The Rise of the Meritocracy (1959)

Book Review from the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Society in 2034

When Swift, with satirical solemnity, suggested in his “Modest Proposals” that poverty in Ireland could be abolished by raising the children of the Irish poor for food, many at the time were shocked. The current suggestion that one day all children will be raised for fitting them to the rigid requirements of a stratified society evokes no great outcry, even though the consequences would be for humans as disastrous as if the “Modest Proposals” had been put into effect.

Dr. Young’s book, The Rise of the Meritocracy (publishers, Thomas and Hudson, 15s.) outlines such a future. By A.D. 2034 Britain is ruled by an intellectual elite, a mere 5 per cent, of the population, “who know what 5 per cent, means.” It is no longer wealth assets but Intelligence Quotient assessment which fixes people’s place in society. All social philosophy is compressed into the formula, l.Q. + Effort = Merit. I.Q. prediction has been pushed back into the womb and the job of the educator is to train these “womb products” at the appropriate level. A society, presumably, where there will be equality of opportunity for everyone to become unequal.

But this exclusion of the many brings frustration and resentment among the masses, who are too stupid to realise that they have been placed in that station of life to which it has pleased their I.Q. destiny to call them. Certain intellectuals, mostly women, to whom the Meritocracy is anathema, excite the mob to revolt. The climax is reached when the Ministry of Education is gutted, a call made for a general strike as well as a great May Day demonstration to be held at Peterloo. The dissident intellectuals also frame a charter demanding, among other things, retention of primary schools, raising of the school age to eighteen and common secondary schools for all.

The book takes the form of a history of the use of the Meritocracy by an unnamed sociologist who is killed at Peterloo before he has time to submit the proofs that in a competitive world where other nations have made the Meritocracy the essence of the Establishment, social survival is only, possible by perpetuating the l.Q. way of life.

Government by the Super-Intelligent

Dr. Young’s satire is apparently a warning against what he thinks might be the outcome of present trends and widely held beliefs. First, that the working class is in economic and cultural decline; that there is a fixed and limited potential of intelligence and that these limited intellectual resources must be efficiently utilised by rigid educational discrimination if we are to hold our own against other nations.

The logic of events would seem to indicate a world controlled by “experts” and “specialists.” The dissolving of the present class structure and the emergence of a new two class system of high I.Q.s and low I.Q.s based finally by continuous selection and breeding on an hereditary principle. The only thing against Dr. Young’s views is that there is no evidence of such trends which point in the direction he adumbrates.

Dr. Young’s account of how the present ruling class is cajoled, indoctrinated and finally liquidated is thoroughly unconvincing. It is a shadowy world where politicians, psychologists, pundits and pedagogues possess enormous power and the complex character of capitalism is reduced to the dimensions of a Meccano set, whose parts can be interchanged in a most arbitrary fashion. The Aladdin’s lamp of the old technocrats’ fantasy is introduced as a device to help the story and the genie is, of course, “automation.” The ruling class—the high I.Q.s,—get enormous incomes and the low I.Q.s live quite comfortably, although, due to labour displacement, many become domestic servants. This may be good fun, but it is bad satire.

There is not the slightest evidence to show that the present ruling class is losing its grip and that effective power is passing into the hands of “experts” and “specialists” of attested I.Q. ability. History knows no ruling class that has voluntarily abdicated its power or has been persuaded out of it by those whose services it employs. The ability of a ruling class to rule is not basically a question of I.Q. assessments, but consists of tradition, cultural inheritance and social practice. A ruling class learns to rule by ruling. And the present ruling class has learned it well. It cannot, as Dr. Young imagines, be reduced to an instructed art or science. Again, people like Lloyd George, Churchill, Macmillan and many others have a knowledge of affairs born out of certain circumstances and experience not amenable to I.Q. prediction and perhaps inaccessible to I.Q. testers.

Fallacious Argument

An instructive part of the book, although perhaps not in the way the author intended, is when the dissident intellectuals of the Meritocracy argue that “people ought to be evaluated not merely in terms of their intelligence and education, but for their kindliness, courage, generosity, etc. And that people should have an opportunity to rise not in any mathematical sense but to each develop his special capacities for leading a rich life. Then we should have the classless society.” But why should sensibility, sensitivity, sympathy and ability to co-operate be excluded from intelligence rating?. The answer lies in the assumptions of present society about the nature of intelligence. In a society like the present one we have been taught to think of intelligence in a most unintelligent way, as something absolute and fixed. The most useful thing we can say about intelligence is that it is inseparably connected with the learning process. Given encouragement, sympathy and the appropriate conditions, people can go on learning all their lives. These prerequisites are gravely handicapped in present society. To-day the authorised pursuit of knowledge takes the form of the rat race of scholarships or later competitive exams, where concepts of status and privilege become the prime stimulus.

So far as the educational system becoming a power in itself, it only makes sense in the light of the requirements of capitalism, i.e., by fashioning the raw material of working class children into the manufactured article required by employers. Education, like charity, is still for the deserving poor. This may offend starry-eyed educationalists dedicated to some abstract principle of education, but they are the facts. Mental testers, administrators and teachers are only doing what capitalist society requires them to do. Many teachers, we believe, recognise this, but there is little they can do about it in practice.

Equality and Equality of Opportunity

Apparently the high I.Q. reformers of the Meritocracy have learned nothing from the reformers of the past—no, not even that they have learned nothing. They want a classless society based on the poetic sentiment of “something nearer to the heart’s desire" ignoring the fact that a privileged society conditions hearts, among other things. The latter day egalitarians, like the earlier ones, try to apply the concept of equality in a social context profoundly unequal. They even confuse themselves and others by equating equality with equality of opportunity, which is, of course, one of the major contemporary confusions. But in a privileged society opportunities are not born free and equal, and the demand for it is the demand of the underprivileged. The demand by Labour egalitarians for equality of opportunity merely turns out to be an opportunity of inequality. That is their dilemma.

We shall, of course, never grasp what human equality really means until we recognise where the source of inequalities lies, i.e., in the ownership of existing wealth resources by a privileged few.

Keeping up with the I.Q. of the Joneses

In a truly classless, society, where all members freely and equally participate in the life and work of the community, the term equality will cease to have meaning; it will have become dissolved into the every-day life and practice of social organisation. There will be no exclusion from above or inclusion from below. People will not be chosen, but do the choosing. As always when people are allowed to choose, they are for the most part sensible about it. In a classless society people will be able to freely avail themselves of a variation of choices and so richly utilise their various capacities. There will be no attempt to shape other people’s lives on some arbitrary intelligence model.

 

In spite of their high I.Q.S, the rulers of the Meritocracy are crass victims of their own ideology, where status and prestige are the ultimate values, and where the chosen themselves have no choice in the matter. A society where it seems families will emblazon their escutcheons not with a coat-of-arms but with I.Q. assessments, a kind of intellectual variation of keeping up with the Joneses. At least the present ruling class have a more intelligent view of the sources of their power and the reason for keeping those sources.

The book is a fusion of elements of Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World and Burnham’s Managerial Revolution, and a rehash to a large extent of the Superman theory of the dead thinker, Shaw. Dead in more senses than one. Like many more, the author is so busy reading the future that he misses what is going on under his very nose. He looks for problems that are not really there, instead of solutions which are right here. i.e., the supersession of present-day profit motivated society for one based on free and equal access to the means of living.

The story of Meritocracy is the story of push-button capitalism and where every push-button country is furiously in competition with every other push-button country, although why, we are never told. The author has a naive belief in the miraculous powers of increased productivity via technocracy and science. For him all human problems are really technical problems which men may fail to master and so produce the Frankenstein of the Meritocracy.

It is a twice-told tale, first told more than half a century ago. There is no more human evidence or non-human evidence for believing it now than for believing it then.

As a book it belongs more properly to science fiction than to a serious social work.

Ted Wilmott

Market myths (1990)

Book Review from the August 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Myth of the Market. By Jeremy Seabrook. Green Books. 1990. £6.50.

Jeremy Seabrook, the journalist and writer who switched from Labour to the Green Party in 1988, provides some compelling criticisms of the mythology surrounding the market and of the effect on social relationships of the domination of market values.

The market, he shows, does not provide freedom and ever more consumer goods for all; in addition to not satisfying needs adequately, it brings social disintegration in the form of increasing crime, mental illness. drug addiction and suicides. Under the dictatorship of the market literally everything has come to be bought and sold and the social bonds linking people are reduced to cash transactions between alienated. isolated individuals.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, Seabrook does not count himself as an opponent of the market as such. In answer to the question "well what would you put in its place", he says we should think in terms of “reducing it to a minimal, functional level in our lives, putting it in its (necessary) place": "Expel the market from all those places it has inappropriately invaded, reclaim autonomy and self-reliance wherever this is possible".

Is this possible? Could the market really be tamed in this way? The market—the production of goods for sale rather than directly for use—is what Marx called commodity-production, and it dominates us today because commodity-production now exists in its most developed form, capitalism where there is not simply production for the market but production for the market with a view to profit.

The way to regain control of our lives, as individuals and as members of a genuine community, is not to go back to an ideal earlier stage of commodity production where the market had not yet emerged as a means of realising profits and was still simply a place where people bought what they needed (which is in effect what Seabrook is calling for). It is to do away with commodity production altogether and institute production solely and directly for use on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources by the whole community. Until we do that we shall continue to be dominated by the market and its values.

Adam Buick

Charity and the State (1990)

Book Review from the August 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Giving: How to Encourage Charities More. By Nicholas True. Centre for Policies Studies. £4.95.

Capitalism does not satisfy people's needs. The result is human suffering on a massive scale. This affects individuals and their families in many ways: starvation, disease and homelessness in many countries: in others malnutrition and bad housing are the commonest forms.

Characteristically there have been two approaches to such problems. One is by legislation. In Britain this led to the Welfare State, the NHS, and to local councils taking on legal responsibility for housing the homeless. The other approach is by voluntary efforts, through a host of charitable institutions and associations. During recent years the size of this operation—in terms of receipts from covenants, legacies and other giving—has appeared to grow steadily. The "top 200" charities received over £900,000,000 in 1987-88. over three times what they received in 1979.

New charities are being registered all the time. By 1989 there were almost 165,000 registered charities, and it is estimated that in total there may be 275,000. Mostly they attempt to compensate for the awful conditions created by an economic system whose priority is not the satisfaction of people's needs. This results in poverty and its associated evils—malnutrition, ill-health and bad housing. In addition, production for profit pollutes the air we breathe, the water we drink, and foodstuff on sale in the supermarket. Nicholas True does not mention these simple and obvious points.

Charities do not tackle the cause of such problems. Worse, the existence of charities enables the state to practise stinginess: welfare is very low on its list of priorities. The main beneficiary of donations to charities is the capitalist class, who otherwise would pay, via taxes, for state expenditure. Here Nicholas True has done his sums:

When the unpaid efforts of charity volunteers are added to the monetary contributions made to the sector as a whole, it can be estimated that the cost of replacing the work of the voluntary sector would be well in excess of £20 billion—or some 12p or 13p on the basic rate of income tax . . . in financial terms alone the State has an enormous interest in sustaining . . . a thriving voluntary sector.

This pamphlet shows that, since 1979, state support for charities has grown significantly, mainly in two areas, both insignificant before 1979. Of £3,680m of state support for voluntary organisations, half goes in government grants to housing associations (£1,138m in 1987-88) and training agencies (£737m). The first enables the state to shrug off any responsibility for housing the homeless, and the second helps reduce the cost to the capitalists of supporting the unemployed.

To fill the gaps in state spending on "welfare" is the function of the legion of charities. The never-ending problems they seek to alleviate are caused by the fact that what we produce is not for our use but for the capitalist class's profit. Since the state is funded by the capitalist class, you get the absurdity of the have-not's giving from the little they earn to organisations whose real reason for existence is to save the capitalist class money.

Charmian Skelton

General Election 2017 (2017)

Party News from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

News and information on the coming election Thursday 8th June

Standing in Swansea West

BREXIT: DOES IT MATTER?

Will BREXIT – whether hard or soft – do anything to solve the problems people in this country are suffering from - job insecurity, inequality, poverty, crime, poor healthcare?

The answer has to be ‘no’. And the reason is that these problems don’t come from particular constitutional arrangements. They come from the way society is organised – production for profit and ownership of the vast majority of the wealth by a tiny minority of people: the global system of capitalism.

The other parties

This is the system all other political parties exist to administer. They have different ideas on how that system can best be maintained, but all agree it must be retained.

Many of their supporters have good intentions but are unaware that, in campaigning for these, they are helping to maintain this built-in system of minority privilege. So, however different Corbyn’s policies may seem from May’s, they offer no alternative to the present way of running society.

No matter how well-meaning politicians may be they can’t control that system – it controls them. The best any government can do is try to ride its storms.

So what's the alternative?

We propose an alternative to the society based on ownership of capital and market forces that currently exists in the UK, Europe and worldwide. This alternative is a society of common ownership that we call socialism.

Not ‘socialism’ as you may understand it. Not the type of dictatorship that collapsed in Russia and elsewhere – which were forms of state capitalism in fact. Not any of the schemes for state control advocated by some in the Labour Party.

For us socialism means something completely different and something much better. We are talking about:

•           a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy

•           a society without buying and selling where everyone has access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money

•           a society where people use the earth’s abundant resources rationally and sustainably, and contribute their knowledge, skills and experience freely to produce what is needed

To sum up:

•           If you don't like present-day society – with or without Brexit.

•           If you’re fed up with the way so many people are forced to live – hanging on for dear life to a job that gives little satisfaction and doing it just for the money

•           If you are sick of seeing grinding poverty alongside obscene wealth

•           If you are sick of the Earth being abused by corporations who don’t care about the future or the environment

•           If you think the root cause of most problems is the market system and the governments that maintain that system

. . . then you’re thinking like we are.

What can you do?

The new society is one without leaders just as it is one without owners and wage-slaves. It is a wholly democratic society, one which can only be achieved when you – and enough like-minded people - join together to bring it about peacefully and democratically.

If you agree with this, you will want to cast your vote for our candidate. In voting for Brian Johnson, the Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate, you will be voting for the socialism you – and we – stand for.

– Election manifesto of our candidate in Swansea West

************************************************************

Standing in London too

The Socialist Party is also standing in London, in Battersea and in Islington North. The candidates are Danny Lambert and Bill Martin.

Islington North, where we also stood in 2015, is Jeremy Corbyn's constituency. At that time he was just an ordinary leftwing Labour MP. In the meantime he has become the Leader of the Labour Party. This hasn't changed our attitude towards him or the Labour Party. We have always been opposed to the Labour Party and have never seen it as a vehicle for socialism.

Battersea is the next door constituency to Vauxhall which we normally contest. It is not far from our  Head Office in Clapham High Street which are being used as our election rooms.

Copies of the manifesto in London can be obtained by a sending a stamped addressed envelope to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Also available are “I'm Voting for World Socialism” stickers.

Offers of help, phone 0207 622 3811 or email spgb@worldsocialism.org

Manifesto (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

You are again faced with a bunch of politicians who can only be distinguished from one another by the colour of their rosettes, but there are thousands of people not prepared to support any of them. About one in four did not vote for any of the candidates in the 1979 General Flection. It is particularly to men and women who are not prepared to follow leaders or to believe the bogus promises of Thatcher, Foot, Jenkins and Steel that this manifesto is directed.

Most of you will not know much about the Socialist Party of Great Britain — this may even be the first time you have heard of us. Certainly, many people have heard the word “socialist" and imagine that it has something to do with the nationalised industries or dictatorships such as Russia and China. It is understandable that many people regard “socialism" as just another political cliché, used to win votes for Labour politicians, but having very little meaning.

The Socialist Party stands solely for socialism because we do not think that the present social system — capitalism — can ever be made to work in the interests of the majority of people. This is not the fault of government policies, but of the present social system in which they are operating. Capitalism always puts the needs of the minority who own and control the factories, farms, offices, mines, media, the means of wealth production and distribution, before those of the vast majority — we, the working class — who produce the wealth, but own little more than our ability to work, which we have to sell for wages or salaries.

It is a hard but undeniable fact that no political party — including the Socialist Party — can legislate to humanise capitalism or make it run in the interests of the wage slaves. That's why it’s time for you to stop giving your votes to politicians who stand for the profit system. None of them can solve unemployment, which has increased steadily under both Labour and Conservative governments, despite their proclaimed recipes for economic success. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will end hypothermia. None of them will prevent thirty million people from starving to death each year. None of them will end the threat of human annihilation as a result of war, because militarism is inevitable within a system based upon the market, trade and ferocious competition. Why waste your vote on parties that cannot make any of these urgently needed changes? Why go on in the hope that a miracle will happen and the insanity of the profit system will be put right?

So what's the socialist alternative? We say that the resources of society must be taken into the hands of the whole community — and by that we don't mean the state, but all of us, organised together, consciously and democratically.

In a socialist society we will produce for use, not profit. This means producing food to feed the world's population, not to dump in the sea if it cannot he sold profitably. Producing for use means ending the colossal waste of resources on armies, armaments, trade, banking and insurance, and all the other social features which are only necessary within capitalism; it means devoting human energies and natural resources to producing the best of what people really need and want. By running society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use we can all have free access to all goods and services.

Two points will be clear to you by now. Firstly, this is no ordinary manifesto. We have made no promises; we have not asked for your support. Indeed, the Socialist Party does not want your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a sensible one and is in your interest. Socialism can only be established when a majority of workers understand and want it, so there is no point in seeking support on any other basis. Secondly, you will have noticed that what we are advocating is different — it has never been tried. That gang of political has-beens, the SDP, have nothing new to offer. The Labour Party, if elected, will continue its futile exercise of trying to reform capitalism. The Tories, if given a chance, will pursue their vicious policy of dancing to the tune of profitability while human needs are ignored. Thatcher’s “Victorian values”, Jenkins’ “consensus politics" and Foot’s “Keynesian” reformism have all been tried — they’ve failed. This is the only manifesto to come through your letterbox which is making a proposal to transform world society from the chaos and waste of the market into the co-operative democracy of production for use.

This manifesto can be summarised. Do you agree with the following statements?

★    CAPITALISM puts profits for the few before the needs of the many.

★ LABOUR governments, “communist states”, and proposals to reform the profit system cannot establish socialism.

★ SOCIALISM means a society of common ownership and democratic control where production is solely for use — not profit.

★ WHEN a majority of workers — including the quarter of the electorate who did not vote last time, the disillusioned members of the old parties and those who have turned to the SDP — understand and want socialism, the new system can be established immediately.

If you think that the above statements are wrong, please take the trouble to tell us why. If you agree with us, then why not take the next step and contact the Socialist Party?

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The Power of the Vote (1983)

Editorial from the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have the millions of workers who were fooled in 1979 by the bogus promises of the Tories learnt not to trust their social destinies to these guardians at the gate of capitalist privilege? Certainly, many blame Thatcher and her party rather than capitalism itself for the sick condition of society today. Capitalism is the cause of poverty, mass unemployment and the weapons of mass destruction. As open defenders of the capitalist system, the Tories undoubtedly belong in the political museum of bankrupt ideologies.

Then there is the Society for Devious Politicians (the SDP) who, together with their Liberal allies, aim to woo those who have lost faith in the two main capitalist parties. They stand before the working class with a bag of vague, stale and unworkable policies which we are supposed to believe will make capitalism decent and pleasant. Recent local election results have indicated that few workers arc prepared to waste their votes on the non-alternative, presented by the new party of old opportunists. The unity of the Alliance is cemented by their joint commitment to the continuation of the anti-social, destructive, insecure profit system. A vote for the Alliance is a vote for more of the disgusting same.

So, is Labour the only alternative? Desperate Labour canvassers plead for working class votes on the basis that anything would be better than Thatcher. Socialists do not want something better than Thatcher (what a limited ambition!) but something better than capitalism.

The trade union leaders who have united with Labour governments in the past to impose anti-working class incomes policies and productivity deals are preparing once again to drag the organised workers into an alliance with a Labour administration of capitalism. Workers must make clear to the Labour mis-leaders that never again will a Labour government receive the support of those over whose exploitation it presides. Socialists have clear memories of the winter of 1978/79 when Labour ministers used all the power they could muster to attack the striking public service workers. We remember Grunwick, where workers were struggling for trade union recognition, and the Labour government sent in the Special Patrol Group (which it established) to smash up the picket line.

The Left, who spend most of their time between elections devising plans to “smash the state” (1789-style) and writing articles pointing out that the Labour Party cannot be distinguished by its actions from the Tories, changes from a playful monster into a slave of political opportunism when the election bell rings and the faithful are called to work like horses (or sheep) for the return of a Labour government. For all of their rhetoric about agreeing with the socialist objective “in the long-term”, the Leftist sects will fight like mad for the return of Labour-controlled capitalism

Even those who concede that a Labour government will be no more able to control the anarchy of capitalism than their Tory and Alliance mirror reflections might still cling to the false hope that Labour in office will at least end or reduce Britain's nuclear stockpiles. Such voters will be disappointed as they have been before. A Labour government started the work on the British atomic bomb; the Foot-led Labour opposition demanded that British troops participate in the Falklands slaughter last year. A Labour government would stay within the nuclear-based NATO alliance; it would be forced to defend British capitalist interests in the most effective way possible. The only hope of ending the dangers of international trade rivalry and military conflict is to get rid of capitalism.

Any worker who votes Labour, after all the experience of the last half century, is an enemy to himself and his class. The workers must put the reformists of the Labour Party where they belong: on the political scrap-heap. Labour, Alliance and Tory all stand for the profit system and therefore they and their rotten system must be destroyed by democratic action.

What, then, is the alternative? In 1979 approximately 25 per cent of those entitled to vote did not do so. An election is a valuable political instrument for the working class; to abstain is to abandon the power of the vote. Many of those who do not vote believe that there is no alternative to the present system; it is the urgent task of socialists to show them the democratic revolutionary alternative.

If you are a convinced socialist you should vote for your principles whether there is a socialist candidate in your constituency or not. Where there is no socialist candidate, write SOCIALISM across your ballot paper. But do not leave it at that. Persuade your friends, relatives and workmates to consider the socialist case. Give your support to the socialist campaign in Islington where there is a genuine socialist candidate. Use this election as an opportunity to join the Socialist Party (we know that there are many workers who have been meaning to join us for a long time) or to persuade your fellow workers to do so. No effort can be too great in relation to the urgent political task which faces us.

In this election the choice, as always, is simple: capitalism or socialism; chaos or sanity. We know which side we are on. Do you?

Strike-Smashing in New Zealand (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

From New Zealand comes a book that will boil the blood of every class-conscious worker. Even workers who have not yet recognised their class status will feel their gorge rise when they read in this book of the trickery, the double dealing, the brutality and the callous bludgeoning of their fellows.

“151 Days” by Dick Scott is the official history of the great waterfront lockout and the supporting strikes in New Zealand from February 15th to July 15th, 1951. The book is published by the now deregistered New Zealand Waterside Workers' Union and has been made possible by the advance orders of hundreds of trade unionists.

If there is any man in doubt about the role of a capitalist government in a major industrial dispute—let him read this book. If there is any man who doubts which way a Labour Party will line up in a major industrial dispute—this is the book for him. If there is any man who thinks that the days of brutal treatment of workers are past—he also must read this history. If there is any man who needs evidence of the class struggle—here it is, right up-to-date. If any man can read this book without his emotions being stirred—then he is lacking in elementary human feeling.

As in Britain, living costs in New Zealand have risen sharply during the past few years and workers’ wages have lagged a long way behind. Also, as in Britain, many New Zealand workers had to work long hours in order to get overtime pay and a pay packet that would give them and their families a decent living. The waterside workers applied for a pay increase and received an award from an arbitration court. But the ship owners tricked them and refused to pay the full amount of the award, so the watersiders said they would work no more overtime till they got their due pay increase. The ship owners were after a show-down. The waterside workers' Union was too truculent; it must be brought to heel and its members rendered docile. When the waterside workers showed up for work on Wednesday, February 15th, the Port Employers confronted them with an alternative to either work overtime or get the sack. They said “no overtime"—and were locked out

Within a few days the Government stepped in with a set of emergency regulations that made the British Trades Disputes Act and the American Taft-Hartley laws look like Sunday School picnics. The government declared a state of emergency because it claimed that the watersiders, by refusing to unload ships, were depriving a large proportion of the people of New Zealand of the necessities of life, despite the fact that the men were at the dock gates everyday offering to work a forty hour week.

When the harsh regulations were imposed, miners, seamen and others came out on strike. From then on the government, employers, top-layer trade union officials, press, police, pulpit and every job-mongering, back-crawling lickspittle turned his attention and spite towards breaking the solidarity of the workers effort and getting them back to work on the employers terms.

We haven’t space to detail all the events and legal crimes of those six months. The book sets them out with documentary evidence and ample illustrations. We will give just one sample.

Amongst those who suffered most were the miners in the small inland mining towns. On a bleak plateau, seventy miles by a rough bush road from the nearest coastal town, was the tiny mining community of Ohura.

   “500 people . . .  a hard working peaceful community where tar-sealing the main street and building a new social hall were more urgent matters than 'Wrecking,' 'intimidation' or 'violence' and where the policeman's house stood empty and no one felt insecure." Page 83.

When the 100 or so miners in this town heard the truth of the situation after receiving misleading telegrams from their Union national headquarters, they downed tools. Then the police moved in.

At their first meeting the police entered, took the names of all present and ordered them to their homes. Local Union officers were placed under house arrest. Police broke their way into private houses where miners were meeting together and ordered them to their respective homes. One man was arrested and charged for talking to some miners who were working. Members of a miners’ committee travelled a dangerous 55 miles across the bush to meet in another town, only to have the police again close their meeting. The police blocked the roads to prevent miners or other strikers from entering Ohura and chased suspects in squad cars. Groups of men on the streets were broken up and ordered to their homes.

Despite this isolation and police rule the Ohura miners held out. They could collect no relief, their womenfolk could not go out to work, their savings vanished, their possessions were sold, debts mounted, the hardships of winter were great, but after over four months they remained solid. When the strike was over and the Ohura miners received a grant of £59 10s. from the Australian miners' £6,700 New Zealand relief fund, they voted unanimously to give it to the Auckland watersiders.

You should read this history of the workers of New Zealand where.

     “Government was reduced to a thing of helmets and uniforms, cells and batons, where the highest civic duty could be measured in terms of a willingness to arrest one's parents for a crime against private property." Page 129.

We in Britain who, apart from letters from our Socialist comrades in Wellington, have only had the press accounts of the happenings of those 151 days, thank and congratulate Mr. Scott and all others concerned, for this detailed and stirring history.

W. Waters

Freedom of Opinion (1940)

From the December 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

On November 18th Mussolini made a speech to the Italian Fascist Party in which he claimed that the Italian war bulletins were truthful and fair statements of Italian as well as British war losses.

Commenting on this speech in its editorial for November 19th, the Daily Express compares the position of the Press in this country with its position in Italy and Germany and Russia, quite rightly pointing out how impossible it is for any criticism of the Government to obtain publicity in the latter three countries.

We know quite well that the dictatorships owe much of their success to lies and the suppression of opinion, but how do we stand here in that respect? The Daily Express says: —

   The difference between Axis truth and British truth is this—that in Britain we still retain means of proving whether a statement is true or not. Our free Press and unfettered Parliament have a real part in our war effort.

Is this statement in strict accordance with the facts? Of course it isn’t. The Press is only free to criticise up to a certain very limited point. If it says anything that can be construed into an impeding of the war effort it does so at the risk of prosecution under very definite and plainly-worded war measures, and this whether the criticism be based on truth or falsehood. It is also within the power of the Government to suppress any newspaper or periodical it considers a hindrance to the successful carrying on of the war, as it has already demonstrated in particular instances.

Free opinion fares no better as the action taken by, for example, certain local councils in penalising employees who are conscientious objectors, has frequently made dear. And this has "occurred in instances where the tribunals appointed by the Government to examine the cases have, by their findings, expressed themselves as satisfied with the sincerity of the people concerned.

Now, either the Daily Express is playing, on a minor scale, the same tune as Mussolini, or, like the ostrich, it is burying its head in the sand.

In its issue of November 20th the Daily Express published an article on the Indian labour leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, by Edward Thompson, in which that writer argues that Nehru is not even a pacifist but is favourable to the British war attitude and would support it if India were invited to participate with Britain as a “comrade.” Yet Nehru has been sent to four years' rigorous imprisonment for “making speeches tending to obstruct India’s war effort.”

In the Stop Press News column of the same issue of the Daily Express as the one containing the article on Nehru, there is an extract from a speech by Mr. Herbert Morrison, who, referring to Mr. Kennedy, the American Ambassador, said: —

   I was delighted to learn of his repudiation of authenticity of interview. . . . He had seen this country clinging, even in the midst of a life and death struggle, to essentials of its historic practice of free speech and free writing.

A curious comment on this is a statement made in an article by Edward Hutton in the "World Review” for November. Here is what he wrote:—

  “The appointment of Mr. Herbert Morrison has given much satisfaction. He is, after all, a much more sympathetic figure than the pompous Anderson, who was the worst type of character to be Home Secretary during a time when it is obviously necessary temporarily to curtail the liberty of the people.”

On this point it is worth while recalling the words of a writer of nearly a hundred years ago— P. E. Dove. In his “Theory of Human Progression,” published in 1859, Dove put the position in a nutshell when he wrote: —

    Freedom of speech, and of public speech, and in any number of speakers and auditors, is one of the first essentials of true liberty. Wherever it is not enjoyed, liberty is a shadow and tyranny is a substance.

However, it may be conceded that if the conditions stated by Dove were allowed to exist it would be impossible for any government to prosecute war successfully.

Of course, what the Daily Express really means when it speaks of "our free Press” is that, providing one is in favour of carrying on the war one may criticise the conduct of those appointed to do this work, again providing that such criticism is not prejudicial to its successful prosecution. And there are many pitfalls into which the well-intentioned may fall, as the Daily Express has had occasion to show in its columns in more than one instance.

This strikes us as a very provisional kind of freedom of the Press.

Gilmac.

Editorial: "But Humbly Regret —" (1911)

Editorial from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Labour Party stands pledged to the Right to Work as a fundamental principle, and every member is in honour bound to do all he can to fulfil the pledge.”

So says the official organ of the Independent Labour Party on Feb. 17th, in the midst of a wail that only thirty of the Labour M.P.s (including the tellers) supported the Right to Work amendment, while one of them actually voted against it.

Why did the Labour members hesitate to support their “fundamental principle”? Why did they not dare move an amendment to the Address, nor introduce their “fundamental principle” in the last Parliament?

It is because the Labour Party in the House only exists by permission of the Liberals, as the last three general elections have proved. Any suspicion of a vote of censure upon the capitalist Government (however necessary such bluff may be to quiet the murmuring rank and file) is consequently fraught with grave danger to Labour M.P.s.

We know how these adjuncts of Liberalism obtained their votes. And Mr. Russell Williams, in a communication to the Labour Leader (Feb. 17th), states in reply to a Labour Conference denunciation of traitors who took Tory gold:

  "Why a distinction between Tory gold and Liberal gold? There are members of the Labour Party in the House of Commons who make no secret of having received Liberal gold with which to fight their elections—and from Liberals who were fighting Labour men, fully endorsed by the Labour Party. Do these men come under the category of cowards and traitors? ”

We pause for a reply.

The need for making at least a show of independent existence caused the Right to Work amendment to be moved this year; but how apologetic were mover and seconder, how they cringed before the Government! Their amendment "humbly" regretted that no promise of a Bill had been made. Said Mr. O'Grady in moving (we quote from the official report):

  "Had we not been unlucky in the ballot probably this amendment would not be moved. . . . I know that every single member of this House is as sympathetic towards the unemployed as we are ourselves, and I am sure that this motion will be considered not merely with sympathy but with fairness’’

And he also said that there is 

   ". . upon the Statute Book one of the finest pieces of legislation in any civilised community in the world, and if it were put into operation it would effect the purposes contained in our motion. I speak of the Development Act. That Act contains every proposal of the Labour and Socialist movement for the last 25 year, proposals about afforestation, erosion of the coast, light railways, and reclamation of land."

Thus do the decoy ducks of Labour repay the Liberal support they obtain, and demonstrate their identity with Liberalism. Nearly every subsequent speaker complimented them on their “moderation” and “fairness.” Mr H. Harcourt particularly referred to Mr. O'Grady’s “moderate and friendly speech.”

But no "statement of the barest truth” can be “moderate” in capitalist ears; no champion of the working class can be friendly to the capitalist class. The fulsome capitalist flattery of Mr. O'Grady sets the seal upon his utter worthlessness to our class. But what of the Bill in question ?—is it any good?

Except that, owing to the hostility of local bodies, the State is to be made mainly responsible for its working, it is the Bill brought before Parliament by the Labour Party three years ago. Then even Labour members admitted that no effective remedy for unemployment is possible under capitalism, yet they claim that their Bill would deal effectively with that question. Such is the "logic” of their position.

To really provide reasonable work or maintenance for all workers would make the wage-labourer master of the labour-market and disrupt capitalism. How childish it would be, then, to beg the capitalist class to be so kind as to commit suicide!

If effective and useful, therefore, the passing of the Labour Party’s Bill would require a social revolution; but it is neither.

In spite of denial, it seems no more than systematic relief works. Its principle is that of the workhouse stone-yard. And there is nothing to prevent men being engaged, as in the post, at exceedingly low “relief" rates to do work which would otherwise occupy the same men at full rates of pay.

It is true, as Mr. Forster said in the House during the recent debate, that it ”must cause more unemployment.” . And he went on to say, with equal truth:

  "I am verified in that view by a statement contained in the report of the Poor Low Commission. They say that work and wages provided by local authorities is in practice either diverted from the ordinary employees in the localities, or extracted from what would otherwise have gone to regular workers, with the result in either case of creating, sooner or later, larger unemployment ”.

And what are the other essentials of the Bill? Its clause 3 is sometimes held to provide work at standard rates, but its wording is fraudulent. As Mr. J. R. Macdonald confessed in the Commons when the Bill was brought forward, the clause "may be badly worded," but “it did not mean that the local employment authority must provide work at, trade union rate of wages". No, the rate is only such as the capitalists may consider "reasonable,” and that means hell for the workers.

And if a man refused the hellish conditions that may be offered to him?

The authority is empowered under clause 7 to get an order "to enforce control of the person named in the order for a period not exceeding six months, which period must be passed in the performance of reasonable work under the control of the local employment authority.”

Now you have it. The capitalists as a class hardly dared go so far. It means that you must accept any conditions, however bad, in the labour market. If you cannot get even this, then the employment authority will give you work under still worse conditions. If, however, you decline to be still further degraded, they may give you six months penal labour!

This they call the Right to Work!

It is superfluous for Messrs. Clynes and O'Grady to say, as they did, that they are not defenders of the "won’t workers." This Bill speaks for itself. But their talk about loafers at both ends of the scale is shown to be the veriest clap trap, because they would allow the well-to-do loafer to go free, but would provide a further punishment for the poor one.

No, the most unhappy victim of capitalism finds no defenders among the Labour Members. On the contrary, they would all one more scorpipa to the scourge of scorpions inflicted by capitalism upon the most miserable and unfortunate of men.

It is not the Right to Work that is needed by the workers, but the opportunity to live; and Socialism alone can grant them this. The legal Right to Work imposed upon the proletariat would only emphasise the “right” of the non-working class to be idle. The "Right to Work,” indeed, excludes the right to live. It means only our "right” to our chains! And the Labour Party, in its characteristic work of legalising the right of the slave to his slavery, at the same time consecrates, to the greater glory of capitalism, the "right” of the wealthy parasite above to his ill-gotten gains and his laziness.

Cooking the Books: Oh No He Didn't (2017)

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

Andrew Marr, in his 7 May Sunday morning show on BBC1, interviewed Labour's Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell. One of the questions Marr put to him was about his alleged 'Marxism'. McDonnell, who has moved in Trotskyist circles, fended off the question by saying that many non-Marxists thought Marx's Capital worth reading. Then, the following exchange took place:

'Marr: The great prediction in Capital ….is that capitalism as a system will come down with an enormous crash. There will be a crisis and the entire system will fail.

McDonnell: That's where Marx got it wrong.'

Marx never predicted any such thing. So where did Marr and McDonnell get the mistaken idea that he did? Marr himself used to move in Trotskyist circles too, and one possibility is that they got it from the time in the 1980s when the both of them were members of a Trotskyoid front organisation, the 'Socialist Campaign for Labour Victory'. Trotskyists have been known to hold some strange ideas about what Marx thought.

This exchange made Marx a minor election issue and prompted BBC journalist, Brian Wheeler, to write an idiot's guide to Marx's Das Kapital (Link.). He didn't explain why Marx should have become an election issue, though something he wrote hinted at it. Marxism, he wrote, 'also became a byword for totalitarianism – as one-party states and dictators proclaimed Marxism as their guiding philosophy'.

This was why sections of the media brought Marx in. They wanted to smear the leadership of the Labour Party, Corbyn and McDonnell in particular, as 'Marxists' seeking to establish in Britain something similar to what used to exist in Russia, with for example cartoons showing them sporting hammer-and-sickle badges.

It is unlikely to work these days. Wheeler himself went on to point out that 'some argued that this was a perversion of Marx's ideas and that the Soviet Union … was really just a form of state capitalism, where the factory owners had been replaced by government bureaucrats.' Some did indeed.

Wheeler summarised Marx's views:

'In simple terms, Marx argues that an economic system based on private profit is inherently unstable. Workers are exploited by factory owners and don't own the products of their labour, making them little better than machines. The factory owners and other capitalists hold all the power because they control the means of production, allowing them to amass vast fortunes while the workers fall deeper into poverty. This is an unsustainable way to organise society and it will eventually collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, Marx argues.'

Marx did see capitalism as based on the exploitation of the workers for profit, but not that under it workers would 'fall deeper into poverty' (only that the capitalists would get richer relatively to the workers). He did also see capitalism as an unstable system under which production continuously veered from boom to slump and back again. But Wheeler seems to have been influenced by the exchange between Marr and McDonnell about Marx allegedly being wrong to say that capitalism will eventually 'come down with an enormous crash'.

Marx certainly thought that capitalism was riven by contractions, the two main ones being that between the already socialised nature of the process of production and the sectional ownership of what was produced and the class struggle between the producers and the owners. It was this struggle, ending in the 'expropriation of the expropriators' (as he put it in the last-but-one chapter of Capital) by conscious political action, that would, he thought, bring about the demise of capitalism, not some catastrophic economic collapse.

Editorial: Jeremy Corbyn’s Reformist Programme (2017)

Editorial from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 16 May, Jeremy Corbyn unveiled his General Election manifesto entitled ‘For The Many Not The Few’. On the BBC Daily Politics Show, on 12 May, a party representative was asked why the Socialist Party does not support Corbyn's Labour Party. A similar question was also put to us by a Danish journalist. After all, the other so-called ‘Socialist’ Parties, including the ‘Trade Union and Socialist Coalition’, support Corbyn, and he is a ‘Socialist’, isn't he ?

In his manifesto, Corbyn proposed higher taxes on incomes over £80,000 per year, raising corporation tax and introducing a tax on certain City deals. The extra income raised was to be spent on schools, infrastructure, childcare, the NHS, reversing the benefits freeze and abolishing tuition fees. It also pledged to bring back into state ownership the railways, the water industry, the National Grid and Royal Mail, and there were also proposals on helping small businesses and enhancing workers' rights.

Whatever their merits these measures are not socialist. In the fifties and sixties, Conservative governments accepted the principle of progressive taxation and were generally in favour of high social spending. About twenty years ago, the Labour government imposed a windfall tax on the utilities and the banks, and nobody can accuse the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of being a socialist. Renationalising key industries isn't socialist either. This merely transfers ownership from private companies to the state. Shareholders become bondholders and the workers continue to work for a wage. In the past, nationalised industries have been beset with strikes and redundancies.

The implementation of this manifesto would come up against the profit limitations of capitalism. Many high earners may seek ways to avoid paying the extra taxes and some capitalists may move their operations abroad where the tax regime is more favourable. If the economy is doing well and profits are high, then the capitalist class may tolerate the extra costs. If, on the other hand, should there be an economic downturn, then the government would have to make compromises and even backtrack and reduce public spending. The media and politicians would then cite these failures as proof that socialism does not work.

The history of previous governments' attempts to reform capitalism in favour of the working class is not promising. François Hollande in France fell on his sword after attempting a more modest redistribution of wealth. Labour governments in the sixties and seventies also came to grief.

Even if a Corbyn government is a success, power and wealth would not be transferred to the working class, they would only receive more crumbs from the capitalist table. The only way to achieve a society that is ‘For The Many Not The Few’ is for a socialist working class to abolish capitalism and establish a society of common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

So, in this general election the Socialist Party will not be supporting Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. On the contrary, we standing against him again in his own constituency of Islington North.

Obituary: James McMillan (1996)

Obituary from the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of James McMillan in March was a shock to all members of the Glasgow Branch.

James was a character. Outside the Party he was known as "Maxie’’or “Jimmy the Pill". Inside it, he was known affectionately as "Wee Jimmy”. Wee Jimmy had a ready wit and was known for his quick-fire delivery. A couple of examples may give some idea of the man. At a party where a non-socialist objected to his swearing and said "Please don’t swear in front of my wife", Jimmy replied "I'm sorry, comrade, didn’t know it was her turn.” On his early life in the East End of Glasgow, he would comment “If there was an egg short, I got it” When a family friend read his tea-cup and said “Maxie,. I see a stranger in your future”, he asked "Is it the butcher?” Wee Jimmy joined the Party in 1965, he was an ever-present at the many outdoor meetings of the Party in the sixties and seventies. He never deviated in his socialist principles.

Our sympathy is extended to his sister, Winnie and his brothers, John and Peter. He will be missed.

Science v Religion (1960)

Theatre Review from the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July, 1925, at the town of Dayton, Tennessee, a school-teacher was charged under a State law with teaching the Darwinian theory of the origin of man instead of the story in Genesis, as the law demanded.

The case was defended by the great liberal lawyer Clarence Seward Darrow, who was famous for defending many workers in cases that had arisen through their Trade Union struggles; a man who was by many derisively regarded as the friend of criminals, because he considered that society was to blame for their actions, being responsible for not only making men into criminals but also for defining at any time what was criminal and what was not, according to its own interests and prejudices.

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee have taken the case of the Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes, and made it the basis of their play Inherit the Wind, which had a regrettably short run at the St, Martins Theatre. The play is not an actual report of the trial and the authors have changes the names of the participants, so that what we have are the essentials of the case and its conflict. This conflict is between the cant and superstition of unsophisticated religion and the enlightenment of “atheistic” science and is played  against the background of the American Middle West with its particular pioneer traditions of suspicion, intolerance and isolation, which looked upon science not only as an encroachment on its religion and a device of the Devil, but as a threat to its way of life. 

The Legislature of the State of Tennessee had laid down that it was unlawful for any public teacher “to teach the theory which denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower form of animals.”* It is also of interest to note that similarly, the State Legislature of Florida had declared it “improper and subversive of the best interests of the state for any public teacher to teach as true Darwinian or any other hypothesis that links man in blood relationship to any other form of life."*

It was against thinking of this kind and every obstacle that could be put in his way, including the refusal to allow the testimony of eminent biologists, and the prosecution’s able lawyer, William Jennings Bryan, that Darrow had to fight in his defence of John Scopes. Bryan was a man who held “firmly with childlike faith to a literal interpretation of the Bible,” who was “hostile to the teachings of biological science which he had never had the inclination to study.”* 

Darrow was moved by his abiding interest in science and his deep commitment to freedom of thought to volunteer to defend Scopes. He was in fact “of an astonishing variety of intellectual and social currents: skepticism in philosophy and religion, determinism in psychology, evolution in science, realism in literature, a farrago of socialism and anarchism in politics.”*

The outcome of the trial was a farcical compromise to save the face of the community, forced by Darrow's brilliant defence and the weight of American public opinion. The teacher John Scopes was simply fined a nominal sum.

So far as Bryan was concerned, says the American Dictionary of National Biography, “the trial only revealed the naivete of his religious faith and his want of familiarity with the trend of biological science." Already an old man, the strain of the trial brought him to his death five days later.

Inherit the Wind conveys with a fair degree of authenticity the setting and atmosphere the trial, though the ending of the play is spoilt by anti-climax. The authors have conceded a point to the prevailing public morality, giving the impression that it is not religion itself that is questionable but merely fundamentalist religion; which is false not only to Darrow and to science, but to the spirit of the play also. Nevertheless, the play is not only good theatre, but a refreshing reminder of the gradual retreat of religion (and other fetishes), which makes our Socialist task that much easier.

Ian Jones

* American Dictionary of National Biography.

Cooking the Books: Ground Rents and Coronets (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The slump has led to a revival of long-forgotten nostrums. Last year the Times (10 June) carried an article advocating a single tax on land as a way out of the crisis. This proposal normally associated with Henry George (1839-1897), but Philippe Legrain chose to associate it with Winston Churchill. Hence the subtitle of his article: “Adopting Churchill’s plan would benefit wealth creators at the expense of the idle rich”.

It is true that a hundred years ago, when the Liberal government of the day was in a power struggle with the House of Lords over the budget, Churchill who was then a Liberal did support a tax on land as a way of getting at the landed aristocracy.

Some harsh things were said in the course of this struggle with the likes of the Duke of Westminster and Churchill’s cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, being denounced as “land monopolists” and the “idle rich”. As indeed they were. Those who own a piece of the Earth’s surface are able to extract an income from the rest of society as ground-rent without having to lift a finger; the higher the demand for their land, the higher their income. In capitalist society this has to come out of the surplus value created in capitalist agriculture and industry. Naturally it was resented by the capitalist class who at least have to arrange for their capital to be invested before they can obtain their property income.

Henry George’s idea was to tax away the whole of the ground-rent of landowners and use it to relieve the capitalist class of the need to pay any taxes. Churchill, Lloyd George and the others didn’t want to go that far, but they still wanted to tax the mere ownership of land. Legrain repeats their argument:

‘The country's biggest private landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch, owns 277,000 acres, not because of his talent or industry, but because his ancestors seized vast swaths of Scotland. These "land monopolists" — as Churchill dubbed them — get richer not through their own efforts, but that of others. The Duke of Westminster owns 300 acres of what was once fields and is now London's priciest real estate — Mayfair and Belgravia. And because so many people have established thriving businesses in the capital, that inheritance is now worth billions of pounds. Surely it would be better to tax that windfall gain, rather than the employees and entrepreneurs who generate it?’

The landed aristocracy lost the political battle and in 1911 the House of Lords had its wings clipped. But they kept their property. According to Legrain, in Britain today ‘0.3 percent of population owns 69 per cent of the land.’ The latest Sunday Times Rich List puts the Duke of Westminster as the 4th richest person in Britain with a pile worth £7,000 million. The Duke of Buccleuch is equal 381st with “only” £180 million, but that’s because land in the wilds of Scotland is less in demand than land in central London. Other bluebloods monopolising land in central London are Earl Cadogan (21st with £2,850 million), the Howard de Walden family (33rd with £1,820 million) and Viscount Portman (53rd with £1,200 million).

The Queen, who besides being the figurehead of the British capitalist state is a landed aristocrat in her own right, is equal 257th with £300 million. Other titled landowners with more than her are the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Sutherland and the Duke of Northumberland.

Their wealth is obscene and not justifiable even by capitalist standards. But Legrain is mistaken. Taxing away their rents would not benefit the real “wealth creators”, i.e. the wage and salary working class, but only the capitalist class by reducing the tax it has to pay.