Marxism (1972)

From the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism argues that human behaviour arises from the way society is organised. Men’s attitudes and actions reflect the social relationships they form to produce wealth. Thus, for instance, from the Marxist standpoint, war arises from the struggle for profits and can be abolished when capitalism (the system of profits) is removed.

The capitalist class and their story-tellers cannot accept such a proposition. War for them is something apart from society, which arises from the brutal and selfish nature of man. In order to give their system an air of permanence they have to concoct myths about men being naturally greedy and war-like, so that all the violence and inhumanity can be accepted without endangering capitalism.

No other theorist has been so often debunked and has so persistently returned to be debunked again. It is a tragic irony that the very people whose cause Marx so ably championed have ignorantly mouthed the notions of their masters against him. But even this can be understood, for Marx knew that the prevailing ideas in any society were the ideas of the ruling class. The working class were bound to get caught up in the mythology of their capitalist exploiters in the process of developing their political consciousness with a view to ultimately changing society.

Any argument has seemed to suffice to down Marxism, even the fact that he lived and wrote during the nineteenth century. He must be discredited from any claim to relevance in the world of to-day. An understanding of Marx’s ideas about economics and history is a dangerous thing to the capitalist class. If those ideas can be twisted into the advocacy of Soviet-style dictatorship, or dismissed as theories belonging to the past, then Marx’s uncomfortable concept of the class struggle and the transitory nature of capitalism can be conveniently forgotten. It speaks volumes for the unscientific thinking of capitalism’s apologists, that they believe that capitalism is transitory only in Marx’s imagination and that the class struggle will go away if they pretend it isn’t there.

Marx did not invent the class struggle, he simply drew attention to it and made certain logical deductions from it. Just as the facts of evolution in biology were there to be discovered even if Darwin had never lived, so the facts of historical and economic evolution are there whether they please the capitalist class or not.

The great merit of the work of Marx and Engels is that it recognises the unity of knowledge, that is to say the inter-dependence and inter-relation of all branches of science. By making their starting point the productive activity of man in society they make it possible to understand and explain the social relationships and the ideological superstructure of any given stage of history and to link together ideas and movements which otherwise appear isolated and inexplicable.

Modern capitalism with its hideous means of mass destruction and its ever increasing contradiction between wealth and want, can only be understood when seen as a period of history, a phase which because of its own internal contradictions, will be superceded by Socialism. Here it is important to understand that Marxism does not envisage blind or abstract “contradictions” changing society by themselves. We are talking of men in society and the consciousness they develop of and in society. It is the working class whose world-wide majority consciousness and democratic political action will abolish capitalism.

Marxian economics shows that the whole structure of capitalism rests upon the exploitation of wage-labour, not the quest to “allocate scarce resources” as taught to unwary students to-day. The further economists get away from this fact and concentrate exclusively on “inflationary spirals”, share-price movements, and the like, the more mysterious capitalism seems to become.

Economics then appears as a subject for academic study in order to try to manipulate and stabilise the trends in this crisis-ridden system. The actual mechanics of the wage-labour and capital basis, are taken as natural. It all becomes a question of adjustments and regulation. The idea of getting rid of this base is not even considered.

Profits are the mainspring of capitalism. When profits clash with human interest, it is profits that come out best. It might be thought that sometimes profits retreat and human interest prevails. But the class which lives from profits knows that it can be damaging to its long-term interests if the profit motive falls into disrepute, and that it is wise to appear to concede a point and survive for greater plunder another day.

The capitalist class and its political servants are well aware of the public relations aspects of their system. A gloss has to be applied, and the myth has to be maintained, that the big business edifice of modern capitalism is there to supply and to serve us. The consumer is supreme. This is the blatant humbug dished up in the name of economic theory by the “learned” pundits whose unsavoury task is to justify capitalism.

The fact that most consumers are members of the working class, who spend their lives ekeing out their wages, is played down. Where are the modern capitalist economists who regard the wages system as a barrier, restricting the distribution of wealth to what it takes on average to maintain the wage earner in working order and provide replacements? They are so buried in a morass of market trends, charts and diagrams, and so bewildered by their own complex terminology, that they spare hardly a thought for the quality of life in terms of what is consumed.

Having coined the phrase “consumer - sovereignty” they seem quite satisfied. The fact that much of what is consumed is rubbish, or dangerous to the user, or damaging to the environment, is beside the point. It is outside the scope of the economists to busy themselves with such trifles. Let the ecologist worry about the environment. Let the psychiatrist worry about nervous and mental disorders and the soaring suicide rate. Let the surgeon or the researcher worry about the connection between cancer and food adulteration. The economist is concerned only with producing more cars and expanding the GNP ! When cancer and mental illness become so widespread that absenteeism hits output and profits suffer from lost production—that is when it becomes necessary to balance money spent on hospitals against money lost through illness.

The economists would have us believe that what is good for capitalism and its profits, is good enough for all of us. Another of their myths is that there is a ‘national interest’ and we are all in it together. Unfortunately for them, capitalism the world over abounds with examples of the antagonism between wage-labour and capitalism, and of profits having priority over human beings.

No wonder the politicians use glib phrases. To sound lofty is the best they can hope for. If the intricate workings of capitalism bamboozle the “experts”, what can ordinary workers do except abandon themselves to their fate ? This is another subtle ploy of the ruling class. The workers must always be discouraged from thinking that they themselves can effect a solution. No matter how rife the chaos and the turmoil, our lives are in the safe hands of those who know what is best for us —even if they do disagree among themselves and constantly contradict each other.

Harry Baldwin

It may indeed! (1972)

From the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unhygienic, cumbersome, expensive to renew, money is rapidly going out of fashion. The credit card, that magic wand of purchasing power is taking over, bringing with it new problems. A Stanford Research Institute economist believes that thefts and other forms of misuse could drive the credit card companies into bankruptcy within 10 years unless they install equipment to stop the abuses. In New York a stolen card now sells for anything from $75 to $200 depending on its status. The typical loss on a card known to have been stolen is somewhere between $5000 and $7000. To foil the thieves will require devices that can link a document with its true owner by voice, fingerprint or some other physical characteristic. The economist sees nothing for it but to set up a nationwide computer system to check every purchase against the card-holder’s normal spending pattern—and. of course, how much he’s got in the bank. The bewildering assortment of hardware required (including new microwave or satellite networks to transmit the data over long distances) could produce a new industry to handle it. And it isn’t as if that will be the end of it. We shall have to guard against the crooks who invade the computerised hierarchy to funnel off private fortunes from so many credit sources at once that no one will know where the money has gone. How absurd the whole business has become. “To each according to his needs . . ." may yet be the only answer.

Ariadne, The New Scientist, 13 January, 1972.

50 Years Ago: High Prices, Low Prices (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Labour Office, acting upon the instructions of its governing body, instituted an enquiry as a result of a meeting held at Genoa in June 1920. At this meeting a representative of the employers’ group said: - 

‘The cost of living has increased in every country to an alarming extent; this phenomenon is due to many causes, but under-production is certainly one of these causes.’

* * *

The enquiry was entrusted to Professor Milhaud of the University of Geneva and the first volume of the ‘Enquiry on Production’ is now to hand and forms the basis of the article ‘An Enquiry into the Causes of the Decrease of Production’ from which we quote.

There are two lengthy quotations from well-known capitalist representatives, such as Mons. Millerand and Mr. Herbert Hoover . . . both of whom during 1919 and 1920 delivered speeches in which they called upon the workers for increased efforts towards greater production.

* * *

Then follow several lengthy extracts from the report showing the fluctuations of prices during December 1919 and June 1921 . . . which, reaching the highest price point in May 1920, fell considerably between that date and June 1921.

We insert this point because what follows shows that the writer of the article in question must have favoured the demand for increased production, for in commenting upon the great fall in prices he (or she) asks as follows: 

‘Was not this fall in prices just the very remedy of which the whole world was in need? Was not the general high level of prices the scourge under which the whole world had been groaning? Was not the return to normal prices the factor from which increased production was to be expected?’

* * * 

The main point of the article to which we draw attention is, that with the fall in prices the writer seems very disagreeably surprised to find that something else had happened, and with an air of injured innocence he laments: 

‘The fall in prices gave rise to a crisis in production such as the world had not yet witnessed’.

Strange! For it was then discovered that the crisis brought forth a universal restriction of production, a huge systematic plan for all over the world to hold up the production of wealth and thus maintain high prices.

(From an article ‘Capital’s Stranglehold’ by Bob Reynolds, Socialist Standard March 1922.)

May Day: Bedlam Let Loose. (1940)

From the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exactly one year ago the Socialist Standard's annual May-Day Message emphasised the imminent danger of war: to-day this war has been in progress for eight months. Poland, Russia, Finland, and now the Scandinavian lands, have been drawn into its destructive vortex.

The League of Nations, “Collective Security,” the “Peace Front”—all have vanished, and in their place has come the line-up of allies in war, as it has always, down throughout the history of capitalism.

“Armed strength means peace!” “Alliances prevent war!” Does anyone now believe those discarded catch-cries ?

Yet right up to the outbreak of hostilities millions pinned their faith to such spurious arguments. Even now we can hear in some quarters regrets: “If only the Western Powers could have made a pact with Russia … !”

The cause of war to-day is capitalism; the line-up in war is forced on the countries concerned by their interests as capitalist competitors for wealth and trade. The factors that cause wars determine also how the warring governments shall group themselves, these factors are indivisible.

The Berlin-Moscow pact, hailed by the Communists in this country as a “Victory for Peace and Socialism,” gave the signal for the outbreak of war. It left the governors of Britain’s wealth under no further illusions, if illusions they held. Hitler had secured Germany in the East; his next move would be either South-East into the Balkans and ultimately Turkey, or else he would strike directly at the West. In either case it would be a challenge to the Empires of Britain and France. And move Hitler must, the German dictatorship cannot stand still. Its only purpose is to establish Germany as a world Power.

For the present his sleeping partner in Moscow has adopted the role of “belligerent neutral.” The Finnish adventure has tested the Russian military machine, and found it, at least for the time, in some respects wanting; further moves from Moscow have had to be postponed, if not entirely shelved. So the Führer turns to his former ally, Mussolini, hoping to tempt him into a more active role.

In the meantime the battle has already begun in earnest—on the soil of a country, Norway, which has not known the horrors of war for over a century. Towns are bombed, villages entirely destroyed, the civil populations, the aged and the sick, have to drag themselves from their homesteads and flee from the combatants in frantic endeavour to save their lives.

This terror cannot be imagined, it can only be experienced.

What will come next ?

Will total war spread to Sweden—to the low countries—or will a million human bodies be hurled against the walls of steel and concrete on the Western Front ? The decision rests with the class into whose keeping the workers have foolishly given their destiny. Whichever side makes the next move we are certain of one fact: that it will not be decided in the interests of the workers. In the opinion of our rulers, we were born to work and to suffer. It is an opinion which only a growing movement for Socialism can change.

Already the signs of working-class discontent are in evidence. There is not unanimous enthusiasm for war. Even the promise of Hitler’s removal has failed to awaken any jingoism comparable with that in the last war, in this country or in France. We may be sure that millions of Germans are in the same mood, although they have little chance of showing it as yet.

Their time will also come, with or without defeat in war Hitler is doomed.

Hitler claims to be the apostle of a new era— he is wrong. He is the backwash of an old one, the German bourgeois revolution of 1848. His gangster rule can only be a passing phase of German history. The tragic pity is the slaughter that may accompany his downfall.

Hitler and his ideas will not be destroyed by war, rather are they given a temporary new lease of life. Not only in Germany, but in France and Britain, too, forces of suppression are coming to the fore as always in war.

Real progress can only be assured through the growing understanding of working-class people in all lands, an understanding of the world and the social forces that make it what it is to-day.

Socialist propaganda plays a most important part in that mental awakening.

History calls upon the working class to take vhe initiative. We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain accept our share of that responsibility.

Our work will go on. Our ideas are invincible. Neither Hitler’s Germany nor Stalin’s Russia, nor the British Empire, will be able to withstand the march of Socialism.

Sid Rubin

Is it a New I.L.P. ? (1940)

From the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The I.L.P. was formed in the closing years of the nineteenth century, in the years when the need began to be felt for independent parliamentary representation among the more independent-minded worker in the trade union movement. The I.L.P. was not sponsored by the trade unions, but its formation was in conformity with the mood among many for independence. Before the formation of the I.L.P. and the Labour Party, workers who entered Parliament did so as members of and with the support of the Liberal Party.

From the beginning the “independence” of the I.L.P. was very circumscribed. In the early days when some of its members stood as candidates for Parliament its “independence” did not preclude the electioneering methods of the older capitalist parties. When, in the early ‘nineties, Keir Hardie stood for S.W. Ham, he angled for Liberal votes and received the official support of the local Liberals to the extent that the official Liberal candidate stood down in his favour. The political objects of the I.L.P. were vague. Though it used the term “Socialism,” it had no clear conception of its meaning, nor did it attempt at any time to define it. From its early literature and the speeches of its members it meant all sorts of things or anything according to the taste of the individual. Consequently, it attracted to its ranks a varied collection of intellectual odds and ends, reformers, social uplifters, teetotal and other cranks, and the political opportunist—the latter, usually men, who, because of lack of wealth or other backing could not find political careers in the older political parties. In a letter to Keir Hardie from Mr. J. R. MacDonald, for example, it was clear that the latter gentleman was applying to the I.L.P. for membership because the Liberals had refused to give the backing necessary for him to enter Parliament.

After many trade union reverses on the industrial field the Labour Party was formed with the backing of the trade union movement a decade or so after the formation of the I.L.P. From this time the Labour Party grew rapidly and the I.L.P. became an affiliated body. It should need very little argument to show that, whatever minor differences were presumed to exist between the two parties, there could be no real differences on fundamental questions between affiliated organisations. The Labour Party fulfilled the purpose of giving independent parliamentary representation for the interests of the trade union movement. It assumed this function with powerful financial and numerical backing. Whatever hopes the I.L.P. ever had of becoming this instrument they disappeared with the birth of the Labour Party.

The Labour Party was reformist—so was the I.L.P. When candidates of the I.L.P. fought elections they did so as members of the Labour Party, with the latter’s backing and on its programme. Even those few I.L.P. representatives who to-day sit in Parliament owe their seats to the fact that they originally represented their constituencies as Labour M.P.s. Some of them have not had the opposition of the official Labour Party since the two organisations separated. Neither the Labour Party nor the LL.P. has ever advocated Socialism, that is to say, the abolition of capitalism, which would involve the end of the wages system and all that goes with it. In fact, the most “daring” proposals of the I.L.P. which have appeared in the Party’s programme from time to time have always assumed the continuance of the wages system. Family Allowances and the Living Wage policy are pertinent examples. Like the Labour Party, the I.L.P. has never shown signs that it regards Socialism as meaning anything more than Nationalisation or State Ownership. Thus it has recently referred to Russia’s policy in Finland as being a betrayal of Socialism . . . which, of course, is nonsense. A few years ago the LL.P. had in circulation two pamphlets, typical of many, which . illustrated the Party’s conception of “Socialism.” The pamphlets were “Socialism at Work in Queensland” and “Chunks of Socialism.” In the former the reader was asked to be impressed by the efficiency of the State butchers’ shops in that country and the fact that these shops were able to sell meat at a fraction of a penny less a pound than the capitalist “private” retailer. In the latter pamphlet the simple worker was provided with a very simple explanation of the meaning and working of Socialism. He was invited to observe “Socialism” at work during his everyday life. The roads that he walked on, the trams that he rode in, the post office where he bought his stamps and received his old-age pension, were all, he was told, “chunks of Socialism.” Further, he was informed, Socialism merely meant an extension of these things to other activities and the addition of more “chunks.”

The I.L.P. To-day

But what of the I.L.P. as it exists to-day . . ? Can the mistakes and the misconceptions of the past be laid at the door of the present I.L.P. ? Has the breakaway from the Labour Party really resulted in an “independent” party? Does the I.L.P. now stand for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism as we understand it?

I.L.P. propaganda to-day is largely concerned with the war. It takes a line which, in appearance, seems to be fairly sound and in conformity with the Socialist position. It is an imperialist war, it is argued, fought over the question of trade routes, colonies, and for political dominance. This attitude, upon which the I.L.P. appears to be united, is in contrast to the policy of squaring the circle which it exhibited during the last war. Should we, therefore, relax our opposition to the I.L.P. because of their stand on this particular social problem ? The truth is that, with a major war on the doorstep, affecting closely the lives and the interests of the British working class, it would have been surprising had even the I.L.P. taken any other line. The test of a sound approach, however, is when it is a question, not of a major war on the doorstep, but a minor war, which appears to be more remote from British working-class interests and not so obviously an imperialist war. When Italy attacked Abyssinia a few years ago the I.L.P. were not so certain about the nature of the struggle. Dr. C. A. Smith openly supported the slave-owning potentate, the Emperor of Abyssinia, against Italy. Dr. Smith, now chairman of the I.L.P., then stated :

“I now repeat that, had I been in Abyssinia, only conflicting duties or sheer cowardice would have prevented my fighting against the Fascist invaders.”

McGovern, in a letter to the New Leader (May 29th, 1936), said that Smith was supported in this attitude by Fenner Brockway and C. L. R. James. McGovern, with others on the Inner Executive of the I.L.P., took an opposite point of view. The Executive passed a resolution which said :

“In our estimation the difference between the two rival dictators and the interests behind them are not worth the loss of a single British life.”

The similarity of phraseology to the 1914 War Manifesto of the S.P.G.B. will not escape those who are familiar with it. But what happened as a result of this reasonably sound attitude from these leaders of the I.L.P.? At a later conference delegates of the party moved a vote of censure on the supporters of the resolution on the grounds that this line was in opposition to the official I.L.P. policy! The resolution of censure was carried by 70 votes to 57. A rap over the knuckles for the leaders by the led ! Another example was the Spanish Civil War. In this, as in the case of Abyssinia, the I.L.P. overlooked the over-riding capitalist interests which were involved and which could, quite conceivably, have driven the war into an international conflict.

I.L.P. Peace Terms

The I.L.P. appears to have learned sufficient to enable them to appreciate that the war is basically a struggle between the capitalists of Europe. But its understanding seems to go little deeper than that. Let us quote the “Socialist Peace Terms” which feature as the I.L.P.’s chief propaganda at present. The following is from the New Leader (October 3rd, 1939): —

“The I.L.P. has written to Socialist and Labour Parties of all countries urging- a world agitation for peace based on the following principles :—

1. The liberation of peoples in Europe from German Imperialist domination and equally the liberation of the subject peoples of the British and French Empires from alien domination.

2. The recognition that, whilst peoples should enjoy autonomy in social and cultural life, the world has become so closely knit that national sovereignty must be subordinated to international unity.

3. The removal of the economic causes of war by whole-hearted recognition that the abundant resources of the earth make the struggle for markets and raw materials unnecessary, and the establishment of an international economic organisation for the distribution of the world’s resources according to the needs of all peoples.”

There are just one or two essentials in that statement that are amazing for their omission. It talks of the “peoples” as though the fact that the world is divided into an owning class and a dispossessed class, the capitalist class and the working class, just does not exist. It is the jargon of the deliberately vague and opportunist politician. And look at point three: “… the abundant resources of the earth make the struggle for markets and raw materials unnecessary.” Quite. But the strangest omission is a recognition of the fact that whilst the earth’s abundant resources are owned and controlled by the capitalist class different sections of that class will struggle for possession of it. We repeat, a strange omission from a “Socialist” statement on war. And how the I.L.P. proposes that the liberation of the peoples in Europe from German imperialist domination should be effected it leaves to be guessed. The truth is that the problem of peace and war is one for the capitalist class. Socialists cannot even remotely affect the issue. It is sheer moonshine to talk of a “Socialist peace” in a world where there is a non-Socialist working class. More, it is fantastic delusion. In whatever way peace will come it will certainly not be a Socialist peace. Socialists can only continue to express their opposition to war.

The Old Reforms Again

War is only one of the social problems thrown up by capitalism and though the I.L.P. appears to have learned a little of that problem it is still the old I.L.P. where other social problems are concerned, and no nearer an understanding of them than they were forty years ago. Some points from the election address of the I.L.P. candidate in the Stretford bye-election indicate this. They are : —

“(1) Introduce a national living wage, with family allowances, to be paid as a minimum to workers in industry and the armed forces alike.

(2) Conscript wealth by transferring industry, transport, land and banking to public ownership.

(3) Suppress all profiteering by fixing a price for raw material and goods in all stages of production.

I am pledged to fight for these demands. The National Government could—

(4) Immediately increase old-age pensions to 20s. per week and increase unemployment benefit and sickness allowances, widows’ and blind pensions in accordance with every increase in the cost of living.

(5) Stabilise working-class rents within the reach of working-class incomes.

(6) Requisition the mansions of the rich, whether in town or country, for evacuation centres, homes for the aged and infirm.”

Note that family allowances occupies first place. The danger of this proposal to the workers’ standard of living by reducing the income of unmarried workers completely escapes the attention of the I.L.P. Or perhaps it is regarded as just good electioneering. Observe also the old-time favourite vote-catching expedient—minimum wages and increased old-age pensions. Votes given for the candidate were claimed to be anti-war votes by the I.L.P. A little exaggerated in view of the bait. And about that minimum pay to “workers in industry and the armed forces alike.” (Italics ours.)

Does this mean that the I.L.P. is now voting for war credits in Parliament? If they are voting against the annual financial appropriation granted by a vote in the House of Commons, without which the Army could not continue, then it cannot logically ask for increased pay for soldiers. The Army can only get its increased pay if the Army gets its appropriation. Logically, to give increased pay for soldiers, the I.L.P. should support war credits in opposition to its “anti-war policy.”

Take another example of muddled thinking from the New Leader (November 10th, 1939) : —

“On Wednesday the Labour Party demanded in Parliament juster and earlier rationing of food.

The principle of the equal distribution of necessities is sound.

The best way to secure it. however, is not rationing of what money can buy, but rationing the money itself.

The I.L.P. demands the equalisation of all incomes so that there is neither luxury nor want.

It proposes that a national minimum on a living scale should be established and that no worker or soldier should be paid less than this scale.

At the same time there should be a maximum beyond which no income or salary should go.”

Ordinary, simple folk who do not know much about economics would incline to believe that a minimum and a maximum income cancels equalisation. They would, of course, be quite right. But wishy-washy politicians have standards of their own. “Demands” should sound “bold” and be calculated to provoke approval among the unthinking. It is the sort of nonsense that came very easily from the Labour Party in the days when the possibilities of becoming a government were remote. In short it is political peddling.

Time to Define Socialism

The I.L.P. is still the same old party; muddled, reformist and with no real idea of what Socialism really means. Two recent issues of the New Leader show this. In a long article on January 19th the following appeared: “The time has come for us to stress the positive side of our policy. Not just against the war . . . but for Socialism. This will require careful discussion of the meaning of Socialism, of the political and economic structure of the society we want, and of the steps and methods by which to achieve it.” On March 14th, Dr. C. A. Smith, chairman of the I.L.P., said: “Clearly it is high time for Socialists to get down to the job of definition, and make quite clear to themselves what they mean by the term.” After nearly fifty years of existence they are going to start doing something which an organisation claiming to be Socialist should have known from the start! At the recent I.L.P. conference Dr. Smith illustrated his complete inability to do this. He said: “Socialists who value democracy have therefore to consider what they can learn from libertarian doctrines, such as those of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, to study the reason for the success and the destruction of the Soviets in Russia.” What could more illustrate intellectual bankruptcy than this pathetic grasping at the discredited doctrines of the Syndicalists. After the I.L.P. broke away from the Labour Party they began to play with the doctrines of Bolshevism in a similar way. The Party has no real understanding of the problem of capitalism. I.L.P. conference also carried a motion permitting its members to join the Co-operative political party.

Another back door into the Labour Party, a party with whom it would have recently re-affiliated if a sufficiently face-saving formula could have been found, a party with whom it has no fundamental differences, but merely tactical differences on questions of policy.

The I.L.P. has attempted to foster the illusion that its breakaway from the Labour Party eight years ago produced a party of revolutionary Socialism. It has only succeeded in showing that mere discontent with the Labour Party cannot make revolutionaries or Socialists Understanding of the nature of capitalism is required for that. And is what the I.L.P. lacks.

The S.P.G.B. is still the only political party in this country able to apply a revolutionary approach to the problems of capitalism, because it is the Socialist Party.

Harry Waite

Capitalist Federation or International Socialism? (1940)

From the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing for the Workers !

In our previous articles, published in the March and April issues of the Socialist Standard, we have shown that a Federal Union could not bring permanent peace or improve the lot of the working class.

The claims of Federalists are extravagant and Utopian, because they are based upon misunderstandings of the capitalist system. Like all other reformists who have preceded them, the Federalists are attempting to achieve the impossible : they want to retain capitalism, but wish to eliminate the evils it engenders. Reformists of one school or another have, for generations, been trying to realise that happy state of affairs. With what result? The development of capitalism proceeds unhindered and defeats their efforts every time: wars, degrading poverty, malnutrition, overwork, unemployment and countless other evils inseparable from capitalism are still with us.

In discussing Federal Union, we have been compelled to arrive at this conclusion: there is not the slightest reason to believe that Federalists would succeed where other reformists have failed. Capitalism cannot be adapted and made to function for the benefit of the mass of the population.

As a matter of fact, some advocates of Federal Union are aware that their scheme can do little for the workers as a whole. Perhaps this accounts for their attempts to win the approval of the tax-paying capitalist and the better-paid sections of the working class. Perhaps this accounts for the promises of easier travel, or reduced taxation and even the promise of new careers for the educated sons of the well-to-do, who are now finding a difficulty in obtaining “suitable” places in capitalist society.

We read in “Federation and World Order,” by Duncan and Elizabeth Wilson, that “the institution of a Federal government would open a wide choice of new careers in the new civil service that would have to be formed” (p. 178).

Whilst the “brains” would have new careers within the Union, the two writers just quoted have to admit that, for the ordinary person, life would proceed much as it does at present. Here is what they say : —

“First it must be emphasized that in many ways of ordinary life the average man would notice little change ” (p. 177).

Presumably the everyday sufferings peculiar to the working class would remain: the worry of making ends meet, the anxiety about employment, etc.

In fairness to the Wilsons we must add that they promise the average person “the absence of a sense of insecurity which has of late become part of his consciousness.” But we have already shown that Federal Union cannot give anybody “security” from war nor from the threats of war, because it does not touch the economic rivalries which are inherent in capitalism.

When the worker is asked to support Federal Union, he ought, thereore, to remember that even according to some of its supporters “the average man would notice little change.” That is our contention, too; Federal Union can do. nothing for the working class.

Federal Union—A Bulwark of Capitalism

Federal Union stands for the retention of capitalism. Let there be no mistake on that point. It has been openly admitted by several of its advocates.

Mr. Streit, one of the principal supporters of Federal Union, states clearly and definitely in his proposed constitution that Federal Union would safeguard private property. According to him, Federal Union must give “Freedom . . . from having property taken for public use without just compensation.”

Of course, were Streit allowed to have his own way, were his idea to be rigidly adhered to, there could never be a Socialist society. Compensation for property socialised means that previous owners would have a right to claim some of the products of industry. In other words, he wishes to ensure that present property owners will continue to live without working, that they will continue to claim, as their own, wealth produced by our class.

Socialists are opposed to the capitalist class living, like parasites, on the backs of the workers.

Mr. Curry goes further. He wishes to see the ownership of property as widely diffused as possible. It is thus that we shall obtain, he thinks, a population that is “independent,” that “cannot be easily bribed, coerced, or bullied ” (“The Case for Federal Union,” p. 101).

It is a pity that the Federalists do not get down to facts instead of dreaming and indulging in wishful thinking !

Federalists defend capitalism, so they must be prepared to put up with its inconveniences. The fact is that it is inconceivable to have capitalism and an independent population, to have capitalism and a population of property-holders. As Marx observed in “The Communist Manifesto,” nearly a century ago, the development of capitalism destroyed private property for the majority of people. The small peasant was either robbed of his land or else driven out of existence by the competition of large-scale capitalist farmers. The petty artisan, with his small tools, likewise could not compete against the giant machinery possessed by the wealthy capitalist. In both cases, the result was the same. The small peasant and the petty artisan lost possession of their means of production (land, tools, etc.) and became DEPENDENT on the capitalist class for their livelihood.

Nor has this process ceased. As time goes on, capitalism concentrates the means of production into fewer hands, the small capitalist being precipitated into the ranks of the property-less.

Does Mr. Curry think he can fight against this tendency of capitalist society ? Does he think he can turn back the wheel of history ? This is the dream of a Utopian.

What blindness when Mr. Curry says: “Middle-class independence depends upon economic security.” Which economic security?

Capitalism offers no economic security to the “middle class.” Doesn’t Mr. Curry remember the last economic crisis and the thousands of small capitalists it ruined ? Has he forgotten the streets of towns with their shop windows bearing the “To let” posters?

In case he has, these quotations from the Sunday Express (March 2nd, 1930) will serve to refresh his memory and show how little security small tradespeople have : —

1) “Ten thousand shopkeepers, mainly trading in villages and small towns of Britain, have gone bankrupt during the past year.”

2) “Bankruptcies among small shopkeepers have increased 50 per cent, since the (1914-18) war.”

The independence of the small capitalist is a myth. The general trend of capitalism is to replace him by, or make him dependent on, the big combine.

The position of the “middle-class” managers of big firms is little more secure than that of the small tradesman. Technicians and administrators are now trained in such numbers that, if capitalist firms so choose, they can replace them without much inconvenience. This being so, the independence of the salaried worker is also a myth.

To sum up, this is our point. When the masses are divorced from the means of production they cannot be other than dependent upon the capitalist class. When the majority depend on the few for the necessities of life “bribery,” “coercion” and “bullying” are natural normal features of life. Not Federal Union, but Socialism can alone put an end to that dependence.

A Vital Factor

The Federalists reject Socialism on the grounds that some remedy must be found quickly to put the world in order. “Time,” says Mr. Curry, “is an absolutely vital factor.”

This argument has repeatedly been used to dissuade the workers from studying the real cause of their plight, capitalism, and to dissuade them from studying Socialism, the one solution of the world’s ills.

In rejecting Federal Union as being worthless from the point of view of the workers, we take this opportunity of urging them once more to study Socialism.

Earlier in these articles we have shown that capitalism is responsible for the many sufferings inflicted upon the workers. These sufferings will continue as long as capitalism lasts, until the workers take matters into their own hands. Mr. Curry is again wrong when he says: “Mankind is not faced with the immediate alternative, Socialism or disaster.” We say that until Socialism is established working-class history will be one long-series of disasters. These disasters will show themselves in the form of wholesale massacres, prolonged periods of unemployment, struggles to maintain their standard of living, strikes and lockouts. These disasters will confront the working class, Federal Union or no Federal Union. Time, then, is a vital factor. Socialism must be established as quickly as possible.

It is Up to You

The workers can put an end to capitalism as soon as they have the knowledge and the will to act.

The means of production have now reached a stage of development when they could be used to produce enough to satisfy the wants of all. Frequently new processes of industry are not utilised because the markets of the world cannot absorb all rhe good things that are produced. Frequently, too, things are burned or destroyed so as to keep up prices and profits. Obviously production for profit is becoming a more serious fetter as time goes on. Even cabinet ministers and economists have occasionally been obliged to admit that we are living in an age of plenty, that because wealth is being produced in such abundance unemployment and poverty are forced upon the working class.

The Socialist solution for the world’s ills is a simple one, but it needs the co-operation of the majority.

In Socialist society all will co-operate to produce and distribute the things man needs. In return, every member will have free access to the means of life.

Poverty will not exist, because we shall have production for use only, and modern technique assures us of a gigantic output of goods.

Unemployment will not exist, because all those who are physically and mentally able will assist in production.

Wars will cease, because there will be no rivalries for markets. Goods will be made solely for use, not for profit. National boundaries will become meaningless, since the workers of all lands will be co-operating to satisfy each other’s needs. Their interests will be identical. The effort that is now put into the manufacture of armaments will, under Socialism, be directed to the providing of the things all can enjoy.

The armed forces, being unnecessary in Socialist society, its members will give their energies to production.

Obviously, the standard of living of the workers would be greatly increased by the introduction of Socialism, and would go on increasing with each new invention and improved process of production.

It is up to you, then, fellow worker. Are you going to support Federal Union, which, as some of its advocates rightly say, will leave you in your present position, or are you going to organise for Socialism, and win the world?

Clifford Allen

Editorial: Whose Idea was the “Graf Spee” ? (1940)

Editorial from the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Graf Spee was scuttled off Montevideo, the Admiral Scheer torpedoed off the Norwegian coast, and the Deutschland rumoured to have been sunk or damaged in some North Sea encounter, the Press and the war propagandists announced these events as the destruction of Nazi ships. “Hitler’s pocket battleships,” they said, “built to outrun or outgun British capital ships or cruisers, had met their end in fight with the warships they were designed to destroy.”

But the curious fact, hardly noticed, is that Germany’s pocket battleships were neither built nor planned by Hitler’s regime but by his predecessors, the Democrats, Catholics and Social-Democrats, who for the most part, ruled Germany from 1919 to the end of 1932. The Deutschland was laid down in 1930, the Graf Spee in 1931 and the Admiral Scheer in October, 1932. At that time, prior to Hitler’s advent to power, two other pocket battleships were projected, but the plan was changed, and two 26,000-ton battleships, the Gneissenau and Scharnhorst, were built instead. The difference between the Nazi naval programme and the earlier one was not a difference of aim but only of method. The pre-Nazi German governments felt still too weak to defy the limitations imposed by the victors in the last war and therefore directed the skill of their naval designers to the problem of building the most powerful and destructive type of ship within the limit of 10,000 tons imposed upon them. Hitler’s Government, working at a later stage of Germany’s secret re-armament came out into the open and disregarded the restriction. The object was the same, that of building a fleet with which to challenge the sea power of rivals, particularly Great Britain. (It is hardly necessary to treat seriously the German Government’s explanation that the “pocket battleships” were “designed with a view to service against the Polish Navy in the Baltic.”)

Similarly it was the pre-Nazi governments which, with the help of Russia and other Powers, were carrying on the secret building up of Germany’s military forces. According to a naval correspondent of the Evening Standard. (April 9th, 1940) the plan for the invasion of Norway was worked out years before and had been “considered as long ago as 1926.”

From German Social Democrats to British Labourites

What are we to conclude from this ? It certainly shows the absurdity of placing the full responsibility for making war on one man. Does it then justify those who maintain that the Germans (including the German workers and Labour Party) are an inferior people, particularly prone to aggression and to being twisted by their naval, military and political castes ? Are they a deceitful race, guilty of having made these preparations for war while talking all the time of peaceful methods and supporting League of Nations schemes for disarmament and peace ? The answer can be found by looking up the record of their counterparts in Great Britain. The 1924 Labour Government, with protestations that another war was unthinkable, nevertheless went on with the building of the battleships Rodney and Nelson, put into effect a programme for five new cruisers, increased the expenditure on the Air Force and planned that Air Force expenditure would go on increasing for several years. Just as, in England, there was a slight protest from a minority Labour group, so also did a similar small group protest in Germany against their Government’s naval programme. The British Labour Government were not, however, by any means sure that the enemy against which these forces might be used was Germany. Indeed, at the 1925 Labour Party Conference the late Mr. Arthur Henderson resisted a resolution for disarmament on the ground that the armaments might be need for defence against France if that country “continued in the frame of mind she was now in” (Conference Report, Page 232).

How then does it happen that British and German Labour politicians claiming to represent the workers’ desire for peace should alike have been instrumental in making preparations for war ? It is because capitalism does and must breed international rivalries leading to war. No amount of good intentions on the part of those who, in the name of Labour, take on the administration of capitalism will disarm that savage monster.

There is ample room in a Socialist world for the peoples of the world co-operating for their common good, but there is no room in a capitalist world for rival powers, each seeking profit through the capture of markets, conquest of raw materials and the control of trade routes and strategic points for their armed protection. For all of them the watchword is “Expand or explode.” Hitler or no Hitler, it is the law of capitalism, the law of the jungle.

Thyssen and a Federal Germany. (1940)

From the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fritz Thyssen is in the news, and it may be advisable for the working class to try and discover why this gentleman, only recently a close friend of Hitler, now receives publicity of a not unfavourable character at the hands of Hitler’s enemies.

A Dutch paper recently published a review of the amazing intrigues of the German capitalist class and the Third Reich.

From a translation of the article above referred to, made by Mrs. D. G. Steeves, member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, and published in the B.C. Federationist of recent date, we take the following: —

“Fritz Thyssen, representative of the world-famous industrial dynasty of that name, once the all-powerful dictator in the great German Steel Trust, after 1933 by the grace of Hitler, Supreme State Authority of the German economy, has now fled to a foreign country, leaving: all his capital behind him. Now he in lives in Ascona, pleasant little refugee colony on the Swiss side of Lake Maggiore, cheek by jowl with the former social democrat minister, Otto Braun, and the writer of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Erich Remarque. We live in a strange world.

Thyssen’s flight from Germany has created astonishment. For it is well known that he was the first powerful personage who sought and made contact with Hitler after the national-socialist collapse in Bavaria. One of the witnesses in a lawsuit at “Dusseldorf” in 1930, who happened to be a director of one of the great coal-mining companies, controlled by Thyssen, was forced to testify that this company contributed one pfennig of every ton of coal mined to the coffers of the national-socialist party. In that same year Thyssen became a member of the party. Two years later, in 1932, the national-socialist party had another serious crisis and Thyssen was the only industrial leader of the Rhineland area who took Hitler’s part . . .

Thyssen worked hard for Hitler in those days, trying to win over the organised barons of industry. It was from Castle Landsberg that Hitler drove to Dusseldorf to make his famous speech in the Club of Manufacturers, by which he succeeded in winning the industrial leaders of the Rhineland and Westphalia District to his cause, Mr. Krupp included. Thyssen had prepared the ground well!

It was on a snowy wintry day. In front of the Park Hotel in Dusseldorf, where the Club of Manufacturers met, the police had great difficulty in restraining a mob of thousands of demonstrating workers. Hitler had to enter secretly at the back. While he was speaking inside, the heavy shutters of the hotel were closed and the police charged the demonsrators again and again. Hitler and Thyssen escaped secretly in a car with closed blinds.

A year later Hitler was Chancellor of the Reich. 

Without any other background than this dramatic episode the flight of Thyssen seems strange. It is more comprehensible if one takes a look behind the scenes of the tremendous struggle for power between the big business leaders of the Rhineland-Westphalian area. And they were not very particular as to what weapons they used. It was told, for instance, that during the era of Kaiser Wilhelm “old Thyssen” sent the nortorious “Kornwalzer letters” to Karl Liebknecht, by which the socialist leader was enabled to make his famous denunciation of Krupp in the Reichstag.

In 1930, when Thyssen finally joined the national-socialist party, the opponents of the Thyssen group had delivered a smashing blow to “young Thyssen.” With the advent of the slump in 1929, “Vereinigte Stahlwerke,” Thyssen’s Steel Trust, was virtually bankrupt. They had debts amounting to 700 million marks.

In 1926, Fritz Thyssen had hoped to make himself ruler of the most powerful trust in the world, and was very nearly successful. However, at the last minute he was unexpectedly defeated by his old opponent, Krupp. I. G. Farben (The German Chemical Trust) was also his implacable enemy. But Thyssen had 26 per cent. of the share capital of the Steel Trust and virtual control. Moreover, through interlocking directorates, he had a voice in 30 other big industries; he was a director of the Rhineland-Westphalia Coal Syndicate, and also a director of the Reichsbank, so the road to an industrial monarchy seemed fairly clear. After the slump, in 1930, it was a different story. He was no longer a controlling factor in the Steel Trust. All his enterprises were so weakened that, for a while, it seemed that all he could do would be to put his business under control of the State or lose it entirely to the bank, unless a miracle intervened. A new man, Frederick Flick, had come up and pushed “young Thyssen” to one side, a dark horse, who had been a small manufacturer. It was then that Thyssen joined the national-socialist party.

In 1932 a tremendous scandal broke suddenly in Germany, in the days of the Bruning-Schleichei government. It was revealed that the government had bought the bulk of the shares of the great mining concern Gelsenberg from its owner, Flick, at a fantastic price, millions more than they were worth. The national-socialist papers made great play of this, reproached Bruning and Flick in hectic terms, as defrauders of the Reich. But Bruning and Flick declared that France had made an offer for the business, and that if the government had not acted the mines would have been delivered into foreign hands. When Paris denied this, Flick revealed that the agent for the French deal had been Fritz Thyssen.

It was fear of the outsider Flick which finally drove the Rhineland big business group into the arms of Thyssen and Hitler. In one of the first proclamations of the “Supreme State authority of the German economy,” Thyssen delivered himself of a tirade against foreign control of German business. . . . Flick was vanquished. However, a new rival soon arose in the colossal Herman Goering State Trust, which competed with the older Rhineland-Westphalian trusts. Shortly after its establishment, Thyssen fled from Germany for the first time. His former enemies, Krupp and the directors of I. G. Farben. persuaded him to come back. They knew they would be able to use him.

Big industry feels it can no longer implicitly trust the present Government. The documents on certain old, but not forgotten, affairs, in particular the old affair, in which Thyssen in 1921, on the accusation of Communists and other leftists, was arrested because he allegedly tried to “sell out” the occupied Rhine and Ruhr area to the enemy, France, have been preserved and are in the dossiers in keeping of Police Chief Himmler. A new type of propaganda is being issued by the German Government to-day, booklets entitled “From Rurik to Stalin,” “The Meaning and Growth of Russia.” “Facts About the U.S.S.R.” It is not outside the realm of possibility, that one day Police Chief Himmler will open up those interesting dossiers. … In the “struggle for the soul of the German worker” these things might be very useful. And it cannot be expected that the industrialists will hang together. There is no honour or loyalty amongst thieves.

 Perhaps Fritz Thyssen feared that he would be the first victim. It is being rumoured that he was summoned to Berlin, but evidently he chose to retreat to picturesque, idyllic Ascona, rather than face the more exciting distractions of Berlin.

You can’t blame him.”

The latest news at the time of writing is that Herr Fritz Thyssen is now in Paris. Just previous to his departure from Switzerland the Daily Telegraph of March 23rd paved the way to an understanding of what was being attempted by this industrialist whose capitalist interests are in jeopardy.

The Daily Telegraph quotes a letter from Thyssen to a German paper published in South America: —

“In making the war Hitler disregarded all facts, objective or subjective. There is not a word of truth in all that Hitler wants to make us believe.

We no longer want a dictatorship—neither dictatorship by a party, nor by the party, nor by one man, nor by youth in uniform.

Force must not take the place of happiness. Never more must there be pogroms, nor concentration camps, nor tortures, and above all, never more an alliance with Bolshevism.

Instead we want a Federated Germany on the lines of Switzerland. We want the disarmament of Europe without desire for vengeance and victory.

The Powers on both sides have equal technical means at their disposal. But supplies of raw materials are not the same. Therefore Germany has lost the war.

Herr Thyssen invites all workmen to unite against Hitler, the enemy of Germany, to prevent the ruin of Germany.'”

Not much patriotism in these fellows; they follow the bait of profit wherever it may lead them, but how little they know of the nature of the forces at work.

It will be observed that Thyssen advocates a “Federated Germany.” It is interesting to contrast this with the views expressed by Trotsky.

In the News Chronicle of March 20th he maintains that: “The unification of the German nation was an inseparable result of its capitalistic development. In order to dismember the present Germany it would be necessary to break the backbone of the German technique, destroy German factories and exterminate the significant part of the population. It is easier to say than do.”

Trotsky sees that the Allies’ programme of freedom and independence for small nations is out of line with reality. His conclusions in this connection are that small states have as little chance of independence in competing with imperial interests as the independence of small industrial and commercial enterprises under the domination of trusts and corporations : the comparison is apt.

France wishes to dismember Germany whilst the latter wants to unify Europe and subject all the countries in it to German rule.

The task of economic unification may be in the line of progress, but the problem is: Who is to unify, how, and what for?

The European nations, according to Trotsky, will not consent to be locked in the barracks of ” National Socialism.” All attempts in this direction tend to provoke bloodshed.

The two peace programmes are, therefore, on the one hand, the Balkanization of Germany and thereby of Europe, and on the other, the transformation of Europe and then of the entire world into totalitarian barracks. The present war is being waged for the sake of these two programmes.

Mr. Thyssen evidently thinks that his interests will be best served if he goes into the Allies’ camp; this is interesting, in view of the past history of the Thyssen family.

When the Allies tried to realize their peace programme after the last war the victors failed. Truly the Romanovs, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns were swept from power, but so also were their opponents. Clemenceau and Lloyd George were kicked out of office and Wilson ended his days a bitterly disillusioned man.

All the present governments, says Trotsky, will go down in the present struggle : the capitalist system is in a blind alley. The only programme the ruling class will maintain is one that is calculated to save their own skins.

We do not venture to cast the horoscope like Trotsky; we cannot inform our readers what the stars foretell.

We are told that without an entire reconstruction of the economic system on a European and world scale our civilization is doomed. The struggle of blind forces and unbridled interests must be replaced by the rule of reason, of plan and conscious organization.

We may or may not agree with this, but when he says all this is to be done by the popular masses led by the proletariat, we should like to know a little more about his definitions of masses, proletariat and, above all, leadership.

We do not need leadership by Trotsky or any other.

Trotsky continues his over-confident prophecies:

“Europe must become a Socialist United States if it is not to become the cemetery of the old culture. A Socialist Europe will proclaim full independence of colonies, establish friendly economic relations with them and, step by step, without the slightest violence, by means of example and collaboration, introduce them into a world Socialist federation.”

It’s all worked out, you see. When the working class understand their class position they will establish Socialism and in doing so remove all barriers to world unity, but they will do it in their own way, not according to any leader’s plan but in a manner that will surprise all leaders and would-be leaders, even Leon Trotsky.

Charles Lestor

SPGB Meetings and Lectures. (1940)

Party News from the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

How can you help to extend the Party's influence. (1940)

Party News from the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of our readers would like to do something in a small way, in addition to our direct approach method, in order to spread Socialist ideas. Here is one suggestion.

Nowadays local and suburban papers contain outspoken letters in the correspondence columns. Where the address of the correspondent is published, either of two methods can be adopted. One is to send a copy of the Socialist Standard in a halfpenny wrapper without comment. A second method is to send the address together with a sixpenny postal order, to the Publicity Committee, who will then arrange to send a copy of the Socialist Standard for three consecutive months and subsequently a letter inviting the recipient to read our pamphlets.

Publicity Committee.

Voice From The Back: Still Accumulating (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Still Accumulating

In last month’s column we reported on how in India capitalism was repeating the process that Karl Marx had analysed in Capital, under the heading of the primitive accumulation of capital; now an identical procedure is being carried out in China. “Several people have been injured in the latest violent clash between villagers and armed police in southern China. …China reported 74,000 demonstrations involving more than a 100 people in 2004.” (Times, 16 January) These demonstrations are by farmers protesting at the seizure by the government of land that they have tilled for generations. The seizures are extremely violent as shown by the death of three protesters gunned down by the police in the previous month.

Same Old Story

Under the headline “People die of famine in nation that exports food” the Times (18 January) expresses astonishment over events in Kenya. “The British aid agency Merlin found that 27 per cent of children around the town were malnourished — nearly twice the 15 per cent emergency level.” Their astonishment is because: “Kenya is a food exporter. Grain silos are still full from last year’s harvest.” Their misunderstanding is because they think malnourishment is caused by drought rather than capitalism, after all in the 19th century during the Irish potato famine Ireland was exporting food. It’s the same all over the world throughout history, if you have money you eat, if you’re poor you starve. That is how capitalism works.

Some Mean Cities

Capitalism is a dangerous society. How dangerous often depends on what part of the world in which you live. More important than that though is the class to which you belong. According to recent figures if you are a man and live in the Gaza Strip your life expectancy is 70.5 years. If you live in some other areas of the war-torn Middle-East it is even lower, but even more hazardous is trying to survive in the working class area of Calton in Glasgow. “In Iraq, life expectancy is 67. Minutes from Glasgow city centre, it’s 54.” (Guardian, 21 January). The message seems clear for all potential parents — don’t have your child reared in a war zone, but if you can’t manage that, at least avoid a working  class area in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham or Newcastle. Capitalism is a killer society, no matter where you live.

The Uncaring Society

We live in a harsh, brutal society; but even by its standards the following report is a shocker. “ A postal worker rode in a subway train around New York for six hours before a commuter noticed he was dead” (Times, 25 January). The 64-year-old Vietnam veteran had joined the subway after finishing work at 1am and his train had covered the 15-mile circuit six times before he was discovered. In the rat race that is capitalism human beings become callous towards others, but probably a contributing factor to this piece of inhumanity was the knowledge that eye contact in the New York subway can prove to be dangerous at certain times.

A Disastrous System

Under the headline “World has only 20 years to stop climate disaster”, the Times (31 January) reported on the document Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. This reported on the conference hosted by the Met Office in Exeter last year. The release of carbon dioxide is causing the polar caps to melt and many areas face disastrous flooding. As every government in the world represents the interests of the capitalist class, who in their mad drive for profits are polluting the atmosphere, the future looks disastrous unless we can get rid of capitalism. 

Education Is A Commodity

Everything that is produced in capitalism takes the form of a commodity even education. “A detailed look at half a million pupils will show that bright children from the poorest families are often fated to perform below their potential. Success at primary school can soon become irrelevant as children repeatedly fail to get places at the country’s top schools, the study by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation will say.” (Observer, 5 February) Everything that is produced — housing, clothing and food — is distributed according to your wealth. Why should education be any different in a buying and selling society? 

All Right For Some

Every day we read in the newspapers about poverty, world hunger and crime, but it is not all doom and gloom inside capitalism. Take the case of billionaire Larry Ellison, reputed to own about $17 billion, his lawyer reported to a San Francisco court that Ellison owned a $194 million yacht. “But most intriguing is the money his accountant set aside for what are described as “lifestyle” expenses: $55,000 a day.” (Times, 7 February) $55,000 a day? Yes $55,000 a day. We definitely need a revolution!

Pathfinders: Sorry, Page Cannot Be Displayed (2006)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sorry, Page Cannot Be Displayed

“Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace. I simply don’t understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.” Tom Lantos of the US House International Relations subcommittee was pulling no punches when upbraiding representatives of Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Google for their supine acquiescence to the Chinese government’s insistence on strict censorship in their search engines. He further told them that they had accumulated great wealth and power, “but apparently very little social responsibility” (BBC Online, Feb 15). Google recently agreed to block politically ‘sensitive’ sites and even words, including the word ‘democracy’, while Yahoo has recently been accused by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders of handing over information to the Chinese authorities that resulted in an 8 year prison sentence for the writer Li Zhi in 2003 and a 10 year stretch for another writer, Shi Tao, in April 2005.

But with an internet population of 111 million, the largest outside the US, China is hard to resist, and service providers who resist its charismatic charms, or who debate political ethics, are likely to end up in history as footnotes. This is globalisation, after all, and arguably it’s not all as bad as it sounds. Accusations that these companies are assisting China to suppress rebellion in return for market share is not entirely fair, since the world saw graphically how well China was able to suppress open rebellion entirely by its own efforts. Chinese capitalism is moving towards liberalisation because liberal capitalism is cheaper and easier to run than state repressive capitalism, and the entry of western IT into China is the thin end of the liberal wedge, bound even though it presently is by guards and restrictions. And unlike Yahoo, Google shows on its search results page which sites have been blocked, so that users in China do at least know that they are being censored. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we knew what information was being denied to us in the West?

PVI PDQ?

Hold the front page! Sex is good for you, says study! Acute stress is relieved by sex, according to new research from the University of Paisley, UK (New Scientist, Jan 28). If this sounds like one of those studies scientists frequently conduct simply to prove the galloping obvious, here’s the twist – it has to be penetrative vaginal sex, because other forms including masturbation don’t work as well, and abstinence doesn’t work at all. Of those studied when put in a high stress situation, those who had had exclusively penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) recovered fastest, followed by those who had had non-coital sex or simply masturbated. Abstainers had the highest blood pressure and took longest to recover. The researcher, Stuart Brody, speculated that the result might be caused by a ‘pair-bonding’ hormone called oxytocin, released during penetrative sex.

What the study doesn’t show, of course, is the states of mind of those involved. It seems logical to Pathfinders at least that those having PVI are also most likely to be those enjoying another, more unquantifiable, phenomenon: love. So could it be love that takes the stress away, rather than the sex?

At any event, capitalism has done the same antisocial thing to sex that it has done to food, clothes, shelter, and all those other little needs of ours – it has commodified it, which means in practice that a very large proportion of the population have no access to it. It will be very interesting, once the brutal and human-hating engine of capitalist market culture has been switched off, to rerun these studies. Pathfinders suspects that there will be a lot more sex, and a lot less stress, all round.

Life Sentence

Further to our enquiry (Socialist Standard, Feb 2006) concerning the dubious benefit of living longer in capitalism, apparently we can already look forward to the even more dubious appeal of 75 year mortgages and a retirement age of 85 (BBC Online, Feb 17).

Shripad Tuljapurkar, a biologist from Stanford University, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St Louis that anti-ageing advances could raise life expectancy by a year each year over the next two decades. This was, he thought, going to put a strain on social security and medical care, unless the retirement age was raised. Translated, what this means is that the capitalist class is damned if it’s going to pay for workers to have a long holiday from hard labour when they could be nose to the grindstone for another twenty years, or until they drop dead.

The biologist did add that the trend towards longevity would create a “permanent underclass” in poor countries that didn’t have the same resources. Sadly, this underclass already exists, and living to the age of 45 would be an achievement for many members of it.

‘Fiasco’ in Chad.

Imagine giving a mugger your wallet on condition that he only used the money to look after homeless kittens. This is pretty much what the World Bank did when, in collaboration with Exxon Mobil, it invested $4.2 bn to develop oilfields in southern Chad and then build a pipeline to pump all this lovely oil through neighbouring Cameroon to the coast.

Now as everyone knows, Chad is a corrupt dictatorship with no record of respecting human rights or giving two hoots about its own poverty-stricken population, but the government was surprisingly keen to agree to use the profits from all this oil development to invest in social healthcare programmes, a condition the pious World Bank insisted on. Now that the work has been done and the pipeline in place, the Chad government has – shock, horror! – reneged on the deal and used the first profits for what it euphemistically calls ‘internal security’, ie. suppress poverty-inspired revolts and also, probably, start another war with Sudan (New Scientist, Feb 11).

Pathfinders would like to offer its services to the World Bank as consultant (at appropriate fees) the next time it plans to make a deal with a despotic bunch of crooks. Predicting this cock-up would have been easy money. But the suspicion is that the World Bank is not really as naïve as it looks, and that in among the hand-wringing a satisfactory deal has been done. Exxon Mobil, for one, must be crying all the way to the bank.

Paddy Shannon

Real Men Want to Go to Iran (2006)

From the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’ll be watching the news headlines, or maybe there’ll be a news flash, and we’ll be informed that the RAF, along with the USAF’s long-range B-52 bombers, and the Israeli Air Force have carried out overnight bombing raids across Iran, targeting nuclear facilities, radar stations, airfields and anti-aircraft bases.

As in the case of Iraq, there will be the prior attempt at the mass manufacture of consent. Bush and Blair, and indeed any other European leaders who think they will have something to gain, will peddle the line about newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They’ll say he is another Saddam Hussein who, if Iran’s nuclear programme is not halted, will be able to lob a nuclear missile at the West in a few minutes and that Iran is supporting international terrorism, financing terrorist cells all over the world, including Al Qaeda. The case will be made that Iran is still very much a part of the axis of evil, first referred to in George W Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2002, and its people, secretly harbouring thoughts of Western-style democracy, are crying out for regime change.

Indeed, it has already started. In his January 2005 State of the Union Address, Bush said: “Iran remains the world’s primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.” The White House has in fact been steadily creating an anti-Iran climate in the US for some time. The Wall Street Journal (3 February) reported that “in recent polls a surprisingly large number of Americans say they would support U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran from getting the bomb.”

Both Bush and Blair have already hinted at military intervention and Israel has previously threatened Iran. The New York Times (13 January) reported Meir Dagan, the chief of the Israeli Mossad, declaring that “Israeli policy makers all agree that a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities cannot be ruled out”. The Sunday Times (11 December) had already reported that Ariel Sharon had instructed Israel’s air force to get ready for a military attack against Iran by the end of March, when Israeli elections are scheduled. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, gave notice that if Sharon did not wipe out Iran’s nuclear installations, he would see the job was done if he became prime minister in March.

A year ago it was reported that Iran was anticipating an attack by the US and that it was ready for an impressionable response within 15 minutes. For over a year Iran has been mobilising recruits into citizens’ militia and has made plans to engage in the kind of “asymmetrical” warfare that has bogged down US troops in neighbouring Iraq.

Iran has sizeable oil reserves that look quite enticing and which other countries have been eyeing up for some time. The highly regarded Oil and Gas Journal reported last year that 125.8 billion barrels of oil were in Iran just waiting to be pumped out. Iran is also the number two producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Most of Iran’s crude oil is to be found in an area known as Khuzestan, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf and the location of Iran’s largest untapped oil fields – Yadavaran and Azadegan. There are serious profits to be had here but, tellingly, the Chinese state oil company China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation has a 50 percent stake in the vast Yadavaran field.

Russia too has a claim in Iranian oil. Three years ago Russia decided to expand its oil procuring and distribution methods by shipping Russian crude to Iran, to be refined for domestic consumption, with Iran delivering a corresponding amount of oil to Russia, thus decreasing the cost of exports via tankers loaded at Black Sea ports and making Russian oil accessible to buyers at competitive prices.

So it’s unlikely that Russia and China will agree to a UN Security Council Resolution against Iran which could justify military action if it is thought to have been breached; for they have strong vested interests in Iran which they are desperate not to jeopardise. Not that this will bother the US in the least, as both Russia and especially China are economic powers that threaten US global ambitions, so any attack on Iran, which consequently leads to the overthrow of the present regime in Tehran, upsets the long-term ambitions of China and Russia.

Iran would be no push-over. The US would not enjoy a hasty capitulation of the Tehran regime, as was the case with Baghdad, exhausted by over a decade of perpetual bombardment and sanctions. The Iranian army comprises about 350,000 active-duty soldiers and 220,000 conscripts and you can add to this 120,000 of the elite Revolutionary Guard. The country’s navy and air force total 70,000 men. Between them, the armed forces have about 2,000 tanks, 300 combat aircraft, and three submarines, hundreds of helicopters and at least a dozen Russian-made Scud missile launchers, the kind Saddam fired at Israel during the first Gulf War of 1991. Iran also has an unknown number of Shahab missiles with a range of more than 1,500 miles. With this in mind you can begin to appreciate the remarks of John Bolton, now the US ambassador to the UN, in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq: “Real men want to go to Iran”.

True, a lot of Iran’s military hardware is old, thirty years old in some cases, and no match for the state-of-the-art weaponry the US is wont to use. Nevertheless, it is still weaponry and more than capable of delivering untold damage to US forces or any other country within striking distance of its missiles perceived as being pro-US.

With Iran controlling the Strait of Hormutz, oil tankers could easily be bombed as well tankers and platforms elsewhere in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. And Tehran could escalate any conflict, giving the nod for Lebanese Hezbollah militant attacks on Israel, sanctioning also assaults on US interests throughout Central Asia.

Oil Bourse

This month Iran intends to launch its Oil Bourse which will facilitate the future trade of oil in the euro instead of the US dollar. According to John Pilger writing in the New Statesman (13 February) this could have far-reaching consequences:

“The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8trn and a trade deficit of more than $600bn. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2trn. America’s military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China. That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran’s nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world’s fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world’s central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.”

Likewise, Krassimir Petrov, Professor of Economics at the American University of Bulgaria, writing of the establishment of an Oil Bourse in the January edition of Energy Bulletin, said:

“In economic terms, this represents [a great threat] because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for euros to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the US dollar altogether. Europeans will not have to buy and hold dollars in order to secure their payment for oil, but would instead pay with their own currencies. The adoption of the euro for oil transactions will provide the European currency with a reserve status that will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans … The Chinese and the Japanese will be especially eager to adopt the new exchange, because it will allow them to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with euros, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar.”

Addicted to oil?

George Bush, in his January 2006 State of the Union Address made an interesting statement: “The US is addicted to oil”. That’s perhaps the truest statement Bush has ever said, but he’s mistaken if this is meant to signify that the US is going into detox and will be weaning itself off oil. At the moment there is just too much US corporate interest in the Middle East and Central Asia for the US to even think of cutting back on one barrel of oil.

Furthermore, there are dangerous competitors out there, who have an insatiable thirst for oil, so it’s important that the US has a say in who has access to the world’s oil resources. The US is not that dependent upon Middle East oil for its own domestic consumption, but is aware that one way to control its foremost economic rivals is to influence just how much oil they can have and at what price. With China a fastly growing economic, political and military power, naked aggression is a strategy the US has been and will continue to be prepared to pursue throughout the oil rich regions of the Middle East and central Asia, regardless of the cost of life and the dent to the US’s global image. The dollar needs defending, the world’s oil resources need to be controlled and military bases built. Dealing with Iran is just one move in the US game-plan to maintain its global hegemony – the real enemy is yet to be confronted.

But for now Washington will use its man at the UN, John “Real Man” Bolton, to help hype a global crisis which could consequently be used to justify attacks on Iran, with or without the blessing of the Security Council. No evidence exists as to Iranian desires to create an atomic bomb, but the country is enriching uranium – legally, as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which some pro-US nuclear states have refused to sign up to. This is the excuse that is being used to whip up support another war for oil.

John Bissett