UK General Election 2005: Democracy as it is and as it could be (2005)

From the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people would argue that Britain is a democracy and that we all benefit from living in a democratic society. By this they would probably mean the regular holding of elections to parliament and local councils, the freedom to organise political parties, a press which is not beholden to the government, and the rule of law. If people object to the policies of the government or a particular MP, they can vote them out of office. If they oppose a specific action by a local council, they can set up a protest group and hold demonstrations, without the fear of being carted off to prison just for voicing their views.

In this, comparisons would be drawn with dictatorships, where elections may be non-existent or a sham, where independent parties and trade unions are outlawed, where the press just follow the government line, and arbitrary arrest and even torture are commonplace. Such comparisons are by no means valueless, and capitalist democracy is definitely useful to workers, yet the idea that elections and the other points listed above in themselves constitute democracy needs a great deal of reflection.

For do the trappings of democracy, as we might call them, really guarantee a truly democratic way of life? Do they ensure ‘rule by the people’, which is the etymology of ‘democracy’? Socialists argue that the answer to these questions is a resounding ‘no!’, that real democracy — a social democracy, as it might be called — involves far more. The problem is that under a capitalist system there is a built-in lack of democracy, which cannot be overturned or compensated for by holding elections or permitting protest groups. Our objections are far more basic than suggestions that proportional representation is the best electoral system.

In the first place, capitalism involves an inevitable inequality, between on the one hand those who have to work for a living or who depend on a family member who does so, and on the other those who own enough land, shares or bonds that they have no need to work. This is a division between two classes, the working class and the capitalist class, between those who do the useful work but are paid a pittance and those who live a life of luxury in country houses, posh flats and expensive clubs and restaurants.

Those who have more money have more power and more control than those who have far, far less. This is partly a matter of mere wealth: if I have one hundred times as much money as you, then I have far more say over how I spend my time, where I live, what my children can experience, and so on. Workers have to struggle with a mortgage, fear of redundancy or a monotonous job, and have far less control over their lives. So poverty and inequality of wealth undermines any claims that capitalism can be democratic. But there is more to be said. The capitalist class have power not just over their own lives but over those of workers as well. They can order the closure of factories, as at Rover or Marconi, the building of a new motorway, the invasion of another country, all of which can affect the workers who will lose their jobs, suffer noise and disruption, or have to fight and die on behalf of their masters. The press may be  formally ‘free’, but in practice newspapers are owned by capitalists and so will naturally reflect  procapitalist views in their pages. The government, too, is there to administer the system on behalf of the capitalists, something they do irrespective of which party is occupying 10 Downing Street.

In fact, though, there is a sense in which the government does not run the system at all – rather, the capitalist system runs the government, by limiting the actions that can be taken. The capitalists and their governments can propose what they like, but it is the capitalist economy that disposes. Raising of interest rates, increased unemployment, devaluation – these may not be what governments want to do, but may well be what they are forced to do because capitalism leaves them no choice.

There are at least three reasons, then, why capitalist democracy does not mean that workers are in charge of their  own lives. They are too poor to be able to do what they want to do, being limited by the size of their wage packets. They are at the beck and call of their employers in particular and of the capitalist class in general. And they are at the mercy of an economic system that goes its own sweet way without being subject to the control of those who suffer under it.

In contrast, Socialists advocate a way or organising society that will result in real democracy, where people genuinely run their own lives and are not pushed around by bosses. Firstly, Socialism will do away with the inequality of capitalism. With free access to what has been produced, everybody (that’s absolutely everybody) will be able to decide on their own consumption, living conditions, and so on. There will no longer be a forced ‘choice’ between a new car and a summer holiday. Poverty will no longer limit people’s lives and experiences.

Secondly, there will be no employment, no employers and no capitalist class. Nobody will therefore be able to make decisions about the livelihoods (and, indeed, the very lives) of others. Nobody will have privileged access to the media and means of communication and so be in a special position to influence the views of other people.

And thirdly, the uncontrollability of the capitalist economy will be a thing of the past. Production will be for use, not for profit, and there will be no more gluts or ‘overproduction’. With all the paraphernalia of money, accounting, interest rates and the bottom line done away with, there will be no obstacles to people producing what is wanted.

More positively, Socialism will involve people making decisions about their own lives and those of families, friends and neighbours — decisions unencumbered by so many of the factors that have to be taken into account under capitalism. The means of production (land, factories, offices) will be owned in common, and everybody will help to determine how they will be used. This need not mean endless meetings, nor can we now give a blueprint of how democratic decision-making in Socialism will work. Quite likely there will be administrative structures at different levels, local, regional and so on. This will not just be the trappings of democracy but the real thing – people deciding about and running their own lives, within a system of equality and fellowship.

Paul Bennett

Will Iran ‘be next’? (2005)

From the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the ongoing debacle of the Iraqi invasion, many people will be aghast at US threats against Iran. Are they serious?

On 10 May, the Iranian government began what may turn out to be a full-blown global crisis when it announced that it is to continue with its nuclear programme. Although Tehran claims it is intent on forging ahead and enriching uranium for civil purposes, the Bush administration is rehashing one of the lies that it used to invade Iraq: namely, that Iran will be manufacturing nuclear weapons that it may well give to terrorists.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which carries out regular inspections in Iran, recently issued a report declaring that it has found no proof of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran. Moreover, according to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory and to which the US cocks a snoot, non-nuclear countries do in fact have the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, on  condition they inform the IAEA of their progress.

There is nothing to substantiate Washington’s claims that Iran is intent on producing a nuclear arsenal, yet before the Iraqi war is finished, the hawkish neo-conservative misinformation machine is at work creating fear that the US is in danger from Iranian nukes unless, we are supposed to infer, America preemptively attacks Iran. Washington has argued that with all its  oil Iran does not need nuclear energy – a statement that smacks of hypocrisy for many reasons, not least because it was Washington that enthusiastically encouraged the Shah’s nuclear programme in the 1970s – and that its desire to continue its nuclear research is clear evidence of its malicious intentions. Again, whilst the US sounds off about other countries having advanced defence systems, we find that the biggest stockpiler of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is the US itself, and which has a proven track record of having used them.

The world’s number one rogue state – the US – furthermore feels free to rubbish the nuclear testban treaty so its weapon scientists can enhance the US’s new theatre nuclear weapons and to develop space-based weapons systems capable of annihilating whole armies in an instant.

Iran – not so long ago named by President George W. Bush as one-third of the “axis of evil” – is surrounded by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq (countries that have been flattened by American bombs in the past four years), not to mention the Fifth Fleet and numerous US bases in the southern Gulf States. Naturally Iran feels a little threatened so it could be that Tehran is working on the assumption that those countries that possess nuclear weapons – Israel, Russia, India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea – generally get treated a lot better by the US than smaller countries that do not.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Undersecretary of State John Bolton was credited with the words: “real men want to go to Iran”. Iraq, it was suggested, was just the first stage of a five-year plan. Iran, with a larger population and better defence systems would certainly not be as placid a foe as the Iraqi forces were and US casualties would be many times those suffered during the invasion of Iraq were the US to launch an invasion of Iran. So, leaving aside the fallacious argument that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons it can sell to enemies of the US, what other reasons could there be for these ‘real men’ to want to attack Iran?

Economic competition

A year ago this month Iran announced plans to set up an international oil exchange (or bourse) denominated in the euro currency and that this would be in operation by 2006. For several years oil-producing and consuming countries have expressed their interest in trading through such an exchange so, logically, such an oil bourse would vie with London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) as well as competing with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), both of which are owned by US corporations.

Since the US Dollar has been so far the global standard monetary fund for oil exchange, oil consuming countries have had little alternative but use the $US to pay for their oil, forcing them to keep the dollar as their reserve fund in their central banks, thus underpinning the American economy.

But were Iran and other oil producing countries presented with the euro as an alternative choice for oil exchange the American economy would go through a real crisis. It is possible the crisis could come at the end of 2005 and the commencement of 2006 when oil investors would be faced with the option of paying $50+ a barrel of oil at the American (NYMEX) and at London’s (IPE), or €37 a barrel at the Iranian oil bourse. Such a choice would reduce trade volumes at the US Dollar dependent (NYMEX) and at the (IPE). A triumphant Iranian bourse would solidify the petro-euro as one more global oil transaction currency, thus ending the petrodollar’s supremacy as the foremost nternational oil currency.

The international trade of oil in petrodollars has kept the US dollar artificially strong for 30 years, enabling the US to amass vast foreign-funded government debt and trade deficits. Whatever Tehran’s motives, we cannot ignore the fate of neighbouring Iraq, which had already begun to trade in eurodollars before the allied invasion. One of Washington’s objectives in Iraq was to install a pro-US stooge government and set up military bases before the onset of peak of world oil production, while at the same time converting Iraq back to the petrodollar, thus frustrating OPEC’s desire to begin using the euro as an alternative currency of oil transaction. Indeed, one of the first steps taken by Iraq’s provisional government was in returning the country to the $US oil standard.

Geopolitics

We must also look to US geopolitical strategy if we seek the reason why Iran is seen as a threat. The country, for one thing, is strategically placed, straddling the Middle East and Central Asia and must be at least neutralised if the US is to control the region’s oil supplies (it’s not so much that the US wants all the oil, rather the US wishes to be in control of its distribution, to whom, and on its own terms).

The US is seriously concerned about the onset of peak oil production (which experts say will come within ten years), that extant reserves will probably be gone within thirty years, and that long before that time China will have the same oil demands as the U.S. China is already securing long-term oil contracts with Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela, seeking out oil contacts via Canada and has previously, somewhat audaciously, made a bid for the US oil company Unocal. It is thus imperative for US capitalists that a rising competitor – China, itself the world’s chief consumer of grain, meat, steel and coal – is prevented from gaining a tighter stranglehold on world resources. The two countries may appear to be on friendly terms, but both are jockeying for position in expectation of a showdown.

For US capitalism, there is much at stake. Should China grow in economic strength, sell off its dollar holdings, US world domination will be threatened. Therefore, to protect future US global resource flows, Iran has to be warned by US gangster imperialists – don’t mess with our interests; don’t run a racket on our turf without our permission; don’t deal with another mob. Preparations to threaten, and if necessary, attack Iran are well under way. In June of last year, Israel took delivery of almost 5,000 “smart bombs” from the United States, bombs capable of penetrating six-foot concrete walls such as those that could well encase Iranian nuclear installations. There have also been numerous reports of clandestine US reconnaissance missions inside of Iran, and of US spy drones violating Iranian air space.

As we approach the final year of Bush’s ‘Five-year plan’, expect war threats in the Middle East to feature prominently in the headlines of the world’s press. We hope we are wrong – for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of workers that would die as a result of a US attack upon Iran – about war actually breaking out but history shows that where the interests of mega-business are threatened, spilling blood is of no consideration. 

John Bissett 

Further info available at: 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA410A.html http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8354.htm     

http://amin.org/index.html

Let them Eat School Dinners (2005)

From the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot of people were happy, or at least hopeful, about the TV series Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners. To begin with there was the famous chef himself, whose on-screen success persuaded the supermarket giant Sainsburys to go back on their intention of ditching Oliver as the star of their TV ad campaign and instead give him a contract for another series, boosting his pay to £1.2 million. This was because Sainsburys were also happy; while Jamie was lambasting school dinners their sales of organic produce went up by 12 percent a week. Cherie Blair was happy; her opinion of the dinners her son Leo eats at school was: “They’re not terrific, to be honest. I am seriously thinking about sending him with a packed lunch”.

The teachers had to be happy in view of the evidence — which was available a long time before Oliver got interested in the subject — that nutrition affects a child’s behaviour and response to learning. A study Food For Thought (2003) by Derek Gillard reported that in 1999 two schools in South London and the Young Offenders Institution in Aylesbury, both behaviour and achievement were better when diets were improved. Finally, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly was happy because, far from being embarrassed by the exposure of dietary deficiencies in the schools, she was able to claim that she had thought of it first, that when she took over at Education one of the first problems she wanted to tackle was that kids were being fed fattening, poisonous rubbish in school.

Advertising

On the other hand there were those who were not happy at what Jamie did. Ex-Education Secretary David Blunkett did not appear to be delighted; in a rare and overdue spasm of less-than-fervent penitence he had to confess that while he was in charge of the schools he “probably” had not done enough to improve the pupils’ food. The £280 million promised by Ruth Kelly, perhaps in a flush of pre-election fever, to improve ingredients and staff training, seemed likely to provoke stresses among local and national government about who would have to make that kind of investment. Then what about the companies who make some of the food, like the infamous Turkey Twizzlers and Fish Portholes? Firms like Bernard Matthews, whose persistent catch phrase is “They’re Bootifool”, would not have welcomed the vengeful threat to their access to that bountiful market of under-nourished children.

Just how bountiful can be gauged by the money poured into advertising by the food industry. In 2001 nearly £200 million was spent on promoting chocolate, sweets and crisps — some of which presumably went to ex-football star Gary Lineker for his role advertising Walkers Crisps. In 2002 McDonald’s advertising bill came to £42 million, including payments to Alan Shearer — another football hero — for his appearance in their TV campaign. And then there were the firms who prepare and dish out those awful school dinners; they were unhappy about the threat to their contracts with local education authorities and some of them made it clear that they were not about to surrender their rights without a fight. One of these is a company called New Schools but they do not actually get to heating the burgers or cooking the Turkey Twizzlers because they have sub-contracted it to another company called Atkins Asset Management, who in their turn have subcontracted it to an outfit called Scolarest.

Protest

The Guardian of 25 April reported on a protest about the food supplied by Scolarest in the London Borough of Merton. Scolarest claimed they had not had any complaints about the food and warned that any schools trying to opt out of their contracts may have to pay the equivalent of a year’s profit as compensation. Meanwhile angry and anxious parents were in no doubt about the quality of what Scolarest supplies. One mother wrote to the newspaper that her children “have rarely eaten school dinners at their Merton school because of the poor quality of the contracted-out, underfunded provisions” and a teacher at Merton, who has three sons at schools there, said “the unbalanced diet in our schools is affecting the health of our children now and will change their health for years. They deserve better”. Unhappily, the protests were energised by the assumption that food is produced and processed – by Scolarest, McDonalds or whoever – in order to nourish people. That is a nice idea but it does not fit in with the logic of capitalism’s priorities. “For contractors,” said the MP whose constituency includes Merton, “what matters is the bottom line”.

An official concern over standards of childhood nutrition is not new. A particular incentive to tackle the problem was the fact that over a third of the volunteers to join the Army in the Boer War were too small, undernourished or sick to be allowed to take part in that imperialist enterprise. This was serious, as it cast doubt on how British capitalism would fight its future wars of which, it was assumed, there would be many. Better, ran the reasoning, to start feeding the children now. The advent of compulsory education was another spur to action; in 1889 the London School Board set up the Schools Dinner Association which supplied cheap, or in some cases free, school meals. In haste a Committee on Physical Deterioration was established and from that there emerged the 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act, which encouraged local authorities to provide meals at schools, on the well-founded assumption that the children were unlikely to get them at home.

The policy was developed between the wars until the 1944 Education Act set out that every child in a maintained school should be provided with a meal, the full cost of which was met by the state.

Poverty

The 1964 Labour government began the retreat from this high spot in education services in 1967, when they withdrew the 100 percent grant for school meals. In 1978 a White Paper on public expenditure opted for halving the £380 million cost of providing school meals, which led to the lowering of standards and the introduction of junk food. The big assault came with the Thatcher governments, which abolished the statutory duty on Local Education Authorities to lay on meals for all school children and then introduced compulsory competitive tendering. This opened the way for the private companies which, to screw the largest possible profit from the arrangement, introduced the cafeteria system and the provision of junk fast food like burgers and chips. The day of Scolarest had dawned.

The link between nutrition and health and behaviour seems so obvious and the evidence for it seems so overwhelming, that it hardly needs to be established through investigation. Booth and Rowntree surveyed the extent of the deeper levels of poverty in London and York respectively in the late 19th and early 20 centuries but the limits to the usefulness of their work can be gauged by the fact that when Booth began to collect his data he thought the extent of  deprivation to be over-estimated and that in any case the condition of many of those in poverty was self-inflicted. The problem today is critical but in many respects different.

As Jamie Oliver and many others have found, malnutrition is not always a matter of lack of food but of having access only to food which may be filling but is nutritionally deficient. That is itself related to working class poverty. At a Diet and Health Forum in October 2003 Julia Unwin, Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency, said “Children a century ago were not getting enough of the right things to eat. British children today are eating too much of the wrong things. Within the last month the Health Development Agency has spelled out in chilling detail the scale of the problem we face …  And hardest hit are those worst placed to react — children living in socially deprived circumstances. We are talking here about a disease of poverty.”

So Jamie Oliver may not have been aware of what he was cooking up, when he set out to expose school dinners on TV. Malnutrition is an aspect of poverty, which is an inescapable reality of capitalism’s class society. Food is a commodity – produced for sale and profit – like all of capitalism’s wealth. That is why the companies could fight to assert the legal right to safeguard their profits, even at the cost of malnourishing school kids. It is a typically tragic mess of this social system, that children can be starved as they are fed.

Ivan

25th Century Capitalism (2005)

Book Review from the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism. By Victor D. Lippit. (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy. £65.)

Lippit’s main theme is that capitalism — as a system in which “a portion of the profits reaped through the sale of goods and services is reinvested, swelling the capital stock, incorporating new techniques in the process, and permitting larger sales and profits in the future” — could well continue for another three and four hundred years but that it will ultimately prove incompatible with human life on Earth. This is because its dynamic of continuous expansion and accumulation will come up against the fact that the Earth’s resources and capacity to reabsorb waste are finite. This, according to him, is the basic contradiction of capitalism, not anything within its own economic mechanism or social relationships.

Lippit argues that up to now capitalism has always been able to overcome periods of slump and stagnation resulting from profits falling or markets shrinking. Such periods have always proved to be temporary and in time have always been overcome by the emergence of new favourable social, political and economic conditions for capital accumulation. Much of the book is devoted to describing what these have been over time in America, Europe and Asia. He expects this pattern to be repeated in the future and sees no internal economic or social contradiction within capitalism that will prevent it continuing for centuries. In fact, he expects it to do so. Meanwhile the global environment will continually deteriorate until human life as we know it becomes impossible (he speculates that, with the ozone layer destroyed, humans may have to live and work underground). 

It’s a pessimistic scenario, but how realistic is it? We ourselves have long held the view that capitalism will never collapse of its own accord for purely economic reasons and that it will continue to go through its cycle of booms and slumps until the working class put an end to it. So, in theory, capitalism could indeed continue for centuries. Obviously, we don’t think it need do, or will, since we think that the class struggle between workers and capitalists built in to capitalism will lead to the workers putting an end to it before then. Lippit says that this is utopian as workers, and even the destitute populations of the Third World, will continue to support capitalism as long as it continues to improve their living standards, however slowly (as he thinks it will). The crunch will only come, he contends, when capital accumulation, and the slow long-run improvement in living standards it brings, will no longer be possible for ecological reasons but that this won’t be for several centuries.

So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? And what sort of system will then replace capitalism? Lippit’s view is that, when the time comes, capitalism will have to be replaced by “a social formation that is consistent with a modified stationary state”, by which he means one with stable population, production and consumption levels. This implies “first and foremost”, he says, that “production must be undertaken for the use values it affords, rather than for profit”:

“The focus of innovation would be on minimizing throughputs rather than on maximizing output. The point would not be to bring an end to scientific creativity and innovation, but to channel it in directions that maintain and hopefully improve the ecological balance on which the maintenance of human life depends”.

We would argue that this “social formation” could only be one based on the common ownership of the Earth’s productive resources, natural and industrial, by the whole of humanity, i.e. world socialism, for how could production be reoriented towards use instead of profit unless the means of production had first ceased to be the exclusive property of individuals, corporations or states? But we don’t see why humanity has to wait till capitalism has nearly destroyed the planet to institute this.

It could be instituted now, so avoiding not only the environmental degradation that will occur if capitalism continues for another three or four centuries but also all the wars and the destruction and misery they bring that will occur during this period too; at the same time, world hunger could be eliminated much more quickly within this framework than Lippit thinks will eventually happen under capitalism.

Adam Buick

The Life of Uncle Joe (2005)

Book Review from the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stalin: a biography by Robert Service. (528 pages. Macmillan. £25,  ISBN 033726278) 

Service deliberately, and bravely, tries to dig for the true story of Stalin’s life beyond the hagiography or demonography that usually represents him.

He presents the case that Stalin, or Joseph Dzughashvili, or Soso, or Koba — as he was variously known — was a central character in the pre-revolutionary Bolshevik party. He was keen acolyte of Lenin, a hardman — he organised the campaign of bank robbery and extortion in the Caucasian areas of the Tsarist empire at Lenin’s behest, even when the latter promised to cease such activities. He edited Pravda, was on the Bolshevik central committee and was Lenin’s close collaborator on the ‘National Question’. 

He was imprisoned several times, and though taciturn with fellow prisoners, he took his beatings at the hands of prison guards with equanimity. During the civil war, he commanded the Red Army on the south fronts, where he proved to be a ruthless if not effective commander.

So, hardly the grey man Trotsky liked to pretend him to be — but Trotsky could hardly criticise Stalin for brutality, when he was as nearly as ruthless. In fact, Service makes a good case that Stalin rose to power as part of a stop-Trotsky faction.

Stalin was able to present himself as the acme of Leninist orthodoxy, and possibly — and Service does make this case — believed he really was creating some form of socialism in the Soviet Union. Socialists — unlike Leninists — have no need to shy away from this fact. Our argument never was that Stalin was a bad man, a monster (although, obviously, he was) but that he was acting upon a false and dangerous theory — that a band of dedicated leaders could force the world to socialism.

Service makes clear that much of Stalin’s apparent paranoia was based on the simple fact that he and his fellows had risen to power suddenly and almost out of nowhere against the might of Tsarism. He believed, apparently, that a similar cabal could unseat him — what comes round goes around.

His callousness was relentless, ranging from bullying subordinates at informal parties, to personally poring over the list of names and faces of victims of his terror. Service alleges a desire to be at the centre of things, to assert himself that grew from childhood and was fostered by his membership of the Bolshevik party. As he notes, Stalin was among the few genuinely working class members of the inner sanctum of the party — which goes to show that having genuine workers in charge doesn’t make that much difference.

In his desk, when he died, were some keepsakes — a letter from Bukharin begging to know why he Stalin wanted to murder him when he was already politically dead, and a letter from Tito, threatening to try and assassinate him if he didn’t stop trying to bump the Yugoslav dictator off — as Service notes, one gangster to another. Even his intimate moments were blood-soaked and ruthless. This is a tidy account of the life of a utopian who thought that through ruthless will alone he could shape the world. As in some parts of his former empire, his statues are being resurrected and his reputation repaired, it also serves as a timely warning against leaders past, present and future.

Pik Smeet

About Socialism (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

It is a political party, separate from all others, Left, Right or Centre. It stands for the sole aim of establishing a world social system based upon human need instead of private or state profit. The Object and Declaration of Principles were adopted by the Socialist Party in 1904 and have been maintained without compromise since then. In other countries there are companion parties sharing the same object and principles, and they too remain independent from all other political parties.

2. What is capitalism?

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, etc.) are monopolised by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, but, as a class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

No: as long as capitalism exists, profits will come before needs. Some reforms are welcomed by some workers, but no reform can abolish the fundamental contradiction between profit and need which is built into the present system. No matter whether promises to make capitalism run in the interests of the workers are made sincerely or by opportunist politicians they are bound to fail, for such a promise is like offering to run the slaughter house in the interests of the cattle.

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

No: nationalised industries simply mean that workers are exploited by the state, acting on behalf of the capitalists of one country, rather than by an individual capitalist or company. The workers in nationalised British Leyland are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned Ford. The mines no more belong to "the public" or the miners now than they did before 1947 when they were nationalised. Nationalisation is state capitalism.

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

No: the so-called socialist countries are systems of state capitalism. In Russia and its empire, in China, Cuba, Albania, Yugoslavia and the other countries which call themselves socialist, social power is monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. The features of capitalism, as outlined above, are all present. An examination of international commerce shows that the bogus socialist states are part of the world capitalist market and cannot detach themselves from the requirements of profit.

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism. In a socialist society there will be common ownership and democratic control of the earth by its inhabitants. No minority class will be in a position to dictate to the majority that production must be geared to profit. There will be no owners: everything will belong to everyone. Production will be solely for use, not for sale. The only questions society will need to ask about wealth production will be: what do people require, and can the needs be met? These questions will be answered on the basis of the resources available to meet such needs. Then, unlike now, modern technology and communications will be able to be used to their fullest extent. The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their self-defined needs. Work will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation: the coercion of wage and salary work will be abolished. There will be no buying or selling and money will not be necessary, in a society of common ownership and free access. For the first time ever the people of the world will have common possession of the planet earth.

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

Capitalism, with its constant drive to serve profit before need, throws up an endless stream of problems. Most workers in Britain feel insecure about their future; almost one in four families with children living below the official government poverty line; many old people live in dangerously cold conditions each winter and thousands die; millions of our fellow men and women are dying of starvation — tens of thousands of them each day. A society based on production for use will end those problems because the priority of socialist society will be the fullest possible satisfaction of needs. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are subsidised not to produce more: yet many millions are malnourished. At the moment hospital queues are growing longer and people are dying of curable illnesses; yet it is not "economically viable" to provide decent health treatment for all. In a socialist society nothing short of the best will be good enough for any human being.

8. What about human nature?

Human behaviour is not fixed, but determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate. Even under capitalism people often obtain pleasure from doing a good turn for others; few people enjoy participating in the "civilised" warfare of the daily rat-race. Think how much better it would be if society was based on co-operation.

9. Are socialists democrats?

Yes: the Socialist Party has no leaders. It is a democratic organisation controlled by its members. It understands that Socialism can only be established by a conscious majority of workers — that workers must liberate themselves and will not be liberated by leaders or parties. Socialism will not be brought about by a dedicated minority "smashing the state", as some left-wingers would have it. Nor do the activities of paid, professional politicians have anything to do with Socialism — the experience of seven Labour governments has shown this. Once a majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, they will take the necessary step to organise consciously for the democratic conquest of political power. There will be no Socialism without a socialist majority.

10. What is the next step?

Many workers know that there is something wrong and want to change society. Some join reform groups in the hope that capitalism can be patched up, but such efforts are futile because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. People who fear a nuclear war may join CND. but as long as nation states exist, economic rivalry means that the world will never be safe from the threat of war. There are countless dedicated campaigns and good causes which many sincere people are caught up in, but there is only one solution to the problems of capitalism and that is to get rid of it, and establish Socialism. Before we can do that we need socialists; winning workers to that cause requires knowledge, principles and an enthusiasm for change. These qualities can be developed by anyone — and are essential for anyone who is serious about changing society. Capitalism in the 1980s is still a system of waste, deprivation and frightening insecurity. You owe it to yourself to find out about the one movement which stands for the alternative.

If you have read this set of principles and agree with some or all of them, contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism. 

Editorial: Race and respectability (1988)

Editorial from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard 

One necessary skill of professional politicians is an ability to cloak the prejudices of their potential supporters in respectable language. We know that nobody in the public eye is a racist, and the British reputation for fair play could be further enhanced if more people prefaced their remarks with reassurances like "I detest apartheid as much as the next white Anglo-Saxon but. . ."; “Some of my best friends are Asian shopkeepers but. . . ."; or even “While I don't mind a hint of curry on my Guardian now again . . .".

The rejection of “liberal attitudes" on race by large numbers of workers does not place them automatically in the camp of the mindless bigot, which is why much anti-racist legislation and practice has had minimal effect. Asians with knife scars and families behind boarded council flat windows can testify to the more virulent strains of the disease, but pumping through the bloodstream of society is racism of a much more matter-of-fact, unselfconscious kind. The statement “he's a darkie, but quite pleasant" assumes shared attitudes and feelings and can be made without any awareness that it causes offence: blacks are viewed as one more natural hazard to be avoided, like bronchitis or barking dogs.

Recognition that such ingrained prejudice cannot be washed away by a constant assertion that there is no difference between "them" and "us" — an approach which anyway takes no account of non overt discrimination — has led to a much more sustained assault on the values and assumptions of "white British culture", at least in the field of education. That the consequence may well be a more segregated society, with white parents opting for what they perceive to be in the material interest of their children, should not be a surprise. Tolerance is clearly a skin-deep matter of proximity and numbers, and the symbolic and ill-functioning character of dogmatic anti-racist practice has given sustenance to those who hide their racism behind the banner of "freedom of choice". As with much race relations law, resentment has been stimulated against those who are seen to be positively favoured.

The various racist Immigration Acts passed by Conservative and Labour governments to keep non-whites out of Britain reflected and gave respectability to the view that blacks or Asians are the cause of social problems. The fact that legislation now prohibits discrimination is neither here nor there: property owners no longer publicly state that blacks are not welcome but simply do not accept them; employers are obliged to treat job applicants on their merits and do so with tongues in cheeks. A surface respectability fails miserably to conceal a situation where non-whites are far more likely to be unemployed, far more likely to be in low paid jobs and bound by the frustration their position creates.

The ideas of the racist cannot be legislated away because they arise from and are nurtured by the society in which we live. As every schoolboy knows, Columbus discovered America and Marco Polo was the first to set foot in China; at least, these were the first personages from white western society to do so, which any enlightened schoolgirl knows to be not the same thing. And if the history books tell us that nothing of any consequence occurred before a white man came along, it is not difficult to see why low social status and inferiority remain associated with a black skin.

Historically, the doctrines of white supremacy and anti-semitism originated as weapons to defend pre-capitalist systems of exploitation, and it has been one of the tasks of capitalism to break down all social divisions except that between the wealthy and the propertyless. This, however, it can never succeed in doing, since of necessity individual worker is set against individual worker in the struggle for a living and many forms of hatred and prejudice flourish as a result. If racial equality were somehow achieved, we could still not have an integrated, harmonious society because capitalism demands constant selection and exclusion and therefore creates the insecurity on which racism breeds.

Those who benefit from divisions within society do not have to compete for third-rate education and housing: there are no racist attacks at Charterhouse or riots in Belgravia. The civilised setting of the gentleman's club is also more conducive to an evenhanded treatment of racial matters — white semi-detached proles are held in only marginally less contempt than their darker-skinned counterparts and the "them" and "us" of racist mythology are translated into real, class terms.

Running Commentary: A saint or a menace? (1988)

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

A saint or a menace?

Words which did not appear in the many tear-stained obituaries for Fenner Brockway, who died last month, were "hypocrite" and "dangerous". According to his admirers, Brockway was a saintly man who longed for a world where everyone — employer or employee — basked in the ecstacy of mutual prosperity; where there was absolute equality between one and another; where all nations, suddenly seized with insight into the futility of war, disposed of all their armed forces and weapons and resorted instead to the quieter, cheaper method of settling their differences though civilised discussion around the conference table.

Anyone who persists in these types of fantasies, in face of all the evidence to disprove that capitalism is basically a sane system, which with a change of heart, could be made to run in everyone’s interests, should be derided. Instead, they are liable to be deeply respected — especially after they die. The obituaries for them don't just regret their death but do so with a touch of wonder and guilt, that the world was so stupid not to heed the teachings of the departed saint.

Brockway was a prime example of this. An ardent, lifelong campaigner for peace, a conscientious objector who suffered imprisonment during the First World War, he was also a prominent member of the Labour Party which so ardently supported both World War One and Two and almost every other occasion when British capitalism needed its working class to take arms, to be killed and to kill their fellow workers. This veteran marcher for CND was an MP supporting a government which was emphatically opposed to dismantling the British nuclear armoury and was an ardent proponent of nuclear power stations. This champion of the dispossessed supported a party which, when in government, fought to keep the living standards of British workers in check, to the benefit of British capitalists. Finally, this man who stood for equality, a life-long opponent of the House of Lords, ended his days sitting on its benches, ennobled as Lord Brockway.

There are many ways of describing such inconsistencies of behaviour but hypocritical is to the point. But is it fair also to say that Brockway was dangerous?

People like Brockway are part of the very tradition of the Labour Party. Although their professed principles, which excite such admiration, should lead them to oppose the party they are among its most steadfast supporters. Whatever anguished twists Labour’s record requires of them, they are equal to the situation; they cling stubbornly to the party no matter what offences it commits against working class interests.

The effect of this is to persuade many people that at heart the Labour Party is not really as we experience it; its inner conscience, personified by members like Brockway, is pure and one day will take over the entire party. So workers continue to vote Labour — for capitalism with all that means in terms of human repression, poverty and suffering. Like any dangerous hypocrite. Brockway had a lot to answer for.

Rough stuff

Hijackers are in the forefront of that exclusive group of people whose actions are certain to provoke one of Thatcher's famous rages or to set Reagan's autocue whirring out the folksy platitudes. No words are too strong to condemn them; they are cowardly, subversive. indiscriminate outlaws who take no heed of the values of civilised society.

In fact, hijackers often personify many of the qualities which Thatcher and Reagan profess to admire in themselves — like sacrificial devotion to their cause, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, a ruthless will to carry out their mission not for their own benefit but for that of their comrades-in-arms. When the media tell us that the SAS or the Royal Marines have behaved in that way Thatcher is quick to praise them and to win a little electoral advantage at the same time but when the same qualities are in evidence from the "enemy" they are somehow transformed from the stuff of Boys' Own Paper into excerpts from the nastiest of video nasties.

The hijackers consider themselves to be at war with bigger, more impressive powers. In such a situation guerilla actions are the customary tactic and among these the hijack is now established as effective. Those who condemn it do so on the implication that war can be a civilised affair, fought to a kind of Queensberry Rules so that everyone who gets killed or wounded can take solace from the fact that it all happened in the most considerate and ordered fashion.

What virtue is there in the notion that something as viciously destructive and anti-human as war would be more bearable if all the participants kept to a set of rules? It would be futile to search for a state whose record in this respect is unblemished. Every one has its intelligence organisation — a spying. assassinating, dirty tricks department who have the utmost contempt for any "rules". We are allowed to know very little about these shadowy bodies but what we do know is that their speciality is not the metaphorical pre-fight handshake but the knee in the groin, the gouge of the eye.

The British and American ruling classes and their state machines are among the leading exponents of these tactics and when they are exposed in this they are unashamed, they make no apology for conforming to the needs of capitalism's persistent and worldwide conflicts.

So the indignation about the hijackers is bogus. There is no such thing as a legitimacy of war. Rather than pursue such fanciful mirages workers should stand aside from the brutal cynicism of it all, to ask how to abolish war itself.

Take your turn

Britain’s doctors are clearly worried about nuclear war. Perhaps they suspect the fragility of the premise of official advise about getting yourself to hospital if you have been injured by the bomb — that the medical profession will magically be immune to its effects.

However there is nothing like forward planning and the British Medical Association has recently issued some guidelines about who should be treated, and who left to die, in a nuclear holocaust (the government, not surprisingly, have been reluctant to grasp this particular hot potato).

These are some of the guidelines: readers are advised to keep them handy, so that they can make sure of their place in the queue for treatment after the bomb goes off. Burn or blast casualties will not get priority if they have also suffered from radiation; thickness bums over more than 15 per cent of the body means that you will almost certainly be abandoned to die; no time is likely to be spent on cardio respiratory resuscitation; the elderly will have the lowest priority and anyone over 60 suffering from burns will not get fluid replacement. Finally, if you have an injured limb which in normal conditions you would expect to be treated and cured, you may find that in the post-nuclear world it is simply hacked off, to save time.

It is a searing comment on this society, that trained doctors and nurses should have to give their attention to so grisly a business. But it is all too close to reality; the BMA estimates that about half the population of this country — 28 million people — will be wiped out in a nuclear conflict with six million more seriously injured. And. as we know, the bombs are still there, waiting in their silos and submarines and aircraft, to wipe out millions if ever the powers of capitalism decide that that is the only way of sorting out their rivalries.

The BMA document makes another illuminating point. Priority in treatment will also be given on the basis of ability, knowledge and social usefulness. And who comes out tops in this? Stockbrokers? Aristocrats? Merchant bankers? Well no — these heroes and heroines of capitalism come a long way down the list. Up at the top will be carpenters, plumbers, stonemasons — and the people who run hospital generators.

This is a comment, not just on nuclear war but on who are the really indispensable people in society, on the values and rewards of capitalism and how they hold back human progress.

Handy hints

Are you well off? Are you about to cash in — if you have not already done so — on the immense Thatcher-planned bonanza of productivity and prosperity? A lot of government propoganda says that you are. What do the facts say?

The latest figures available showing the level of "official" poverty — too bad if yours is unofficial — say that in 1983 nearly 16½ million people, which is about 30 per cent of the population, were struggling along on an income of 140 per cent of what was then the Supplementary Benefit level. The statistics covering 1985 have not yet been published; it is whispered in the poverty lobby that when they do come out it will be to show a sunnier picture, not because poverty has become less harsh but because the government has redefined it.

Does it matter, if you're among the officially poor? Money isn't everything, after all. According to a medical study for 1987 the kind of poverty which comes with unemployment coincides with men being 40 per cent more likely to die of all cancers, 75 per cent more likely to die of lung cancer and twice as likely to commit suicide. Of course, that could be coincidence ... A study by Peter Townsend and others suggests a clear link between serious deprivation and higher mortality. Last year the British Medical Association, which is not famous for being subversive, drew attention to the surveys which show how children whose parents are chronically unemployed tend to be stunted.

The Department of Health and Social Security, perhaps under the impression that this was living up to its title, recently issued some advice to the poor. "Don't shop when you're hungry", the ministry urged their claimants. "You may be tempted to buy more than you need". This is exactly the kind of humiliation experienced by out-of-work people in the 1930s which, the experts assure us, would never happen again, now that we live in the age of enlightenment. Nearer reality was a comment from someone who is not unemployed, a mother of four who works as a shop assistant, in the Observer of 17 April: "I was brought up poor. I never thought it would go on for ever, on to my children and maybe now their children's children".

For the working class poverty does go on. blighting the lives of one generation after another. Mass unemployment is a factor which harshly worsens a condition which will be with us for as long as this social system is allowed to endure — and so will the humiliation which goes with the deepest kind of poverty, when useful people are of no account because they are redundant to the drive for profit.

Lenin and elections (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

We did not mean to suggest in our reply to a letter in the April Socialist Standard that Lenin took up an anti-parliamentarist position and was opposed to participation in elections. On the contrary, he was in favour of this as a way of trying to obtain reforms and urged workers in Britain to vote Labour, though he also argued that the minority vanguard party he advocated could never get to power by electoral means but only through violence.

The Editors

A tale of two tyrannies (1988)

A Short Story from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack and Jacek meet on a train. Jack is a true blue British Tory; Jacek is a member of the Polish Communist Party. Jack loves his Queen and has a big picture of Churchill on his wall, with a smaller one of Thatcher next to his bed. Jacek goes out and gets drunk each year on the day when Poland became a "socialist country". He has a big picture of Stalin on his wall and a smaller one of Jaruzelski next to his bed. Every Sunday Jack can be found upon his knees in the local C of E Hall of Lies. On Sundays you can be sure to find Comrade Jacek on his knees in the Catholic Church, for though he appreciates the guidance of Lenin regarding the affairs of this world, he still seeks divine assistance on his preparation for the passage to the illusory next world. Jack is reading The Daily Mail which always gives him his lies in good plain English. Jacek reads the official state newspaper which most Poles know to be as dishonest as it is dull. The two men get talking, the way that often happens on long, boring train journeys.

Jacek has been reading about the attempt by P&O to smash the National Union of Seamen. He reads about how the company, with dictatorial arrogance, simply sacked its wage slaves for daring to take trade-union action. When the men formed picket lines in order to prevent scabs from being brought in to take away their jobs the police were brought in to exercise their usual scab-herding powers. When the NUS decided to ballot its members they were told by the phoney democrats of the British government that it is illegal to conduct a secret ballot as to whether to go on strike and if such a ballot was held the union would be taken to court. He read about how the judges in the High Court had decided to empower the state to rob the NUS of its legally collected funds. As Jacek read the report he became angry. It was genuine anger. It was indignation which every self-respecting member of the working class ought to feel when he or she sees a government. representing the privileged and powerful. using its power of coercion to persecute workers who dare to combine in their own defence. Jacek tells Jack of his sense of anger, but Jack, who has had mental blinkers fitted many years ago, courtesy of his education and exposure to the press, is full of rage for a different reason. He tries to explain to Jacek that these seamen are nothing but agitators — troublemakers — sociology graduates, quite possibly. Mrs Thatcher has a duty to the nation to ensure that these unions do not become too powerful. Why, if they are not kept in check, the next thing they will expect is to own and control the ships that they have worked on all their lives. And, as every properly educated Englishman knows, the right to own and control ships must belong to the likes of Sir Jeffrey Sterling, who has never had to work on a ship in his entire parasitical life.

There is a period of uneasy silence. It is quite clear that these two passengers will not see eye to eye. Jacek attempts to make light conversation about how he enjoyed fighting alongside the British in the last war; it was so pleasant for Churchill's wage slaves and Stalin's wage slaves to be joined in the common fight in defence of "democracy". The irony occurred to neither of them.

Just as the train was passing through a tunnel somewhere near Didcot Jack gasps in astonishment. Jacek thinks that perhaps his travelling companion has swallowed a pip from his South African orange. But no, he has been reading about how the police were sent in to the Nowa Huta steel works in Poland. With what brutality they used their truncheons against men and women whose only crime was to attempt to organise in a trade union — Solidarity — which is not run by the state bosses. On May Day Lech Walesa of Solidarity called upon the workers of Poland, "I demand of you solidarity with the Nowa Huta strikers tomorrow in your shipyards, in your ports and in your factories'. Last November the Polish government had held a referendum to test the workers' support for a massive increase in food prices in order to increase state profits so that debts to the Western banks could be paid off. The government failed to win a majority in the referendum. but this did not deter the undemocratic dictators: between February and April the price increases were instituted and this has led to nationwide protests and the biggest strike wave since 13 December 1981 when martial law was introduced in order to smash Solidarity. Across Poland the most foul thuggery has been carried out on the orders of the so-called Communist dictatorship; the workers have to be kept in their place. Jack, though never a supporter of strikes when they are in “his own country" is full of admiration for the heroic Polish strikers. Inconsistent as he is, Jack is right to support these brave men and women who will not be brought to their knees by a police state. Every worker everywhere must admire and show sympathy with our brothers and sisters in the state-capitalist countries who are robbed and oppressed in the name of socialism, just as we are in Britain in the name of democracy. Jack explains to Jacek that the Polish government is clearly an enemy of the majority of Polish people. Jacek is infuriated by such a senseless comment: did Jack not realise that these wreckers in Solidarity are out to cause economic ruin and sabotage — and anyway, most of them are probably in the pay of the CIA.

The two men look out of opposite windows of the train, refusing to say another word. They look at their reflections in the glass and catch glimpses of each other. Somewhere down the other end of the train —the end which is labelled “First Class", where the seats are comfier and the stewards will actually bring stale tuna fish sandwiches to where you are sitting we find Mr Ponsonby-Crutch and Mr Polotsky, each a respected member of the business community. Ponsonby-Crutch — or Ponsy, as he is known to the assembled idlers at the gentlemen's club where he occasionally sleeps away his afternoons — is attempting to fix up a joint venture with Polotsky who represents the Polish Trade Ministry, and does not smoke Cuban cigars simply for reasons of ideological solidarity. The two men talk as friends, realising, as representatives of capital must, that ideological differences must not be allowed to interfere with the higher goal of making profits. In a moment of relaxation the two men speak of their respective workforces. Ponsy thinks that the British wage slaves are in "pretty good shape" (a description he has been known to apply to his race horse, Dummy), but there are still a few recalcitrant types who need to be sorted out. With the aid of the police, the anti-union laws, the judges and workers forced to scabbing by the poverty of long-term unemployment. he feels confident that disruptive elements will be weeded out. Ponsy calls it "giving them the miners' treatment”. Polotsky sympathises. His government knows what it feels like to have the noble needs of profit-stealing interrupted by the anti-social antics of the unpatriotic minority. General Jaruzelski, being a military man, will spare no blood in showing the Polish workers who the masters are. Ponsy sighs longingly, wishing that his own government would show a little more of that kind of uncompromising commitment to the national interest.

Britain is a capitalist country and P&O are doing what any self-respecting capitalists will do: tyrannising their workers until every last drop of profit can be wrung from them. Let the drowned corpses of those workers who fell victim at Zeebrugge to the spirit of Free Enterprise stand as monuments to the consequences of free enterprise. Poland is also a capitalist country; its form of tyranny is state capitalism, but its differences with the economies of the West are outweighed by its similarities. In Poland the so-called Communist state locks up trade unionists who do not obey its rule and uses brutal force, indistinguishable from that used by British and other capitalist states, in defence of property and profit. Workers of the world have one single class interest; capitalists of the world, while competing like beasts of the jungle, have a common interest in keeping the workers in a condition of submissive wage slavery. We must not let them succeed in Dover or in Gdansk — in every part of the world the forces of capital must be met with the force of organised socialists whose sole aim is to claim for the inhabitants of the earth all of the resources in and on the earth. Then, with its cause abolished, tyranny will die, in all its forms.

Steve Coleman

Candidates are reminded . . . (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's Summer, Ian McCaskill has once again, for a brief interval, been recast from a harbinger of gloom to a relatively welcome informant. Six hundred and fifty MPs are preparing to go on holiday for a couple of months and leave the profit system to run itself while slow-paced, deep-voiced cricket commentaries, emanating from every media outlet, provide the season's soundtrack.

One place that soundtrack does not intrude upon, though, is the silence of the large, wooden-floored hall in every school and college where thousands of young people every year sit exams. Every summer tens of thousands of students from High schools and colleges step off a convey belt and into a quality control unit — the examination. Like cassette players or cars which carry a 'Tested—Okay' label, some candidates will leave the process certified as competent to perform certain roles in the commercial system or pass on to the next stage of training. Others will be sent back to the drawing board or invited to quit the process.

In Victorian times the education system prepared young people for wage-slavery in a blunt and blatant fashion. In Hard Times, Charles Dickens describes this operation with vivid detail in a chapter called 'Murdering the Innocents'. Here children are being knocked into uniformity and docility by one of a new regiment of indoctrinators. The teachers were made by much the same method as they were now using on their victims.

. . . Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs.

Some of today's educationalists would say that things are drastically different now. But are they? The same class-divided social system operates today as operated in Dickens' day and it has the same demands for a workforce which is disciplined, respectful of authority and implanted with the same fundamentally fallacious assumptions about society, class, competition and "Human nature" as its Victorian predecessor.

Examination Halls are once again filling up every morning and afternoon with hundreds of worried people. Once inside the Halls, the candidates, whose only identification for these purposes is a number, will be ushered to their respective desks the regulation three feet from their neighbour. They will be briefly addressed in a detached, impersonal tone and then will follow two or three hours of occasional coughing, sporadic fidgeting and the trail of invigilator's footsteps. College lectures have been described as the process by which lecturers' notes are passed to the notepads of students without really passing through the minds of either. Spilling out the same stuff on an exam script in a similar fashion is often the next stage in the game. I have been a participant in this rigmarole for 17 years: eleven as a student at various schools and colleges and now six as a teacher and examiner. The more familiar you become with the whole process, the clearer its main purpose becomes. Vainly describing itself as 'Education', the training programme delivered to people between the ages of 11 and 18 is little more than preparing people for the job market. Students are encouraged that the later they leave the process. the more attractive will be the job application form available to them.

Training Workers

The burden of cost for education, so-called, lies with the ruling class — the small minority of men and women who own and control the world's wealth. Education is. with most governments around the globe, the second largest budgeted expenditure after "Defence" (War), such is its importance in moulding a working class generally compliant to the hardships and insecurities of the profit system and tailored to the requirements of its work.

It is true that widespread literacy and numeracy are a pre-condition for the democratic operation of world society but we have already reached that stage. Since the early nineteenth century, the commercial system developed the need for a better educated workforce and then, later on,, for increased technical skills. Syllabuses and examinations have developed broadly in accordance with what the profit system needs. One recent development has been the move to experiential learning techniques and corresponding methods of testing those skills. The Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) and General Certificate of Education (GCE) O’ level have now been abolished and replaced by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) syllabuses which purport to provide a better "education" for those leaving full-time education at 16. One important factor in the design of these new courses was the way they would help to improve the organisational skills of prospective workers. According to a recent publication from the Department of Education and Science. GCSEa Guide for Employers,

Many employers have long been in favour of GCSE. It was, after all, developed in consultation with employers and other interests. (HMSO Educ. Jo. 243.1988)

In Britain about 4,000,000 people work in offices and there is a growing concern amongst employers, as commercial competition becomes more intensified, that their workers may not be up to date with the latest technology. The main purpose of the "A" level exams is to provide an entry ticket for the arena of "Higher Education", or entry into wage (salary) slavery at a "higher" level. Although some people climbing these rungs of the ladder can give the impression that the altitudes are enough to cause giddiness, their clamberings are not even visible from the heights of wealth and power occupied by the ruling class. Back at street level, even several of the "A" level syllabuses are being revamped to include more "practical" components. The Business Studies "A" level, for example, now incorporates a period of "work experience" where the student contributes a few weeks work to a local firm for nothing or next to nothing. Clearly a nice little perk for the owners of the local firm but less clearly a useful experience from the student"s point of view. Arguably the best result that can come from this episode is for the student to work his or her guts out during the "experience". not make any inquiries about a union and act with the right sort of servility to the right people — then they just might be hired by the firm on a "permanent" basis.

Learning the Rules of the Game

Recently, the courses run by the Business and Technician Education Council have become more prevalent in colleges around the country. The BTEC courses at "First" and "National” levels roughly parallel the more theoretical GCSE and A" level courses. They are based, almost exclusively, on a learning-by-doing principle and students' progress is monitored by continuous assessment of "assignments'". The BTEC National course (the "higher" of the two), though, has an examination at the end but because the ethos of academic exams runs against the ethos of the BTEC, their exams are not called exams but "Time Constrained Assignments".

Students on these courses are frequently asked, as part of their assignments, to assume the role of a particular type of employee and then, presented with a "scenario", are invited to complete a number of "tasks". You can see why the owners of industry and commerce must find this sort of thing a real boon. For one thing, it must cut the cost of their own training schemes, either in-house or the type they pay their workers to attend. Education in the commercial system, capitalism, has always been geared to shaping people for the role that their class demands from them. The children of the wealthy owners of society are sent to expensive, exclusive, elitist schools where they are trained in the ways of being patronising members of the ruling class. Conversely, ninety per cent of us attend schools where they teach you (or try to) how to work and to be on the receiving end of orders from the boss. The element of these BTEC courses which is a new departure is the open starkness with which the "students" are being apprenticed to types of work in the setting of a college; not just the skills and procedures required in different types of work but also the way in which they are encouraged to adopt The Right Attitude.

Consider one example of an assignment for students on a BTEC National course designed to prepare them for low levels of management. Details are given about an imaginary company, Fuelsave Ltd. based in Cricklewood with a workforce of eight, three of whom are part-time. The company produces a petrol saving device. A full report on the company is also given, " . . produces between 225 -275 Fuelsavers a week . . . gadgets retail mainly through garages in the South East for £80. . . Fred Smith the founder and majority shareholder wishes to increase production but expansion at the current site is impossible. . . Fred calls a Board Meeting to discuss expansion ". Students are then asked to put themselves through a succession of different roles in furnishing the firm with advice about relocating in two sites, raising new sums of financial capital, suing other firms if they try to use the technology of the fuelsave device (which has been patented), and the "best" way to make workers redundant. Other assignments in this course entail the students casting themselves as clerical workers, estate agents, insurance officers and local government workers.

The remodelling of education on more commercially related lines has also begun to percolate into higher education not only by the innovation of degrees in subjects like "Business Administration" but also in attempts to trim out of existence those research projects which do not appear to be useful to the actual workings of capitalist society and its constant quest for profit for the few. Higher educational institutions are also being seen as places which could be more concertedly used by the owners of industry to cultivate greater numbers of their highly skilled workers. Speaking recently to a conference in London, Lord Prior, former Employment Secretary (before he disagreed with Thatcher) and now collecting a little spending money as Chairman of G.E.C. (£200,000+) said that Britain is too snooty about its universities and this is "depriving industry and commerce of highly-trained brains". He suggested that universities and degrees should not be seen as ivory towers offering glittering prizes. “They should be seen as places which produce a highly-trained workforce for the market place".

(London Evening Standard, 30 April 1988).

If you are taking exams this month, or have children who are, or are teaching towards them or marking them, then you may well be familiar with the little blurb at the top of exam papers which proclaims that "Candidates are reminded of the necessity for good English and orderly presentation in their work . . ." A fully honest preamble would also tell you that "this exam is a necessary part of a competitive and uncivilised social system. It has virtually nothing to do with genuine study and knowledge . . ." One final point, in fact an alternative exam question: Imagine you are living in a society which has abolished class division and operates on the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need". Explain how your life is different from that of one of history's wage slaves!

Gary Jay

A Spring thaw? (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

To many in the "peace movement”, it seems that the tide is finally turning. The focus for their optimism is none other than former Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan, who has instructed his negotiators to "go for gold", and hammer out a 50 per cent cut in the superpowers' nuclear arsenals. They should not be so easily fooled. Behind the pacific rhetoric lies a grimmer calculus which reflects the new realities facing American capitalism in the 1980s.

In the drive to restore profitability to US industry, business interests have clamoured for cuts in the $200bn budget deficit in the new financial year. As a result the Pentagon will be receiving $33bn less than it anticipated and funding for "Star Wars" will be slashed. Forced into a corner, the military and their political allies have felt compelled to change their tactics, and the apparently paradoxical result has been a new found enthusiasm for arms control. To see how this has come about, we will take a brief excursion into the bizarre world of nuclear strategy.

To the military mind, there is no such thing as an "unusable" military weapon, and from the earliest days of the US "deterrent”, the Airforce developed plans for massive first strikes against the USSR. General Curtis Le May stated this quite openly in front of a presidential committee in the 1950s. when it was put to him that pre-emptive nuclear strikes were not official US policy. "I don’t care", he replied, "it’s my policy. That's what I'm going to do." This remains the dominant view in the highest reaches of the US military-political establishment. Colin Gray, for example, now a senior presidential adviser, wrote in 1980 that the US should "identify war aims that in the last resort would contemplate the destruction of Soviet political authority and the emergence of a postwar world order compatible with western values". Nuclear weapons were to be treated in the same way as conventional ones had been in previous eras; as a means to destroy opposing military forces and compel compliance with the interests of the victorious national ruling class.

The paradox of using nuclear weapons to accomplish political objectives, however, was that their sheer destructive power could result only in genocidal war. which could have no rational political use. This was the conclusion of the Harmon Committee, which examined the feasibility of a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union in 1948-9.

What was needed, from the point of view of the military planners, were "cleaner" weapons, which could selectively "take out" discrete military targets such as silos, troop assembly points etc. whilst avoiding large-scale "collateral" damage. It has been estimated that 20 million deaths is an "acceptable" level for civilian casualties in this sort of scenario. In recent years, the technological developments necessary to allow such nuclear war fighting strategies have begun to emerge.

In the dehumanised language of nuclear mass murder, the ability of a warhead to destroy a hard target, such as a silo, is measured in terms of "lethality", or “K". “K" is dependent primarily upon how close to the target a warhead is delivered. The first generation of US ICBMs had an accuracy (acronym "CEP") of some 1000-4200 FT. giving a lethality of between 9 and 12. Some meaning is given to these figures when we compare them with the comparable ones for the new generation of US missiles. The MX and Trident D5 have accuracies of just 300 FT and lethalities of 200. whilst Cruise missiles will land less than 200 FT from their targets with a lethality of 300. US scientists are now working on manoeverable terminal guidance warheads which will have accuracies of 120 FT. as well as "earthquake bombs" which bury themselves in the ground before exploding. In practical terms, these missiles can destroy with virtual certainty the hardest of Russian silos. Moreover, simply throwing more of the earlier missiles at a target does not compensate for lack of accuracy, since the first missile to arrive over a target would destroy those following even a split second behind. Greater accuracy, with fewer missiles means greater certainty of a clean kill. Military strategists have even turned the controversy about the "nuclear winter" to their own advantage, by claiming that the theory is only applicable to attacks on cities by the older, indiscriminate nuclear missiles. Military targets such as silos, it is argued, are located in wilderness regions, which would not throw up the debris associated with burning cities. This form of attack is undoubtedly the more ecologically sound!

It will by now be clear that far fewer of the new missiles are necessary in order to pursue an effective nuclear war-fighting strategy, and that the older ones are effectively obsolete in military terms. It is precisely these older missiles that the US will be "sacrificing" in any major arms reduction agreement. This, however, is only half the story. There is another very good military reason for supporting a major cut in the superpowers" nuclear arsenals, and this has to do with the technological limitations of the "star wars" (SDI) programme.

When SDI was first conceived, it was intended as an integral part of a war-fighting strategy; it was to be the shield behind which the US could shelter from Soviet retaliation after delivering its own first strike. Insuperable technical problems have been encountered in attempting to develop such a device, however, and military planners recently conceded that it is not a feasible objective for the foreseeable future. Instead of a massive space security shield protecting US cities, they now plan only to protect vital military installations, and still reckon only to be able to destroy 30 per cent of an all-out Soviet strike, or some 1,300 warheads.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. however. Suppose that the Soviet nuclear arsenal could be cut in half, to some 2,800 land-based warheads and 600 submarine launched ones. Suppose also that the new US missiles could be expected to destroy even half of the remaining forces in a first strike (bearing in mind that five out of six Soviet submarines are stuck in port at any one time and therefore highly vulnerable. This leaves the number of warheads available for a retaliatory Soviet strike at a number which the new slimmed-down SDI might be expected to deal with. The enthusiasm of the military for a treaty which would cut both sides' arsenals by 50 per cent whilst leaving the US free to develop and deploy its own devastating new weapons is thus readily apparent.

The change in the US approach to the Geneva arms talks, therefore, has nothing to do with the changing whims of its leaders, and still less to do with the influence of the peace movement. Rather, it has to do with material factors; the weakness of American capitalism, which necessitates cutbacks in non-competitive production, and the capabilities and limitations of the available technology. This much is conceded by Professor Paul Rogers, a leading spokesman for CND, in a recent article in the New Statesman (8 April). What, however, is to be done about it? Rogers is reduced to calling for yet more campaigning for a test ban and a freeze in the deployment of new weapons; this is apparently "the best that can be hoped for". But military power and its related technology are the necessary accompaniments of the rivalry between competing capitalist and state capitalist blocks. The murderous technologies and strategies of nuclear war do not have an existence outside of this struggle, and cannot be eliminated without first tackling the antisocial system of which they are simply the most terrifying symbols.

Andrew Thomas