Editorial: Just another May Day? (1961)

Editorial from the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Each year, as the first of May comes round, it is our custom to reflect upon its significance for the working class. For the better part of fifty years we have devoted either the editorial or leading article of the Socialist Standard to May Day.

We do not need to check on every past issue to know what all those editorials have said. If there is any essential difference to be found between them it will be in their growing awareness, as each May Day comes and goes, of the widening gulf between the present and the past. The May Day of today is but a pale shadow of those gone by.

All those editorials will have spoken about the origins of May Day in the struggles of workers in the past. Of the way in which it has gradually been losing its meaning for them in the present. Of how its message has been distorted and degraded over the years by so many people and parties claiming to be Socialist—but who are far from being so. Above all, they will have reflected on how an event born in the spirit of the international brotherhood of the working class has become an occasion for displays of the crudest nationalism and military pageantry, and of the way in which an idea that, for all its shortcomings in practice, at least had some relevance to the movement of revolutionary Socialism, has deteriorated into an annual charade for the prime benefit of the Labour reformists of the world.

And how long will it be before they cease to keep up even this pretence? The charade is already developing into farce. May Day, if it is not dead, is rapidly dying.

What, then, are Socialists to make of May Day? Convinced that the only hope for the world lies with international Socialism and that May Day should be a unique occasion to demonstrate this, what are we to think of its debasement by the reformist prattlings of Labour leaders or the parades of nuclear missiles through Moscow’s Red Square? Should we be disheartened by such travesties of the meaning of May Day and write it off in despair? Of course not.

Say what we will, May Day reminds one of the few occasions capable of enthusing workers to come together and demonstrate politically. That we consider their politics to be wrong only serves to confirm that it is the duty of the Socialist Party to seek to convince them that our policy is right. May Day gives the opportunity—from our platforms, through our literature, and by discussion with them as individuals—to do just this.

This year we are holding two open-air rallies, one in London and the other in Glasgow. Each of them will be followed by a large indoor meeting in the evening. It is for each and every member of the Party in both cities to do his utmost to make them a success. The results of the Party’s effort at Easter, in spite of atrocious weather, show what can be done.

In a world of sordid nationalism and political reformism, the cause we stand for is international Socialism. Let us then demonstrate for this, the only fundamental thing worth demonstrating for, more confidently and more effectively than ever before, this May Day, 1961.

For we should not regard it as just another May Day. On the contrary. It is a further opportunity—a fine opportunity—to spread the message of Socialism.

Let us make the most of it.

Editorial: Our Motto For May Day. (1911)

Editorial from the May 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The month of May, named from Maia, the Roman Goddess of Spring, is reminiscent of ancient games and festivals, of the growing warmth of the sun, of the lengthening day, the opening flowers, and the perennial re-birth of Nature. Even in the stony deserts in which we live, move, and have our being some little influence of May is felt. May is, indeed, symbolical of the springtime of life. What wonder, then, that the one-time merry month should be looked upon as emblematic of a newer social phase, of the re-birth of Society, and of the germing of hope in the breasts of workingmen?

Yet sadly enough must it be confessed that symbolism is impotent. It is but a pale reflex of things that matter. Demonstrations that were to stimulate the workers into interest in their class mission, that were to induce them to clamour for the end of slavery, turned directly into a vain clamour for eight hours’ slavery. The promised revolt of the workers against exploitation became an ardent support of Liberal capitalism with its vague promises of reform. Such is ever the danger of mere enthusiasm, mere spasmodic emotion that is not based consciously on class interest, and is not recognised as such on every day equally with May Day.

As we have been told, we have reforms; but we ask, is the gulf between the classes narrower or wider than before ? We have had years of Liberal-cam-Labour legislation, yet the chasm between the classes is wider than ever. We toil harder. Our real wages are less. Despite trade booms and growing wealth, there is more and wider spread poverty now than when the Liberals went into office, as even a prominent Liberal statistician is moved to confess. This is “progress” under reform. It is the ashes into which the I.L.P. policy of advance to “Socialism” by the reform method turns in practice. There is no hope for the proletariat in the futile endeavour to build up Socialism by an accumulation of reforms within capitalism. Reform does (and must, in accordance with economic laws) entirely fail to keep pace with the worsening trend of capitalism ; and pursuit of it still leaves the gulf to widen, and our emancipation to be achieved.

In the economic field, also, the hopelessness of the endeavour to bridge the class gulf and reduce exploitation is abundantly plain. Increases in wages confessedly fail to keep pace with the rise in prices of necessaries due to the cheapened production of gold. Decreases in hours utterly fail to keep pace with the speeding-up of production and the more rapid exhaustion of the toiler. Consequently there is as little hope in industrial methods as there, is in reform; they are at best but a means of covering an inevitable retreat.

We do not. however, counsel non-resistance. Far from it. That would be suicide. It would place us even more completely at the mercy of our unscrupulous exploiters But it must be recognised that even though we slacken the inevitable increase in exploitation under capitalism, we are, nevertheless. still losing ground, and that victory lies not that way.

"The first step in the revolution by the working class," said Marx and Engels in the "Communist Manifesto," “is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class. to win the battle of democracy." And unless this step be taken the working class will but wallow deeper into the Slough of Despond, despite their struggling. The revolutionary method alone can lead to victory. It alone can help us make the best of both present and future. It alone can result in the end of capitalism and the emancipation of those who produce. Once this is seen by the wage earners their freedom is at hand. Once they become revolutionary in aim, and understand the magnitude of the issue at stake, then all else in their struggle assumes its true subordinate proportion.

The future of humanity depends upon the |consummation of the revolution for Socialism. In this light most of the present trade union and political activity of the workers is seen to be worse than useless, and must be ruthlessly opposed. And for the rest, such as is part of the necessary organisation and resistance of the working class must fall into line and receive consideration only in so far as it is necessary to the revolutionary end which in our guiding star.

No reform can weigh anything in the balance against Socialism, and no reform, no padding of the chains of slavery, can deserve the enthusiasm of the working class. Too often have they allowed red-herrings to lure them from the straight path of their class policy. The energy of the workers must not be frittered away, as it has so often been, in futile demonstrations for utterly hopeless reforms. Their enthusiasm and heroism must be reserved for occasions worthy of them, for the policy that will benefit their whole class, not for a day, but for all time

One thing above all others must inspire them—the need for the conquest of the world by the working class.

On their backs society is built. By their intelligence is its production carried on. And by their labour alone is its wealth produced. Today they are the only necessary class, and upon them must the ownership and control of social wealth devolve. Once the worker's victory is complete classes disappear, and all find health and joy in participating in the needful but immensely lightened labour of the Socialist commonweal. Consequently, on the working class alone does the future of the whole human race depend. As it has been wisely said: militant, the workers' cause is identified with class; triumphant, with humanity.

Let the worker, therefore, ponder the magnitude of his class mission. He will become ashamed of the pettiness of his present ideals and the squalor of his aims. Let him realise how much depends on him in the present epoch of social change, and he will see that his aim can be no less than Socialism, and his inspiring motto no less than that of the Socialist Party - "The World for the Workers." This we offer as a motto for May Day—and, indeed, for every day until the victory of the working class is an accomplished fact.

Our Message for May Day and Every Day (1934)

From the May 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again May 1st sees the gathering of Labour to march, with banners flying, to the places appointed as centres for speech-making. For over forty years these processions have been an annual Labour event, but the class that lives on Labour still remains solidly entrenched in the seat of power, and, bitter commentary on the periodical display, is kept there with the aid of the votes of the processionists.

It is interesting to recall that at one of these meetings in 1915 Ben Tillett, for long a favourite May-Day orator, addressed the following message to French workers: —

Britain alert, mutually co-operating with France, stands for civilisation, for a spiritual awakening of Europe for the overthrow of Kaiserism, militarism, and the capitalistic vandals whose brutal power is now ravishing Europe, and the world itself.”

("Reynolds,” May 9th, 1915.) 

Nineteen years have passed away, Ben Tillett has gone into a well-deserved oblivion, the “vandals" were overthrown, but armament conferences till give their window dressing performances and newer and more deadly means for murdering are devised. To cap it all Germany, under Hitler, is now staging an official "Labour Day” complete with hammer and sickle, the Communist emblems, alongside the swastika!

Discontent is as strong now as ever it was, but it is still politically ignorant discontent, and while it remains so it will be, as in the past, the sport of flaming orators like Ben Tillett—and Adolf Hitler.

Bands and banners are symbols of emotion and can lead a column equally well to their goal or to destruction. The path to social freedom cannot be cut out by mere emotional outbursts, there are too many entanglements on the way. Those who have enjoyed the emotional uplift of the march and the meetings afterwards relapse into their customary grooves. In the main their revolutionary fervour is just the pastime of a particular day. It will continue to be so until the workers give as serious and thoughtful consideration to their social conditions as they do to the getting of their daily bread. When the mass of the workers adopt this attitude they will lose their admiration for oratorical outbursts and cease to waste their time on fruitless displays.

No great knowledge is needed to understand the workers' social condition. The position is so simple that one is almost astounded to find how much effort is needed to induce workers to examine it seriously. In a few words it may be put as follows:—

The wealth of the world is produced by the workers, but the capitalists, by their ownership of the means of production, own the product of the workers' labour. In return for their productive labour the workers receive in the form of wages only sufficient, as a rule, to keep them living and producing. The wealth remaining enables the capitalists to enjoy their lives of ease. The capitalists are in control of the political machinery and use it to keep the workers in their condition of subjection. The workers by their votes put the capitalists in possession of this political machinery at election times. The problem for the workers is how to get rid of their subject condition. The solution is to abolish the present private ownership of the means of production and substitute for it common ownership. This can be accomplished by the workers sending delegates to Parliament for the purpose, the delegates to act as their servants to carry out their instructions. The workers would then obtain control of the political machinery and be able to break the power of capital.

The position is just as simple as this and does not need a fanfare of trumpets to demonstrate it. It is a message for every day and not only for specially picked occasions. It speaks the same language in every land and to every race. It has neither a religious nor a nationalist outlook. It points out the unity of interest of the workers of the world and their common antagonism to capitalism.

Finally it was, it is, and it will be our message for every day until the last of our chains have parted and we are entering the new free social conditions that one day will be our heritage.

Gilmac.

A May Day Message (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first day of May once had a significance which has now become only a tradition. It was a day of hope and rejoicing at the awakening of Nature from its winter sleep and the promise of bright days and good crops. The wet, dark days of winter were past, and the dry, sunny days of summer were coming, and it was an occasion for fun and frivolity. The festival is old and takes us back to the flowery times of old Greece and Rome. Our forefathers celebrated the day with festivals in the villages with dances round the maypole.

But these are dull times, and our opportunities for gaiety are limited by our toilsome hours providing profit for masters. Yet a pale shadow of these celebrations still drifts about on May Day. Just as the ancient joyous and colourful festivals reflected the spontaneous outburst of less rigid times, so the modern ghost reflects the strictly commercial character of to-day. In the parks beribboned railway vans and the like have a "busman’s holiday.”

The Labour movement celebrates May Day in its own particular way. The first conference of the International Workingmen’s Association adopted a resolution stating that the limitation of the working day was the first step in the emancipation of the working class. When the first conference of the second international met in Paris in 1889 they seized upon this resolution, reaffirmed it, and set aside the first of May in every year for Labour demonstrations in favour of an eight- hour day. Since then the first of May has been haunted by the spirit of reform.

Every year larger and larger processions form up behind banners representing almost every conceivable reform, and, with bunting flying, march to arranged spots where platforms are set up to enable Labour leaders and cranks of different descriptions to rant and rave or discourse sweetly to the enhancing of their own reputations and the satisfaction of masses of discontented workers who have not yet discovered the real source of their discontent and the remedy. The proceedings end with the passing of pious and empty resolutions which do not carry the working-class movement a step further on the road to emancipation.

The association of protests against mere effects of capitalism with the May Day demonstration continues to cloud its proceedings. It expresses the clamourings of hosts of people who have their own little corner of discontent, and sworn enemies unite on the platforms to entertain the large audiences. Nationalists, unemployed, Communists, trade unionists, anti-vivisectionists, labourites and reformers of myriad hues unite in more or less vague protestations against the powers that be— protestations that are utterly futile because there is no effective power to back them up.

Our May Day message is now twenty-eight years old, but it is still the same, and it is still fresh and to the point. The capitalists own the means of production and distribution, and owing to this they are able to keep the worker a toiling slave. Ownership of the means of production and distribution is assured to the capitalists through their control of political power, a control that the worker gives them when he votes them into power at election times. The way to freedom lies through dispossessing the capitalists of the power they wield and the instruments they control. This can only be accomplished by obtaining control of Parliament for the purpose of establishing Socialism. This is the common task of the workers the world over regardless of race or colour. The purpose and the determination necessary are the same on every other day of the year just as much as it is on May Day.

As spring awakens hope let it awaken those who are sunk in apathy to the real promise of the future, and stir them to grapple with the fundamental problems of working-class life.

On this May Day then, as usual, we send forward a message of fraternal greeting to our fellow-workers of all lands, whether they be Jewish or German, Hindu or Russian, white or coloured. We urge them to join with us in the work of overthrowing the power that keeps them in bondage and to refrain from placing trust in ideas of leadership or in vague aspirations that only have the heartbreaking end of disillusion and apathy.

Gilmac.

Proper Gander: The Vegan Revolution (2017)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Simon Amstell is carving himself an interesting career, graduating from presenting Popworld and Never Mind The Buzzcocks to writing and directing for television, alongside gigs as a stand-up comedian. His work often draws on his ruminations about his own life, and his vegan diet has drawn him to his latest work. Carnage (BBC iPlayer) almost pulls off the tricky feat of combining sci-fi, comedy and satire in the mockumentary format to raise some important questions about societal change.

The film is made in the year 2067. By this time, the populace is vegan: peaceful, polyamorous young adults can’t understand how people used to eat animal products, while some older people join support groups to deal with their guilt and shame at having been carnivores in the past.

Through clips, newsreel and talking heads, Carnage looks back on the history of animal-free diets since 1944, when The Vegan Society was formed. The movement was slow to attract support, with vegans getting little positive exposure to the wider public. 70s TV shows featuring dowdy, stilted vegans presenting an array of beige food couldn’t compete with the excitement of Fanny Craddock mutilating a pig in the Royal Albert Hall. Most people didn’t think about what they were eating because ‘the animals people were consuming stopped looking like they’d ever been animals’, thanks to the fast food industry and its gaudy marketing.

Despite increasing awareness of the risks of an animal-based diet, such as susceptibility to heart disease, obesity and cancer, and the dangers of intensive farming spreading diseases, there was still a ‘meat-driven political culture’. This was challenged in 2010 when the UN announced that veganism is essential to limiting climate change because of the carbon dioxide emissions caused by the livestock industry. Increases in flooding incidents over the next few years reinforced concerns about changing weather patterns and their causes.

After an epidemic of ‘Super Swine Flu’ in 2021, intensive farming was banned. ‘Sadly, chickens people had been eating were so genetically modified it was very difficult for them to celebrate the news’. Then followed ‘the era of confusion’ when people wanted to act more responsibly, but weren’t sure how, until inspirational role models emerged. Hip activists and chefs on the telly spread a positive message about veganism: ‘we’ve got to shock people with love. We’ve got to shock people with compassion’. Other signs that the vegan movement was growing were 2024’s hit musical about the cruelties of the dairy industry and Albania winning the Eurovision Song Contest with a power ballad about veganism. The movement was galvanised when a prominent activist was killed by a member of the Great British Meat League. This, along with the pro-meat vlogger vlogging ‘This is England! We aren’t lentils!’ makes a link between right wing politics and eating animal products. In 2032, the argument for veganism was strengthened when technology was invented which can read and translate animals’ thoughts, such as ‘I am not a cheese factory. I am a goat’. Three years later, eating animal products was banned in the 2035 Bill of Animal Rights.

Carnage throws a lot of ideas from the screen, through faked footage, archive clips and Amstell’s sarky narration. Sometimes its serious message about the supposed advantages of veganism gets clouded when a scene veers too close to Brass Eye-style satire, but the gags prevent the film from sounding preachy. The scenes from abattoirs, of cows being shot and chicks on a production line speak for themselves. But Carnage isn’t just about veganism; it also explores what makes a cause popular enough to create lasting change.

Could as significant a shift as mass conversion to veganism happen within capitalism? In Carnage, the transition sounds fairly straightforward: scientists show that eating animal products is bad for the environment and cruel, support for this view grows among the public and government, and legislation bans the meat and dairy industries, leading to utopia. In real life, it’s doubtful that the capitalist class would be so flexible, considering the economic clout of these industries. Would popular pressure and the changing climate be strong enough reasons for capitalism to be reformed in this way? Even so, mass veganism - if desirable - could only happen within capitalism if vegan-friendly industries became more profitable for their owners.

The programme starts to explore whether such a shift could only happen as part of wider change. One of the future experts looking back links the eating of animal products with the acceptance of hierarchies: ‘The Queen, despite being just another animal, was above all British people, so I suppose we thought that we should be above something’. Unfortunately, Carnage doesn’t expand on the notion that if we reject hierarchies between people we would also view animals as equal. Instead, it focuses on the how the future road to veganism gets played out in the media, and the viral videos, performance artists, social media campaigns and telegenic role models probably would be part of any growing movement.

The BBC tends to hide its more challenging output away on its iPlayer service, and Carnage is worth finding if you’re hungry for some food for thought.

Mike Foster

Editorial: Here We Go Again (2017)

Editorial from the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the third time in as many years we are being asked to make a decision for the capitalist class. Last year it was whether Britain PLC should or should not remain in the capitalist EU. The year before it was about which set of professional politicians should run the state machine on behalf of the capitalist class. Now, we are being asked to do this again.

The reason Theresa May gave for calling this election is distinctly undemocratic. The parliament elected in 2015, she said, was not sufficiently compliant with what the government wants over Brexit, therefore it must be dissolved.

It is true that the rather inaptly named Fixed Term Parliament Act does require two-thirds of MPs to vote for dissolution but Labour, the only party with a one-third blocking minority, was never going to employ this, if only to avoid being accused of being afraid to put their policies before the electorate. Besides, most Labour MPs will have seen a premature general election as a chance to get rid of the Corbyn leadership and resume their careers. Labour loses, Corbyn falls on his sword and their chance to become ministers is brought forward from 2025 to 2022.

So, here we go again. This time many more will probably, and understandably, abstain. But, despite the antics of the professional politicians, parliament remains the route to political power and, given that the electorate is made up overwhelmingly of members of the wage and salary working class, in the final analysis a general election is about whether or not the working class is prepared to leave political power in the hands of the capitalist class.

We have no illusions on that score. We predict that, unfortunately, the capitalist class will win this election as all previous ones, whether represented by Tory, Labour, Liberal, Nationalist or Green politicians. All these parties agree that the legal right of rich individuals to own the means of living should remain intact and that production should continue to be in the hands of profit-seeking enterprises, even if some of them may wish to tinker with the system or try to impose unrealisable demands on it.

But, in voting to continue with capitalism, those who bother to vote will be voting for the problems in fields such as housing, health care, education and the environment to continue, because the root cause of these problems is capitalism and its economic imperative to put making profits before satisfying people's needs.

We socialists will still be going to the polling stations to show that we consider the vote a potential weapon that the working class can use to dislodge the capitalist class and clear the way for the establishment in place of capitalism of a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production so that they can be used to turn out what people need. But, except in the few constituencies where they will be candidates standing for this, we shan't be voting for any of the candidates on offer but instead casting a write-in vote for world socialism by writing this across our ballot paper.

Ask the general (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the intoxication of the INF Treaty comes the hangover of reality. The record has recently been put straight by NATO's Supreme Commander (and you can't get much higher than that in the business of managing a mass murder machine) General John Galvin, who advises against any misconceptions about the effect of the Treaty which, he says, will remove only about three or four per cent of the nuclear inventory. Whatever gap this may leave, the General is engaged in trying to plug by bringing NATO's battlefield nuclear weapons up do date. At the same time the British government is planning a £2 to £3 billion long-term costing for a new nuclear stand-off missile for the Tornado bomber, as another way of plugging the gaps left by the INF.

These facts indicate that, in spite of the blast of publicity which came with its signing, the INF Treaty will leave the world anything but nuclear-free. After all, nuclear arms did not happen by accident, out of an unconnected nothing. They were in the direct line of succession of capitalism's state organised means of murder and destruction (what, we wonder, will be next in the line?). The bomber aircraft which emerged from World War One were succeeded at the end of 1939-45 by the guided missile and the rocket. then in their infancy but holding the awful prospect of refinement and fitment with nuclear warheads.

This doleful state of affairs, in which a substantial amount of human energy, knowledge and resources is poured into manufacturing devices with the sole use of blowing us all up, is the inevitable consequence of a social system based on the class monopoly of the means of life. Capitalism produces its wealth for profitable sale; its relentless drive is for the accumulation of capital. This means that it is a society of competition, which at its fullest involves a massive, world-wide clash between the super powers armed with the most destructive weapons available.

The case that capitalism causes war and that war gives rise to the means of destruction. which must inexorably get more and more powerful, seems too straightforward for the anti-nuclear campaigners, who prefer to think that the weapons can be eliminated without doing anything about their cause. So imperfect an understanding of this social system must cause a vulnerability to misconceptions, of the sort which CND constantly offer as viable policy. That is why they celebrated the INF Treaty as the harbinger of a new age of peace and freedom from fear.

In reality, the powers of capitalism will not surrender their capacities to damage, perhaps destroy, each other at so casual a wriggle of pens on pieces of paper. They will not so easily dismantle the arsenals they have so painstakingly, so expensively, accumulated. They remain deadly rivals; the world is still a place of tension, under threat of the ultimate holocaust.

After the false euphoria of the INF Treaty, that is the reality. Ask General Galvin. 

Getting a message (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

I always watch breakfast television to see if the Revolution has started without me. Every day I wait for Gordon Honeycombe to announce that the working class have finally emancipated themselves. Well, this particular morning he didn't say that. Instead we got Batman repeats, followed by the usual mind- numbing mixture of self-publicising nonentities and heart-warming human interest stories. The aim of this early morning junk is to anaesthetise the thought processes of the workers before they set out to perform their capitalist employers' bidding.

Undaunted, I turned to the newly delivered newspaper. I nearly choked on my toast. "'Jesus lives' to adorn Britain's letters for six weeks," the headline read. One of 3000 Intercessors for Britain, who have vowed to pray for an hour a week over the moral state of the country, has paid the Post Office fifty thousand pounds to postmark every letter, parcel and periodical with the slogan "Jesus is alive". Expletive deleted, I thought to myself. I read on. A Post Office spokesman said. "The scheme in no way confirms that we agree with the contents of the slogan. We do not consider the slogan contentious but a fair and reasonable message generally to the public". Well it's not agreeable to me, matey. It adds a new dimension to "unsolicited mail". My indignation quickly subsided when I realised that it was yet another triumph for crass commercialism.

I had thought of writing on my outgoing mail, "Jesus is alive and well in America, providing homophobic bigots and racists with well heeled lifestyles made possible by screwing millions of dollars out of those members of the working class who need an emotional crutch to help them cope with capitalism, a system of society that produces war. poverty, economic insecurity and unemployment". Then I realised there would be no room left on the envelope for the address. So I think I'll write "Abolition of the wages system" instead.

Dave Coggan

Be your own boss? (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the nineteenth century Samuel Smiles offered the doctrine of hard work and abstinence to the British working class as a path from the poverty and suffering they experienced during the "golden era" of empire and industry.

Today the government peddles a similar message of self-help to the unemployed through its Enterprise Allowance Scheme with advice on how to become self-employed. The Prime Minister has revealed her vision for the future — a nation of self- employed. This is a bold vision in its denial of economic reality but it does reflect the pressures of party politics.

At the heart of the matter is government concern over unemployment levels and the consequent fear of losing power at the ballot box. This is a problem that has been faced by successive governments, whether Conservative, Labour, or Liberal (and will no doubt prove a source of worry to the new SLDP). Each has offered a variety of "solutions" that have proved useless without exception. Unfortunately for all parties hoping to capture power and administer capitalism the problem remains that unemployment is an inherent part of the capitalist economy and not capitalism gone wrong. As such the "solutions” offered by these parties and their accompanying economic advisers are spurious and, regardless of the promises, unemployment will be relatively high or low depending on the prospects for the capitalist class of realising a profit given prevailing market conditions. If the economy is expanding the capitalist will draw on the reserve of unemployed workers to increase production. When the economy contracts redundancy notices are issued.

The present government is offering the unemployed worker a chance to Be Your Own Boss. This self help booklet is available at Job Centres and offers advice and financial assistance in setting up your own business. It promises that "You won't have a boss breathing down your neck" (not that the target audience has the luxury of this inconvenience) and offers a list of services you could provide as a budding entrepreneur. Among the services listed that could launch you on the road to prosperity are: picture framing, making pottery, sign writing, gardening and child minding. Contact with reality is avoided by ignoring those crucial elements of market economy — competition and profitability. The reader is simply advised to identify a service that cannot be obtained at the "right price" in the area they live. The realities of the market place are left further behind when advice is offered on forming a co-operative. A co-op may suit you if you are ". . . more interested in serving the community than making profits". It would be hard to find a more cynical denial of the priorities of capitalism than to offer hope to unemployed workers by implying that a desire to help others may be enough to earn a living.

Tony Dobson

The Passing Show: Sons of Peace (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sons of Peace

We have only to mention such names as Berlin, Korea, Suez, Lebanon and 'Cuba, to recognise something they all have in common. All of them have at some time or other been trigger spots over which an extra large squabble has threatened something even bigger and more horrifying. At the time of writing, Vietnam is the current trigger spot and even the most ignorant must be aware of the slaughter which is going on there.

President Johnson has announced that the U.S. forces will be increased by fifty thousand men—“We are not going to be pushed out of Vietnam”, he says with cold-blooded frankness. His move, we can be sure, will be matched by the Vietcong and their supporters, and the situation moves one step further up the escalator.

But you may or may not have noticed the hypocrisy that gushes to the surface at a time like this. Nobody likes going out to war, but once it starts it’s difficult to stop, so there’s plenty of political prestige for the capitalist politician of perhaps a smaller “uncommitted” power if he can convince people that he has been responsible for putting a stop to the fighting. It’s a bandwagon which rolls merrily along, pausing only briefly between blood baths, and the assortment of individuals clambering aboard is bizarre indeed.

You may recall Korea, for example, and the appeals of the Indian government for a cessation of the hostilities—the very power which had gone to war only a few years before with Pakistan over the Kashmir issue. Since then Goa and the Rann of Kutch have been added to the nasty little list of “incidents” over which the Indian rulers have used force to push their interests, but these have not prevented the late Mr. Nehru, and his successor Mr. Shastri, from posing as peaceful mediators when some of the bigger powers have squabbled.

Perhaps you can think of any number of other examples, but to bring you up to date, the bandwagon has a new passenger. The Guardian of August 22nd reports that the gentle warrior Marshal Tito is trying to get a peace conference going over Vietnam. He will also ask that other war hater President Nasser of Egypt, to urge the peace loving Chou en-lai of China to “take a more constructive role in the Vietnam Crisis”. Apparently these moves are a result of talks in Belgrade between Tito and the Indian Prime Minister—obviously, whoever slips off the bandwagon, Mr. Shastri is determined to stay on it.

Just what the word “constructive” means in this context is anyone’s guess. As far as the contestants are concerned it will be only when the other side backs down, and until that happens, the slaughter and destruction will continue. So will the crocodile tears and the hypocrisy.


Right-About-Turn

The government announced at the beginning of August that the immigrant quota is to be severely curtailed. About 300,000 Commonwealth applicants won’t stand a chance of entry, and only some 8,500 work vouchers a year will be issued. A far cry from the days of unqualified Labour opposition to restriction when Gaitskell was their leader? Maybe, but a politically popular decision nevertheless, and that’s what matters to the parties of capitalism.

Ironic is it not, then, to look further afield and find that the Australian Labour Party has now taken the opposite stand to that of its British counterpart, although it has always been a staunch supporter of a “white Australia” policy. Its statement of August 2nd says:

Convinced that an increased population is vital to Australia’s future, the Australian Labour Party will support and uphold a vigorous and expanding immigration programme administered with sympathy, understanding and tolerance. (Guardian, 3/8/65).

Now there may be a number of reasons for this change of front. Although the policy up to now has been to encourage British and Europeans and discourage Asians and other coloureds, Australian capitalism has been short of labour power for a long time, and the present policy has not succeeded in overcoming it. Then again, the Australian Labour Party may have its eye on the new independent Asian states not very far away, and its new policy could be an attempt to placate them (President Sukarno of Indonesia has for his part been saying some nice things about Australia just lately). Or maybe it’s a combination of factors, all contributing to what the ALP thinks are modern capitalism’s requirements. One thing is certain from the statement above, and that is that it’s not brotherly love for the coloured worker that has motivated it. )

But don't forget that the ALP is not in power at present, and if it ever does become the government again, we could well see a volte face if the situation demanded it. Hie labour Party may do the proposing, hut capitalism always does the disposing.


Gaspers

  NATO has been a success and the measure of thai success has been the shift of the threat from the West to the East (Mr. R. Maudling in a Commons debate. 20/7/65)
  Nobody has put any pressure on me to resign and nobody has suggested that I should go, but there are those who feel that a change of leadership would be right. (Sir A. Douglas Home, on his resignation. 22/7/65).
 Since 1945 it has become plain that the alternative government system is a defective means of securing national recognition of economic facts which exist whichever party is in power. (Guardian political correspondent, 29/7/65).
 The new leader sounded decidedly thin when it came to the Conservative remedies, many of which sounded nearly indistinguishable from Labour remedies. (Guardian comment on Commons censure debate, 3/8/65)

Eddie Critchfield

Abundance (2012)

Book Review from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Abundance: the future is better than you think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. Free Press. 2012

In the 1960s there was a spate of books about how automation would usher in a world of abundance in which we would all need to work only 20 hours a week before retiring at 50. It never happened. The post-war boom came to an end in the 1970s and pessimism set in: the Club of Rome, for instance, famously predicted that many non-renewable resources would run out before the turn of the century. That didn’t happen either.

Doom and gloom is still the prevalent mood.  Some are predicting the end of civilisation by the end of the century as a result of global overwarming. So it’s refreshing to read a book that’s rather more optimistic. Diamandis and Kotler set out to show that:

“Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standard of living for every man, woman and child on the planet. Within a generation, we will be able to provide goods and services, once reserved for the wealthy few, to any and all who need them. Or desire them. Abundance for all is actually within our grasp.” (p. 9)

They anticipate that it is achievements and future developments in Artificial Intelligence, nanotechnology, digitisation and genetic engineering that will enable this. Chapters 8 (Water), 9 (Feeding Nine Billion) and 13 (Energy) provide the details.

Most of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.  Water shortage should not therefore be a problem if an efficient and ecologically-sound way of desalinating it can be found. (They say it has.)  And there are also developments in water purification which permit the re-use of dirty water. Food production can be increased through genetically-engineered plants, artificial meat (grown from stem cells) and vertical farming (employing hydroponic techniques). The obvious alternative to burning fossil fuels as a source of energy for industry, transport and households is the sun. Until now a major problem has been how to store electricity. Diamandis and Kotler say this is in the process of being solved. Appropriate biomass can also provide a substitute for mineral oil.

The book’s big drawback is that this is supposed to happen under capitalism through the pioneering efforts of DIY inventors and innovators and ‘techno-philanthropists’ such as Bill Gates.

There is no theoretical reason why capitalism cannot further ‘develop’ the so-called developing world by providing more and more people there with some of the amenities (such as clean water and mobile phones) enjoyed by people in the developed parts of the world. But this can be done more quickly and more rationally in a socialist world.

Under capitalism, too, the risk is always there that advances in technology will be abused; as they have been and still are being abused. Drones, for instance, which could be used to transport medicines and spare parts to remote areas of Africa, are being used to transport bombs to kill people. And it’s only under capitalism that a group of terrorists could use developments in genetic engineering to concoct, and use or threaten to use, their own biological weapons.

One thing capitalism won’t be able to do is to remove profit-seeking as the driving force of economic activity, and so prevent wars and preparations for war.  Nor will it eliminate the enormous waste of resources this involves, nor prevent economic crises like the present one when austerity not abundance is the order of the day.

Diamandis and Kotler fix a date by which abundance and “an end to most of what ails us” will be realised as 2035 (p. 25). That’s a year before the UK government is preparing to raise the age of retirement to 67. Given the continuation of capitalism, it’s the latter that’s the more likely.

Adam Buick

Tactical Voting (1983)

Editorial from the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who remembers the days of “consensus” politics, when Butskellism was rife in this country (which means when the Conservative and Labour parties made no secret of the fact that they were in basic agreement over the running of British capitalism) will be familiar with the slippery image of the floating voter. All manner of electoral bait was cast on the muddied waters to entice the floating voters into the net, as they moved shoal-like between the bed-rock support for the two big parties. Many dirty tricks disfigured the great angling contest between Labour and Tory, for the floater was in many cases considered to be crucial to the outcome of an election.

But all that was in the days of Macmillan, Gaitskell, Butler and the like; interest in the floating voter has declined and attention is given instead to the tactical voter, who is now said to be the deciding factor. There are contrasts between the two types. The floating voter could be an apathetic creature, liable to stay in its shell if the bait was not enticing enough to get it out to the polling station, while the tactical voter is essentially someone who votes. When the floating voter did vote, whether under inducement or threat, in the end it was for the party of its choice; the whole point about tactical voting is that it is for the party you don't really support.

In the famous Bermondsey by-election, for example. Labour supporters who were persuaded that Peter Tatchell stood little chance of winning might have voted for the SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate as the one most likely to keep the Tories out. This tactical vote would have been cast, even if the voter had been aware that the Alliance is a bunch of unprincipled opportunists.

Tactical voters try to be on the winning side, which means that they will be affected by preconceptions about the result. Electoral forecasts, then, are important; if Tatchell had looked likely to win in Bermondsey he should have attracted tactical votes rather than, as was the case, repulsed them. In that event many supporters of the Alliance, although they regarded Tatchell as a dangerous revolutionary (which he isn't) and the Labour Party as discredited and impotent (which it is) should have voted for him. In the past this process was known as a bandwagon which, as it gathers speed, picks up more and more people eager to be taken for a ride.

Although it seems to have been only recently discovered, tactical voting has been practised for a long time. Ever since the twenties the Labour and Conservative parties have argued that, as the Liberals could not hope to win an election, to vote for them was a waste; for tactical reasons. Liberals should vote Labour or Tory, even if they were opposed to those parties. This is not an argument about principle but about a squalid expediency. As the Liberals once suffered through the use of the tactical vote, it might be expected that they would be still opposed to its use now and would still be protesting that people should vote in accordance with their ideas; but now that they think the tactical vote is favouring them, the Liberals have no difficulty in accepting it.

Of course this is causing the Labour and Conservative parties a great deal of anguish and they are turning their ire on to the opinion polls on the assumption that, by forecasting the winner, they help to attract the tactical vote to that party and so to energise its bandwagon. A bruised Labour Party asserted that this happened in Bermondsey and one Labour MP — the ridiculous Doug Hoyle — wants to ban the polls from operating during the crucial period of an election. Hoyle sits on a thin majority having won a by-election almost as disastrous for his party as Bermondsey so it is natural that he should be anxious to find a picturesque excuse for Labour’s failures, to add to those which litter their history. A pollsters' conspiracy may now take its place alongside the bankers’ ramp, the economic blizzard and the winter of discontent.

Hoyle’s spluttering symbolised how seriously these matters are taken by the big parties whose business is to amass enough voters, whether sinking or floating, tactical or suicidal, to get them into power. None of them need be concerned about what the votes are based on — about what informs the voter who can be persuaded, during the brief couple of weeks of an election, to switch their support from one candidate to another. It is clear that no part in this is played by elements of political maturity or class consciousness or an awareness of the power of the vote to transform society.

Those votes are determined by inconsistency and opportunism and an ability to ignore the historical fact that it is useless to change from one of the capitalist parties to another. Workers in Britain have been swinging from Labour to Tory and back again since the twenties without producing any effect for the better; to add the SDP to the game will make no difference to its futility. All these parties represent the interests of the minority who own the means of life and they have no plans or intentions — or any conception — other than to run the social system in which that minority dominate through their ownership. They stand for the society which produces war, nuclear weapons, famine, poverty and disease alongside class privilege. They all stand for the decadence of capitalism and it matters not one whit if the vote swings from one to the other of them. The real issue is to get rid of capitalism.

This cannot be brought about through the crazy oscillations of the floating voter nor by the expedient manoeuvres of the tactical vote. It needs a stable political awareness that capitalism cannot be reformed out of its nature. A voter who has that knowledge does not drift or wriggle; they cannot be tempted to vote for any of the capitalist parties under the delusion that this is a useful thing to do because it keeps one of the others out or lets another in.

In contrast to the floaters and the tacticians there is the socialist, whose vote cannot be bought or manipulated or netted. Socialists vote on their knowledge, which means they use their vote to the limits of its awesome power to establish the society of freedom.

"The Prisoner" (Plaza) (1955)

Film Review from the June 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Prisoner is based on Bridget Boland’s play of the same name which had a short run in London a few months ago. The play, which was one of the very few worthwhile serious plays shown in London in the past year or so, had two of the main characters in common with the film—Alec Guinness as the Cardinal and Wilfred Lawson as the warder. The interrogator, the other principal character, is played in the film by Jack Hawkins.

It is a story of a Cardinal in an iron curtain country who has fallen foul of the regime by his outspokenness. The authorities, however, are unable to merely arrest and liquidate him owing to his fame and popularity, and it is therefore necessary for them to extort from the prisoner a confession of crimes sufficient to discredit him and to ensure his fall from public favour. In the words of the interrogator: “You are a public monument and that monument must be—defaced.”

The story, then, deals with the efforts of the interrogator to discover the chink in the Cardinal’s armour that will enable him to break down his resistance and eventually bring about his public recantation and “confession.” The interrogation takes months and although the prisoner is subjected to no actual physical torture, his spirit is broken by solitary confinement, the complete absence of sunlight and other well-thought-out “psychological” methods of torture. Inevitably roe chink in the armour is discovered and exploited and the State triumphs, although the interrogator discovers in the process that he himself is not free from pity, and is bringing about his own destruction as much as the prisoner's. The interrogator's method of breaking the prisoners’ will (or “curing him” as the interrogator puts it) and the Cardinal’s struggles to thwart him make a fascinating, although horrifying, study.

Any other conclusion to the story would have been dishonest for, in fact, in the so-called “Communist peoples' democracies” the State has always triumphed.

Bridget Boland has also written the script for die film and, unfortunately, has been prevailed upon to embellish the severity of the play with some romantic interest and some other tiresome, Hollywoodesque, film conventions, presumably at the instance of the box-office experts. The action of the play took place completely in the interrogation room and in the prisoner's cell, but there are a number of outside episodes added to the film that are both distracting and pointless. For instance, there is the disjointed love story of one of the police-warders; then a young boy is shot by the police while chalking “ Freedom” signs on a wall; a gun-battle breaks out between troops and an armed man in a house; a subversive journalist is arrested in a cafe; and so on. The addition of these episodes ruins the original unity of the play, and makes the film crudely anti-Communist, sprawling and inconsequential. Less reprehensible, perhaps, is the addition of the Cardinal's arrest in the cathedral and the trial. Both are quite effective but again, add little to the unity and point of the original.

The political trials that have taken place in Russia and the other so-called “Communist” countries generally follow a consistent pattern. At the trial the accused generally gives an abject “confession”; admits to all his crimes; extolls the virtues of the leaders of the party; admits the complete wrongness of his thought and sometimes even demands that the maximum penalty be exacted for the benefit of the people he is confessing that he has betrayed! A few extracts from the accounts of some of these trials should be sufficient to demonstrate this.

Trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others. (Russia, 1936):—

“Vishinsky: How is one to judge the articles and declarations which you wrote in 1933 and in which you expressed devotion to the Party? As deceit?
Kamenev: No, worse than deceit.
Vishinsky: Breach of faith?
Kamenev: Worse.
Vishinsky: Worse than deceit, worse than breach of faith. Do you find this word? Is it treachery?
Kamenev: You have said it.
Vishinsky: Zinoviev, do you confirm this?
Zinoviev: Yes.”

Trial of Traicho Kostov and others. (Bulgaria, 1949):— 

Kostov: “So I repeat, I plead guilty of nationalist deviation in relation to the Soviet Union, which deserves a most severe punishment”—and—“I must confess that my readiness to put myself at the disposal of the British Intelligence Service was due partly to my left-sectarian, Trotskyist convictions of the past as well as to my capitulation before the police in 1942 . . . "

Nikola Nachev at the same trial:—

“Citizen Judges, having fully realised my criminal and hostile activities, carried on by me against my Fatherland and the Bulgarian people, I have described these activities in my written depositions before the People’s Militia. I will now tell you about what I did and what I know, so that the criminal conspiracy in which I also participated may be revealed. . . .”

One could go on quoting indefinitely this kind of thing. No one in their right mind could accept these confessions as being genuine and it is impossible not to feel uneasy when thinking of the methods which must be resorted to in order to obtain them. George Orwell in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has, perhaps, described these methods in their ultimate form. For example, when O'Brien is explaining to Winston Smith the methods and ideals of the party he says, “Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act; the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them."

It is ironical to think that after thousands of years of human progress, a large part of the world's population exists without even those elementary freedoms that the workers in this country possess, but this in itself does not justify despair, for though tragic failures, the Berlin riots and the Vorkuta rising are two signs that the “Communist” dictatorships do show cracks.

However, to return to the film. It merits a visit in spite of its faults, not only because of the superb acting performances of the three principals, but also because it throws some light on one of the most remarkable social phenomena of our time:—the political trial.

Albert Ivimey

Back in the USSR (2003)

Book Review from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. By Stephen A Resnick and Richard D. Wolff. Routledge, 2002

"The exploitation of workers”, the authors contend, “prevailed across the entire history of the USSR. When one kind of exploitative class structure was overthrown, another soon took its place . . . The 1917 revolution displaced private capitalism in industry but established an enduring state capitalism there instead”.

This is the sort of thing we say but, as the authors point out, how you regard(ed) the former USSR depends on your definition of class and exploitation. According to them, those in the Marxist tradition have used two different criteria for defining class: one based on property (legal ownership) and one based on power (actual control). The first view (embraced by the official ideologists of the former regime and the Trotskyists and by many in the old Labour Party) is that capitalist class society is abolished when legal private property rights over means of production vested in individuals are abolished and replaced by state ownership.

Although a classless society will have to involve the ending of such legal private property rights, it is clear, if only from the experience of Russia, that this is not enough. Nor is it really a Marxian approach since it emphasies what the law (formal property relations) says rather than looking at what the underlying productive relations actually were. Hence the alternative definition: that class is defined in relation to who actually controls access to and the use of means of production. On this, arguably more Marxian approach, where there is state ownership the question arises of who controls the state; those who do would, in practice if not in law, be the owners of the means of production.

This second is the approach we came to adopt, arguing that Russia was not, and never at any time since 1917 had been, a classless society but a class society in which the workers were exploited by an exclusive group that controlled the state. In fact, it is the approach adopted by nearly all those who argue that Russia was, or became, state capitalist.

But, as Resnick and Wolff point out, it still leaves open the question of what a classless, socialist (or communist, the same thing) society might be. Some who use this argument say that Russia would have been socialist (or become socialist) if only the state had been democratically controlled by the population or if only industries had been controlled and managed by those working in them. We don't take this view because, for us, common ownership of the means of production implies the disappearance of production for sale and with it of markets, prices, wages and money itself. If Russia had retained these but become democratic it would still have been capitalist, even though a democratic state capitalism or a worker-managed capitalism would be an unrealistic utopia.

Resnick and Wolff use this ambiguity to criticise not just the “property” theory (the Trotskyist nonsense about Russia having been a “degenerate workers' state” is an easy target) but also the “power” theory and to advance their own “surplus” theory of class: that class structure is determined by who appropriates and distributes the surplus produced at enterprise level. If it's not the direct producers then there's exploitation of them by another class; if it is the direct producers then that's communism. That right from 1917-18 the surpluses of enterprises were appropriated by state officials is the reason they give for saying that Russia always was state capitalist. (We say it was because commodity production, the wages system and money never disappeared.)

This theory raises a number of difficulties, the first being the definition of communism. Because Resnick and Wolff concentrate on what happens at enterprise level their argument leads to the conclusion that communism can exist at enterprise level. This is, in fact, their argument; which makes producer co-operatives the typical communist organisation. Insofar as communism is equated with any kind of “common ownership” then such co-operatives could be called “communist” since the co-operative's assets and products are commonly owned by its members. In fact, in their detailed economic history of the USSR between 1917 and 1990 that takes up most of the book, the only example of “communism” they identify in Russia are the collective farms set up in the 1930s, on the ground that, legally, the surplus they realised was not directly appropriated by state officials but belonged to the farmers as a collective group.

Traditionally, however, “communism” has meant a communist society, i.e., a whole social system based on the common ownership of the means of living and their democratic control by all the people (when we ourselves talk of “common ownership” this is to be taken as shorthand for common ownership of all the means of production by society).

Resnick and Wolff are prepared to consider “communism” existing above enterprise level, by for instance whole industries being commonly owned by those working in them and even (as a theoretical limiting case) of all industry being commonly owned by all productive workers. So that, for them, a fully communist society would be one in which all enterprises and all industries would be owned by those working in them, so that it would be the producers who would not only produce the surplus but also appropriate it (i.e., it would belong to them as soon as it was produced) and, even if through delegation either to professional managers or to state officials, decide its distribution.

Such a society would have more in common with what the co-operative movement and syndicalists used to envisage than with what we understand by socialism or communism, especially as Resnick and Wolff envisage buying and selling relationships existing between the various commonly-owned enterprises and industries. Thus they talk about “communist” markets and even “communist” value, surplus value, price and profit—enough to make our hair stand on end and conclude that they are not talking about communism or socialism in the original sense of a society in which all the means of production and distribution are commonly owned and democratically controlled by all the people. Since in such a society what was produced would also be commonly owned by everybody (or by nobody, the same thing from another angle), the question that would arise would not be how and where to sell it but how to distribute it through non-market mechanisms. Value, prices, profits, wages, money, etc are capitalist economic categories that won't exist in socialism.

That Resnick and Wolff are thinking in terms of an economic system based on capitalist economic categories is also evident from their treatment of productive labour, which is behind their workerist position that the surplus(-value) produced in an enterprise should belong only to that enterprise's “productive” workers to the exclusion of its “non-productive” workers such as its purchasing, sales, cleaning and guarding staff.

Here again, they are employing a concept that is relevant only to capitalism. Under capitalism a “productive” worker is a worker who produces surplus value. This is because the aim of capitalism is to maximise the amount of surplus value produced. Thus, for it, only workers whose labour is exchanged against capital (as opposed to being paid out of income) are productive. This does not mean that other workers, paid out of someone's income, are not productive in the broader (and more normal) sense of productive of use-values. A tailor employed by a landowner or a capitalist to make him a suit still produces a suit even if they don't produce surplus value. Similarly, a civil servant by his or her work still provides a service (even if in many cases one that is only useful under capitalism). Anyone who works, whether for an employer, on their own account or as a volunteer, is productive insofar as they produce something, whether an object or a service, that is in some way useful to somebody. All such workers are productive of use-values.

Since socialism (communism) will be a society that will produce wealth solely in the form of use-values then everybody who produces any use-value will be productive, and there will be no sense in trying to distinguish those who, if society were still capitalist, would have been regarded as producers of surplus value. And even less sense in placing such producers in a privileged position with regard to other producers by allowing them the first say in how products should be distributed. That wouldn't be democratic and it's not socialist either. Socialism, we insist, is the common ownership of the means for producing and distributing wealth (i.e., use-values) by and in the interest of the whole community (including non-producers such as the sick and the old).

Adam Buick

Pathfinders: Don't Be Evil (2017)

The Pathfinders Column from the April 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Google have been in trouble again lately, this time for 'allowing'  ads by governments and major companies to appear next to extremist and hate videos on YouTube, making it look as if the videos are being sponsored by the likes of HMG, M&S, the Guardian and others.

The problem, as Google readily admit, is that they don't know how to prevent this happening. So-called smart filtering software does exist, but it's unrealistic to expect it always to tell the difference between appropriate and inappropriate content, given that human opinions are often divided on the subject. Current estimates vary, but in 2014 YouTube stated that 300 hours of new material were being uploaded every minute to their site, so policing that volume of content is next to impossible. Nevertheless critics are wont to demand the moon on a stick and attack Google for not doing enough to keep their house in order.

At the same time, Google has also been criticised for censorship, usually when their automated efforts to police content go wrong. An Egyptian blogger's videos of vote-rigging and police brutality were removed in 2007. A video criticising sharia law in Britain and backed by the National Secular Society was taken down in 2008. There are hundreds of other complaints about Google being either dictatorial or drippily laissez-faire, depending on the individual point of view. And YouTube was  itself blocked in Pakistan for carrying videos criticising Islam, in Turkey for videos insulting national founder Kemal Atatürk, in Thailand for unflattering remarks against the royals, in the UK and Germany for music copyright infringement, in China, Iran and Turkmenistan in virtual perpetuity, and so on.

It's not just the videos that YouTube has been castigated for. Its policy of allowing comments has repeatedly been under fire for unleashing a barrage of inane bigotry. Time Magazine complained in 2006: "Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred", and the Guardian in 2015 called it "a hotbed of infantile debate and unashamed ignorance" (Wikipedia). Google in 2013 decided to force viewers to create a Google+ account before they could post comments on videos, but this in turn attracted a storm of protest, even from one of YouTube's own co-founders.

This is all quite apart from controversies about aggressive tax avoidance, supposed manipulation over search results, source-code secrecy, abuse or appropriation of intellectual property, invasion of privacy and monopolistic practices. Having failed to live up to its founding motto 'Don't Be Evil' (what corporation wouldn't fail, though?), Google adopted a new motto in 2015: 'Do the right thing'. What this means is anybody's guess, but it's likely that Google won't live up to this motto either.

Google is valued at $133bn and its parent company Alphabet is listed by Forbes as the 27th largest company in the world, above IBM, General Motors, Gazprom, Intel, Boeing, Disney and Coca-Cola. Just as Uber, wriggling and writhing through its current worker-exploitation controversies by insisting it is a technology 'platform' not a taxi company, so Google aims to avoid government regulation by maintaining that it is a technology platform and not a media company (Google's crisis of confidence, BBC Online, 20 March). Whether it's allowed to get away with this in the future remains to be seen.

There is a degree of 'shoot the messenger' involved in all this. The internet has opened a hitherto unsuspected Pandora's Box of horrors including trolling, fraud, cyberbullying, revenge porn and general 'net rage' which reveals the crawling underbelly of capitalism in its harshest light. Young people, caught up in this ferocious storm of cruelty, have been driven to suicide. Pious pundits may wonder where all this rage and cruelty comes from, but socialists are not under any illusions. Happy people are not cruel. Anger runs through capitalism like 'Brighton' runs through a stick of rock. What people are angry about is the conditions they live under in capitalism, and the oppressive power relations that grind them down. Of course it's in the nature of power relations that you can't take your oppressor out into the street and punch his face in. So people vent their anonymous spite on each other instead, and then everybody blames Google for 'allowing' it all to happen. Maybe when they said 'Don't be evil' they didn't mean themselves.

What would Google and YouTube look like in socialism? Not that different, in some ways. But passwords and paywalls would be obsolete, to general relief, as would pop-up ads, banners and flashes, not to mention adware and spyware and porn links. Search results would tend to reflect genuinely popular sites, as they mostly now do, but without web developers having a money incentive to 'game' the rankings systems to promote bogus sites. But perhaps the most noticeable difference would be the disappearance of the obsessive cult of online secrecy, including the 'dark web', and the consequent freedom presently enjoyed by some in capitalism - the freedom to abuse, bully, libel, humiliate and torture someone, sometimes to death, while cosily wrapped in layers of anonymity, safe from discovery. That's not a freedom anyone will want in socialism.

Wiki Games

How accurate is Wikipedia? A recent study of Wikipedia produced a very interesting result. It turned out that Wikipedia's own army of 'bots' - autonomous editing and web maintenance programs - have been engaged in a relentless war with each other for at least a decade, changing and rechanging each other's edits, backwards and forwards, without let or quarter (Link.). As a study author put it, 'humans would have given up by now, but bots just go on forever'. Oddly, there is no entry in Wikipedia itself about its own bot wars, which might be an oversight or else a craven example of truth being the first casualty of war. At any rate, nobody's quite sure how this happened, or what to do about it. Says one researcher: "It is crucial to understand what could affect bot-bot interactions in order to design cooperative bots that can manage disagreement, avoid unproductive conflict, and fulfill their tasks in ways that are socially and ethically acceptable."

Quite so, and perhaps when they've managed that, they can start explaining it to humans.

PJS