Adventures in Marxism

From the From Despair To Where blog:

A couple of years ago, I picked up Marshall Berman's Adventures in Marxism. I couldn't get on with it and chucked it aside. But recently I stumbled across it again, dipped in at random, and have been hooked ever since. It's the first 'unputdownable' book I've read in ages.

For the first time in years, it's made me want to go back to Marx. Berman's genius is to make Marxism seem relevant. When most Marxists try to do that, they just give us a dull lecture on how capitalism has or hasn't changed, the relevance or not of Marx's analysis of capitalism, how he got it right or not about globalisation, and so on. Berman, on the other hand, likes to focus instead on the individual lives of individual workers, what they think about their lives and work, what they think about prospects for the future, their hopes and dreams, whether realised or frustrated. He shows that they are rarely stupid, often intelligent and thoughtful, never as trapped by fetishism and false consciousness as many Marxists would have it. They may be stuck in pointless jobs, but they are also able to construct something meaningful and creative out of their lives. And however trapped ordinary workers may or may not be in their jobs, Berman shows that they're rarely as trapped as Marxist intellectuals are in their own thought. In a brilliant piece on Perry Anderson, Berman says:

"Another reason that I've written so much about ordinary people and everyday life in the street, in the context of this controversy, is that Anderson's vision is so remote from them. He only has eyes for world-historical Revolutions in politics and world-class Masterpieces in culture; he stakes out his claim on heights of metaphysical perfection, and won't deign to notice anything else. This would be all right, I guess, except that he's so clearly miserable over the lack of company up there. It might be more fruitful if, instead of demanding whether modernity can still produce masterpieces and revolutions, we were to ask whether it can generate sources and spaces of meaning, of freedom, dignity, beauty, joy, solidarity. Then we would have to confront the messy actuality in which modern men and women live. The airmight be less pure, but the atmosphere would be a lot more nourishing; we would find, in Gertrude Stein's phrase, a lot morethere there. Who knows – it's impossible to know in advance - we might even find some masterpieces or revolutions in the making."

I think that passage might sum up why I hated the book the first time round, and love it now. First time around, I identified more with the Andersons of this world. But Berman's right: it's lonely and miserable up there. We can't wait for revolution before doing everything we can to fill our lives with joy and freedom.

In another piece in the book, Berman even makes me want to go back to Marx's Capital. And given how much pain and anguish it caused me the first time round, that's no mean feat. Berman's review of it focuses onthe people that talk to us from the pages, the "shopkeepers and sharecroppers, the miners and millowners, poets and publicists, doctors and divines, philosophers and politicians, the world-famous and the anonymous". Marx takes us, argues Berman, "back to the glorious days of the 19th century novel", where some of the "most vivid characters appear for only a moment; [and] others stay with us for long stretches and engage Marx in long and passionate argument; others disappear for hundreds of pages, only to return transformed". But it also looks forward to the modernist masterpieces of Eliot and Joyce, with its "voices from mythology and poetry, sorcery andtheology, from every country and culture under the sun".

Berman again:

"Marx's point in presenting this immense and bizarre chorus is to show capitalism as a maelstrom that sweeps the whole world into its flood, past and present, reality and mythology, East and West: everything and everyone is caught up and whirled in the world market, nothing and no one has the power to hold back. We the readers – along, of course, with the writer – are part of it; we respond, our voices are incorporated into the chorus; the audience finds itself onstage. This may be one reason why, like many great modernist works, Capital never really comes toan end: it reaches out to us in the audience, and challenges us to give the work an ending, by bringing an end to capitalism itself […]

"[Marx's] feeling for contradictions infuses the wholeof Capital with vitality and adventure. An adventureis not an idyll: much of its excitement springs from its risks, from the chance that it could end horribly; but we go on, because we are moving in an ambience of life and hope. The ambience could be a great gift to us today. It is right there, in Capital: the book lies open and open-ended, waiting only for us to give ourselves."

Wonderful stuff. But, says a critic, didn't Marx get it wrong? Berman has the best answer to this we haveyet come across, and I'll finish with just one more quote from him:

"Even when Marx is studied in universities… his thought gets chopped up into various theories to be verified or refuted, and methods to be followed or discarded; what gets left out is what is most alive and exciting, Marx's vision of the world as a whole. A writer's vision of life is less tangible than his politics, economics, religion, ideology; but it goes deeper, and it is what makes his work last long after his causes have won or lost or faded away. Literate people understand this in general: they know that the truth and power in Plato doesn't depend on the validity of his theory of ideas, that Dante can change our lives even if Thomism doesn't, that Dostoevsky's hold on our souls doesn't stand or fall with his claims for the power of the Russian soul. But so many ordinarily sophisticated people become crude when they come to Marx: they observe acidly that workers are often nasty and brutish, or that capitalism hasn't collapsed, or that, in places where it has collapsed, the state hasn't withered away; they note these things, rather impatiently, then slam the book closed and walk away fast without looking back. They forget, or repress, something that they normally know: that it's possible for a writer to be wrong about all sorts of things, and yet to tell the truth about life."

Stuart W.

"Interview With Marx" (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Interview with Marx

Question 1 : Dr Marx , you are well known as the author of a book on economics but I think you studied law at university, didn't you ?

Karl Marx: Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject subordinated to philosophy and history. In the year 1842-43 , as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests . The deliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts and the division of landed property; the first polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberpresident of the Rhine Province, against the Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Moselle peasantry, and finally the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions .Present-day society.

Q 2 : What, as a result of the studies you then undertook, would you say is the basis of present-day society?

Marx: "Present-day society" is capitalist society, which exists in all civilised countries, more or less free from mediaeval admixture, more or less modified by the particular historical development of each country, more or less developed.

In present-day society the instruments of labour are the monopoly of the land-owners ( the monopoly of property in land is even the basis of the monopoly of capital ) and the capitalists.

The capitalist mode of production rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal conditions of productions, of labour power.

Q 3 : What would you say are the essential features of this capitalist society?

Marx: Capitalist production is distinguished from the outset by two characteristic features.

First. It produces products as commodities. The fact that it produces commodities does not differentiate it from other modes of productions ; but rather the fact that being a commodity is the dominant and determining characteristic of its products. This implies, first and foremost, that the labourer himself comes forward merely as a seller of commodities, and thus as a free wage-labourer, so that labour appears in as wage labour. The relation between capital and wage-labour determines the entire character of the mode of production. The principal agents of this mode of production itself, the capitalist and the wage-labourer, are as such merely embodiments, personifications of capital and wage-labour.

The second distinctive feature of the capitalist mode of production is the production of surplus-value as the direct aim and determining motive of production.

Q 4 : You say that the relation between capital and wage-labour determines the whole character of capitalism but how, first , would you define "capital"?

Marx: Capital is a social relation of production. It is a bourgeois production relation, a production relation of bourgeois society. Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour and raw materials, not only of material products; it consists just a much of exchange values. All the products of which it consists are commodities. Capital is, therefore, not only a sum of material products; it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes.

Material wealth transforms itself into capital simply and solely because the worker sells his labour-power in order to live. The articles which are the material conditions of labour, the means of production, and the articles which are the precondition for the survival of the worker himself, the means of subsistence, both become capital only because of the phenomenon of wage-labour. Capital is not a thing , any more than money is a thing. In capital, as in money, certain specific social relations of production between people appear as relations of things to people, or else certain social relations appear as natural properties of things in society. Without a class dependent on wages, the moment individuals confront each other as free persons, there can be no production of surplus-value; without the production of surplus-value there can be no capitalist production, and hence no capital and no capitalist! Capital and wage-labour (it is thus we designate the labour of the worker of the worker who sells his own labour-power) only express two aspects of the self-same relationship.

Q5: But in some cases the means of production belong to the State. Does this make any difference to this basic relationship of capitalism?

Marx: The social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including joint-stock capital and also state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, and so on and the function as industrial capitalists). Where the State itself is the capitalist producer, as in the exploitation of mines, woodlands and the like, its product is "commodity" and for this reason possesses the specific character of every other commodity.

Q6: How do you explain the origin of surplus-value?

Marx: The value of a commodity is determined by the total quantity of labour contained in it. But part of that quantity of labour is realised in a value, for which an equivalent has been pain in the form of wages; part of it realised in a value for which no equivalent has been paid. Part of the labour contained in the commodity is paid labour; part is unpaid labour.

The surplus value, or the part of the total value of the commodity in which the surplus labour or unpaid labour of the working man is realised, I call Profit.

It is the employing capitalist who immediately extracts from the labourer this surplus value, whatever part of it he may ultimately be able to keep for himself. Upon this relation, therefore, between the employing capitalist and the wage labourer the whole wages system and the whole present system of production hinges.

Q7 : So you are saying that it is through the wages system that the workers are exploited?

Marx : Wages are not what they appear to be, namely, the value, or price, of labour , but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labour power. The wage-worker has permission to work for his own subsistence, that is, to live, only in so far as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter's co-consumer's of surplus-value); the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity; consequently the system of wage labour is a system of slavery , and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment.

Q 8: But surely you are not saying that workers should not try to obtain "better payment" while capitalism lasts?

Marx: To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system. What you think just or equitable is out of the question. The question is: What is necessary and unavoidable with a given system of production?
The periodical resistance on the part of the working man against a reduction of wages, and their periodical attempts at a rise in wages, are inseparable from the wages system, and dictated by the very fact of labour being assimilated to commodities, and therefore subject to the laws regulating the general movement of prices.

The value of labour-power constitutes the conscious and explicit foundation of the trade unions, whose importance for the English working class can scarcely be overestimated. The trade unions aim a nothing less than to prevent the reduction of wages below the level that is traditionally maintained in the various branches of industry.

Trade unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injurious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.

Future Society

Q9 : Clearly then, the abolition of the wages system is one key feature of the socialist, or as I believe you prefer to call it communist, society which will achieve "the emancipation of the working class", but what else can be said about it?

Marx : The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class. The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them.

There can therefore be nothing more erroneous and absurd than to postulate the control by the united individuals of their total production, on the basis of exchange value, of money. The private exchange of all products of labour, all activities and all wealth stands in antithesis to free exchange among individuals who are associated on the basis of common appropriation and control of the means of production.

If we were to consider a communist society in place of a capitalist one, then money capital would immediately be done away with.

Q10 : So you are saying that the working class can only emancipate themselves by establishing a classless, stateless, and moneyless society, but , with regard to this last point, you yourself are on record as mentioning "labour-time vouchers" as a possible means of distributing consumer goods in the early stages of communist society. Is there not a contradiction here?

Marx : Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one.With collective production, money capital is completely dispensed with. The society distributes labour-power and means of production between the various branches of industry. There is no reason why the producers should not receive paper tokens permitting them to withdraw an amount corresponding to their labour time from the social consumption stocks. But these tokens are not money; they do not circulate.

The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his claim to a certain portion of the common product which has been set aside for consumption.

Q11 : But you are not claiming , are you , that such "tickets" or "certificates" would be a permanent or even an essential feature of a future classless society?

Marx : What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.

In a higher phase of communist of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and herewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, have vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners : From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

The Period of Revolution

Q12: The continuing development of the forces of production over the last hundred or so years means that communist society could now proceed almost immediately to this stage of free access. But I want to move on to ask you about how you see the change-over from capitalist to socialist. Or communist, society taking place.

Marx: The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, of the proletariat organised as the ruling class, and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Q13: Wait a minute . Let me stop you there . What exactly do you mean by the phrase "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State , of the proletariat organised as the working class"? In a previous reply you told us that socialism was a society without a State.

Marx: When [ the proletariat] attains government power its enemies and the old organisation of society has not yet vanished.

The proletariat still acts, during the period of the struggle for the overthrow of the old society, on the basis of that old society, and hence also still moves within political forms which more or less belong to it. It has not yet, during this period of struggle, attained its final constitution, and employs means for its liberation which this liberation fall aside.

It can however only use such economic means as abolish its own character as salariat, hence as a class. With its complete victory its own rule thus ends. As its class character has disappeared.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the public power will lose its political character.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms , we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Q14: You are saying that to establish a classless, stateless society the working class has first to organise to gain control of political power - "win the battle of democracy", as you put it - and use it to expropriate the capitalist class. This seems reasonable enough, even if today it could again be said that this period of revolution could be passed through very quickly precisely because the centralisation and development of the means of production has now reached such a high degree. But how do you see the working class winning political power, peaceably or violently?

Marx: The workers will have to seize political power one day in order to construct the new organisation of labour; they will have to overthrow the old politics which bolster up the old institutions.
We do not claim, however, that the road leading to this goal is the same everywhere. We know that heed must be paid to institutions, customs and traditions of various countries, and we do not deny that there are countries , such as America and England, where the workers may attain their goal by peaceful means. That being the case, we must recognise that in most continental countries the lever of the revolution will have to be force.

Q15: Today of course "most continental countries" have adopted the same political forms as America and Britain, but in any event won't socialism or communism, have to be a world system?

Marx: United action of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

Empirically, communism is only possible as an act of the dominant people "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a "world-historical" existence.

Causes of Crises

Q 16: Can we now perhaps turn to some current issues that are of immediate concern to people today. First of all, the present slump where we hear about there being over-production of steel, cars, food and other goods.

Marx: The word "over-production" in itself leads to error. So long as the most urgent needs of a large part of society are not satisfied. Or only the most immediate needs are satisfied, there can of course be absolutely no talk of an over-production of products - in the sense that the amount of products is excessive in relation to the need for them. On the contrary, it must be said that on the basis of capitalist production, there is constant under-production in this sense. The limits to production are set by the profit of the capitalist and in no way by the needs of the producers. But over-production of products and over-production of commodities are two entirely different things.

Q17: Yes, that's clear enough, but what do you think of the proposal put forward for instance by the Labour Party that the way out of the crisis is to increase spending.

Marx : The popular ascription of stagnation in the processes of production and circulation to an insufficiency of the circulating medium is a delusion.

It is pure tautology to say that crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption. The capitalist system does not recognise any forms of consumer other than those who can pay, if we exclude the consumption of paupers and swindlers. The fact that commodities are unsaleable means no more than that no effective buyers have been found for them , no consumers ( no matter whether the commodities are ultimately sold to meet the needs of productive or individual consumption ). If the attempt is made to give this tautology the semblance of greater profundity, by the statement that the working class receives too small a portion of its own product, and that the evil would be remedied if it received a bigger share , if its wages rose, we need only note that crises are always prepared by a period in which wages generally rise, and the working class actually does receive a greater share in the part of the annual product destined for consumption. From the standpoint of these advocates of sound and "simple" ( ! ) common sense, such periods should rather avert the crisis. It thus appears that capitalist production involves certain conditions independent of people's good or bad intentions, which permit the relative prosperity of the working class only temporarily, and moreover always the harbinger of crisis.

Q18 : What about the other aspects of crisis such as unemployment and falling real wages?

Marx: Capitalistic production moves through certain periodical cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis and stagnation. The market prices of commodities, and the market rates of profits, follow these phases, now sinking below their average, now rising above them.

Well! During the phase of sinking market prices and the phases of crisis and stagnation, the working man, if not thrown out of employment altogether, is sure to have his wages lowered.

A surplus population of workers is a condition for the existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, which belongs to capital just as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost.

Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour power which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its unrestricted activity an industrial reserve army which is independent of these natural limits.
Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and this in turn corresponds to the periodical alternations of the industrial cycle.

Q19 : Lets now turn to the other big economic issue, inflation. What do you see as its cause and consequences?

Marx: Here we are concerned only with inconvertible paper money issued by the State and given forced currency.

Pieces of paper on which money-names are printed, such as £1, £5, are thrown into the circulation process from outside by the State. In so far as they actually circulate in place of the same amount of gold, their movement is simply a reflection of the laws of monetary circulation itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money can only spring up from the proportion in which that money represents gold.

In simple terms the law referred to is as follows: the issue of paper money must be restricted to the quantity of gold ( or silver ) which would actually be in circulation, and which is represented symbolically by the paper money.

If the paper money exceeds its proper limit - the amount in gold coins of the same denomination which could have been in circulation - then, quite apart from the danger of becoming universally discredited, it will still represent within the world of commodities only that quantity of gold which is fixed by its immanent laws. No greater quantity is capable of being represented. If the quantity of paper money represents twice the amount of gold available, then in practice £1 will be the money-name not of  1/4 of an ounce of gold but of 1/8 of an ounce. The effect is the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as the standard of prices. The values previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.

In such a case nothing would have changed, either in the productive powers of labour, or in supply or demand, or in values. Nothing could have changed except the money names of those values. To say that in such a case the workingman ought not to insist upon a proportionate rise of wages, is to say that he must be content to be paid in names, instead of things . All past history proves that whenever such a depreciation of money occurs, the capitalists are on the alert to seize this opportunity for defrauding the workingman.

Q20 : What do you think of the idea of cutting taxes as a way of trying to improve the workers' position under capitalism?

Marx: If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which goes into them . Either the employers' profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity , or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have taken place. Instead of the present system, whereby the capitalist also advances, as part of the wage, the taxes which the worker has to pay, he [ the capitalist ] would no longer pay them in this roundabout way, but directly to the State.

Ecology

Q21: Finally, there is a growing concern these days about pollution and the environment. Could you say something on this.

Marx: The capitalist mode of production completes the disintegration of the primitive familial union which bound agriculture and manufacture when they were both at an undeveloped and child-like stage. But at the same time it creates the material conditions for a new and higher synthesis, a union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the forms that have developed during the period of their antagonistic isolation. Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historic motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil. Thus it destroys at the same time the physical health of the urban worker, and the intellectual life of the rural worker. But by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism, which originated in a merely natural and spontaneous fashion, it compels its systematic restoration as a regulative law of social production, and in a form adequate to the full development of the human race.

Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility.

Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the worker.

Q22: Would you like to address a special message to our readers?

Marx: It is the working millions of Great Britain who first have laid down the real basis of a new society - modern industry , which transformed the destructive agencies of nature into the productive power of man. The English working classes, with invincible energies, by the sweat of their brows and brains , have called to life the material means of ennobling labour itself , and of multiplying its fruits in such a degree as to make general abundance possible. By creating the inexhaustible productive powers of modern industry they have fulfilled the first condition of the emancipation of Labour. They have now to realise its other condition. They have to free those wealth - producing powers from the infamous shackles of monopoly , and subject them to the joint control of the producers, who, till now, allowed the very product of their hands to turn against them and transformed into as many instruments of their own subjugation.

The English working men are the first-born sons of modern industry. They will then, certainly, not be the last in aiding the social revolution prepared by that industry, a revolution, which means the emancipation of their own class all over the world, which is as universal as capital-rule and wage-slavery.

A Note on Sources

Every word in Marx's replies is taken from his actual writings, the only changes being to leave out, in some cases, introductory phrases or conjunctions. Nor have we indicated that we are sometimes quoting from different writings in the same reply.

Q1 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, p19-20
Q2 Three separate passages from the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Progress Publishers, 1971 , p 25 , p13 , and p18 respectively.
Q3 Capital Vol 3, FLPH, 1959, p 857-8Q4 Wage Labour and Capital M-E Selected Works, Vol 1, 1958, p90 Results of the Immediate Process of Production, appendix to Penguin Vol 1 of Capital, 1976 p1005-6
Q5 Capital Vol 2, Penguin 1978 p177 Comments on Adolph Wagner's Lehrbuch , BICO. 1971, p22
Q6 Three separate passages from Value, Price and Profit, Peking, 1969, p54, 55 and 56
Q7 Critique of the Gotha Programme p22-3
Q8 First two and fourth paragraphs from Value Price and Profit, p 46 , p71 , and 78-9. Third paragraph from Results, p1069
Q9 The Poverty of Philosophy FLPH ,1956 p196-7, Critique of the Gotha Programme, p16 Grundisse, Pelican, 1973, p158-9
Q10 Critique of the Gotha Programme p18, Capital Vol 2, p434, Capital Vol 1 p188-9 footnote
Q11 Critique of the Gotha Programme, p16 and p17-18
Q12 Manifesto of the Communist Party, FLPH ,1954, p79-80
Q13 First three paragraphs from Conspectus of Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy, The 1st International and After, Penguin, 1974 p 332, 338, and 335. The fourth paragraph from the Communist Manifesto p81 and p82 [re-translated from original German]
Q14 Speech at the Hague Congress, The 1st International p324
Q15 Communist Manifesto, p7
Q16 Theories of Surplus Value, Pt2 , Progress Pub., 1968, p527
Q17 Capital,Vol 1, p218, footnote, Capital , Vol 2 , p486-7
Q18 The first two paragraphs from Value, Price and Profit , p69, the other three paragraphs from Capital Vol 1 , p784 , p788, p790
Q19 First three paragraphs from Capital Vol 1 p224-5. Last paragraph Value, Price and Profit, p65-66
Q20 Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality, Collected Works, Vol 6 Lawrence and Wishart ,1976, p329
Q21 Capital, Vol 1 p637-8
Q22 Letter to the Labour Parliament, Articles On Britain, Progress Pub., 1975, p215 Speech at the anniversary of the "Peoples Paper", Articles On Britain, p261

Suicide Bombers: Heroes or Villains? (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the morning of 7 July 2005 the inhabitants of London awoke and prepared to go out for the day. Fifty-six of them were to die the victims of terrorist bombings. For twenty years in countries across the globe members of our class have been subjected to other such murderous outrages. What motivates the bombers and who supports their actions?

One common response to an unpleasant or disturbing occurrence is to attribute bad intentions to others more often than we should given the evidence we have about their states of mind. If we believe we are under threat or are likely to be harmed by others there are at least four explanations we can adopt for their behaviour:

1. It was unintentional – an accident.
2. It was unintentional but arose from an unavoidable clash of interests.
3. It was intentional and arose out of malice or the wish to cause deliberate harm.
4. It arose from some personality or character defect in the other.

In the case of terrorist attacks a common reaction is to attribute malice or other defect –an understandable reaction to emotionally disturbing events. But politically it is a dangerous one as it disposes of the need to examine the actions of the perpetrators more closely. This unconsidered reaction can be encapsulated in a catchy slogan such as "axis of evil". Each subsequent event can then be explained by this slogan and difficult or time-consuming analysis can be avoided. Thus in the popular imagination terrorist bombers remain "lunatics" and their activities labelled "irrational".

Socialists challenge these reactions. We insist that emotion itself is not enough. Indeed while we share the understandable revulsion expressed by the majority of our fellow workers we insist that emotion must be accompanied by careful thought and analysis. Explaining suicide terrorist activity by reference to the make-up of the individual perpetrator while ignoring the social and political environment from which they come is inadequate. What needs to be understood is that far from being mad or lunatic or irrational, people and organisations who engage in suicide terrorism are in reality rational killers who employ violence to achieve specific political objectives.

Terrorism uses violence, or the threat of violence, to achieve its ends. It is designed to have far reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target. It is at bottom political in its aims despite the high sounding phrases used to disguise that fact.
One political analyst has examined the phenomenon in depth and has produced the following useful summary:

"Terrorism is designed to create power where there is none or to consolidate power where there is very little. Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence and power they otherwise lack to effect political change on either a local or an international scale." (Bruce Hoffman: Inside Terrorism)

The suicide terrorist differs from the "ordinary" criminal or lunatic assassin in that the suicide terrorist is not pursuing purely egocentric goals. They are not in the main driven by the wish to line their own pockets or to satisfy some personal grievance. It is important to see the suicide terrorist as fundamentally an altruist. He or she believes that they are serving a 'good' cause designed to achieve a greater good for a wider constituency (real or imagined) which the terrorists and their organisation purport to represent.

Suicide terrorism has its own strategic logic. To treat it as "irrational" or driven by religion or personal economic gain fails to take account of the facts concerning the social, historical and political conditions which give rise to it. Academic and other research in the field reveals a number of things not commonly believed or understood about suicide terrorists.

Audrey Cronin – a researcher for the United States Congress – has reported that "most terrorist operatives are psychologically normal". Their attacks were always premeditated and the perpetrators were aware of the consequences of their actions to themselves and others. Scott Atran – a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan – concludes that "Suicide terrorists on the whole have no appreciable psychopathology". A CIA study concluded from their investigations that there was: "No psychological attribute or personality distinctive of terrorists."

The findings of a number of studies can be briefly summarised as follows:

- Terrorists tended to be young men aged between 18 and 30.
- They are in the main well adjusted in their families and liked by their peers.
- They are often better educated and economically better off than their surrounding populations.· Personal despair is not a significant factor in their actions.
- They are willing to sacrifice themselves for others and for what they see as the welfare of future generations.

Not motivated by religion
Despite the religious language in which the claims and statements of some terrorist organisations are made when looked at in a world wide perspective it has been found that religion is not a strongly motivating factor. Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has compiled the world's largest database on suicide terrorism including information on every attack reported between 1980 and 2004. His conclusions are:

"The data show that there is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think", and "Overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that terrorists view as their homeland". Such attacks are: "Mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism".

To underline this one has only to recall that at the top of the suicide bomber league table are the secular nationalist Tamil Tigers operating in Sri Lanka and India. Other secular nationalist or separatist organisations who indulge in suicide bombing include the PKK and PFLP. Even in ostensibly Muslim countries secular groups are responsible for one third of all attacks.

What then is there in it for the terrorist organisation?

The characteristic mode of a terrorist attack is that of hit and run. For a relatively small organisation to directly take on the might of the armed state invites complete annihilation. Instead terrorist organisations use "cowardly" tactics such as ambush or hidden explosive devices set off by remote control. These tactics ensure a high survival rate for the terrorists. This is not the case with the suicide bomber where success inevitably means death. What are the calculations made by groups using these tactics?

Suicide attacks are attractive as they offer a range of advantages:

- The suicide terrorist has been described as the ultimate "smart weapon". The bomber can control the time and location of the attack so as to maximise the number of casualties and/or damage done to the target.
- Suicide attacks attract wide media coverage giving maximum publicity to their supposed grievances and their determination to have them resolved.
- The publicity for their cause leads to increased support by way of new recruits and political influence locally and also to increased funds. Following one female bomber's attack on an Israeli supermarket Saudi TV ran a 'telethon' which raised $100m for the organisation concerned.
- Suicide bombings are often spectacular – think of those images of the Twin Towers – and they are frightening, disorientating, intimidating and psychologically disturbing.
- They are cheap – typically around less than $100 for an attack on a target in Palestine – and success is virtually guaranteed. Moreover they do not need complicated and potentially expensive mechanisms of escape and safekeeping.
- A successful suicide attack leaves no survivor to be captured and interrogated with the danger of their passing on information that might endanger other activists.
- As killing operations they are effective – in the period mentioned earlier suicide bombings formed 3 percent of all attacks world wide but accounted for 48 percent of all deaths due to terrorism. In Palestine 2000-2002 suicide bombers accounted for 1 percent of all attacks but for 44 percent of all deaths due to terrorism.

This is an impressive list of operational advantages for the organisation using such tactics. What then are the advantages or benefits for the perpetrators themselves?

Researchers have found that what motivates most suicide bombers is a sense of outrage at a situation they find both oppressive and undignified. What must be understood here is that the term "suicide" is misleading. Those of us from a different culture find it difficult to comprehend that young people should deliberately undertake a course of action knowing with almost complete certainty that they will not survive the experience.

Martyrs
The perpetrators and their families and communities do not see it like that. In particular activists operating within an Islamic frame of reference know that committing suicide is forbidden by the Koran. However they believe that there is a divine command to protect their religion and way of life from attack by infidel unbelievers. Verses from their holy texts can be quoted to justify this. By undertaking such attacks the activist is seen not as a suicide but as a martyr and as acting in a highly commendable way in line with a long and noble tradition.

In addition a potential Islamic martyr is assured by elders and clerics that they will suffer no pain, will avoid the supposed horrific purification period in the grave, and will go straight to heaven. Martyrs are also allowed the privilege of ensuring that 70 members of their family also go to heaven.

In the meantime the families left behind are assured of material support from various religious, charitable and philanthropic organisations – many of them with their own political agendas. The martyrs' families are also the recipients of a number of less economically tangible but nevertheless real benefits – the honour and respect of the community for example.

Where they exist then the religious beliefs of suicide bombers act as an enabling factor and not as a motivating one - they are the lubricant in the engine not the petrol in the tank. And just as the IRA bomber did not intend to turn Protestants and agnostics into Catholics so Muslim suicide bombers are not in the business of religious conversion.

There are patriotic, political, and nationalistic aspects to these altruistic acts which demonstrate how altruism – the undertaking of tasks primarily for the benefit of others – can be warped and distorted by political interests. The result is that this otherwise admirable human trait is made to work for the political interests of a minority bent on achieving political change often of an overtly nationalist kind

Political agenda
A brief examination of the political agendas of three organisations among many that advocate and pursue a policy of suicide bombing will illustrate what has been said above.

Osama bin Laden's messages to the world are invariable couched in religious terms but in reality his first and abiding concern relates to political conditions in Saudi Arabia. He is driven by a strong desire to replace the present rulers there – possibly with himself though this is never explicitly stated – and with an obsession to end United States presence in the Middle East. Two thirds of all Al Qaeda attacks originate from countries with a US military presence not from for example Sudan or Iran – both strongly Islamic states.

He castigates the United States because it supports regimes that he considers are corrupt, and because "It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources" They should "Deal with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of subjugation, theft and occupation."

These demands seek alterations to geopolitical realities rather than changes in religious affiliation. After an analysis of bin Laden propaganda video tapes Fawaz Gerges of Columbia University has concluded that bin Laden and Al Qaeda are "religious nationalists" and that "under the thick layer of bin Laden's rhetoric and Islamic trans-nationalism lies an unconscious Saudi nationalist."

The Islamic Resistance Movement – better known as Hamas – aims "to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." That phrase is of course is double speak for the destruction of the state of Israel – not for religious reasons but for economic and political ones mainly to do with the dispossession and displacement of the Arab population living in Palestine prior to 1948.

Article 12 of their "Covenant" or manifesto reads: 

"Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. If other nationalist movements are connected with materialistic, human or regional causes, [the] nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement has all these elements as well." (Emphasis added).

Islamic Jihad - also known as Hizballah (the Party of God) - is a radical Shia group formed in Lebanon in 1988. Their stated objectives include the expulsion of the United States and the French from Lebanon thus "Putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land" also expressed as "destroying American hegemony in our land." They claim to reject both Capitalism and Communism as both are incapable "of laying the foundations for a just society."

Here again we have a radical group that has gained seats in the legislature of a country only to find that the economic realities are not capable of political manipulation to the extent that they might wish. Faced with a number of intractable economic problems and increasing social unrest Hizballah has had to act like any other capitalist party and enter into negotiations over competing interests so as to maintain a hold on political power.

One further thing unites these organisations. They are led almost exclusively by members of what is an emerging privileged class. This class has its sights on political power and is intent on replacing the existing elite in societies and states that are not yet fully formed capitalist ones. They encourage and facilitate others to carry out acts of murder that they themselves are unwilling to undertake. In effect they are attempting to emerge as a new ruling class by clambering through the blood and over the bodies of our class.

Gwynn Thomas

In Theory . . . (2007)

Latest post from the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back:

Socialist Party of Great Britain member, Brian Gardner, reflects on the SPGB's 2007 Summer School that took place this past weekend in Birmingham.

FIRCROFT SUMMER SCHOOL

This weekend some 40-plus members, sympathisers and Standard-subscribers from as far afield as Italy, Turkey and USA gathered for a weekend of discussion and debate at the annual summer school organised by Birmingham Branch.

Under the theme “Thinkers of the 20th Century” a range of ideas – from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, information technology, literature and philosophy - were reviewed from a socialist perspective and much heated debate followed.

It's not surprising that a recurring issue throughout such a themed weekend is that of “freedom”. Much abused in everyday currency, “freedom” often translates as little more than lower taxes and fewer regulations, issues of little or no concern to world socialists. In contrast, socialists are intensely interested in freedom, whether its the freedom we have to surpass the gene as a constraint on how we live, the freedom to work co-operatively in software development/use software without restrictions, or the more abstract freedom of the individual under the state.

The dystopian visions of Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and George Orwell (1984) then, formed a large part of the discussions around the first two talks from Richard Headicar and Mike Foster respectively. What sort of state do we live in now? Which dismal projection has survived the best? Probably a bit of both is the answer: Orwell's boot stamping on the face is still prevalent in many parts of the world as the market system emerges to an ungrateful population of new wage-earners. “Late” capitalist states on the other hand have clearly evolved more complex and subtle forms of oppression, including of course the diversions of Big Brother (the TV “reality” show) and the dubious freedom of consumer choice.

To what extent can you separate the thinker from the thoughts? While Orwell got his hands dirty down mines, in hotel kitchens and most famously on the frontline in Spain, Aldous Huxley in common with most of the other thinkers risked little more than a paper cut in the drawing rooms of Bloomsbury. Does this influence how we read each author?

As Marx famously noted, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is to change it”. Someone who has done very little interpretation of the world, but by contrast has undeniably changed it is Richard Stallman. A software engineer turned intellectual property activist, Stallman developed GNU software, CopyLeft and the free software movement. This has inverted contract law to ensure that CopyLeft software (such as Linux operating system) gets the fullest expression of its use value (ie it is free to copy and use), but has effectively no exchange value as users have to agree to make available and not restrict access to any amendments made to it. Tristan Miller discussed how this little oasis of “socialistic” production has grown unstoppably within the body of capitalism and effectively mirrors – albeit within the software and digital music communities – all the features of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”.

The subject of freedom of the individual phenotype (eg human) as opposed to the dubious constraints of biological determinism arose during Adam Buick's introduction to the cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who is best known for his contributions during the middle part of last century to the nature v nurture debate. It is likely that his writings will stand the test of time better than the more recent fashions of biological determinism - sociobiology and evolutionary psychology - as typified by the “popular" science writers Richard Dawkins, E O Wilson and Steven Pinker. If human nature is slowly becoming less of an ideological “barrier to socialism” than it once was, it will be due to the painstaking work of real scientists such as Montagu.

Simon Wigley got the short straw in having to present the ideas of the Frankfurt School of philosophy shortly after a large Saturday lunch. He stuck to the brief given to him admirably however, particularly given that he had little enthusiasm for these ideas, as he made clear. Whilst some in the audience wanted to shoot the piano player, others were grateful that Simon had done the hard work of reading this stuff and translating it from the English for our benefit.

Personally speaking I gained most from this talk – even if it was only to gain confidence that the Frankfurt emperors were indeed just as stark naked as I had always suspected, and that rather than being extensions to marxist philosophy, the ideas of Adorno, Habermas et al (along with the post-modern ideas they set the scene for) are negations of class-based analysis, of the enlightenment, and even of the scientific method that drove it.

The material conditions of capitalism really haven't changed that much in the last century – and our philosophies really dont look like they need to change much either. Anyone who thinks that world socialists are intellectuals, academics or armchair philosophers would have been pleasantly surprised at the disdain with which these ideas – far removed from anything actually to do with working class experience – were discussed. Habermas could have dug coal during the Spanish Civil War for all I know, but – judged on their own merit - his ideas still should not be taken seriously.

In summary, there is of course a perpetual tension between theory and practice that no political organisation, whether liberal, marxist or anarchist, gets right all the time. However, assisted by a plentiful supply (according to need of course) of the local Black Country beer, and the opportunity to catch up with old comrades and new sympathisers, most attendees I spoke with left the weekend feeling stimulated, reinvigorated and better-prepared for the more practical need to spread the socialist case. Surely, the ideal balance between ideas and action.

Brian Gardner

Greasy Pole: Blair bites the hand that fed him (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It must have taken a considerable effort of amnesia for Blair to attack the very media he has courted and manipulated"

Among the associated discomforts of the event, the process of dying is said - by some who have yet to experience it - to activate a flash review of the more guilt-worthy episodes in one's life. So was it that Tony Blair, as he clung on in the dying days of his prime ministership, became moved to look back on the style of, and his government's relationship with, the media. Astonishing though this was it was made more so by the distortion which Blair applied to his recall of certain events and his disregard of others.

About a fortnight before he was due to hand over to Gordon Brown Blair revealed to the waiting world the fruits of his meditation about the media. They were not those of a satisfied, reassured man:

"The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out . . .  the media has become dangerous because of its desire for stories with "impact" that will allow it to stand apart from the rest of the media. This comes second to accuracy."

Morgan
The use of the word "feral" is interesting in that it does not chime in with the usual vocabulary of Blair's oratory. More often it is a word resorted to in panic-inducing media reports of offences by youth gangs in the frenzied centres or hopeless estates of the cities. Used in that way it encourages a concept of crime as a social ailment more susceptible to cure by harsh, confining penalties - behaviour to be tough on - rather than as a doomed response to conditioned alienation - a cause to be tough on. It recalls the time when Blair was eagerly grasping for power, showing a budding skill in using the very media he now condemns to stimulate the kind of impulsive, ill-considered response to a social problem he judged would yield him the support he needed to realise his ambition.

Among those under the lash of Blair's criticism there was one who cheerfully admitted to being a "feral beast". Piers Morgan, during a long, and not always reputable, media career, was editor of the Daily Mirror for about nine years until May 2004. At that time he was sacked after the Mirror had published photographs, on its front page as well as inside, which seemed to be of British soldiers assaulting and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war. The Mirror hailed this as a world exclusive and there was an appropriate response, from the Chief of the General Staff ("…appalling conduct…contravenes the British Army's high standards of conduct"); Downing Street ("We expect the highest standards of conduct from our forces in Iraq"); and the then Defence Minister ("…behaviour clearly unacceptable"). Rival newspapers were sourly envious while much of the world media clamoured to be allowed to publish the pictures. Without a doubt, this was a story with what Blair later called "impact", designed to drive up circulation and thereby inflate profits. The problem - for Morgan and for the Mirror - was that the pictures had been faked. And a problem for Blair was that the Mirror and its embarrassing editor were Labour supporters; in the midst of the crisis over the photos, Blair sent a handwritten note to Morgan: "Thank you for the Mirror's renewed support, it's come at a good time". Although the "renewed" support did not include backing the Iraq invasion, which Morgan described as "a senseless, illegal war".

Marr
A media rival of Morgan, also thrown off an editor's chair, is Andrew Marr, whose amiable, interesting face has recently invaded our homes with his TV series The History of Modern Britain (in which some of his conclusions are open to debate). One of the upward steps in Marr's journalistic career saw him, in 1996, editor of the Independent, a newspaper apparently well-suited to his reputation as a centre left commentator on the seamy world of British politics. His design for the Independent was for it to be tough and serious, read by about 200,000 tough, serious people. Not, in other words, at all like Morgan's Mirror. This promised to be hard going in the ruthless broadsheet circulation war in which the victor was likely to be, not the best written, most courageous, widest informing, newspaper but the one able to compete for sales through cutting its price or with promotions like give-away CDs. Most to be feared in this struggle was The Times which, backed by Murdoch's riches, was able to sell below its market price.

At the time the Independent was almost half owned by the Mirror Group, which put it under the influence of the odious David Montgomery, who was himself struggling to resuscitate his employable appeal to newspaper proprietors after being fired by Murdoch in response to a disastrous launching of Today. Montgomery's vision of the Independent was very different from that of Marr; he saw it as a kind of yuppie version of the Daily Mirror, appealing to Rolex-wearing, Porsche-driving, "aspirational" (another word in present favour with New Labour) people. This style was supposed to raise productivity through savage budget cuts and sacking a host of people, especially those whose function was to report the news as distinct from composing a column about those "interesting" people. Marr did not see this as the way out for the Independent which was why he had to go, although he did have the consolation of the staff giving him a send-off which included the honour of "banging out" – an old ritual involving the wielding of printers' hammers. In fact, soon after being sacked Marr was enticed back but it was not long before he finally left.

Sucking Up
Like Morgan, Marr is no blind supporter of Blair and his party. In his book My Trade he comments on Labour's "sophisticated, endless media strategy" and its "ruthless discipline on its main figures". Tony Blair, he writes was "adept at telling people what they wanted to hear…Tough on crime with the Daily Mail; tough on the causes of crime with the Guardian" . And this was before New Labour had got into power. One of Marr's conclusions is that the party's "relationship with rich, and sometimes dodgy, characters was no purer than the Tories' had been in the bad old days of 'sleaze' ". Clearly, it must have taken a considerable effort of amnesia for Blair to attack the very media he has courted and manipulated, sucking up to Murdoch and his rags, playing on the neuroses of Daily Mail addicts. The media reflects the society it operates in, poisoned by the reality that its first regard must be for sales and profits, a society where feral beasts roam because only the most savage survive.

Ivan

The Mentality and Criminality of War

Latest post from the Mailstrom blog:

the mentality and criminality of war

"The brutalisation of American soldiers and the inhumanity of the Iraq war has been reported by The Independent".

Everything Free (1999)

Book Review from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nous qui desirons sans fin. By Raoul Vaneigem.

Vaneigem is a Belgian writer who was active along with another, Guy Debord, in an organisation called the Situationist International in Paris during the 1960s. The international bit was the triumph of hope over fact—there must have been all of a dozen of them.

Nevertheless a book he wrote at the time The Revolution of Everyday Life achieved a sizeable distribution and was translated into several other languages. It was well-received in the US which, like France, was going through a political upheaval at the time, caused mainly in the US by the Vietnam War and in France by the Algerian War. Britain at the time was contenting itself with the Beatles, Carnaby Street fashions, and the Mini, both the car and the skirt.

There are several problems for an English reader with this new book. Abstractions in English are derived from Franco-Latin but in French the same words are not necessarily abstractions, so the book will seem to be more abstract than it actually is. Add to this the author's love of paradox, irony and wit and English readers could have a hard time. Nor are we helped by the way the book is put together. There is no sustained argument but, as the back cover puts it, only "brief analyses and theses which offer a critical examination of a market society in decline and of a living society called upon to replace it".

Vaneigem is no reformist or derivative from Leninism. He is firmly on the libertarian socialist side of the line. His earlier book had a curious choice of heroes: blood and guts characters like the 19th century thief and murderer Lacenaire, who went to the guillotine, and was introduced to us as a character in the great classic film Les Enfants du Paradis. Another was the poet Lautreamont, who also lived and died violently. But that book was thirty years ago.

Now, after many other books, he writes:

Market civilisation is founded on forbidding anything for free. From this comes the blocks placed on our wants, on their refinement, on their harmonisation, and the on the fulfilment of a human future. This has been the first era to achieve this. It will be the last when, stimulated by the gifts of our natural energies, we have decided to no longer pay for anything at all in whatever way.

Ken Smith

Free Access to What? Some Problems of Consumption in Socialism (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

We say that socialism will be "a society of free access" (see article in last month's issue). However, one obvious but rarely clarified question is: free access to what? Even if everything produced is made freely available to people, how will the range of goods and services to be supplied be determined?

One answer might be: if producing a thing is technically possible and if someone somewhere wants it, then it will be supplied. But most people might feel that a single individual should not have so much leverage over others' work. A rule might be established that a new product will be supplied once a certain number of people have registered a request for it. The number of requests required could vary, depending (say) on the difficulties involved in providing the new product, but also on how essential it was to those asking for it. Thus, specialised medications and prosthetics would surely be prepared even for very small numbers of people suffering from rare conditions – something that capitalist firms are reluctant to do because it is unlikely to yield a profit.

However, it is possible that socialist society may decide, either by a formal procedure or spontaneously, not to produce certain things even if quite a few people want them. Such decisions might be made for a variety of reasons, good and not so good.

Dangerous products
First, majorities may vote against producing certain goods on the grounds that they endanger the consumer and/or other people. Examples might include guns for hunting, explosives for demolition, porn, and highly addictive substances (which might be made available only through treatment programmes). Conceivably, majorities might go too far and refuse to authorise some goods and services on vague and inadequate grounds such as being "inconsistent with socialist values."

Second, the production of certain goods may be judged too unpleasant or dangerous, to producers or to local residents, even after all possible safety precautions have been taken. Consider bird's nest soup, a delicacy treasured by gourmets for its supposed medicinal and aphrodisiac properties. Collectors stand on bamboo scaffolding to harvest swifts' nests from high up on cave walls, at considerable risk to their lives. Capitalism resolves such conflicts of interest in favour of the consumer because people will do just about anything to survive. But members of socialist society, like the wealthy of today, will be free of economic duress: their needs will be met as of right. This will not undermine their willingness to work, but they are likely to be rather picky in choosing the work they do.

Few miners (to take a more important example) will be keen to go on working underground. Whether or not society adopts a formal decision to abolish the most unpleasant kinds of work, people will "vote with their feet". The issue is how society reacts. Unless people can be gently persuaded to continue temporarily with work they want to leave, society may have to accept the situation and adjust to the resulting change in the range of products available.

Free access to outer space?
What about goods that may not be dangerous to consume or produce but do incorporate large amounts of labour, energy, and materials, with a correspondingly large environmental impact? Will socialist society ensure free access to luxury goods like those currently consumed by the wealthy – for instance, the "off road vehicle" sold as a boys' toy by Harrods (see http://www.harrods.com)?

It may be objected that the members of socialist society will not want to ape the lifestyle of the idle rich under capitalism. However, a demand for highly intricate products need have nothing to do with frivolous self-indulgence. It may arise from a spreading interest in artistic self-expression and scientific exploration. There may be numerous amateur scientists clamouring for the latest sophisticated equipment for their home labs. Will socialist society provide free access to electron microscopes? Or to space travel for the millions of people who dream of venturing into outer space? (At present the Russian Space Agency offers trips to the International Space Station for $1 million.)

There is also a class of "locational" goods that can never be supplied in abundance because they are tied to specific locations. Whatever precautions are taken, for example, the number of tourists allowed into nature reserves must be restricted if ecologically sensitive habitats are not to be degraded.

Another knotty question is how the principle of free access is to be applied in the sphere of housing. One of the top priorities when socialism is established will be to replace substandard housing stock so that everyone has access to spacious and comfortable housing. Presumably certain standards will be set for new residential construction – quite high ones, no doubt. But surely the new housing will not be as spacious and luxurious as the most expensive residences under capitalism. People will not have free access to their own marble palaces.

Restricted access?
In short, for certain categories of goods and services free access is bound to be infeasible, certainly in the early stages of socialist society and possibly even in its maturity. The real choice in these cases is between non-provision and restricted provision. So alongside free access stores, there may be restricted access outlets for various kinds of specialised goods, perhaps using some sort of coupon system.

It is conceivable that socialist society will decide that things that cannot – for whatever reason – be produced in abundance should not be produced at all. Such a decision would have obvious disadvantages, but it would preserve the principle of "free access to what has been produced" and avoid the difficult problems associated with restricting access, such as enforcement.

However, we can envision restricted access arrangements that socialist society is much more likely to find acceptable and on which it may, indeed, extensively rely. People may have free access to many facilities at local and regional centres but without the option of taking equipment home. Museums and art galleries that do not charge for entry exemplify this kind of arrangement. Similarly, there could be community centres equipped for specialised cuisine, exercise and sports, arts and music making, and scientific exploration.

There could also be depots where people have access to specialised goods – for instance, do-it-yourself and gardening equipment, and also motor vehicles – on a borrow-and-return basis, as in libraries. The staff at these depots would also maintain the equipment in good working order and provide advice and assistance as needed. This would be much more efficient than keeping machines like lawn mowers at home, where they stand unused 99 percent of the time.

The solution to everything?

To sum up, it would be wrong to play down the scope that socialism offers for the solution of our problems. Enormous resources will be freed up when we get rid of the waste inherent in capitalism. But the new society will face urgent tasks that will also be daunting in their enormity. It is hard to judge which enormity is likely to be the greater. Socialists do not assume that socialism will solve all problems at once, and prefer to think about socialism – and especially about its crucial early stages – in a practical and realistic spirit.

Stefan

The French elections: Mr Nasty wins (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent round of elections in France resulted in the rout of the French Left. Were the workers wrong not to vote for them?

I wonder if you can still buy that little gadget which used to be sold in joke shops. It was a black plastic box with a slot on the top. You put a penny in the slot and it made a weird grinding sound which suggested that something amazing was about to happen. After about 15 seconds a small flap opened and a plastic hand flashed out and pulled the penny down into the box from which it could not be rescued.

Clunk!

The sudden shock of seeing one's own credulity taken advantage of and the resulting gasp of recognition is what many people may have experienced after the French Presidential electoral campaign in May. Nicolas Sarkozy – a kind of Gallic equivalent of Margaret Thatcher – is now in power for the next five years. France is no longer the exception in Europe.

Strangely enough although he managed to gain a large slice of the working-class vote, Sarkozy actually promised very little to the workers. Indeed he can be counted on to increase exploitation, unemployment and poverty. The reformist "Socialist Party" (PS) represented by Segolene Royal promised a hell of a lot more but the voters seemed unconvinced.

As always the presidential election was presented by some as an almighty struggle between Left and Right with Sarkozy quite effectively playing the role of Mr Nasty. By contrast, Segolene Royal proved to be completely ineffective. Her insipid and uninspired version of social reformism fooled no-one. To make matter worse, she presented herself in interviews as someone with a calling, an instrument of destiny. (Well, she does come from the same area as Joan of Arc).

For his supporters Sarkozy was represented as the epitome of modernity, economic liberalism, dynamism, and Blairism. His early morning jogging sessions contrasting with the more sedate political tradition of the conservatives in the party he inherited from Jacques Chirac. Royal was castigated for having expressed the outdated values of the Left, public sector immobilism, heavy taxes, anti-americanism and (don't laugh) Marxism.

So much for the media Punch and Judy stuff. In reality this was a typical election under modern capitalism. Media constructed stereotypes, disinformation, mystification and rumour crowded out reasoned argument and the impartial presentation of the facts. In the final analysis, the differences between the candidates were often minimal.

European Constitution
Anyone who knows anything about French politics knows that the real agenda of the election was the European Constitution problem. Because of growing distrust of an increasingly free-market Europe, the projected constitution originally dreamed up by Giscard D'Estaing was thrown out in a referendum in 2005. Besides being a set-back for capitalist politicians bent on creating a single competitive space to counter the other big capitalist nations, this was an issue which neatly divided the PS into two groups, the pro-constitution leadership and the anti-constitution left-wing with its popular base.

As a result Royal was obliged to promise yet another referendum on the issue whilst Sarkozy promised to negotiate a mini-constitution which would be ratified by parliament, short-circuiting the scruffy Euro-sceptics who were inevitably enough presented as 'extremists'. With Royal's idea being a clear non-starter, the capitalist money was clearly on Sarkozy from the start, all the more since Sarko's treaty could be ratified with the social aspects of the constitution edited out.

One of Sarko's first moves after the election therefore was to meet Angela Merkel to talk about the issue. With Merkel's government currently putting the German welfare state on a slimfast diet with active help from the Social Democrats this is one obstacle out of the way. In Britain, Sarko can count on New Labour's dyed-in-the-wool opposition to a social Europe.

As for French PS, well, their Mr Europe - Jean-Pierre Jouyet - has just joined Sarko's government. He was already on a train to Brussels on 15 May and nobody is calling him a traitor to the socialist cause (not even Royal, a close personal friend)

Thirty-five hour week
With the one really important electoral issue for the capitalist class out of the way, the secondary but routine issues of screwing the working-class called for more expeditive methods.

Shortly after the election the various trade union leaders could be seen going to see the new President one by one. (Trade union unity is not fashionable in France. Each union leader was interviewed separately.)Wearing the pinched faces of tribal chieftains invited to meet the new colonial administrator, the leaders attempted to gain a little negotiating leeway from a government which is fully committed to ramming home some pretty unpopular measures: restrictions on the right to strike, more flexible employment contracts, attacks on public sector retirement pensions, restrictions on entitlement to unemployment benefits etc.

Strangely enough, there was never any question of abolishing the 35-hour week; the flagship reform of the Jospin government, despite the fact that the conservatives had been moaning about how it penalized (their) business interests for the last five years. In fact, because the 35-hour week permitted capitalists to modulate working hours to meet fluctuations, it gave the employers the flexibility they needed to meet fluctuations in demand at low cost.

This issue did however allow Sarkozy to propose the defiscalization of overtime as a solution to the problem of a low and falling standard of living: 'work more to earn more' being the slogan. Not everyone was taken in by this idea. After all, overtime already tends to be paid at a higher rate and it's the bosses who decide the working week anyway. And it's difficult to see how this could be a solution to the deep-seated unemployment problem of the French economy. Joblessness is currently running at 9 percent.

Other measures introduced by Sarko include the usual neo-liberal medicine of tax breaks for the rich, the reduction of taxes on inheritance, and - a lollipop to the so-called middle-classes - tax allowances for workers with mortgages. The problem is that all these gifts have to be paid out of a state budget severely limited by the heavy and growing national debt currently equivalent to 60% of GNP. The solution is the so-called 'social VA.', the idea of shifting the burden onto the population as a whole remembering that the workers spend proportionately more on consumer goods than the wealthy.

Were the workers stupid?
Of course, it's tempting to see in the election of Sarko yet another illustration of the stupidity and blindness of the workers. This theme is doing the rounds right now together with the Leninist theme of the need for an enlightened leadership.Why didn't the workers vote for their proclaimed friends on the Left who promised them so much more? Why did they vote for their open class enemies?

In fact, on the European issue, as we have seen, Sarko and Sego probably shared a lot more than they are prepared to admit. Royal's party led by Jospin accepted a European agreement which committed France to raising the official retirement age to 65 though this has yet to be take place.

It could be argued that the 'social VAT' issue is conclusive proof of the stupidity of the French workers. But here, of course, there has been deliberate deception by the Sarkozy government. The measure was in fact deliberately downplayed by ministers until Fabius, a former French Prime Minister in the Mitterrand government, craftily winkled it out of the economics minister on TV.(This is already causing chaos in the government's presentation of its 'reforms')

On the other hand, Fabius will be well aware that this type of regressive tax is currently being practiced by the coalition government in Germany. It therefore has the official backing of the Social Democrats, the European allies of the French PS.

As for the defiscalization of overtime issue this has to be placed in context. The PS's 35-hour week has proved to be very unpopular with production line workers who now find their leisure periods moved around at the whim of their employer in a way which is often totally destructive of family life. Many have also suffered from stagnant wages as a result of these changes. The promise of more work for more pay clearly appeals to workers who are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.

Royal's electoral programme was a barely credible wish-list of social reforms, many of them very desirable in themselves: slightly higher minimum wages, more money for hospitals, universities, schools, better pensions and so on. However when she was asked what miracle ingredient was going to be used to finance her programme (somewhat compromised by the profligate State spending of the last 25 years and the resulting heavy national debt) she mentioned 'growth' on the assumption that the French economy was just waiting for a nod from the left to get its arse into gear. In actual fact, whoever won the election a period of working-class belt-tightening was clearly inevitable and only a fool could believe in the promises of the P.S.

But if the official reformists in the PS were prepared to make the most unreasonable promises in order to get elected, the Leninist left was hardly less extravagant. And here there were three official Trotskyist candidates competing with the Communist Party to make bigger promises. All of them promised better public services, higher wages, better pensions and a reduction in unemployment presumably on the assumption that capitalism existed simply for the benefit of the workers. Few took them seriously.

In the end, Sarkozy's triumph was largely due to the confidence which people place in capitalist politicians of both Left and Right. Sarko's programme, which will not in any way satisfy the expectations of the workers who voted for him, seemed almost purpose-built to create a hysterical leftwing reaction. Because the Mr Nasty image presented by Sarkozy provided only a very wispy smoke-screen behind which the Left could hide its manifold weaknesses, the Right had a strategic advantage from the start.

But then again this is the way elections always take place in capitalism. Voter invest a lot of hope in the mystifying images that are placed before them. There is a lot of noise and movement, a feeling of anticipation.

And then the penny drops.

Malcolm Mansfield