The Review Column: Deadlock in Vietnam (1967)

The Review Column from the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Deadlock in Vietnam

In Vietnam, if we are to believe them, both sides want to end the war but neither can stop fighting. The North Vietnamese say they would like to start peace talks—if the Americans would first stop the bombing.

The Americans say they are only too willing to stop the bombing—if the Vietcong stop their infiltration and attacks.

The only thing standing in the way of breaking this deadlock, apparently, is a little matter of mutual misunderstanding of each other’s intentions.

We have, of course, heard this one before.

Modern wars do not happen because of misunderstandings, nor lack of communication, nor stubborness on the part of a country’s leaders.

At the most, these factors can only contribute to a situation caused basically by the conflicting interests of capitalist society.

These interests—economic, strategic, commercial, political—spring from the very nature of capitalism and the system cannot exist without them. They divide the world's peoples, they distort our lives, they waste enormous human resources in the quest for an ever more powerful means of waging war.

In Vietnam, the Americans are fighting desperately to protect access to the raw materials in South East Asia and because it has become a sticking point in Washington’s twenty year old struggle in the Far East.

If Vietnam goes, the surrender of the rest of Indo-China may follow. American influence and control in an area important for its mineral wealth and its markets would be severely restricted, perhaps leaving Russia and China to squabble over the spoils.

This is a typically complex and perilous struggle. Each side is committed to the stage where no end is in sight and the only consolation is the precarious fact that so far it has not developed into something worse.


Scarborough Follies

Another year, another autumn, another Labour Party conference. We have, by now, not the message. In 1963, again at Scarborough, Labour heard Harold Wilson say that a better life was just around the corner, as soon as we had a Labour government to set the scientist free.

In 1964 they heard Wilson—then Prime Minister—assure them that, with Labour in power, better times were definitely on the way.

In 1965 Wilson was on the defensive, struggling to justify his government’s incomes policy and what he called redeployment—not, he insisted, unemployment. All of this was, he said, a necessary preliminary to the better days which everyone knew lay ahead.

In 1966 it was an outright wage freeze, credit restrictions—in fact everything which under the Tories had been stigmatised as top-go—which Wilson said must be endured before we could come into Labour’s Promised Land.

This year it was the same old story. Better times are coming—in fact, Wilson can actually see the hoped-for improvements which prove to him that we are almost round the comer. But before that, there is a little matter of wage restriction, unemployment and cutting the unions down to size which must be gone through.

So it goes on, year after year.

Party conferences, as everyone now knows, have little meaning other than as exercises in public relations. This year the Labour leaders used their gathering to defend their records and, with one or two exceptions, they did it with diabolical skill.

The delegates accepted it. The wonder is that they never tire of hearing the same weary promises, the same cynical justification of broken pledges, the same old visions of prosperity just over the horizon.

Labour Party members, it is clear, are content that they will never arrive at the Promised Land. But surely even they must see that they are not even travelling hopefully?

Horizon of Horror

“If, then, man is to have a future at all, it will have to be a future overshadowed with the permanent possibility of thermo-nuclear holocaust.”

 

That was Americans Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, speaking about the decision to establish a screen of anti-ballistic missile sites in the United States.

This is another stage in the nuclear arms race. The screen is designed to counter the latest generation of Russian missiles, which were developed in answer to the Americans building up their missile stocks, which they did because they were convinced that the Russians were drawing ahead in the race . . . . 

The next stage will be more fearsomely efficient missiles, with devices designed to pierce the screen; it will be other screens by other nuclear powers, with all of them working on ways to beat the defences of the rest.

Somewhere in all this, someone is still presumably touting around the deterrent theory.

These latest devices will have to be tested, almost certainly in the air. Whether Russia or America does this first, we shall be subjected to a campaign of excuses for the breaking of the Test Ban Treaty—and of course the other side will announce itself free of all obligations under the Treaty.

The Treaty was, in fact, no more than a pause in the development of the world’s nuclear horrors, while the super powers digested their knowledge of the Bomb and built up their stocks of it. It did not mean the end of the arms race.

It did not, first of all, prevent the emergence of new nuclear powers—France and China—and it did not prevent the established powers testing their weapons, when they needed to, underground.

This situation has exhausted itself and the time has come for another lurch upwards in the crazy, murderous spiral.

If we require evidence of the increasing horror and degradation of capitalism, of its inability to satisfy human needs, we have no need to look further than the progress man daily makes in perfecting what could be the means of his own annihilation.

Work under Socialism (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

However man organises society, be it chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism or Socialism, work is necessary to provide his basic requirements of food, shelter and clothing. How he produces and distributes his requirements determines that society’s attitude to work.

For example the ancient Greeks considered that mechanical work, which was mainly performed by slave labour, made man unfit for the practice of higher, more civilised cultural activities.

Early Protestantism justified and made pre-eminent the conduct and feeling about work necessary for modern capitalist society. Luther thought that work was “the base and key to life".

As capitalism has developed it has been realised that constant work does not maintain the efficiency of the worker— ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'—and so concepts of leisure and recreation have in recent years been much discussed. The use of leisure under capitalism must make the worker fit for the continuation of toil, and so there have been recurring complaints against leisure activities which are considered frivolous or degrading.

It should be noted that leisure in the re-creational sense expends energy, and in that sense is work. The opposite to work, idleness, could not be continued for long for it becomes insufferably boring. Work is necessary to meet mankind’s basic requirements. Also it is necessary to maintain the full health of man’s body, physically and mentally.

One of the objections to Socialism is often framed in terms of man's laziness. Given the opportunity to have his basic needs met, it is argued that man would be lazy or idle.

It should be realised that man must exercise his body, or make it work, in order that various organs and parts—muscle, brain, heart, continue to function efficiently.

Man is essentially a social being, not merely because he enjoys the companionship of his fellows, but out of sheer necessity. This social bond shows at times of great disasters. Without society there could be no man. The reason mankind has gained the control over nature that we know at present is due to his developing social organisation. The various problems throughout his evolution have been met by a changing society. Capitalist society throws up problems which are not soluble in its own terms. Those regarding work are principally: no work unless you can find an employer, alienation from the means of production and the product of labour, debasement of quality, trivialised craftsmanship, and specialisation which results in the worker being an extension of the machine. These are some of the conditions of work that Socialism will remove.

Socialism will be a democratic, classless society. All mankind will stand in the same relationship to the means of production. Production will be organised to meet the needs of society, and science will be used to remove work that the community finds distasteful. All labour will be useful. That is, it will be concerned with the production and distribution of goods and services. Commodity production with its requirement of numerous commercial workers, adding nothing useful to meet mankind’s needs, will be no more. Leisure will be idleness or recreation as the individual desires. There will not be any pressure to conform to any given pattern of work and recreation. Men who are working in their own interests do not have to be driven, coaxed, or cajoled. Work under Socialism will be inspired by the greatest of all incentives— the knowledge that the function required of workers will enable each and every human being to have “according to his needs”.

In Capitalist society life is compartmentalised into Infancy, Training, Work and Retirement. Under Socialism people will endeavour to work their bodies to maintain their maximum efficiency in order to gain the greatest enjoyment from life. When young much of the work process will be educational, but the learning process will not cease at any given age. All people will have the opportunity to further their knowledge, ability and interests whatever their age. There will be no such thing as compulsory retirement.

As people get older they will desire to play a greater and eventually a smaller part in society. This will be demonstrated by greater and later a smaller participation in the productive process.

Work will be a pleasurable activity of free men and women, taken up consciously by them and continued as long as the effort is rewarding. There will be no time wasting as today, for time wasting is a reflection of the fact that there is no satisfaction in the work being done. Under Socialism when work becomes distasteful the worker will seek activities more in line with his need and ability.

Production under Socialism will design and produce goods to meet the needs of man in the best way possible. When the products of labour are the best possible, when production is organised to meet the needs of mankind, when man can demonstrate his interest in constructive work, when the alienating conditions of work experienced under Capitalism are gone—then the social constructiveness of work will have removed the cause of much mental ill-health and work neurosis experienced under Capitalism.

Man will then be free to pursue recreational games and pastimes. The do-it-yourself leisure activities of today—man’s limited opportunity to express himself through work and take pride in his achievement—will be part of the production of goods and services that society will require. This means that man will bring the standards of craftsmanship to production, which can be contrasted with today’s cheap shoddy goods with built-in obsolescence designed to meet the requirements of the market.

The historian and his observations today can tell us much, with considerable detail, about the conditions of work under earlier societies and present day capitalism. We cannot be as specific with regard to work under Socialism, for the problem when looking into the future is that we do not know the scientific and technological tools, instruments and machines that will be available. The means of production will obviously strongly influence the method of organisation. Nevertheless knowing the social conditions it can be said that work will be necessary, that man will gain pleasure from creative work, that the free time he will enjoy will enable him to widen and deepen his interests—all in the knowledge that by co-operative efforts the welfare of all mankind will be furthered.

Man, a social being, will recognise that his first vital need is work.

Ken Knight

How food is poisoned for profit (1981)

From the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The EEC Council of Ministers decided at the end of September that the injection of hormones into animals for human consumption to accelerate their growth should be banned throughout the nine Common Market countries. A regulation to this effect has now been prepared.

This decision was sparked off by two events: a very successful boycott of veal launched by a consumers organisation in France and the discovery in Italy that a number of babies had developed premature sexual characteristics as a result of eating baby food made from meat containing injected hormones.

The injection of hormones into calves has in fact been illegal in France since 1976 and the boycott was called simply to get this law enforced. Like many such laws, it remained a dead letter, with farmers and chemists widely ignoring it. The discussion provoked by the boycott brought out some interesting “justifications” for not respecting the law, all of them illustrating that profits come before human welfare under capitalism, and that sometimes the capitalist state has to check its own economic system which might otherwise poison the lot of us in its search for profits.

Veal production is in a sense a by-product of mass dairy farming since to keep giving milk a cow has to regularly have a calf. Some of these are used to restock the dairy herd, but what to do with the rest? In France the dairy farmer generally sells his surplus calves when a few weeks old to another farmer who fattens them up for three or four months before sending them off to be slaughtered and sold as veal.

The horror story begins after the calves have passed from the dairy farmer to the livestock farmer. Only about 20 per cent of calves in France are fattened “naturally” in the sense that they are fed on their mother’s milk and allowed to roam free in the fields, absorbing naturally the hormones they need to grow. The other 80 per cent are raised under factory-farm conditions: crowded together in huge sheds, often never seeing the light of day let alone being allowed out, and fed on powdered milk. Here we can mention, but only in passing since it is not linked to the question of hormones, another widely-employed practice. Consumers, apparently, like their veal to be white-coloured and the way this is done is to feed the calves on powdered milk with a greatly reduced iron content; the result is that they become anaemic—and so their meat is white.

It normally takes three or four months for a calf to become fat enough to be sent to the slaughter-house. Clearly, if the required weight can be reached in a shorter time, the producer is going to make more profit—and it is precisely this faster fattening that the injection of hormones brings about. Hormones are organic substances which affect growth. Two sorts are used to fatten calves: so-called “natural” hormones, (hormones that exist in nature but which are nevertheless produced artificially by the pharmaceutical industry) and artificial hormones, which have been entirely created by the chemists and which are not to be found in nature.

If all scientists are agreed that artificial hormones can be harmful when consumed by humans —one of them, diethyl-stilboestrol (DES), banned but still used, has long been identified as a potential cause of cancer —they are not agreed about the effects of natural hormones. It is clear that even if so-called natural hormones, in a “natural” dose, cannot be harmful since they need to be absorbed even by “free range” calves, the doses injected into the factory-farmed calves are way above what would be absorbed naturally.

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

At one stage the French Minister of Agriculture floated the idea of amending the 1976 law so as to legalise the injection of natural hormones but, in view of the hostile response, quickly dropped the idea. And now, under the proposed Common Market regulation, all hormones, whether natural or artificial, are to be banned. In Britain, incidentally, certain hormones were allowed to be administered under licence; according to the press, they have not been used on veal, only on beef. So perhaps the Roast Beef of Old England hasn’t always been as traditional as claimed. Hormones have also been used in beef in France, but the Minister of Agriculture intervened to tone down an article in another consumer magazine which highlighted this. He evidently felt that, with pressure being brought to bear on him by irate calf-raisers threatened with ruin by the consumer boycott (consumption and prices of veal really did fall off dramatically), he could well do without a similar pressure from beef-producers.

Many of the veal producers were not after huge profits but only trying to ensure that they got a living income; it was the capitalist system which obliged them to resort to the practice. The farmers’ organisations, in fact, did not hesitate to explain that it was economic pressures that forced some (said the consumer organisations) livestock farmers to break the law. A spokesman for one organisation was quoted as saying, after complaining about competition from imported hormone-injected veal:

   the livestock farmers are forced to cheat since it is often the difference in weight arising from the administration of hormones that represents their margin of profit (Republicain Lorrain, 13 August 1980).

Another organisation explained that some farmers broke the law because “the low level of profit does not always allow the heavy investments to be amortised” (Ouest-France, 12 September 1980).

These claims were confirmed by a Working Party of scientists set up by the Ministry of Agriculture which concluded that, if cheating went on, this was because anabolisants generally, with or without hormones, “are useful to the profitability of stock-farms” (Republicain Lorrain, 19 September 1980). The same issue of this paper quoted “professional circles” for figures which showed that the use of anabolisants (what some weight-lifters and shot-putters use to put on weight) without hormones allowed a stock-farmer to increase his production by 5 per cent; of anabolisants with natural hormones to increase it by 5-10 per cent and with artificial hormones by 10-15 per cent. “In these circumstances”, the paper concluded, “it is logical that the stock-farmer who is in any case going to take the risk of cheating should choose the most profitable product”. Which also happens to be the most dangerous to human health.

Although many of the farmers involved did so just to get a living income, big profits were still to be made out of the use of hormones in veal production. The hormone's themselves— including DES (only its use, not its production, was illegal) —had to be produced industrially by a complicated chemical process and it was the big drug firms which were involved in this. They encouraged the practice, sending out their pushers to try to convince farmers to use their products and chemists and vets to prescribe and administer them.

The real lesson of this episode of Veau aux hormones is not that there should be stricter laws governing the quality of meat on sale, but that we live under an economic and social system which makes such laws necessary. The fall in consumption and prices was undoubtedly the key factor which got the French government to say that in future it would enforce the law banning hormones and to press for a similar ban at Common Market level. But, quite apart from the fact that it remains to be seen whether the French (and other) governments will in fact make available the number of inspectors and laboratories that will be needed to enforce the ban, the same sort of battle will have to be fought over and over again, with consumers organisations always on the defensive, reacting to some new way round the law which some capitalist firm has thought up. Already in fact it is being suggested that the drug companies, which have made millions out of the hormones in question, will now switch to manufacturing other anabolisant drugs which will have the same effect on the growth of calves. These, apparently, have not been pushed till now since hormones were cheaper. In a few years time then the fight will still be on for drug-free meat.

So-called “consumer protection” laws, in any event, are passed in the general interest of the capitalist class as a whole and not to protect that nebulous entity, the “consumer”. Most consumers of food are wage and salary earners and, if they are being poisoned by the activities of a section of the capitalist class, then it is the other sections who will in the end be harmed since the quality of the labour power which they consume, and for which they pay the worker a wage or salary, will be diminished. It is because a reasonably healthy workforce is in the interests of employers generally that consumer protection laws are passed. The consumer who is being protected is the consumer of labour power.

The very need for the capitalist class to have to pass such laws against their own excesses is in itself a condemnation of the capitalist system. For what sort of economic system is it that has to threaten to use the force of the state machine to try to ensure that one group does not poison the rest of society? If production was for use and not for sale, as it will be in socialism, on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, such a problem just could not arise. It is quite inconceivable that anybody would even think of adopting a practice which was known to be a risk to human beings. Production being carried on solely to satisfy human needs, nothing would be produced and no processes would be used that might in any way be a threat to human health and well-being.

Adam Buick

Political Notes: Norman's Defeat (1981)

The Political Notes Column from the February 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Norman’s defeat

Norman St. John Stevas, as might be expected about anyone with a name like that, is well known for his sense of humour. At least, much of what he says matches the soppy grin he perpetually carries about on his face.

Whatever he has. he probably needed all of it when he was abruptly sacked in Thatcher’s first reshuffle of her government. In fact the whole thing had its funny side because when she fired Stevas Thatcher sent him a lovely letter telling him what a splendid chap he is and what valuable work he has done in the government. If a management did that on the factory floor the Industrial Tribunals would be swamped with complaints about unfair dismissal.

However, Norman added to the hilarity by declaring himself a devotee of ". . . compassionate, caring, one-nation Conservatism” and promising to keep up a fight for this. One problem he will obviously have will be knowing just what he is fighting for, since there can’t be anyone who is confident about the meaning of the phrase. Stevas is in immediate danger of becoming lost in the forest of meaningless verbiage which is the political terminology of capitalism.

Whatever is meant by “one nation”, it clearly doesn't exist in a society which is founded on the privileged standing of a parasitic minority over that of the useful, working, producing majority. It is no more than a catch phrase intended to hide the realities of capitalism's opposites of riches and poverty and at that it is transparently bogus.

But connoisseurs of such deceits need not fear. Norman’s dismissal doesn’t have to harm his ambitions, especially if he becomes a leader of the growing Tory unease at Thatcher’s performance. We may even end up with him as another in the line of “one nation" Conservative Prime Ministers. And we will need a sense of humour to survive that.


Roy Jenkins

With the return from Europe of Roy Jenkins, like a messiah come back from the wilderness, or wherever messiahs come back from, the prospects for the formation of a new Centre Party in Britain begin to look firmer. Of course it will be a pretty big job starting up a new organisation aiming at the immediate capture of political power against the might of the Labour and Conservative parties. And if that doesn’t leave Jenkins with enough problems there is Lord George Brown promising that if a Centre Party is formed he will be one of the first to join.

A few Labour MPs are also lining up for a seat on what they hope will he a runaway bandwagon, even it it is a bit early to get in their bid for a job. Mike Thomas is one, declaring himself in the Co-operative News — although whether anyone actually reads that journal is another matter. Roy Mason and Tom Ellis are others who are threatening to recast the entire face of British politics and then of course there is the famous, if less predictable. Gang of Three. 'This dazzling array of talent is banking on popular disillusionment with Labour policies persuading workers that capitalism would be more tolerable if it were administered, not from the "left” or the “right", but from the “centre”.

Nobody has actually decided what these terms mean nor where, say, the "left” ends and the “centre” begins. The problem is that in essentials there is no difference between them other than perhaps an ephemeral emphasis on a particular ailment of capitalism or on a personality.

Experience tells us that “left wing” ministers run capitalism very much like “right wingers’’ and that, whatever label is stuck on a government when it takes office in practice it is very little different from others with different labels—and it often ends up with the opposite label to the one it began with. This has little or nothing to do with the personnel of a government: it is simply that the capitalist system can be run in only one way — against the interests of the majority of its people.

So if Jenkins does ever make Number Ten from the Centre, we shall hardly notice the difference. His journey from Brussels is not necessary.


Postman’s knock

As the new season of explosives by mail order gets under way, we might anyday find that the 1981 publicity slogan for the Post Office will be that “Someone, somewhere, wants a letter bomb from you”.

There was, let us say straight away, absolutely no substance in the scurrilous rumour that the recent example of such missives, addressed to Margaret Thatcher, was sent by the reshuffled Cabinet Wets. At the current rate of postal charges they would have needed a whip round to pay for it, which might have been difficult at their lower wages.

What on earth do these bombers think they are doing? Do they seriously believe that if they had killed or injured Thatcher it would have made the slightest difference to the way British capitalism operates? Do they think there would not have been someone ready to take her place, at the head of a Tory government? Do they delude themselves that it would even have damaged the Tory Party? Or done anything at all to convince the working class that they should stop giving their support to capitalism?

In reality such acts of political terrorism have the opposite effect. Firstly, as they arouse sympathy for the victims and for what they stand for; as the IRA know only too well, martyrdom is a seductive vote catcher. They encourage an official state reaction against the terrorists, which can damage working class political freedom—witness the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act, rushed through by "liberal” Home Secretary Roy Jenkins immediately after the Birmingham pub bombings.

Finally, terrorism obscures the essential issue that the policies of capitalist parties exist and operate only because the working class support the system. That support is a matter of ideas and those ideas must change before capitalism will end. There is no evidence that this change will happen under the pressure of violence, however it is delivered.

Running Commentary: Smashing the State (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the March 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Smashing the State

It would be suicidal to take on the power of the governmental machinery from the outside, like throwing a few stones at a rocket bomb from a distance. The state includes much more than just police and soldiers — a point very well demonstrated by the exposure of a secret Post Office circular in Time Out magazine (No. 562, January 1981). The document in question was first sent to Local Authorities in 1975. It gives details of the “Telephone Preference Scheme”, which says that in any “civil or military emergency”, only those in “categories one and two” could make telephone calls, while the rest of the population would be able only to receive calls and listen, not make calls or talk. Only ten per cent of people are in the special categories whose telephones would be able to make calls: national and local government offices, police, armed forces, MPs, judges and magistrates, newspapers, the CBI and other employers’ organisations, certain trade union offices and factories, banks and prisons.

If a growing socialist movement ignores the centres of power in present-day society we will be cut off from the vital channels of organisation. We openly contest elections on this basis. Our candidates are unimportant as individuals. We are mandating them to go and ensure, as a body, that the current powers of coercion are not used against us. There is no other way in which we can operate in organising democratically to establish a system of society which will itself be democratic. We have the power to end this travesty of democracy. The MPs elected by the workers recently voted 172 to 111 to reject a Freedom of Information Bill giving individuals access to personal files held on them by government agencies. That is just one example of what supporting the status quo means.

Reagan’s millionaires

The massive power of the American electorate has just sent Carter back to his peanuts in the South and brought in another representative of the profit system, Ronald Reagan. The cabinet Reagan has chosen are not just defenders of the existence of property for the few and poverty for the rest. They are also owners of vast properties themselves.

Ten out of the seventeen are multi-millionaires. CIA Director William Casey has S5.2 millions and the Attorney-General, William French Smith has S5.8 millions and an income of S850,000 a year. Secretary of State General Haig has made S2.1 millions out of the American working class during the past year alone and the unearned income of the Labour Secretary Raymond Donovan is about 1 million a year (Guardian 27/1/81).

American workers should remember this when the cabinet asks them to work harder, “pull their belts in” and, if necessary go and die in battle for “their” nation. The nation and the state are controlled by that cabinet on behalf of the owning, employing class in America.

Free press?

In order to sell 3.8 million copies of the Sun each day, Rupert Murdoch mounted a massive television advertising campaign, which cost thousands of pounds each second. The Sun is just one of many newspapers which Murdoch owns and controls, filling millions of workers each morning with prejudices which are protecting the power of their bosses. In Britain alone, he also has the News of the World and now, it seems, the Times empire.

At a time when we are constantly told that “the country” is going through hard times and that “we” must learn to cut down, Rupert Murdoch has enough private wealth to buy an entire newspaper network His papers build up high readerships not just by the bared flesh of Page Three, but also by fitting in with ideas and assumptions which are reinforced by other media and by social pressure and persuasion.

On any major issue the Express, the Mail, The Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Sun, the Mirror and the Star can all be expected to give similar views. For example, they all say that it is necessary to have employers and workers, rich and poor, because of “human nature”. They never question the real cause of problems like war, racism, poverty; they will never take a realistic class view of society.

So whether it is Murdoch who controls The Times, or whether it is any other capitalist, such as “Tiny” Rowland (whose latest shopping list includes Dickens and Jones, Harrods, Barkers and D. H. Evans, when most people can’t even afford to buy items in those shops, let alone the shops themselves) we will read the same stories.

What are you worth?

The December 1980 issue of The Safety Representative contains an article, “How Much Safety Can We Afford?" which explains how commercial enterprises make decisions about environmental and safety measures. One method used, called “weighing in the balance”, involves a direct comparison of financial costs. “For example, we can compare the cost of preventing an accident with the costs of the damage and injury it will produce”.

This means having to put a price on human life, and the article recommends such books as The Valuation of Human Life by G. H. Mooney (MacMillan, 1977) and The Value of Life by M. W. Jones- Lee (Robertson, 1976). An alternative method, called “standard setting” involves choosing a particular degree of safety and then aiming to maintain that level.

We are not living in a democracy; enterprises are owned and controlled by small groups of shareholders. Companies compete, trying to cut costs and capture markets, in order to maximise shareholders’ profits. The outcome is this horrific pricing of human life, the cost accounting of humanity. If co-operation and production for free use replaced competition and production for profit, there would be no need to cut costs; the only standard of value would be the quality of life and the direct satisfaction of human needs.

Clifford Slapper

Trade Unions and Socialism (1981)

Editorial from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the continuing debate about the role, the power and the function of trade unions there are basic misconceptions on both sides.

Some of what are often called “moderate” trade union leaders, for example, think that unions should properly involve themselves in the shaping and execution of government policy. Len Murray is one of these; a constant complaint of his is that the Thatcher government are formulating policy without first calling the TUC to Ten Downing Street. One inevitable result of this attitude is that the unions are too often preoccupied with trying to resist the irresistible—opposing the inexorable effects of the slump on employment, for example.

Then there is the less “moderate” element, who are sure that the unions can extend themselves into the ownership of industry. This element is liable to organise sit-ins at firms which are about to close when they have become unprofitable and then to entertain fantasies about the basis of ownership and control in capitalist society. At more alarming times this approach can lead on to even wilder fantasies, that a sit-in can be the first step on the road to a socialist revolution. In reality what happens is that the profit-making demands of capitalism first undermine, then grind away, the fantasies and the enthusiasm which they gave birth to.

On the other side of the debate the great misconception is that trade unions are all-powerful, that they dictate policy to governments, run industry and can exert a strangle-hold on vital points in society such as medical services. The evidence offered to support this point of view is usually the disruption which can be caused by a strike and events like the collapse of the Heath government in 1973/4 and the recent retreat by the Thatcher government in face of the miners.

In fact, on both occasions the governments of the day judged the situation in terms of capitalist priorities—that is on the likely profitability of industry at large and the possibility of notching up a victory in the class struggle. These judgements did nothing to alter the basic situation; capitalism is still there, still run on the same motives and the same assumptions. At present, for example, there is reason to think that the government sees its retreat as no more than a temporary measure, to give some time to regroup its forces. This is what happened in the surrender (or so it seemed at the time) to the miners before the General Strike in 1926. (At that time there was another pressure group at work —the coal owners—but there was little complaint in the media at a powerful minority dictating policy to the government.)

All these misconceptions can be cleared simply by a clear idea about the role of trade unions, one which fits in with their history and their reality.

The first fact to take into account in this is that we live at present in a class divided society, the division being based on the minority class ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. This division is the direct cause of a clash over the apportioning of wealth, which takes the form of a dispute about wages and working conditions. On the one hand the working class, who do not own the means of production, struggle for the best possible wages and conditions. The more they get the less there is for the owners, the capitalist class who employ the workers.

This clash is a continuing, unavoidable feature of capitalist society. It is obvious that in this—as in any other—struggle, unity is strength. The employers recognise this; they have their own organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry and overseeing them all, protecting the privileged position of the capitalist class as a whole, is the might of the state machine.

In face of this, the working class would be entirely helpless if they did not also build their own unity. Failure to do this would reduce workers’ bargaining over wages and conditions of work to a disorganised mass of separate, feeble entreaties. At present the trade unions, with all their faults (and socialists are more aware of these than anyone) represent that unity and offer the workers their only chance of offering to the employers a concerted front of resistance.

But there are many ways in which the unions, even accepting their present deficiencies, could be much more effective. To begin with, they should confine their activities to the industrial field, to the struggle to defend and improve working class wages and conditions of work. They should not be diverted in this by spurious appeals to consider concepts like the “national interest” —which means the  need of the British capitalist class to compete more successfully on the world markets.

They should not be impressed by an apparent readiness to involve them in capitalism’s legislative processes —to call them in to see the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Minister of Labour . . . These are no more than inducements to weaken their resolve in carrying out their proper function to promote working class interests on the industrial field. An effective union will not succumb to any such inducements but will single-mindedly carry out its task in those workers’ interests.

And in this there is a recognition of the limits of trade union activity. This can be only defensive; it is by definition an aspect of capitalist society, an inevitable product of that society and is restricted to operating under capitalism. Trade unions then can only ease the pressures upon workers; they cannot eliminate those pressures. They can only ameliorate working class problems, they cannot cure those problems. They can only moderate the effects of capitalism,  they cannot abolish the system.

That must be the work of a socialist working class, a working class conscious of the basic causes of capitalism’s problems and of the need to replace it with socialism. As that consciousness grows it will affect all social organs within capitalism; they will all become that more effective for an injection of aware, politically aggressive socialists. And that will apply with special force to trade unions. At present the unions are in truth a comparatively feeble lot, which should be vastly more effective given the size and the industrial power, of their membership. As the socialist movement grows, so will the strength and the effectiveness of the unions, powered by a membership no longer content to accept minor concessions from their masters but determined to have it all, for the benefit of all.

Political Notes: Stand Again (1981)

The Political Notes column from the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stand again

Is panic the only motivator of Labour MPs agog at the polls (for what they are worth) which say that the Social Democratic (sic) Party would sweep to victory at an early general election? Could conscience also be gnawing away at them?

Such questions spring to mind when reading of the anguished demands from the Labour benches that any MP who joins the SDP should at once resign from Parliament and fight a by-election under their new colours.

These MPs, runs the argument, were elected by voters who (except in the case of B. F., or Brocklebank-Fowler) supported the Labour Party programme. It they have now changed their political views, those electors arc disenfranchised; the honest, democratic thing to do is to give the constituents the chance to have their say on the change.

This indignation would he more impressive if the House of Commons were not full of people who spend their time in Parliament imposing policies very different from those they were elected on. Yet none of them has so far resigned on the issue.

Labour MPs are especially guilty in this. How many of them, for example, told the electors in 1974 that they stood for cuts in living standards, medical services, for breaking strikes, for making the rich richer and the poor poorer? And how many of them eased a tortured conscience, when their government carried out these policies, by asking the voters what they thought in a by-election?

If MPs really behaved as those anxious Labour members are now demanding, the House of Commons would be pretty well empty. The bars, the dining rooms, the lobbies would no longer resound with the jolly banter of capitalism's legislators. The House is said to be the most exclusive club in the world but, as any political careerist will agree, you can take exclusivity too far.


Crooked aim

“It is the thinking person’s party” trumpeted a recent convert to the Social Democratic (sic) Party. Unkindly critics might have commented that it doesn't take that much brain to wield an Access card but let that pass, after all, the SDP are only trying to prove that they are alive and clicking in the age of the credit card. Vote now — pay later might be their motto.

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

Well how does the “thinking person” like his politics? Before he or she fills in that credit card number on the application to join the SDP, he/she is invited to agree that they "share our (SDP) aims". Now that sounds perfectly straight forward except that the SDP so far doesn’t have any aims. Indeed, according to the Guardian (10/4/81) the hairy SDP leader William Rodgers “. . . insisted that there was still a long way to go before the infant SDP has even a constitution, let alone an agreed political programme.”

It would take the thinking person — not to say one who could read and write — only a minute or so to run through the advertisement which included the application form on which they had to confess their support for SDP aims to realise that there was absolutely no hint there of what SDP aims might be.

The very most the T.P. would find would be vague promises like standing for “. . . a new future", which may be a strong contender for the Waffler of the Week award but is not a political policy worth — or even capable of — being discussed.

Of course traditionalists who relished the empty thunder of Churchill, the oiled assurances of Macmillan, the sweeping platitudes of Wilson, will welcome the SDP as a talented contributor to the art of political half-think (their stuff does not yet merit the description of doublethink).

But the SDP claims to be new, to be breaking the mould of traditional British politics. So far their supporters remain starry eyed and hopeful in their delusion but they must be aware that using a credit card is only a postponement of reality; eventually the bill has to be paid


Reagan responding

With a bullet in his lung Ronald Reagan gave out. unknowingly, some discomforting lessons for all exponents of the political assassination policy.

Anyone who thought that getting Reagan out of the way would modify his policies could not have been reassured by the fact that as a result the American working class were almost subjected to a period under the rule of Alexander Haig. The ex-Vietnam general is by reputation a harder line, farther right wing hawk than Reagan himself.

As he recovered, wise-cracking, from his wound, Reagan was borne up on a popular wave of sympathy and support. Most observers agreed that if he had been fighting the presidential election right then his victory would have been even more emphatic than it was last November.

The majority Reagan got then would not have melted away or solidified around an opponent, if the assassination attempt had succeeded. An example of this was when Johnson swept Goldwater almost to oblivion in 1964. In that campaign the Democrats coldly exploited the emotional response to John Kennedy’s killing which, far from damaging their chances, must have contributed to their crushing win.

Political murder is an established method with “extremists’ of both “left" and “right” wings but there is no reason to think that it acts against the ideas represented by the victim. The evidence in the cases of Kennedy and the attempt on Reagan (although the signs are that neither was for political ends) is that the murder of a politician induces sympathy and not hostility.

The properly effective way of dealing with an opposing theory is to prove, if possible, that it is at variance with reality. Such a method, although it has little appeal for the political romantics with guns, is the only way in which we shall build the political consciousness needed to establish a new society.

Party News (1981)

Party News from the June 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 8 May at Guildford Branch there was a debate between E. Hardy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and Arthur Seldon of the Institute for Economic Affairs, on “the Inevitability of Capitalism". Mr. Seldon explained that we are doomed to wage-slavery for this generation and the next, and that we must therefore “make the best of it”. Our comrade Hardy pointed out that capitalism was merely an historical phase which, like feudalism in its day. had outlived its usefulness.

The world market system acts as a barrier to the satisfaction of human needs. When Hardy pointed out that the recommendations of the IEA, such as stopping inflation, reducing state intervention and having free trade, all existed in the nineteenth century and did not prevent mass unemployment, starvation and war, Seldon replied that in 1840, capitalism began to develop nicely for a while. That is. four years before Engels described the terrible poverty which existed then, and in many places still does, in his Condition of the Working Class in England.

Seldon gave two types of reason for the n "inevitability of capitalism”. First, instincts such as the “exchange" instinct and the "family" instinct. He gave no scientific proof that such instincts exist. On the contrary, most of us have nearly nothing we could exchange except our poverty and our work. Then he criticised state intervention, high taxation and other ideas which the Socialist Party has never defended.

Socialism is not increased state power, but the abolition of the state power. It is not high taxes, but the creation of wealth for direct use without any money system at all. This debate, which about fifty people attended, might not a seem like a great threat to the status quo. But it knocked one more nail into capitalism's coffin, by making an important point. Capitalism is not inevitable; its replacement by socialism is the start of mankind consciously controlling its own destiny. IEA members who want us to “make the best” of an insane system want us, like them, to hand over our brains, together with our work, to our bosses each week.

Clifford Slapper

Obituary: Bob Lees (1981)

Obituary from the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with deep regret that we report the sudden death of Bob Lees, a consistent socialist and comrade. Bob was already a party member when he arrived in Manchester from Derby in the late 1930s. He immediately became involved in the activities of the Manchester Branch, which then included many outdoor meetings in Manchester and Oldham. Bob regarded the sale of party literature as vitally important and for over 40 years had a round of regular readers to whom he would take the Socialist Standard. He had a considerable knowledge of the working class movement, with a particular interest in the Lancashire area, and was well versed in socialist theory. His bookshop in Oldham always had a good supply of Party literature. The outbreak of war caused many difficulties for the Manchester Party members. Bob took on the job of Branch Secretary during that period and played a large part in holding the Branch together. He regularly attended Branch and public meetings throughout his membership and played an active part in the movement; such comrades are hard to replace. We extend out sincere sympathy to his wife, Marion, and son. 

Wally Preston

Anti-Democrats Exposed (1981)

Party News from the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember the birth of the new Social Democratic Party? They were going to be the radical new face of British politics. No more secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms for Open debate was to be the order of the day. The guardians of democracy had arrived.

Now. it takes more than a bunch of ex-Labour careerists to persuade the SPGB that anything new is happening. So, on 6 March of this year a member of our Islington branch wrote to the Islington Gazette with the following message about the so-called Gang of Four:

  Rumour has it that a new ‘Democratic Socialist Party' will soon be on the scene, nationally and perhaps locally. As an active socialist in Islington. I can appreciate the sympathy which many local people would feel for it. Many of us are appalled by the patronising arrogance and undemocratic elitism of the traditional Left. Most of us are unimpressed by the absurd efforts of that tupenny circus, the Liberal Party, to convince us that its political opportunism is somehow more virtuous than that exhibited by its opponents. All but the privileged and the naive are beginning to see through the vicious defence of capitalism of the Tories. So, ought the new Council for Social Democracy to be welcomed as a radical alternative? Most certainly not.
   A gang of political careerists, with a sterile programme of more nuclear arms madness, more Keynesian economic nonsense and more of the same old profit system which serves the few and exploits the many, is no alternative at all. Despite the media's frantic efforts to give the Gang of Bores a chance to spell out the case for Social Democracy, they have failed to offer anything but the same old social inequality, class division and oppression which arc the hallmarks of capitalism. Contrary to the confused views of the leftist-guard-dogs of the state, socialism means social democracy: the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution by the entire community. The Utopians who want to reform capitalism from a nightmare into a paradise may indeed follow the new set of leaders, but I for one shall be staying in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and fighting for real social democracy.

Tire following week (March 13) a letter appeared from one Tim Jilani. who said that he found ‘the prospects of the Council for Social Democracy very exciting as it represents the resurgence of political thought of the radical middle ground.’ On March 20 the Gazette published a reply from an Islington SPGBer. pointing out that:

  There simply Is no middle ground between escalating militarism and the human desire for secure survival, between production for profit and production for need, between the dictatorship of the few and the democratic co-operation of the many.

In the same issue was a letter from a so-called social-democrat called Edward Partridge, who wrote that:

  As a local active supporter of the Council for Social Democracy, I challenge [the SPGB) to substantiate its bland assertion that the SDP . . .  is no alternative at all. 

Socialists, being democrats, never turn down challenges. So in the Islington Gazette of April 3 we issued a public acceptance of the challenge and stated our intention to debate with the social-democrats whenever and wherever they wished. Then we waited for the ‘Democrats’ to respond (first making sure that a copy of the letter was sent to them).

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

Then came the Greater London Council election campaign. The Social Democrats were very active, taking four full-page ads in the Islington Gazette at an approximate cost of £1,000. But despite all the noise coming from their direction no reply was received to our letter. When a Party member stopped the SD candidate, Douglas Eden, and asked him what he intended to do about the debate, he replied that his election agent was ‘dealing with it'. Now, Douglas Eden is the kind of political trickster from whom one would not buy a proverbial second-hand car. In the event the electorate did not buy his second-hand policies either and Eden lost the election.

Since GLC polling day (May 7) Islington branch’s secretary has waited by his letter box every morning to see if the bogus democrats have decided to reply to what was a response to their challenge to defend our case. Not a word has been heard. On July 3 the following letter from a member was published in the Islington Gazette:

   In the Islington Gazette (April 3) I issued a public challenge on behalf of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the so-called Social-Democrats to come out into the open and debate their policies. Then the voters of Islington would be able to choose between the revolutionary stand taken by our party which the Social Democrats prefer to attack by means of unsubstantiated slander and the reformist manifesto of their party. So far there has been no response at all from the ‘Brave New Face of British Politics’ — not even a letter to say that the democrats refuse to debate. Perhaps we should have offered them a TV debate with Robin Day or David Dimbleby loading the questions in their favour. But to debate in front of ordinary workers — why, it would be beneath their dignity, wouldn’t it?

The Social Democrats are cynical liars when they talk of the need for free, open and tolerant debate. We have proved that they are scared of debate because their bankrupt policies will be exposed by the logic of socialists. The editor of the Islington Gazette is to be congratulated for revealing these people for what they are — political eon-men.

Steve Coleman

Some taxing questions (1981)

From the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The propagandists of capitalism are always lecturing the working class about our alleged obligations and responsibilities (to the capitalists, of course). We are told that to ask for higher wages is irresponsible, that all pay increases must be earned by higher productivity, that “restrictive practices" must be abandoned. The implication of all this propaganda is that the workers are somehow managing to cheat the capitalists and take more than they give whereas the capitalist system could not operate without the system of legalised theft through which profits are made. Putting that aside for the moment however, one might expect the capitalists, having struck this moral attitude, to set a good example themselves. This is far from the case however; taxation is a good example of their hypocrisy.

The capitalist class throughout the world is divided into various groups, each of which operates a state machine in its interests. To use the terms “country" or “nation” for these entities is to fall into a trap set by the ruling class, to create the illusion that the state represents the interests of the whole population. In order to run the services provided by the state, taxes are raised by the capitalist governments. Part of the fantasy concerning the nature of the state is that the whole population is contributing to the funds raised by taxation, and is receiving certain benefits in return. The truth, however, is that the capitalist class alone contribute to the national exchequer; the other social class the working class-does not pay taxes.

At first sight this assertion appears absurd. After all, many workers on their weekly or monthly payslips will see that a certain amount of money has been deducted for “income tax". And often when we buy something, the price tag will tell us that “value added tax” has been included. The answer to this apparent contradiction lies in the way wages arc determined.

In order to have access to the means of living, workers must sell their labour power, physical and mental energies, to an employer. Labour power is a commodity and its value, about which its price fluctuates, depends on the labour time necessarily involved in its production and reproduction. The wage or salary which the worker receives is the price of the labour power, on average just enough to keep the worker and any dependants in a state fit to carry out the tasks required by the capitalist class. Of necessity it must be the net wage, the worker’s take-home pay, which represents the price of labour power. Thus the “income tax” deduction on a worker’s pay slip is. in fact, part of the employer’s payment to the exchequer, and not a charge on the worker.

Now, in view of all the denunciations by the capitalist media of the “greed” and “irresponsibility” of the workers, what sort of example is set by the capitalist class when it comes to their own responsibilities in the matter of paying taxes? Sixty years ago Lord Clyde, a High Court Judge, set the moral tone in delivering judgement in 1920 in the case Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services and D. M. Ritchie v IRC:

No man in this country is under the the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his finances or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest shovel into his stores.

More up-to-date illustrations of capitalist ethics are given in the Granada TV Production series Business Decisions. The programme screened on 28 June last was devoted to tax problems. The TV Times billing posed the following questions: “How far can a business go to minimise its tax bill? How far will the Inland Revenue go to pursue offenders and change the law?” The assembled panel of executives, civil servants and “experts” were in basic agreement that to stretch the letter of the law to its limit for the purpose of tax avoidance was perfectly legitimate, indeed laudable. When it was suggested that “the government needs this money”, a company finance manager said simply “I need it too ”.

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

One thing is certain however: if some capitalists can reduce the tax bill they pay to the state, either more must be extracted from the other capitalists, or the services provided to that class as a whole will have to be reduced. The hypocrisy in the attitude expressed by this finance manager does not lie so much in saying that “his” firm need the money (although many who have massive resources will say this) but in the sharp contrast between the morality displayed here and the continuous demands for sacrifices from the workers. The distinction drawn in the programme between tax avoidance which stays just within the law, taking advantage of loopholes in it, and tax evasion, which the state is usually compelled to punish severely, is one which is of some concern to the ruling class although in reality no difference in principle is involved.

The use of tax havens has become increasingly common, so that it is now probably the most popular method of tax avoidance. A tax haven is a country where a taxpayer from a different country may achieve some relief from the taxation in his place of origin. Small states such as Lichtenstein and the Cayman Islands, which do not need to provide much in the way of services, are famous as tax havens. The revenue authorities in these places know that there is only one reason for a non-national forming a company there. However, some eminently respectable financial centres can also be used as tax havens. It is not, for instance, generally realised that Britain comes into this category, despite all the propaganda from the ruling class about “penal rates of taxation”. There are considerable attractions for non-residents, or even foreign nationals temporarily resident here. A UK registered company controlled from abroad pays no UK corporation tax on its non UK income and is free of capital gains and capital transfer taxes. This has made a useful and prestigious base for many multi-national businesses.

It is a sobering thought that this double standard is so openly admired by so many workers. It illustrates again how little pressure is yet being exerted for the abolition of capitalism, despite the misinformed optimism of a few left wingers. People generally act in what they believe are their best interests, and tax avoidance is only one quite small illustration of capitalists doing just that. To denounce them for doing so, as many left wingers do, is to miss the point completely. The trouble is that the working class have an incorrect appreciation of where their true interests lie, still believing that the capitalist system can somehow be made to operate, like some great tropical tax haven, to their benefit.

E. C. Edge

Editorial: Socialism the answer (1981)

Editorial from the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a a time, not so long ago, when the politicians could talk as if slumps and unemployment, and the power these gave to employers to enforce wage cuts, were all in the past. We now had a new breed of wiser, cleverer leaders who had learned from those days and the unenlightened thirties would never come again.

Well once again the real world of capitalism is upsetting the dreams of its politicians’ speeches and programmes. And the people who are suffering in this are the working class; the screw is being turned on their wages, their working conditions, their sense of security.

It is ironical, that this pressure is especially severe on workers in the aircraft industry, both those making aircraft and those operating them. For this industry was a post war boom spot which, because it was comparatively young and had obvious scope for development, was widely regarded as one where jobs would be safe for a long, long time. Then there was the glamour of big airliners with their uniformed crews roaring off to far away places, which made a job with them seem very desirable.

But much of the glamour is now being rubbed off, by some stern economic realities. The staff of British Caledonian have recently accepted a management suggestion that they forego a pay rise this year, although they have a contract which allows them an annual increase. Pan American has a plan to cut its employees' wages by ten per cent. British Airways has announced its intention of cutting its workforce by 9,000 by June 1982 and imposing a wage freeze until the end of September 1982.

In this grim situation the unions seem almost powerless; at most they can protect some of their members from the worst of the effects. It would be useful, if this were to prompt trade unionists to ask themselves why their organisations can do so little and why it all happens anyway.

In all industries, whether glamorous or not, workers are employed so that their employer can make a profit. If there are no profits, then workers are likely to be sacked; for example, the Chief Executive of British Airways said, when announcing the airline’s economy plans, that BA is losing money at the rate of £200 a minute: “No business can survive losses on this scale”, he added. Part of the process of profit production is the workers selling their ability to work — their labour power — for a wage. Labour power then is a commodity, like everything else which is produced to be sold.

The price of a commodity fluctuates around its value, or what is needed to reproduce it, but at any one time it corresponds to the balance struck between the competing pressures of supply and demand. If there is a shortage of bread, its price will tend to rise; if there is a surplus (in terms of the market) of labour power its price — workers’ wages — will be under pressure to fall.

This is a fact of capitalist life which is often obscured. For example an airline pilot, as he jets across the oceans, will not easily accept the idea that he is doing something as sordid as selling his ability to control the aircraft. But at times it is made compellingly obvious by our very living experience. This is happening now to airline crews, whose wages are under the squeeze along with all the other employees and who are likely to have to face some forcible redundancy.

Just as workers are up against capitalist reality, so are the trade unions which are there to protect them. And this illustrates the important fact that, at best, the unions can only be defensive of workers’ wages and conditions (at other than best they can, and do, operate against their members’ interests); they can only try to ward off the harsher effects of capitalism but they cannot deal with the basic cause of those effects.

This must be the act of the working class on the political field and here we are discussing a social revolution with the object of fundamentally changing society. Such a revolution will end the private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution and make them the property of the entire human race. It will abolish all the relationships typical of capitalism, including the all-pervading one of wage labour to capital, in which labour power is a commodity to be bought and sold—or, when it is not required, thrown onto the nearest scrap heap of social security.

Yet the human ability to work, to conceive, to design, to make, is a vital, precious force in human society. When socialism is established it will be applied to produce wealth which will not be commodities but will be objects produced solely for use. Socialism’s wealth will therefore be freely available to all its people. Socialism will liberate labour power and allow it to realise its full range of ability for the benefit of the human race. The possibilities of this are awesome.

So how do we achieve this? It will be a start, in the growth of working class consciousness which is needed for the establishment of socialism, for frustrated trade unionists to grasp the reason for their lack of power in face of the slump. The next step for them is to stop thinking in terms of defending their position as workers and in terms of abolishing it, by setting up a classless society. This will involve the world working class cooperating to take over the society which they now design, build and operate. In their concern for human welfare and progress, trade unionists need look no farther than the case for socialism.

A bad case of Flew (1981)

Book Review from the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Antony Flew, Professor of Philosophy at Reading University, is a committed opponent of the case for human equality. Last September he debated with the SPGB on the argument that “equality is just a socialist myth”. His latest book. The Politics of Procrustes, is a readable account of the confused and occasionally vicious views of a defender of capitalism.

Like most anti-socialists, Flew fails to give any clear definition of “socialism". Despite his claim that he aims “to clear up some of the confusion to be found around and about the notion of socialism” (Chapter One) he soon arrives at the typically confused definition of socialism as “state ownership and direction of — in the hallowed words of the original Clause IV of the Labour Party — all the means of production. distribution and exchange”. He proceeds to make the outrageous claim — rejected even by most Labour Party supporters — that the Labour Party “has been for more than sixty years, and still is, both in theory and in practice, socialist”. With Professors of Philosophy like Flew "clearing up the confusion" about the meaning of socialism in such a manner, we may well repeat the question of Karl Marx: “Who is going to educate the educators?".

Socialism does not mean state control and the Labour Party has never stood for the establishment of socialism. The basic features of the capitalist system are — minority class ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution: wage slavery for the propertyless majority; the production of wealth as commodities to be sold on the market with a view to profit. Those who fail to recognise these basic features of the system will fail to see through the spurious claim that state capitalism—either as proposed by the Labour Party or as practised in Russia and China—is socialism. Two opposite systems cannot be defined by identical characteristics; capitalism and socialism are mutually exclusive.

Only by absurdly distorting the real nature of capitalism can Flew and his colleagues in the misnamed Freedom Association, assert that capitalism provides us all with freedom. Flew informs his readers that "It is the friends . . . of the market generally who are in truth the friends of individual liberty.” For Flew, the buying and selling system of the market is the finest example of social Freedom:

  . . . trade is a reciprocal relationship. If I am trading with you it follows that you are trading with me. Trade is also, for both parties, necessarily voluntary . . . So, if any possible advantage of trade to the trader could be gained only at the expense of some corresponding disadvantage to his trading partner, it would appear that in any commercial exchange at least one party must be either a fool, a masochist or a gambler (p. 150).

Flew is right when he states that buyers and sellers start out in a position of reciprocity. For example, a worker selling his labour power needs a wage or salary in order to live and a capitalist buying labour power needs the worker’s mental and physical energies in order to produce profits enabling him to live. In this sense, both classes go into the market place upon equal terms, unlike in previous slave or serf societies where the producer was legally tied to the owner of the means of production. To this extent, then, we can speak of freedom. But Flew is wrong when he states that the contract between buyer and seller is “necessarily voluntary”.

The truth of the matter is that the working class is compelled to sell its labour power because it has nothing else to sell. (Such is the definition of a worker.) Legally, workers are free not to work (although it is illegal to remain on the dole for long without seriously seeking employment—and begging is illegal), but in reality it is impossible for a worker to survive for long without selling his mental and physical energies to an employer. The wage slaves who are regularly poured out of the schools and universities into the factories and offices are not entering into a voluntary condition of dependence upon wages or salaries—nobody asked them whether they would prefer to be wage slaves or capitalists: they are the compulsory victims of capitalist exploitation.

Flew argues that workers would only enter into an arrangement of exploitation, one where the capitalists’ gain results from their disadvantage, if they are fools, masochists or gamblers. The assumption is that such exploitative transactions only occur occasionally. In fact, such exploitation is the hallmark of the production of profit under capitalism. When the capitalist buys the worker’s labour power he pays a price for it which fluctuates around its value, or what is needed for the worker to subsist and to reproduce himself. But labour power is only employed if it can produce values over and above its own value. For example, if a capitalist buys a worker’s labour power for a wage of £80 a week and invests £30 in machinery and raw materials, the worker must produce commodities which will sell at more than the investment or £110 before a profit can be made.

The employer will only take on the worker if he can predict that surplus value will be produced. If the worker produces goods valuing £150, then the capitalist has made £40 profit. This unearned income is made for the capitalist at the direct expense of the worker. Workers cannot insist that they will only work long enough to reproduce their own value, for the very essence of the arrangement is that labour power will be exploited for profit. If the workers do not like the arrangement there is nothing they can do to opt out of it, for they are wage slaves dependent on obtaining money in order to survive and the capitalist class own and control the productive and distributive machinery. If the workers realise that they are being deprived of the fruits of their labour and decide to appropriate for themselves some or all of the surplus value they will be called thieves and locked up in a prison. The capitalists are not known as thieves (by those who seek to legitimise this theft) because their theft is legalised. As Flew says, workers who put up with this daily exploitation would seem to be “fools” or “masochists” do to so for long.

Having examined the real nature of the profit system, we may now return to the Professor’s ignorance of the meaning of socialism. It does not mean that instead of private capitalists exploiting the working class, a state bureaucracy will do it. Workers who are exploited by the government are no less exploited than any others. Socialism means the common ownership and democratic control of the productive and distributive machinery. In a socialist society everyone, without distinction of age. race or sex will own and control the social wealth. Instead of wage slavery, people will contribute to society as much as they are able to. Instead of buying and selling, people will take according to their needs. Instead of production for sale on the market with a view to profit, all production will be solely for human use. Socialism will be a system of society where the spurious freedom of the market place (the liberty of the capitalists to take liberties with the working class) will be replaced by free access. In a society of co-operative, conscious human control of the earth and all its resources there will be no exploiters and exploited, robbers and robbed—we will at last be free, equal social beings.

Steve Coleman

CND: No Safety in Numbers (1981)

From the December 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The increasing threat of nuclear war has brought new life to CND. It enabled them, in late October, to stage one of the biggest and most impressive demonstrations London has ever seen. Other large-scale activity is planned for the future. To objections that it has all been tried before and shown not to succeed, CND reply that its campaign in the late fifties and early sixties did not have the widespread informed support from all sections of the population that it has now and that with such mass support and determined activity it can succeed in getting the British government to abandon its nuclear arms.

But can CND succeed this time? If there are certain differences between the last campaign and this one, what has not changed is CND’s concern not with the reasons wars break out but with the likely effects a third world war would have. This failure to look at the underlying causes of war is a fatal flaw in anti-war movements like CND — no matter how much support they may get.

If CND did look closely at the causes of war, they would see that a nuclear war — like other kinds — would not be started by irresponsible leaders or a clash of ideologies. A nuclear war would be caused in just the same way as other wars have been, and are being, caused in the modern world — by a government or governments taking military measures to protect the markets, trade routes or sources of raw materials owned by the small privileged minorities which own most of the wealth in their countries. In short, a third world war would be caused, as were the first two, by economic rivalries between competing capitalist classes and would break out when other means (diplomacy, threats, and so on) of settling these rivalries have failed. Governments will give reasons based on personalities, individual incidents or ideologies to justify fighting wars; but when examined closely this can be seen as camouflage. The true motivations are economic — protection of the interests of their capitalist class.

If CND saw this, perhaps they would see the futility of asking governments which function — as they must — to look after their owning class, to give up their best weapons. To ask a government to get rid of its nuclear weapons is to ask it to get rid of its best means of being taken seriously by its competitors.

In these circumstances, to ask a government, as do CND, to declare itself “neutral” is to make a demand unlikely to be met. The owning class in Britain has too much to lose. But would even “neutrality” be a guarantee of safety in the event of a nuclear conflict between the big powers? History shows that it would not. The “neutrality” of Belgium and Norway in the last war, for example, did not save those countries from being invaded when the Germans found it strategically necessary.

Even if we indulge the CND fantasy for a moment and imagine not only Britain but all countries banning nuclear weapons, would this make the world safe? Rather than safe it would leave us armed to the teeth with deadly conventional weapons which, during the ‘peacetime’ period since 1945, have killed twenty million people in 130 different wars.

Instead of campaigning for the abolition of certain kinds of weapons within a system that is necessarily geared to war, we should be campaigning for a different kind of system, one that excludes the possibility of war completely. Instead of allowing their emotions to be stirred by being among massive crowds and hearing dramatic rousing speeches, CND supporters would do better to mull over whether their activity, whatever its sincerity, energy and commitment, serves any real purpose. They might also consider whether they wouldn’t do better to use their energies in a movement actively engaged in spreading the idea of a classless, frontierless world based on free access and voluntary co-operation, a world in which weapons and war, an inevitable feature of the present economic set-up, would serve no purpose and have no place.

Howard Moss

Asked and Answered (1951)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked by the writer of the following letter to reply to it in the Socialist Standard.

Maida Vale, W.9.

The Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

I have heard it stated by socialists who are members and non-members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, that a person cannot be a socialist and a doctor at the same time.

Their reason is that the activities of doctors hinder in the efforts of obtaining Socialism.

By this they mean that drugs and other chemicals which doctors use have in the long run detrimental effects on the human body.

They continue by stating that the medical approach to disease by suppressive methods, such as drugs, lead to other dangerous diseases.

All this they claim has also a detrimental effect on the brain-functions.

I have always accepted the view that doctors were members of the working class and that their intentions, in the main, were the same as the rest of the working class, namely, because of their property-less position, they have to sell their abilities in order to live, hence their interests were in common. I would, therefore, like to frame my question as follows:—

1. Can a socialist become a doctor, and vice-versa?
2. Where do nature-cure socialists “draw the line”?
3. Do you think raw carrots, cabbages, wage-labour, and Capital à la Karl Marx a good combination.

Yours truly,

                           D. Brooks

Reply:

Our first thought on reading the letter was that our legs were being pulled. On the assumption, however, that the questions may be intended seriously we reply that membership of the S.P.G.B. is open to those who agree with the Declaration of Principles and act in accordance with the Party’s rules. The S.P.G.B. exists to secure the establishment of Socialism and not to control the kind of civilian employment its members are compelled by Capitalism to take, or with the views they hold on medical practice, nature cure, football, chess, music, beer-drinking, etc., etc.

Editorial Committee.