism is more than moral outcry in an uncaring world, as Wright assumes. He argues that both socialism and capitalism are compatible with despotism but only capitalism has been capable of providing democracy and political freedom. This leads him to opt for a "third way between state socialism and welfare capitalism” a solution which is as unrealistic as Wright obviously feels socialism to be.

This book is yet another attempt to undermine socialism. It pretends to be offering "realism" but in fact is little more than an avowal of capitalism and an apologia for the Left.

Philip Bentley

Pollution and poison (1987)

Book Review from the January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Poisoned Womb. 1986. John Elkington. (Pelican Books. 255pp. £3.95).

This book sets out to describe the dangers to health and, in particular, the health of future generations that drugs, radiation, pollution and pesticides pose as a result of the increasing use of toxic substances which damage reproductive capabilities or cause mutations.

The author, a prolific writer on environmental problems, has collected an impressive amount of evidence to illustrate the ecological disasters which have occurred because of the need to make a profit under capitalism.

Infertility, miscarriages and congenital diseases have always occurred and the interplay of factors causing them make it difficult to prove that individual substances are harmful. But as the author points out, in the USA in the late 1950s about 2 per cent of newborn babies had some physical, mental or learning defect compared with about 4 per cent today (p. 18) and research carried out at Florida State University showed that by the late 1980s some 20 per cent of American males could be functionally sterile, compared with only 0.5 per cent in 1938. when scientifically sound sperm counts began, (p.48)

The different methods used in the analyses of pollutants and contaminants and the problems and limitations of the tests employed are described in interesting, though sometimes technical, detail in chapter one.

Chemical poisoning is not a new problem however. The ancient Romans suffered from lead poisoning due to the extensive use of lead drinking vessels and Napoleon suffered a number of symptoms as a result of arsenical contamination of the wallpaper in his room at St. Helena.

Multinational firms have, in many instances, ignored safety regulations, falsified research records of dangerous substances and been socially irresponsible in the search for increased profits. At least 5,000 children were born with deformities of the limbs by 1961 because their mothers had taken the drug thalidomide during pregnancy. The drug had been distributed by Distillers under the trade name of Distival in spite of the fact that Dr. George Somers, Distillers' pharmacologist, found in 1959 that a liquid preparation of thalidomide was definitely toxic. He tried to get Distillers to publish his findings but the company chose to keep them secret, (p. 101)

In 1976 the James river in Virginia had to be closed because of contamination from the manufacture of the insecticide Kepone by Life Science Products. Workers at the plant were found to be working in an environment where Kepone dust was several centimetres deep, and a number of workers suffered from severe headaches and tremors and some were found to be sterile. An investigation showed that a pollution control system had not been implemented because it would have affected profitability

Ciga-Geigy deliberately sprayed unprotected children with the insecticide Galecron to see how much of the insecticide was excreted, (p.232)

It is claimed that the damage can cause to reproductive systems has led to discrimination against women in the workplace. In 1979 five women opted for sterilisation to keep their jobs with Cyanamid Corporation. USA. The resulting controversy, although acrimonious, was by no means new: at the beginning of this century women were banned from working in the heavy lead-using trades in Britain because of research carried out at Guy's Medical School. The fact that lead may have been equally toxic to the fertile male worker was not considered and it is consistent with capitalism's priorities that it is more profitable to exclude certain categories of workers than make industrial processes safer.

Under capitalism profits can be made from any misfortune:

The Xytex Corporation . . . is aiming to publish a thriving market in human sperm: it sends out frozen sperm by mail order to doctors carrying out artificial insemination, supplying catalogues listing donors with details of their ethnic origin, height, weight, hair and eye colour, skin colour and blood group, (p.64)

John Elkington has provided many examples of the way in which the drive for profits harms workers' health without drawing clear political conclusions and the book ends rather lamely by stating more people are concerned with environmental issues. Even when political statements are made:

Such problems cut right across political frontiers, as it forcefully illustrated by recent experiences in Siberia. The rapid development of the region's natural resources has resulted in soaring birth defects and worker-mortality rates, (p.20)

Elkington misses the point that problems in the state-capitalist countries are caused by their integration into the capitalist system. Although this book provides a lot of useful information it does not offer a solution to the present system. Readers looking for a socialist alternative to capitalism's nightmare will have to look elsewhere.

Carl Pinel

Editorial: A message for the New Year (1965)

Editorial from the January 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another new year has arrived, and with it the usual crop of wishes for health, wealth, and prosperity. It is customary for the politicians and press at this arbitrary point in time to review the last twelve months and talk about our prospects in the coming year.

Probably many of them, Tories in particular, will be glad to turn their backs on 1964, not without a shudder. For the Conservative Party, it was a time of internal ructions and fortunes at a low ebb. Under the rather uninspiring leadership of Douglas-Home, they were still trying to live down the effects of the Profumo and other scandals, and were sensing the swing of opinion against them as the general election drew near. For the Labour Party, it was of course a different story.

With the turn of the year, Wilson's hundred days will be more than three-quarters gone, and with them perhaps some of the working class enthusiasm which gave him his precarious victory last October. A settling-in period he called it, and in that time the Labour Government have been busy imposing just the sort of measures which they so heartily condemned when their predecessors used them. There is nothing surprising in this. Such is the stuff of capitalist politics that even the best-intentioned promises are broken just like so much piecrust.

If the sentiments of a new year’s wish could become a reality by wishing hard enough, life would be a lot simpler, but whatever we may wish, capitalism will determine what we get, and for most of us it will be a pretty second rate existence.

For we are the majority and we have no ownership in the means of production and distribution; we have to rely on our wage packets to get by. Because of this, 1965 basically will not be any different for us than the years which went before, although Labour politicians will try to tell us otherwise.

For the owning minority it is another story. Capitalism will determine what they get also, but it will be very much more worth having than the very best for which workers can hope. It will in fact be for them a life of ease and comfort, with the best food, clothing and shelter that money can buy. Despite the ups and downs of business, this will be the general picture of their life from one end of the year to the other. They are the capitalist class.

Capitalism is based upon the minority ownership of the means of life, where the paramount interest is the production of goods for sale and profit Such a system is anarchic, riddled with anomalies and contradictions, and relegates human interests to a point way down the list of priorities. Yet despite all this, it will not die of old age, but will stay in existence until the workers of the world decide to end it. It is against this background that the failures of governments fall into perspective. They just cannot deliver the goods as far as workers are concerned, because capitalism can only be administered in the interests of the capitalist class.

The only answer is to establish a world of common ownership, where production is carried on solely for the use and enjoyment of the whole of the world’s population. It will take mass working class knowledge and understanding to achieve, but that it can and will be done is our confident expectation, despite the apparent bleakness of the present outlook.

The Anti-Socialists at Tottenham. (1909)

Party News from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tottenham—where the I.L.P. have long since ceased from troubling and the S.D.P.  are at rest—has been honoured. The Anti-Socialist Union decreed that our time had come. Tottenham was to be saved from us, and we of the S.P.G.B. were to be finally and definitely put to rout. Well, we heard of the coming conflict, and trembling—with joy awaited the day of battle. Did we prepare to meet them by attacking their meetings, singing and shouting "Red Flags." etc., and generally behaving as hooligans to prevent them getting a hearing? No, such inwardly tactics would have implied a lack of confidence in our own propaganda, and is at all times an insult to the intelligence of the people. Knowing the work we have accomplished in Tottenham, and that no real argument can he brought against Socialism as propagated by the Socialist Party, we at all our meetings advertised the ruining of the Anti-Socialists, and advised our hearers to attend their meetings, listen courteously to what was to he said against Socialism, and judge for themselves. At long last they came—they saw and were conquered! Down upon Tottenham swooped the legions of the Anti Socialist League. Three or four specially prepared gramophonic orators, each guaranteed to we able to emit “Daily Expressions” about Socialism for at least ten minutes headed each attack.

Two such attacks on Sunday evenings fizzled out immediately our ordinary meeting commenced; then a Saturday evening appearance was tried, but again they packed up their traps and stole silently away, leaving large and enthusiastic audiences listening to our speaker. Despite reports to the contrary in the Daily Express, there was no organised opposition, no fighting, there was no I.L.P., either, to applaud or assist them at those meetings—only laughter and jeers at the ignorance of the Anti-Socialists. With their armoury of absurdities they courted disaster and were defeated—and disgraced. Complaining that they had been denied a hearing, they were offered a platform with a guarantee of a peaceful hearing, but refused. They funked the debate they challenged us to. They referred us to their head office, who refuse to take up the challenge, and now, exeunt the Anti-Socialist Union. It is to be placed on record that a "Tottenham Labour League” has been brought into existence by a few local politicians seeking notoriety, “to fight the Socialists of Great Britain/' and taking up the cry of the unemployed in the interests of the master class, have successfully wrecked what little organisation the unemployed had. In this they were assisted by men who still claim membership in the I.L.P. and S.D.P. The President of this precious “Labour" League is Councillor A. E. Harvey, I.L.P. Its Vice-Presidents include several well-known local Liberals. Their actions are being watched by the local branch of the S.P.G.B., and should that league live much longer it may be the subject of a future note.

Alex Anderson

Editorial: Our New Year Message. (1920)

Editorial from the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the commencement of another year it may be expected that we should send out to our fellow workers the Customary New Year message. It is, however, one of the penalties of advancing years in the life of a journal that it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything fresh to say upon the recurrence of such a monotonous event as the birth of another year, or to put pen to paper upon such an unsuspicious occasion without dropping into platitudes. But to-day “ye gods” are kind—ye gods for the moment being those very honourable and proper personages, the Prime Ministers of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

These gentlemen have issued a New Year’s Message to “Our Fellow Citizens of the British Empire," and as luck would have it, their opening sentence fills the aching void for this year, at all events—provides a sort of text for a New Year sermon.

Says their bigbugships: “The war, in shaking the very foundations of ordered civilisation, has driven all thoughtful men to examine the bases of national and international life.” Well, let us assist in that examination.

Ye gods, as might be expected, find that the “hope of a 'brotherhood of humanity’ reposes on the deeper spiritual fact of the 'Eternal Fatherhood of God,’” and declare that “In the recognition of the fact of that Fatherhood and of the Divine purpose of the world, which are central to the message of Christianity, we shall discover the ultimate foundation for the reconstruction of an ordered and harmonious life for all men.” That is their message—now for ours.

If anything has become clear “both through the arbitrament of war and through the tests of rebuilding a life of peace” (as the Premiers say), it is that all the goodwill and spirit of brotherhood in the world go down before the force of economic interests. It must necessarily be so. Take the case of two men struggling for one job. Does the spirit of brotherhood dictate that one should stand aside for the other? Then what of the men’s children? No, the divergent interests of the two men dictate that they fight it out to the very last gasp. To fail to do so is death, and not very heroic death either.

The “real foundation for the ordered development of the world’s life,” therefore, is the unification of their material interests. Not while one class lives on the toil of another class can there be harmony; not while the wealth produced is the subject of a struggle between those who produce it and those who do not can there be peace. The only way is to make the interest of all the same. How can it be done?

The reason of the conflict of interests in the society of to-day is that the people are on two different economic planes. One section own the means of life, the other section own only the means of operating those means of life—their labour-power. It is dear, then, that those who do not own the means of living must either wrest those means of living from the owners or sell their labour-power to those owners for the means of subsistence. This means of subsistence is part of the product of their labour.

There must, then, always be, in the first place, a struggle over the division of this product of the workers’ toil—this struggle is the wages struggle. And in the second place there must be a struggle for freedom on the part of the enslaved workers.

The ground is clear enough now. Harmony can only be established by destroying the private ownership of the means of living. This is the Socialist remedy.

The "ultimate foundation for the reconstruction of an ordered and harmonious life for all men" we declare, in contradiction to ye gods the Six Premiers, lies in making the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth the property of the community, and using them to produce wealth for the use of the community, instead of for sale. 

That is our New Year message. To that consummation, which will open a way to a harmonious life for all men and women by harmonising the economic interests of all men and women, we urge all members of our class to devote their attention in the new year that has come upon us. So shall we find emancipation and happiness in years to come.

About Books (1953)

Book Reviews from the January 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spartacus was the leader of the third, and greatest, slave revolt against Rome (about 73 B.C.). A Thracian by birth and a gladiator, he rallied an army of slaves and, over a period of years, by adroit generalship, he defeated army after army of Roman soldiers sent against him, until the revolt was finally suppressed with great cruelty.

It was almost inevitable that a writer like Mr. Howard Fast, who selects the subjects for his novels from the struggles of exploited peoples against their oppressors, should eventually write a book about this revolt. His latest book, “Spartacus,” published by The Bodley Head (13/6) may not be such a gripping story as some of his earlier writings, but it is splendid reading and is to be recommended.

This story is not a chronological history of the slave rebellion. It is more in the nature of a symposium, the story being told through the mouths of a variety of characters each of whom views the revolt from a different angle. Licinius Crassus, the Roman general who led the army that eventually defeated the slaves; Lentulus Gracchus, a shrewd, successful Roman politician; Lentulus Batiatus, who kept the school for gladiators at Capua from which Spartacus escaped; Marcus Tullius Cicero, who later became the famous Roman philosopher, writer, politician, orator and consul; David, a fictitious Jewish rebel slave who in the book was closely associated with Spartacus from beginning to end of the revolt; these are some of the characters who tell the story and discuss the problems of chattel slave society.

A number of these problems have their parallel in present day capitalism, as, no doubt, Mr. Fast intends us to realise. Instance, unless the slaves could destroy the chattel slave system there was nowhere for them to go and nothing for them to do but to struggle until they were either killed or driven back into slavery. So it is with wage workers. Unless they abolish capitalism, struggle how they may, they will remain an exploited class.

The author gives a clear analysis of the Roman republic. It was a world in which the majority had nothing whilst a few had almost everything. Those who owned so much, needed protection from the slaves who produced it for them. The Roman soldiers, in the main, were peasants who had been driven from their land in order that slave plantations could be developed. The slave plantation had turned them into landless paupers. They had no more to defend than the rebel slaves whom they were sent to fight against. Those who owned nothing, who possessed no slaves, had to march their feet off, live in filth and squalor, wallow in blood and die fighting the slaves, in order that the slave owners could live in comfort and luxury. Had the Roman soldier but realised it, he had more to gain from a slave victory than from a slave defeat.

The job of the Roman politician was to be an illusionist, to convince the landless Romans that they had power, that they were the strength and glory of Rome, that they were free and that their freedom was precious, that they controlled their civilisation by their vote, to make them feel proud and superior because they were not slaves. Then, no matter how they stank, how hungry they were or where they slept, they felt proud and ready to defend the society that kept them in that condition against those who were their companions in misery—the slaves.

The horrors of crucifixion and gladiatorial combat, the depraved morality of the Roman leisure class, the comradeship within the many-tongued slave army and the hopes and fears of the slave leaders are splendidly dealt with in this book. It is well worth reading.

In an introductory note the author tells that, with the help of friends, he had to publish this book himself in America. Owing to the political temper of the times no commercial publisher would undertake the publication and distribution of such a book in the U.S.A.

Penguin Books are publishing a new series on the development of English society. It is to comprise eight “Pelican” books with the following titles:

1. Roman Britain.
2. The Beginnings of English Society (From the Anglo-Saxon Invasion).
3. English Society in the Early Middle Ages.
4. England in the Late Middle Ages.
5. Tudor England.
6. England in the Seventeenth Century.
7. England in the Eighteenth Century.
8. England in the Nineteenth Century.

All except the first of this series have been published. Each book is by a separate author and each author is a specialist in the period about which he, or she, writes.

The authors have had a free hand with their work, with the consequence that each has put his own emphasis on different aspects of social development, but, in general, the series is good.

Certain chapters in these books are complete essays in themselves and very useful essays, too. Instance the chapter “John Wesley and the Road to Salvation,” in “England in the Eighteenth Century,” by J. H. Plumb.

The influence of Wesley’s early life and his parents is dealt with. When, after 1738, he started to preach his Methodism and to build the organisation of Methodist chapels he was helped by the fact that the newly developed industry in this country was creating a number of new towns which had no churches. The tie-up between the Anglican church organisation and the state was such that the Anglican church ignored the new towns and so Wesley had a clear field. He had a violent dislike for radicalism and preached that the people should have no share in government. For him, the way to reform the evils of society was to transform the will of the individual. He preached thrift, abstinence, hard work and concentration. It was the Puritanism of the previous century shorn of its political radicalism. To an embryo capitalist class, striving by thrift and frugality to accumulate greater capital this teaching had a great appeal.

Wesley was intensely superstitious. He believed in witches and the possession by devils. His teaching called for no exercise of the intellect and appealed to his uneducated working class audiences. The owners of the workshops and factories that were growing up all over England, following the inventions of Savery and Newcomen, Arkwright and Hargreaves, the Darby’s of Coalbrookdale and others, were demanding more and more child labour. Poverty stricken workers had need of the few pence that their children could earn. Wesley taught that play was unworthy of a Christian child, that a child’s sole education need be only a knowledge of the Bible and the Catechism, that for the sake of its everlasting life a child should be at work. So, a Methodist could regard his overworked children with complacency. Methodism flourished through discipline and toil in the ugliness of suburbs and the industrial villages of England.

But the Methodist teaching destroyed its own objective. Wesley himself wrote, at the age of 84. that, through diligence and frugality many of his disciples were increasing their wealth and, as their wealth increased so did their pride, their anger and their desires of the flesh. Although the form of Methodism remained, the spirit was vanishing.

This Pelican History of England is, in total, very useful. There is another Pelican book entitled “Pre-historic Britain” which, although not one of this series, is a useful addition to it as a prelude to the series proper.

W. Waters

The Savage Eye (1960)

Film Review from the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE SAVAGE EYE, at present showing at the Curzon, is something of an emotional block-buster. Staggering out into the neon lighting, the dazed cinema-goer finds himself asking, “Is life really as dreadful as this, are people usually so hopeless and despairing?” or worse still, "Am I one of them?”.

Certainly the eye is savage enough giving a conducted tour of present-day society as seen by a bitter, disillusioned and dejected divorcee. Finding herself in a spiritual vacuum, she wanders about the city, draws her alimony cheque regularly, and spends much of her boredom increasing her disgust at the behaviour of human beings. Sourly she views the world at large from the pavement, and a singularly depressing view it is. Bad debts at the dog tracks, screams for blood at wrestling matches, vicious brawls in pubs. Men looking for women, women looking for men. and fat ladies pedalling wildly on stationary bicycles in a beauty parlour. Candid shots of gaping mouths, sagging waists and false smiles. Yet beneath their phony, gilt-edged pretensions, people struggling for recognition, love and affection. Even in one of the most pitiful and truly horrific scenes of the film struggling for their health at a faith healing ceremony ("Dear God, it's her liver. Move along friend and pray awhile.”) During all of this she conducts a cynical and at times slightly pretentious dialogue with a resonant manly voice that identifies itself as “Your inner self, your angel,” and the unhappy wanderer is finally persuaded to face reality and come to terms with the people she despises so much.

The film shows you nothing new. People are seen doing the things you know that they do, living the life that you know they live. But it does make clear the fact that society is made up of people, and that people within modern society need more than new flats, health insurance and hair driers to make them feel that life is worth living. They need to belong, to feel that they are doing something considered worthwhile to the community, to give and to receive. In a society such as ours it is quite obvious that these needs are for the greater part unrealised. Our world is dominated by fear, hatred and confusion, where cash, profit and ‘‘What's in it for me?” are so often the criteria for doing anything. When half the population do not even have their basic requirements of food, clothing and shelter met, much less their emotional needs, how can they find personal satisfaction and harmony in their every-day lives? To retain a sense of ordinary humane values requires a conscious effort. Divorced from emotional security at home, in spite of vast housing estates and modern gadgets: alienated from pride at work, for all the new machinery: still there is little sense of achievement and pleasure.

This is all shown clearly, but the film offers no solution to the problems. Surely to reorganise society on a basis of common humanity and the social considerations of the well-being of all human beings is not such a difficult task. While Socialists may feel that The Savage Eye does not look far enough, it is none the less well worth seeing for it does extend an invitation to its audience to (misquoting the faith healer) “Move along friend and think a while."

John Higgins

A grown-up attitude (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the last Labour Party conference Neil Kinnock made an impassioned appeal to Labour members to sink their differences and rally round his leadership. He asked them to win power for Labour so that they could end the blight and waste of unemployment and make the world a safer place to live in. Kinnock argued that these social evils flowed from the policies of the Thatcher government, thus implying two things: firstly, that unemployment is the result of government policies; and secondly that a change in government will remedy the situation

Poverty and unemployment have indeed increased in the last four years or so. Where the writer lives—Scotland—there are now three-quarters of a million people living below or on the "official'' poverty line and a further quarter of a million working in low paid jobs which place them on or below this line. The poor live on incomes that give a married couple with two youngsters only £59.20 a week, or £8.46 a day. a payment which in real terms is only 25 per cent above Rowntree's official poverty line of 1936, which he considered "the minimum in which physical efficiency could be maintained". These appalling figures apply equally to other parts of Britain. Recent estimates of poverty, using only a slightly more generous estimate than that of the DHSS. put the number of British people in poverty at fifteen million. Once in poverty a whole series of forms of deprivation follow: bad health, poor housing and educational facilities, and so on. Poverty has no respect for age; it hits the young and the old the hardest. One Glasgow pensioner puts its impact in vivid terms: "Eighty-two years old and hardly a stick of furniture to call my own. I can't afford to heat my house and eat as well".

The cause of poverty is not to be found in the policies of the Thatcher government, but in capitalism itself. It is a society of glaring contradictions in which people starve in the face of a mountain of food, where people are homeless and at the same time building workers are made unemployed; where more is spent on amassing weapons of annihilation than on health. Capitalism is blind to need; it exists only to accumulate wealth for the tiny proportion of the population who own the resources of society. Because it is based on the anarchy of the market, from time to time it stumbles into crisis. This, of course, occurs on a world-scale and not just in Britain. We at present are living through such a world depression, in which workers have been thrown out of jobs not because they have produced too little, but paradoxically because they have produced "too much". The trouble with Kinnock and Thatcher is that they assume that governments can do something about it. Slumps, they claim, can be ended through changes in government policy. For Kinnock it is increased government expenditure; for Thatcher it is decreasing public expenditure.

Both are doomed to failure. In the 1970s government expenditure increased four times yet unemployment rose from half-a-million to two million. Faced with such problems. Denis Healey, the Labour Chancellor, imposed the first round of spending cuts in the social services. The Thatcher government has carried on where Labour left off in the belief that cutting public expenditure and reducing taxation would stimulate investment in industry. What both miss is the fact that slumps are natural features of capitalism. As an economic system capitalism has been characterised by booms and slumps throughout its historical development. Only when business confidence is restored by the prospects of renewed profitability will investment recommence and unemployment fall as output increases. Claims that Labour or Tory can get Britain working are fatuous and also encourage people to believe in simplistic notions of good and bad governments.


At the moment the very mention of the word "Thatcherism" is enough to make a left winger foam at the mouth, to seethe with anger and indignation. The reaction is quite understandable. Thatcher and her crowd, in their exhortations to the unemployed to get on their bikes and find work, and their comparisons of striking miners with international terrorists, are callous and calculating. The trouble is that their rhetoric and complacency amid a multitude of personal disasters distract people from examining the system they represent and fix attention on personalities. Not so long ago the personification of evil was Edward Heath. Since then he has become a good guy, although not as good as Kinnock.

Although we cannot compare the government performances of Thatcher and Kinnock, comparison can be made between former Labour governments and the present Tory one. In the area of trade unionism the left argues that present Tory policy is designed to shackle and weaken organised labour. We would agree with this verdict, but is the Labour Party any better? During the so-called winter of discontent James Callaghan, Labour Prime Minister,

said in the Commons (January 1979) that "everyone has the right to cross a picket line and I hope they will do so". Remember also it was Labour back in the 1960s through Barbara Castle's white paper In Place of Strife — who tried to impose upon the trade unions measures not dissimilar to present Tory policy — for example secret ballots, cooling off periods, and so on. Moreover Labour s treatment of strikers is no more sympathetic than that of Thatcher. During the last Labour government the vicious Special Patrol Group was used on pickets at Grunwick; troops were used to break the firemen's strike; and the public sector workers opposed to Labour's "social contract" (read contrick) were vilified and hounded

Thatcher is also accused of running down the social services and of creating more inequality by making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Indeed inequality has increased, but again has Labour done better? Under the last Labour government there were cutbacks on spending in health, education and housing. The Child Poverty Action Group reckoned that children were worse off under Labour than they had been under the Heath government of 1970-74. It was during the Wilson/Callaghan government that the Fight the Cuts demos began. What inflamed much of the protest was that while the working class was bearing the brunt of the economic crisis the rich were seeing their incomes increase. During the Heath government the proportion of wealth owned by the top 1 per cent fell from 30 per cent to 22.5 per cent; under Labour it climbed to 23.5 per cent in 1975. 24.9 per cent in 1976, and so on upwards. The original reason for Labour coming into being was to redistribute wealth and this they have failed miserably to do.

The past experience of Labour gives us nothing to cheer about and neither do we believe that things will be much different if Kinnock gets elected. Blind faith in leaders has got the working class nowhere. In the 1950s the darling of the left was Nye Bevan, who led the fight within the Labour Party for unilateral nuclear disarmament — that is until he became the shadow foreign minister and asked members not to send him naked to the conference tables of the world. In other words, without the bargaining counter of the nuclear bomb. More recently, another former pacifist—Michael Foot— outdid the Tories in his jingoism during the Falklands War. He, along with Tony Benn, was a member of the Labour Cabinet which introduced Polaris behind the backs of their own MPs. How can we believe that Kinnock will prove different, particularly when surrounded by such well-known "socialists'' as Hattersley and Kaufman?

There is no doubt that the Labour leadership is once again ready to give full support to British capitalism. This does not surprise us; since Labour has no idea what socialism is. it has no notion of how to achieve socialism. Both the Tories and Labour are out to run capitalism. They may disagree as to the best way to run the system but they have the same objective. But capitalism has shown itself to be incapable of operating in the interests of the working class. Kinnock or Thatcher represent the politics of the nursery. Why not join the grown-ups in the struggle for socialism?

Bill Knox

Editorial: Alright for some (1985)

Editorial from the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not the exclusive brain child of Home Secretary Leon Brittan to increase the deposit an electoral candidate must lodge against securing a defined proportion of the vote. The idea has been around for a long time, as inflation has reduced the significance of the £150 deposit as a deterrent against frivolous and eccentric candidates; its implementation would concentrate the contest into the hands of the few big parties with a chance of being elected. The predictable protests from the smaller parties, such as the Ecology Party, may have forced second thoughts on the government; such opposition has succeeded whenever the idea of putting up the deposit has been floated in recent years. Although of course Leon Brittan does pride himself on being an unusual Home Secretary . . .

The Ecology Party is not among those classified as frivolous; that is reserved for the likes of the Raving Loony Monster Party, or Screaming Lord Sutch (who seems to win more applause as a daft parliamentary candidate than he ever did as a singer) or Commander Bill Boakes with his mixture of traffic, public hygiene and race neurosis. The opposition to the increase argues that it will not prevent such devaluation of the elections; it will simply confine the frivolous candidates to those who can afford it.

The argument for the higher deposit rests on the assumption that Screaming Lord Sutch is playing games when he stands for parliament while parties like Labour and Conservative are giving the matter a proper gravity.

But this is to confuse minority opinion with frivolity. What of the bigger parties? How do we describe an organisation like the Conservative Party, which has a long history of presiding over intense human misery and deprivation yet still claims to stand for a Better Britain? Are we expected to take seriously a political party which tells us that mounting unemployment and ever harsher impoverishment for the working class is really prosperity? Should we laugh or cry when Tory speakers assure us that the terror and pain and murder of war is really the height of glory and human achievement? It is surely frivolous for the Conservatives, after their appalling record of repression of the mass of the people, to persist in asking for working class votes?

Then what of the Labour Party? They tell us now that unemployment is avoidable, that it exists in Britain today by Thatcher's own personal design and that they have the cure for it. Yet they know that during their last term of power the figures of people out of work doubled; they know also that they began the financial fumbling with state expenditure restrictions which they now castigate as the road to longer dole queues, as if spending cuts were the Tories' exclusive policy. Is not this toying with the truth frivolous? The Labour Party now makes great play with the Tories' warring relationship with the unions, implying that they have the secret of a better, more productive way of handling industrial disputes. In this they ignore the history of their own governments, going back to the 1920s and 1930s. during which they were constantly in conflict with the workers over their policy of lowering living standards for the useful, productive class in society while protecting the privileges of the parasitic minority. Are the Labour Party to be taken seriously, when they now ask for the votes of trade unionists on the appeal that they will give them a better deal?

In this sorry mess, it is easy for the Liberal/SDP Alliance to denounce the Tories and the Labour Party as the Old Gang, implying that a New Gang under Steel and Owen would not have the same problems. But the Alliance produces no policy which is basically new or different from those of the Old Gang; it simply rehashes what the other capitalist parties have to offer, relabels it and promotes it through different salespeople. Is not this a frivolous waste of time? The same can be said for organisations like the Ecology Party, who attempt to analyse some of the problems of capitalism but offer remedies for them which leave the basic cause untouched. No worker should regard appeals to vote for reformism under yet another name as anything other than a sour joke.

In contrast, the candidates which the Socialist Party of Great Britain puts forward at elections are in deadly earnest. Socialists aim at capturing the seats of power, to dispossess the capitalist class and transform the basis of society from one of class ownership of the means of life into one of communal ownership. Very few votes are registered for that proposition, against the name of a socialist candidate. We have never approached anywhere near saving our deposit, so Brittan's proposal may be cripplingly expensive to us. But the lack of support for the ideas of socialism is not a measure of their validity; what socialists have to say is desperately urgent.

We argue that capitalism is essentially a social system which cannot meet the needs of the people. It must repress us with wars, poverty. famine, disease, ignorance, frustration . . . The parties which ask for our votes on the grounds that they can eliminate these problems while keeping capitalism in existence are claiming to be able to do the impossible; they are the ones who must not be taken seriously.

Only a social revolution can get rid of the ailments which afflict human society today. That revolution cannot be masterminded by leaders; it must be carried through by a politically conscious, participating working class, worldwide. This is at present a minority viewpoint but it is anything but eccentric or frivolous. It is the very stuff of social progress to a free, co-operative, abundant world.

Cooking the Books: The First Lost Decade Since the 1860s (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a speech in Liverpool on 5 December Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, described the current decade as ‘the first lost decade since the 1860s’ (See here). At that time, he stated, ‘Karl Marx was scribbling in the British Library, warning of a spectre haunting Europe: the spectre of communism.’ Not quite, as Marx wrote about that much earlier, in 1848, when he was living in Brussels. But he would have been in the British Museum taking notes for his major work, Capital, that was to be published in 1867.

Before that, in 1864, Marx drafted the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association that had been set in September of that year. In it, he noted a statement Gladstone had made in his budget speech to the House of Commons in April 1863:

‘Dazzled by the “Progress of the Nation” statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: “From 1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing to be almost incredible! ... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,” adds Mr. Gladstone, “is entirely confined to classes of property!”’

Later, critics were to accuse Marx of distorting what Gladstone had said. The controversy is described by Engels in his Preface to the fourth German edition of Capital in 1890.  Basically what happened was that Gladstone had exercised the right of MPs to alter Hansard if they had said something they didn’t mean and had deleted the part about the increase in wealth and power being ‘entirely confined to classes of property’, even though this is what the newspapers the following day had reported him as having said.

Carney’s speech was accompanied by a graph (chart 6 on page 5) which showed that in the ten years up to 1864 real wages fell. So Gladstone’s initial statement had been correct. The increase in wealth during that period was ‘entirely confined to classes of property’. Just as it has been during the current ‘lost decade.’ Carney quoted some figures which showed that, as then, the richer got richer:

‘In recent decades, as global inequality has fallen markedly, it has edged ever higher in most advanced economies. In Anglo-Saxon countries, the income share of the top 1% has risen notably since 1980. Today, in the US, the richest 1% of households receive  20% of all income. Such high income inequalities are dwarfed by staggering wealth inequalities. The proportion of the wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans increased from 25% in 1990 to 40% in 2012. Globally, the share of wealth held by the richest 1% in the world rose from one-third in 2000 to one-half in 2010.The picture in the UK is complex but in general suggests relatively stable but high levels of overall inequality, with sharper disparities emerging in recent times for the top 1%.’

Plus ça change.

Editorial: Russia Never Was Socialist (2017)

Editorial from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution where the focus will be on the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917. The historic rivalry between the Western Powers and the world's first so-called "Communist" state has been presented as a struggle between Western ‘liberal democracy’ versus Soviet ‘totalitarian Communism’. Many believed that the fall of ‘Communism’ would usher in an era of global peace. However, despite the arrival of Western-style representative democracy in Russia, relations between Russia and the West appear to be descending into a new ‘Cold War’.

In spite of what its leaders claimed, the Soviet Union was never a ‘Communist’ state, as real communism (or socialism) involves the abolition of the state and the establishment of a global classless, moneyless society where the means of production are held in common. This was clearly not the case here, where the state owned the means of living and employed a class of wage workers. At the time of the revolution, social and economic conditions in Russia were not ripe for socialism, as it was predominantly an agrarian economy based on peasant labour. Also the working class in Russia and elsewhere did not have the political consciousness required for establishing socialism. So, in these conditions, only a form of capitalism could emerge.

Like other capitalist countries, the Soviet Union needed to compete in global markets, secure trade routes and sources of raw materials. This inevitably led to rivalry with major capitalist powers, like France and Britain. Many in the Western ruling classes were horrified by Bolshevism and feared that their ideas would spread among their workers, especially in the context of the social and political unrest that erupted in the aftermath of the First World War. They also feared that Bolshevism could inspire the growing independence movements in their overseas colonies. Nonetheless, nation states do not go to war to uphold a belief system, they do so to advance their material interests. British and French support for the White Army during the Russian Civil War was as much about preventing the Bolsheviks from defaulting on Russia's foreign loans.

After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the main powers, competing to control resources and trade routes. This led them into a military rivalry, which became known as the Cold War, and resulted in standoffs like the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early nineties, many believed that the Cold War had ended. In the new Russia, former state bureaucrats enriched themselves by coveting former state enterprises. However, Russia has since grown stronger and is attempting to reassert itself globally and reclaim its influence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. This has led it to fight a war against Georgia and more recently to annex the Crimea and support the government forces in the Syrian Civil War. By expanding its influence, Russia is challenging the dominance of the Western Powers, and the latter have responded by enlarging the Nato alliance and surrounding Russia with military bases. This time, however, the pretence that the struggle is ideological has been dropped. It can now be seen for what it always was: economic and geopolitical.

What causes famine? (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

One popular explanation of the cause of famines sees them as being due simply to not enough food being available. People starve because there's no food for them. What could be more simple? And if there's no food available that's because of some natural disaster—some so-called Act of God which we can’t do anything about— like flooding in Bangladesh or a drought in Ethiopia.

This simplistic view has been challenged and effectively refuted by Professor Amartya Sen in his book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation that appeared in 1982. Sen showed that in most recent famines the food was available: what wasn’t available were "access rights" to it, whether money or the ability to directly grow food, on the part of those who starved.

Professor Sen returned to this theme in a radio broadcast on BBC3 on 21 March. After referring to his early experience when a schoolboy of the Bengal famine of 1943, one of the worst famines that has taken place in recent times, which he showed to have been falsely attributed by the authorities to not enough food being available. Professor Sen stated his basic case:

In every society the amount of food a person can own and consume depends on a set of rules governing his legal entitlement given by ownership, and possibilities of production and exchange. If food were to be distributed equally, the aggregate food availability would indeed determine how much food each person could get. But obviously this does not happen in any actual society. To decide whether a person will m fact be able to acquire enough food, we have to see what he owns, what he can produce with what he owns, what he can get in exchange. and so on. Starvation will result if a person is not able to establish ownership over an adequate amount of food through these means. Starvation is a social outcome reflecting an entitlement failure. Availability of food is only one influence among many affecting that outcome.

Turning to the 1974 famine in Bangladesh, he explained that what happened was that a flood destroyed the jobs of many millions of rural labourers who would normally have earned money planting and transplanting rice. With no jobs they had no income and so no money to buy food, despite 1974 being a record year for food availability over the period 1971- 75. As Sen put it, "what killed the Bangladeshi rural labourers was not any physical lack of food, but the failure of the social system to give them adequate entitlement to the food that was there”.

A similar situation had occurred in Ethiopia in 1973 except that it affected peasant farmers working their own land rather than rural wage workers. Here there was indeed a drought that did adversely affect crop production, but it wasn't this that caused people to starve, at least not directly as in the popular “not enough food" explanation for famines.

Because they had less of their particular food crop to sell, the peasants in the Wollo province, which was the centre of the famine, suffered a reduction in their income and were therefore unable to buy food to replace that which they were unable to grow themselves. It was this collapse of their income, not the failure of their crop as such, that led to the famine. Professor Sen again: “Had there been only a fall in food output in Wollo, without a simultaneous decline in the local population's economic fortune, food would certainly have moved into Wollo under the pull of the market”.

Nor could the famine be attributed to a lack of transport facilities, another reason sometimes advanced as a cause of famines, since the main North-South road from Addis Abba to Asmara runs through the worst hit area of Wollo. There was a movement of food along this road—out of Wollo. This happened, as it did in the notorious Irish famines of the 1840's, because purchasing power in the area had fallen more than output, so that market forces led to the "surplus” (to market requirements) being exported to areas where people did have the money to pay for it.

So, famines are features of a society in which entitlement to food is not direct but by means of money. Professor Sen sees the solution as lying in establishing mechanisms which would ensure that every person has enough money to always be in a position to buy enough food to stop them starving. He thereby ignores the obvious solution: establish a society in which people would have free and direct access to food as of right, a moneyless, socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources. In such a society nobody would ever starve because food would be being produced for its natural purpose of feeding people.

Adam Buick