Ukraine: Between Oranges and Blues (2014)

From the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic pattern of political confrontation in Ukraine has remained the same ever since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The two camps in Ukrainian politics are labelled Oranges and Blues – a usage that has its origin in the “Orange Revolution” of late 2004 and early 2005 that brought Viktor Yushchenko to power. The main features of the Orange and Blue camps are shown in the Table.

The regional division

The underlying division is basically regional in nature. Most people in the western and central parts of Ukraine, including the capital Kiev, support the Oranges, while most people in the country’s eastern and southern regions support the Blues. The regional division shows itself not only in politics but also in differences of language, historical background, economic structure and attitudes toward other countries.

Mostly agricultural West Ukraine, also known as Galicia, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War One and to Poland between the wars. It is overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking (except for some border areas) and the most fervently nationalist and anti-Russian part of the country.

East Ukraine, especially the Don coal basin (Donbas), formed an integral part of the late tsarist and Soviet industrial complexes and therefore depends on close ties with Russia. Many of its inhabitants speak Russian or a mixed Russian-Ukrainian dialect called surzhyk. This does not mean that they do not regard themselves as Ukrainians, but they view Russian and Ukrainian identities as closely related rather than opposed to one another.

The southern and central regions of Ukraine are in some ways intermediate between East and West Ukraine, with the south more like the east and the centre somewhat more like the west.

The oligarchs

Despite the regional division, all parts of Ukraine are similar in important respects. The dominant social group in all regions now consists of ‘oligarchs’ – individuals who made fortunes by exploiting their close connections in government and acquiring state-owned assets on the cheap. It is estimated that just fifty oligarchs control 85 percent of the country’s GDP. Many of them have backgrounds in organized crime.

Oligarchs own the mass media and football clubs as well as banks and means of production. Most if not all of Ukraine’s numerous political parties are funded, controlled or even directly led by an oligarch or by a small group of oligarchs. This includes political parties with names that suggest a leftist or environmentalist orientation, such as the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and the Party of Greens of Ukraine.

The oligarchs are themselves divided along geographical, political and other lines. There are said to be rival oligarchic ‘clans’ based in different cities – Kiev, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, etc. This is probably an oversimplified picture. In any case, the oligarchs have shared class interests vis-à-vis the rest of the population. If they ever do face a serious challenge from below, they can be expected to form a united front. We shall then also see how much they really care about human rights.

Choice of external orientation

Maintaining political stability in Ukraine depends, among other things, on reconciling the essential interests of its various regions. In some policy areas this has been achieved. One example is the working compromise on the language issue. While Russian is not recognized as a second state language alongside Ukrainian, no serious attempt has been made to restrict the use of Russian in places where Russian speakers are in the majority. Another is Ukraine’s status as a buffer zone outside both NATO and the Russian-led military alliance of post-Soviet states (the Collective Security Treaty Organization).

On some issues, however, such a compromise is not feasible. One such issue is the choice of an external orientation for Ukraine’s economy. Should Ukraine go ahead with the Association Agreement it has negotiated with the EU? Or should it join the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) – the post-Soviet customs union that now includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and (since last September) Armenia?

In November Blue President Viktor Yanukovych, faced with the alarming prospect of the severance of East Ukraine’s economic ties with Russia, announced that he would not sign the agreement with the EU after all. Thereby he set off the Orange protests and the current crisis.

This time, it seems, Ukraine has to make a definite choice. It cannot move toward membership in both the EU and the EAEC. That is unacceptable to both organizations. Ukraine would become the gap through which Russian or Kazakh goods (say) could enter the EU or German or Polish goods enter the EAEC, effectively turning Europe and the post-Soviet region into a single customs union. In fact, Ukraine will not even get observer status at the EAEC if it enters into an Association Agreement with the EU (Interfax-Ukraine, June 14, 2013).

Who are the Blues?

Western capitalist propaganda associates the Blues with the Soviet legacy of corrupt authoritarian rule, inefficient protectionism and opposition to thoroughgoing ‘market reform’. Conversely, some Western leftists react to the pro-Orange slant of that propaganda by viewing the Blues as ‘anti-imperialist’ allies, in accordance with the dubious logic that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.

The linkage of the Blues to the Soviet past had some basis in the first few years after the collapse of the Soviet system. At that time the dominant parties in East Ukraine were the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) and/or the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) (which served as a substitute for the CPU at the period when the CPU was illegal). These parties represented old Soviet officials and managers of state industry who stood to lose their status and privileges in the transition from state to private capitalism.

However, these are now spent forces. Although some new Blue groups have arisen that appeal to nostalgia for the Soviet period – in particular, Natalya Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine – since 2006 the dominant party in the east has been the Party of Regions.

It is hard to understand how anyone could see anything ‘left-wing’ in the Party of Regions. Its funders and parliamentarians include several of the country’s most prominent ‘oligarchs’, including Rinat Akhmetov (the wealthiest person in Ukraine whose diverse assets have been valued at up to $28.4 billion) and Dmytro Firtash (whose main interests are in gas and titanium). The president’s son Alexander Yanukovych has also made quite a pile for himself, no doubt with assistance from his father, although with assets worth only $510 million he is hardly in the same league as the leading players.

Who are the Oranges?

Western propaganda portrays the Oranges as freedom-loving citizens struggling to establish the ideal Western model of clean government, competitive market capitalism, democracy and human rights. This picture completely ignores two important facts.

First, the Orange and Blue parties are equally dependent on the financial support of oligarchs (possibly with a few minor exceptions on both sides). The leading Orange oligarch is Igor (‘Benya’) Kolomoisky, whose assets are worth $6.2 billion, making him the second or third richest person in Ukraine. Whatever the programmes of Orange parties may say about ‘fighting corruption’ or ‘level playing fields’, their oligarchic backers are wedded to the business model of ‘crony capitalism’ and most unlikely to tolerate any serious attempt to disentangle business from politics.

Second, there are good reasons to doubt the ‘democratic’ credentials of the Orange camp. Quite apart from the question of the compatibility of genuine democracy with any form of capitalism, the current Orange coalition includes the Svoboda (Freedom) party of Oleh Tiahnybok.

This party, which until 2004 was called the Social-National Party of Ukraine, adheres to the semi-fascist ideology of ‘organic’ Ukrainian nationalism invented by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in interwar Galicia under Polish rule. Although the main base of Svoboda is in West Ukraine, in the 2012 elections it achieved a breakthrough from regional to national politics, winning over 10 percent of votes and 38 out of 450 seats in parliament.

Members of Svoboda are active participants in the current protests. They have been especially active in making practical arrangements for the protests, such as the provision of food, toilets and first aid. (Extreme nationalists – Russian nationalists in this case – seized a similar role in the anti-Putin protests in Moscow.) Svoboda has also claimed the credit for toppling the Lenin monument in Kiev, although it is not clear who actually performed this feat.

The nature of the protests

The Orange-Blue confrontation in Ukraine is basically a conflict between two groups of oligarchs and politicians over the choice of an external orientation of the country – toward Europe and the West or toward Russia and the post-Soviet region.

A Marxian analyst might expect that the interests and connections of the Blue oligarchs would be mainly confined to the post-Soviet region while those of the Orange oligarchs would extend to Europe or even further afield. This hypothesis has yet to be properly verified, but there are certain indications of at least a tendency in this direction.

Thus, according to his Forbes profile, Kolomoisky (Orange) ‘is a prominent international businessman with diversified business interests, including ownership of significant industrial assets worldwide and particularly in CIS countries... [He has] extensive business experience in Eastern Europe’. The corresponding profile for Akhmetov (Blue) focuses solely on his holdings in Ukraine. However, Firtash (Blue) does seem to have significant interests in Europe.

This does not mean that the protestors themselves view their cause in such grubby terms. There is no reason to doubt that the great majority of them sincerely believe that they are fighting for democracy, clean government, the rule of law and European civilization. In fact, many do not support any party or politician. One observer reported from Kiev in late November that two separate rallies were taking place on different squares – one organised by the Orange political parties, the other by ‘young non-partisan activists inspired by the Occupy movement’ (louisproyect.org/2013/12/26/whats-going-on-in-the-ukraine).

Protests have also been held in the cities of East Ukraine, although in the east the Orange parties are not able to muster many supporters – at least by comparison with the big counter-rallies being held in support of the government. Here again, news reports suggest that some protests have been simply in support of democratic rights and against corruption, without signs of allegiance to either the Blue or the Orange camp. So there is some potential at the grassroots for overcoming the regional division and developing a genuinely democratic and eventually socialist politics.

Stefan

Labyrinth of lies and propaganda (1995)

Book Review from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West by David Rieff (Vintage £8.99)

Written by a journalist who has worked almost continuously in Bosnia since the war began this recently published book gives penetrating insights into a number of aspects of the Bosnian conflict, focusing primarily on the role of the West.

One of the most persistent myths about the Yugoslav wars, especially that in Bosnia, is that they were caused by "ancient hatreds", with Serbs, Croats and Muslims straining to get at each others throats for decades, but only able to do so when the collapse of Tito's federalism allowed them to slip the leash. In actual fact the violence that occurred in Bosnia's ethnically mixed towns and villages was deliberately stirred up by Serbian Nationalists, often by means of the most extreme terror. Rieff describes the common method of placing a gun or knife in the hands of a Serb villager and ordering him to kill a Muslim neighbour in front of other villagers. If he refused (and apparently many did) he was shot on the spot and the process was repeated, A young Cetnik interviewed by Rieff in Bosanka Krupa boasted that: "By the third house, they're shitting themselves and asking you where you want the Muslim shot, and how many times." And yet this same youth goes on to tell Rieff that before the war he had many Muslim friends, attempting to explain this by saying: "But I didn't understand many things at that time." Apart from the young man's naïveté this shows clearly that Bosnia was not torn apart by "ancient hatreds", but by a very modern nationalist poison that has left thousands dead and thousands more traumatised and brutalised.

Anyone who wants to find their way out of the labyrinth of myths, lies, distortions and propaganda peddled by western politicians and their lackeys in the media about what is happening in Bosnia; and who wants a graphic illustration of just how hypocritical, duplicitous and cynical the capitalist great powers are, even with regard to the international laws they themselves have made, would be well advised to read this book. For those who wish to remain blind to the facts and dismiss this as just another war between mutually aggressive neighbours with heroic western peacekeepers caught in the middle, keep taking the tabloids.

Ian Simpson 

The unsung centenary (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July we were asked to celebrate two anniversaries: 400 years ago the Spanish fleet did not land in Britain and 300 years ago William of Orange did. The Protestant Orange Order of Northern Ireland used the latter opportunity to parade their bigotry, but neither occasion made much difference to workers. Certainly the claim that William was responsible for parliamentary democracy today is risible when a 40 per cent vote produces a 100 majority in the House of Commons and Members of Parliament behave like unruly children.

The BBC celebrated the centenary of the birth of the crime writer Raymond Chandler, but it fell to my local primary school, in their end of term play, to remind us of a centenary which marked a much more important milestone in working-class, and especially women workers' history. The Match Girls dealt with the co-ordinated action by unskilled workers which led to the formation of the first non-craft union.

On 7 July 1888 Annie Beasant printed an article "White Slavery in London" in Link, the Fabian paper of which she was co-editor, describing conditions of work in the Bryant & May match factory in Bromley by Bow in London's East End:

The hour for commencing work is 6.30 in summer and 8 in winter, work concludes at 8pm. Half an hour is allowed for breakfast and an hour for dinner. This long day is performed by young girls, who have to stand the whole time. A typical case is that of a girl of 16, a piece worker, she earns 4s a week . . . The splendid salary of 4s is subject to deductions in the shape of fines: if the feet are dirty, or the ground under the bench is left untidy, a fine of 3d is inflicted; for putting "brunts"—matches that have caught fire during the work—on the bench 1s has been forfeited . . . If a girl leaves 4 or 5 matches on her bench when she goes for a fresh "frame" she is fined 3d, and in some departments a fine of 3d is inflicted for talking. If a girl is late she is shut out for "half a day", that is, for the morning of six hours, and 5d is deducted out of her day's 8d.

There was also a one shilling compulsory "contribution" towards a statue of Gladstone being put up by Bryant, and employees had to take a day's unpaid leave for the unveiling. Ay that time shareholders in the company received a 20 per cent dividend.

When the article appeared Bryant & May tried to get the girls to write and deny its content and the three who had talked to Annie Besant were sacked. When the company dismissed another girl they considered the ringleader, the women in her department, followed by the other 1,400 employed by the company, walked out. A deputation sent to the London Trades Council for support were given £20, offered mediation with the employers and help with drawing up the list of  grievances. When the meeting took place, Bryant & May conceded almost all the girls' demands.

The first meeting of the Union of Women Matchmakers was held on 27 July 1888. Later re-named The Matchmakers Union, it only survived until 1902, but the action taken by the matchgirls in 1888 had considerable immediate and long-term effects on the trade union movement. The formation of other non-craft unions soon followed.

How much has the lot of unskilled workers improved since the Victorian values of Messrs. Bryant & May were challenged a hundred years ago? The clothing sweatshop and other low paid workers of 1988 would tell us: not much. They still try to make ends meet on their meagre wages while employers make heavy profits. Although deductions to erect a statue to the present Prime Minister are not yet compulsory, no doubt "invisible" deductions, reflected in poverty wages, still go to swell the funds of capitalism's parties.

Eva Goodman 

Obituary: Gilbert McClatchie (1976)

Obituary from the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gilbert McClatchie (GILMAC) died on 20th April at the age of 86 after a lifetime of activity in the SPGB. Only a few days earlier, on the Friday he had been present at the Annual Conference and had said now pleased he was to be there and how encouraging he found it. In recent years failing health and accidents had resulted in long periods in hospital and in his being largely confined to his home, but his interest in the Party and in companion parties abroad did not flag and he kept up continuous correspondence with members here and in USA and Canada.

He joined the Party in 1910 and was soon fully involved in a range of activities which was to include writing, speaking, conducting study classes and long years of service on the Editorial Committee and the EC. He was already writing articles for the Socialist Standard before the first world war. After the 1939-45 war he was Party candidate in a Parliamentary election.

His father was a farmer in Ireland. Getting into financial difficulties, the family came to England when Gilmac was six years of age. Returning to Ireland in the war Gilmac did a variety of jobs including a long spell at timber felling. He got to know many of the men active in the Irish trade unions and Labour Party and the Republican movement, with all of whom he argued the SPGB case. Some of his articles (on occasion written jointly with Mick Cullen) dealt with the "Irish Problem". He wrote valuable articles on the Russian Revolution.

His association with the Party was an outstanding example of mutual benefit. He brought his wide knowledge of history, economics and the working-class movement to the service of Socialism, but, as he explained, it was the stimulus of his membership that led him to study Marx and many other economists, to read Greek and Roman history and to tackle Hegel and other philosophers and the works of anthropologists. His first acquaintance with Marx's Capital was seeing it in a bookshop and buying it under the impression that it would help him with his job as a book-keeper.

Gilmac married Hilda Kohn (sister of Adolph) and for many years they worked together in Party activities. Between the wars he was happily able to combine his love of books with travelling round the country buying and selling rare works on history, economics, etc. His bookshop, which gave him welcome opportunities to meet writers and collectors, was put out of action by the second world war.

His great knowledge served the Socialist movement well in the formulation over the years of the Party's contribution to political and economic thought. He wrote a full-length book for the centenary of The Communist Manifesto in 1948, covering developments of organization and theory in a century of working-class history. Unfortunately no publisher could be found. He wrote the introduction to the Party's edition of The Communist Manifesto and in 1975 had the pleasure of seeing in print the pamphlet on the Materialist Conception of History.

Late in life Gilmac obtained great satisfaction from several extended visits to USA and Canada where he renewed contacts with his many friends and gave radio and television talks on Socialism. The London Times published an obituary notice in its issue of 23rd April.

His many friends will miss him and remember his work for Socialism. Whatever upsets he had in life and with his health he never ceased to be optimistic for the Socialist future.

We offer sympathies to his daughter Jenny and brother Norman, and their families.

H.

Cooking the Books: Owen Jones’s Hopeless Agenda (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the Independent on Sunday (26 January), ubiquitous Labour left-winger Owen Jones proposed a nine-point ‘Agenda for Hope’.  It is essentially a wish-list of reforms to capitalism, as illustrated by the first of the points:

‘A statutory living wage, with immediate effect, for large businesses and the  public sector, and phased  in for small and medium  businesses over a five-year Parliament. This would save billions spent on social security each year by reducing subsidies to low-paying bosses, as well as stimulating the economy, creating jobs because of higher demand, stopping pay being undercut by cheap labour, and tackling the scandal of most of Britain’s poor being in work. An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work would finally be enshrined in law.’

The ‘finally’ is a nice touch since the campaign for a ‘living wage’ was started by the old ILP, then still part of the Labour Party, over 80 years ago in the 1920s. Since Jones has demonstrated in the past that he has some knowledge of Marx’s ideas, he must have chosen the phrase ‘an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work’ deliberately. It is of course a modern version of the demand for ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ which Marx, in a talk to British trade union leaders in 1865, described as a ‘conservative motto’ as opposed to the ‘revolutionary watchword’ of ‘abolition of the wages system.’

Jones does not give a figure for what he considers to be a living wage. At the moment the so-called living wage which some employers and especially local councils have agreed to pay no one less than is £8.80 an hour in London and £7.65 in the rest of the country, compared with the legal minimum wage of £6.31 an hour. This ‘living wage’ is only about £15,000 for a year of full-time employment outside London. Although this would be an improvement on what many workers are getting now it is hardly a living wage in any reasonable sense of the word ‘living’.

What Jones is advocating is a legally-decreed wage increase for millions of workers. This is unlikely to have the effect he intends. It could well ‘save billions spent on social security each year by reducing subsidies to low-paying bosses’. The Tories are on to this too and favour an increase in the minimum wage for precisely this reason. On the other hand, it could lead to employers laying off workers or even going out of business, so augmenting the ranks of the unemployed and social security payments to them. Not that the cost of social security should be of concern to workers. It’s only a problem for the capitalist class since they pay for it.

One thing it won’t do is stimulate ‘the economy, creating jobs because of higher demand.’ Since the extra wages will have to be paid by employers this will not result in any ‘higher demand’; the increase in demand resulting from higher wages (to the extent that it happens) would be offset by a fall in demand derived from employers’ profits. It’s a zero-sum game. So it won’t stimulate the economy or create extra jobs. In fact, since it is profits not wages that drive the economy, the reduced profits could have the opposite effect.

Owen Jones has failed to grasp that capitalism is not a collection of random bad things that can be tackled piecemeal. It’s an economic system with its own mode of functioning that cannot be reformed by legislation to work other than as a system that gives priority to profits not wages and which has to be done away with altogether in one revolutionary change.

Rock bottom (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Red Wedge is a campaign by rock musicians aimed at conning young workers that voting Labour is in their interest. It is a cynical tactic employed by a party which, despite the idealistic intentions of some of its supporters, is in the business of forming a government to run the capitalist system of inequality, exploitation and insecurity.

The campaign strategy is simple: concerts are sponsored by the Labour Party and young workers are sold tickets promising a good night out. Then comes the propaganda. Billy Bragg or Paul Weller sing a few songs and then pass some comments on the need to get Kinnock into Number Ten. They might just as well advise people to try disco dancing on the M1. Waiting in the wings at all Red Wedge concerts are a few Labour MPs—carefully selected ones who don't use long words or talk about the need to recognise the realities of the world market. Their job is to make big promises, like drunks in pubs who tell you that if you  come back tomorrow night they'll be drinking with Samantha Fox. Recipients of these giant-sized whoppers are supposed to leave the concert with a burning desire to vote Labour. 

This all comes as music to the ears of Labour leaders like arch-opportunist, Robin Cook, who has observed that

At the next election there will be four million first-time voters who were too young to vote in 1983. Norman Tebbit might ponder with profit on how they will vote on the day of reckoning, and his campaign advisers could usefully remind him that it was a majority among young people that secured the election of a Labour government in 1964 and in 1974. (Guardian, 7 February)

So, the Labourites are again hoping for electoral success on the basis of anti-Tory feeling by workers too young or too forgetful to know that Labour-run capitalism is just as bad for the working class. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Labour's strategy is its negative appeal: in general, workers are not told that Labour will do anything great—rather, Kinnock has been at pains to stress how little he would try to change—but are urged to rally under the pink flag because "anything must be better than Thatcher". In short, the Labour Party is depending on a rejection of the present, rather than plans for the future.

Paul Bower, Labourite co-ordinator of the Red Wedge con-trick, has a pessimistic view of the mental capacity of young workers. Indeed, he is condescending in the extreme:

Leaflets convince nobody. Meetings convince nobody . . . Why push a leaflet through somebody's door? They're probably so depressed they don't want to read it. A woman's come home from doing a cleaning job. She's too tired to read bloody boring leaflets. Also, people aren't literate in the same way that they were twenty years ago . . . they don't sit down and read books in the same quantities that they used to. I read books all the time. I love books. But I'm the product of a very different society than Britain between 1979 and 1985. (LAM, 28 January) 

What patronising nonsense! If Labour leaflets and meetings "convince nobody"—and we are glad to hear this from one of the party's promoters—perhaps it is because workers are sensible enough to reject the message they are being fed. Are we also to believe that women who go out to work are too mindless at the end of the day to examine "bloody boring leaflets"? What Bower must understand is that bloody boring parties inevitably produce them and workers will rightly throw them away. How often have socialists been told "Don't bother putting any of that socialist stuff through my door; I've seen it before and I can't be bothered reading all them promises". The propaganda of the Labour Party is a big turn-off, but that is no reason to suggest that workers are unable or unwilling to read anything.

In the USA, that land of bogus freedom and democracy, moderate actors can become President. In the recent election in the Philippines, Marcos and his wife toured the night clubs doing a double-act song and dance routine to whip up votes for their particularly vicious brand of capitalism. Perhaps all this is the necessary direction of capitalist politics, as reformist promises become hollower the emphasis must be on pure showmanship. Maybe we have yet to see the Iranian Ayatollahs doing a barber shop quartet and Gorbachev playing the spoons on network Georgian TV. We have already experienced the sickly picture of Kinnock dancing around in a pop video with Tracey Ullman.

Red Wedge is just another descent on that familiar journey of political opportunism. Of course, music can and always has been used by those who want to express themselves politically. But there is a mighty difference between the passion of the singer who has something to say and the hollow sound of this new gang of party-political mindbenders.

Steve Coleman 

Editorial: Double Standards (2014)

Editorial from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thirty years ago this month began the Miners’ Strike which ended in defeat.  But the class struggle continues. On both sides. The recent strike by workers on London Underground led to calls by capitalist politicians for fresh attacks on the organised working class movement. They want new restrictions on strike action, proposals for a minimum service to be provided by London Underground workers like the current legislation around the fire service, new thresholds to make sure a majority of union members vote for strikes rather than just a majority of those who cast their ballots.

A Tory source said 'It's right that we look at issues like ballot thresholds and minimum service agreements in order to protect passengers on vital public transport networks.' Boris Johnson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he supported new voting thresholds on industrial action ballots: 'I think minimum thresholds would be reasonable for vital public transport functions such as the London Underground which has to keep the greatest city on earth moving, on which millions of people depend on for their livelihoods, and people say: 'Oh, well, you only got elected on 40 percent and so on', well I quite understand that point. I just think that there's a difference between a local election or a political election and the operation of a vital public service.'

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) had walked out for 48 hours from 9.30 GMT on 4 February in a row over 953 job losses stemming from the closure of ticket offices. The RMT ballot had a 76 percent yes vote on a 40 percent turnout while the TSSA ballot had a 59 percent yes vote on a 52 percent turnout.

Turnout statistics are very illuminating and demonstrate that 'our political leaders' shouldn't have any political power going by the yardstick they want to introduce. The 2012 London Mayoral election turnout was 38 percent of which Johnson got 44 percent of votes in the first round which is 17 percent of all London's electorate. Since 1979 the Euro-elections have had an average 33 percent turnout with an all-time low in 1999 of 24 percent. A real all-time low is the 2012 turnout of 15 percent for Police and Crime Commissioners while a parliamentary by-election in Manchester South in 2012 had an 18 percent turnout. All these capitalist elections are null and void if we apply some turnout threshold on trade union ballots or are the organised working class a special case and in need of legislative sanctions?

Trade Unions are essentially defensive organisations of the working class to protect wages and working conditions, and the strike weapon is a necessary tool to prevent the working class being driven into the ground by the capitalist class’s never-satisfied demands for profit, what Marx called 'the never-ceasing encroachments of capital'. As socialists we stand with our fellow working class in their necessary battles to defend themselves, but point out at all times that the real victory to be achieved is the abolition of the wages system.

Retrospect - the Socialist Standard 1904 (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Seventy-five years ago, the first issue of the Socialist Standard was published—a clear statement of the unique socialist case, of uncompromising opposition to the expediencies of reformism:

The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence in every commercial country of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth . . . It is the producer of wealth who is poor, the non-producer who is rich. How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who manipulate the machine, who build the factory and the home, and, in a word, who create the whole of the wealth, receive only sufficient to maintain themselves and their families on the border line of bare physical efficiency, while those who do not aid in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to supply their every necessity, comfort, and luxury?

All the attempted improvements and reforms of governments since then—be they Tory, Labour, Liberal or coalition—have not made any difference. Society is still divided into classes, the haves and the have-nots:

. . .  the life condition of the workers is one of penury and of misery. The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a bare subsistence wage. The food they eat, the clothing they wear, the houses in which they live are of the shoddiest kind, and these together with the mockery of an education which their children receive, primarily determine the purchasing price of their labour-power.

Today, three-quarters of a century later, these observations are still true. Now we eat soya-bean substitutes in place of meat; we accept that new clothes will fall to bits rapidly or need mending soon after purchase. Some even rely on jumble sales and thrift shops to clothe their children in second-hand reach-me-downs; working-class housing is built on the cheap and nasty principle, heedless of comfort and of a most unappealing ugliness; while the schools our children are compelled by law to attend are no more able to educate them than a battery farm can be said to educate its hens.

That first article went on to demonstrate how profit, interest and rent derive from "the unpaid labour of the working-class".

So long as this lasts – and it will last as long as the capitalist system of society – it will not be possible for the workers by any Trades Union organisation to more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming every day more limited by the combinations among employers to defeat the aims of the working class.

The socialists of 1904 would find their description of the capitalist system in British applies just as aptly to 1979 as when that sentence first appeared in print. Now the trade unions are opposed by the Confederation of British Industry, Aims of Industry and the Institute of Directors, as well as by combinations of employers within various branches of industry. During these seventy-five years, we have seen and learnt from many bitter experiences just how limited is the power of trade union action. In 1926, all the efforts of the coalminers solidly united in their union and supported by other trade unionists could not prevent a reduction in their wages. In recent years, currency inflation combined with rising levels of unemployment have brought about similar falls in the real purchasing power of workers' wages. Even in 1904, the Socialist Standard reported that "the real wage of the worker as measured by its purchasing power has, since 1900, been reduced by ten per cent." Experience tells us that we cannot expect lasting improvements from trade union action, only temporary gains which are wiped out when market conditions alter.

What, then, can we do? The answer given by the Socialist Party in 1904 is the same as we would give today, not because we are blinkered slaves to tradition but because the conditions and problems we are dealing with are essentially the same. Our task is

. . .  to show the workers that while their organisation in trades will  prove an invaluable aid in the transformation of society by facilitating industrial reorganisation, yet at present they can best help to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of wage-slavery by recognising that in their class struggle with their exploiters they can be most certain of success in the political sphere of action.

Then, as now, socialists had to expose the non-revolutionary parties—whether allegedly labour or avowedly capitalist—as opposed to socialism. That first article proceeds to sum up the Conservatives and the Liberals as parties "interested in maintaining the present class society", which "cannot, therefore, be expected to help in its transformation from capitalism to Socialism."

The Labour Representative Committee, which later spawned the Labour Party, was described as 

" also to be avoided . . . [It] has no programme whatsoever, and its members possess no principles in common save the name “Labour." . . . Unity is only possible among those who possess common principles. Unity can not, therefore, be secured for any length of time by the members of the Labour Representation Committee, but even if it could, the body is not based upon Socialist principles and should not receive the adhesion of working men."

History has shown that unity can be achieved in the absence of common principles, but only by those prepared to elevate vote-catching and expediency. The Labour Party today, perpetually threatened with splits, develops its politics mainly with a view to the popularity polls when out of power, and when in government never fails to disappoint its faithful rank and file by its concern for capitalist class interests, under the cover name of the 'national interest'.

What was needed, we said in 1904, was a socialist party. There was then the Independent Labour Party but, being a 'halfway house to socialism', founded on compromise, was doomed: 

Having neither the courage to proclaim themselves Socialists nor to disavow Socialism, they are to-day coquetting with that working-class wing of the Liberal Party – the Labour Representation Committee.

As we have so often seen with the Labour Party, the LRC's reaction to the question of socialism was that "that was neither the time nor the place for such discussion". It is doubtful if the question of socialism—the abolition of the wages system—has ever been thought proper for discussion or been on the agenda at any Labour, ILP or LRC meeting.

The other party claiming to be socialist in 1904 was the Social Democratic Federation, from which the founder members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain had seceded earlier that year. It was following a 'compromising policy' like that of the ILP, so much so that it was "surely developing into a mere reform party, seeking to obtain the provision of Free Maintenance for school children". Like the ILP, the SDF was drawn into the orbit of the Labour Party and is long since defunct. The SPGB, scoffed at as 'Impossibilists', has however survived, and has developed its case in response to historical change. Since 1904 we have stated the socialist attitude on war, on the Russian Revolution, the General Strike, the theory mooted in the Depression that capitalism was about to collapse, and many other issues.

As in 1904, the SPGB is "a party determined to use its every effort in the furtherance of Socialist ideas and Socialist principles". We continue to work "gain the confidence and support of the working-class . . . by consistently advocating . . . a clearly defined body of principles". Then, as now, we assert that "the first duty of The Socialist Party is the teaching of its principles and the organisation of a political party on a Socialist basis". The first message of the first socialist political party to the working class, with an optimism now embarrassing, concluded:

Men and women of the working-class, it is to you we appeal! To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members. To-morrow we shall be strong in our numbers, for the economic development of capitalist society fights for us, and as, through the merging of free competition in monopoly and the simplification of industry, the personal capitalist gives place to the impersonal trust as your employer, you will be forced to see that the welfare of the people can best be guaranteed by the holding of all material wealth in common. 

We ask you, therefore, to study the principles upon which our party is based, to find out for yourselves what Socialism is and how Socialism and Socialism alone can abolish class society and establish in its stead a society based upon social equality. When you have done this we know that you will come with us and, by enrolling yourself a member of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, help to speed the time when we shall herald in for ourselves and for our children, a brighter, a happier and a nobler society than any the world has yet witnessed.

Charmian Skelton

Noam Chomsky - Rights and Lefties (1995)

From the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists aren't the only people pointing out that it is useless pleading with governments to end the problems which are endemic to capitalism. Noam Chomsky reiterated this during a recent talk - pity his audience didn't appreciate his point!

There was something vaguely comical about the atmosphere in the Central Hall, Westminster on the bright June evening when Prof Noam Chomsky was to deliver his talk on the theme "HUman Rights in the New World Order". All the fashionable stewards wore black T-shirts with the following imperative in small white lower-case letters: "defend diversity". There were scores of people dressed in this uniform.

Chomsky's address was part of a Human Rights convention which had been sponsored by the Observer and the legal campaign group Liberty. This event was attended by a wide range of left-wing lawyers, radical journalists, professional campaigners, and post-post-modern pundits. Most of the famous names were there to lead seminars or workshops.

Noam Chomsky, often dubbed as the world's greatest philosopher, is a man who is steadfastly opposed to icons of any description, to human sheep following political shepherds. He even opposed the superb documentary about the book he c-wrote with Edward S. Herman (Manufacturing Consent) on the grounds that it personalised grand political issues. It was therefore incredible to witness the degree of personal adulation bestowed on this man by many of the people there. The man in front of me kept taking photographs of Chomsky during the talk. At the end of the talk hundreds of people tried to get the philosopher's autograph.

We do not underestimate the immeasurable contribution that Noam Chomsky has made, and is making, to radically change the world, but to treat him as a saviour is to misunderstand his arguments. Chomsky was on his feet for two hours. He gave a coruscatingly good analysis of modern capitalism. and showed how the origins of sustained human rights violations can all be traced back to struggles over property rights, land rights, rights of trade and so forth. It was, therefore, utterly dispiriting for socialists in the audience (and probably for Chomsky himself) when his blisteringly articulate condemnation of capitalism drew nothing but fairly dull questions from the audience. Each of the few questions seemed to come from various left-wing, reformist activists, and betrayed an apparent incomprehension of what had been said in the talk.

Chomsky's arguments

Chomsky began by pointing out that in capitalism "politics takes place in the shadow cast by big business". He concentrated on American foreign policy showing how, for example, such policy in Haiti was formed and reformed in accordance with the interests of the super-rich both there and in America. The ordinary population of Haiti was treated as a dispensable element in the process of making a few people very rich. The American government like countries with which it does business to be "stable". The stricter the government, the better. A strong military government is fine, a fascist regime will do nicely. No trade unions to interrupt the wealth-creating process, and a large armed police presence all the time will produce just the sort of disciplined order and reliable "economic miracle" that American investors would be prepared to rely upon.

With fastidious detail, and supporting his every proposition with demonstrably accurate data (often adducing facts and figures released by the American government itself), Chomsky showed how "liberals" like Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton had condoned mass murder, torture, and savagery by the deals they did, in Brazil and Colombia respectively. "If the Nuremberg laws were applied," as Chomsky commented on another occasion, "then every post-war American president would have been hanged."

He then gave a frighteningly grim picture of life today for many Americans. The recession has produced armies of politicians and "experts" who favour social policies of "tough love". This means being cruel to be kind. Taking away the nanny state in order to teach people the virtues of self-dependence. No free school, no free medicine. Win in the rat race or curl up and die. "Tough love is what they call it for a good reason," said Chomsky, "because the rich love it and it's tough on everybody else." The irony is, as he pointed out, that these policies were put forward in the name of "family values" and yet their direct and clearly predictable result has been to assist in the destruction of that institution in America. Fathers who have been conditioned to see themselves as breadwinners have no employment, mothers work long, part-time sessions, and children are supervised by television sets. Fathers get drunk and depressed, wives work themselves into a torpor, and the kids end up as unsocialised, illiterate delinquents. And all this in the cause of promoting God and the family.

Why should workers be afforded the luxury of employment contracts and their associated legal rights? Ask the new economists. We should all become part of a more "flexible economy". Chomsky explained the rationale for this: "the bosses want you anxious as hell when your head touches the pillow each night, worrying whether you'll be at work the day after tomorrow, as there's nothing quite like that worry to get you worrying like mad".

Chomsky's opposition to the wages-system is always clearly put: "I don't think that many people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive", as he once put it. Many of his ideas appear succinctly in a book which is a commentary on the documentary Manufacturing Consent. The book is Noam Chomsky and the Media edited by Mark Achbar (Black Rose Books, Montreal/London) and the "rent" quotation is on page 215. Again, consider his views on the need for government:

"presupposing that there have to be states is like saying, what kind of feudal system should we have that would be the best one? What kind of slavery would be the best kind?" (p. 208)

At the meeting Chomsky revealed two telling figures from a recent opinion poll in the United States. He noted that 82 per cent of the respondents thought that most politicians were in politics for their own gain, and that 83 per cent of respondents thought that "the current economic system is inherently unfair". It could hardly have been plainer that Chomsky's identification of the reasons for human rights violations was the essential nature of capitalism. It was not an unacceptable face of capitalism, something that needs adjusting with a legal instrument, it was the system itself.

Yet, after two hours of quietly, cogently, and often hilariously, showing that the social system was necessarily slanted against human rights, campaigners stood up at the end of the talk and asked for Chomsky's blessing for a variety of foredoomed crusades. Chomsky had argued that the problem of human rights abuse was just a necessary consequence of having a system run by bankers not by philanthropists or moral philosophers, yet the reformers wanted him to approve of huge human efforts to plead with governments to act more kindly.

To his great credit, Chomsky seemed to treat legal interference with capitalism as an unreliable solution to the problems of human rights violations. Although he spoke for two hours he only came to the matter of law in the final sixty seconds of his talk. He picked up a piece of card and referred to some specific questions involving legal strategies which he had been invited to address by the organisers, said, in effect, that they weren't very important in the context of capitalism, and concluded his opening remarks. Those lawyers who had been manning the expensively-decorated recruiting stall of the Law Society (the solicitors' trade union) in the foyer before the talk must have felt rather let down.

The first questioner, from the audience of 2,000,  introduced himself as a spokesperson for the "Luton Peoples' Collective". He said that some people in Britain had been victimised by the police for illegal drug use. Was this branch of human rights designed to intimidate all deviants from conventional behaviour into conforming to capitalism? Having travelled 3,000 miles to talk about human rights in a world suffering from such enormous problems as starvation somewhere in the world), carnage, ethnic cleansing, forced female circumcision, and the catalogue of crimes exposed by Amnesty International, Chomsky was visibly disappointed with the first question. But the questions did not improve.

The second questioner asked whether Chomsky favoured the London-based campaign to stop the Cuban government buying certain sorts of missiles? A possibly rather gutted Chomsky patiently explained to Private Eye's Dave Spart that, as had been pointed out in the talk, there was no convincing evidence that governments could be persuaded by moralists to run capitalism in accordance with anything but the principles of accounting. And so the questions continued. I wanted to ask Chomsky to comment on the sort of society he wanted to see at the end of the "long road" he had said we would have to travel before becoming civilised; and how we should travel there. Alas, despite 20 minutes of impersonating a flagless semaphorist, I was still not chosen by the steward to ask a question. Perhaps I should been wearing a T-shirt bearing a single demand from capitalism as its slogan.

Many people on the left in politics have an unwarrantedly optimistic view of what can be achieved by using the law to tame and control commerce. The law cannot do that. As a socialist I do not support the campaign for human rights, for two reasons.

First, the whole idea of getting down on your knees and asking someone or something for your "rights" is undiginified. It presupposes that the giver or rights (he, she, they, or it) is superior to the supplicant. I am a human being and I don't want a society where I have to depend upon John Major, the Lord Chancellor, Bill Clinton or the chief judge in Strasbourg to finish a plate of lobster and then tell me whether I have the right to breathe, work, be free, protest, or anything else. Rights are for the meek.

They are also for the unrealistic. The second objection to rights is that history has shown them to be nothing but instantly disposable guarantees. The American constitution in 1776 declared that "all men are born free", yet slavery was still an institution for almost another century, swiftly followed by universal wage-slavery. The left's hapless "right to work" campaign fizzled out in the 1980s when it became apparent to even the most bigoted SWP member that capitalism does not and can never guarantee such rights. Go to any country in the world which boasts a constitution guaranteeing the right to life and you will find the bodies or the statistics to debunk the paper right.

Jeremy Bentham, the nineteenth-century reformer, and the man who wrote that "property and law are born together and die together", had a clear understanding of legal rights. He said that they were "nonsense" and that the idea of basic human rights was "nonsense upon stilts". There's no point in calling them rights if getting them enforced is only a pious hope. A call for rights is a plea to a recognised superior. Let's forget "rights", and get up off our knees.

Gary Jay

Editorial: Why we are different (1980)

Editorial from the November 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people complain that all political parties are the same. The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is different from all parties, movements and sects which from time to time appeal to you for support. Our message is not designed to sell you political leaders at election times, nor does it consist of slogans with more echo than substance. The socialist case is based upon the secure grounding of political logic and material interest.

The SPGB was formed in 1904, two years before the Labour Party. Our Declaration of Principles did not arise out of a Utopian idea, but out of the real problems produced by the way in which society is organised. Modern society operates within the confines of the capitalist system. Capitalism has certain hallmarks: the minority ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution; production for profit; exploitation of the working class (all those who receive wages and salaries as a means of living) by the capitalist class (those who can live by possessing capital without having to produce wealth).

Capitalism is a system of wage slavery for the majority of people; it is impossible to run the wages system in the interest of the wage slaves. Political parties of all types have tried to reform the capitalist system in the interest of the working class, but this is a futile struggle to treat the symptoms and not the disease. Reformism is the political approach which endeavours to run capitalism without recognising the in-built antagonism between the two classes in society. Reformists, however sincerely motivated they may be, are bound to end up running society in the material interest of the ruling class.

At its inception the SPGB rejected the reformist tactics of the Labour Party. Early issues of the Socialist Standard predicted that the new party would fail to solve the problems faced by the working class. Nothing has happened since to persuade us to change our mind and plenty has happened to make us even more resolved in our hostility to the Labour Party. It supported two world wars and was in office when the first British atomic weapons were produced. It has nationalised industries which was simply a move from private to state capitalism—and called it socialism. It has introduced and upheld racist immigration legislation and other divisive acts of nationalism. It has used troops to break strikes. The SPGB is different from the Labour Party simply because we stand at all time for the social interest of the working class, whereas Labour has consistently come to the aid of the class enemy.

The political aim of the SPGB is a response to the futility of reformism. Ours is the politics of revolution. We do not mean bloodshed and barricades when we speak of revolution, but a fundamental change in social relationships. The Socialist Party stands for a totally new system of social organisation in which the means of producing and distributing wealth—the land, factories, mines, docks, hospitals, railways—are commonly owned and democratically controlled by all members of society, without distinction of race or sex. In socialism each member of society will give according to ability and take according to self-determined needs. Money, wages, buying and selling will be things of the past, when wealth is held in common. Clearly, such a system does not operate anywhere in the world today. Neither could it exist in one country; the world system of capitalism can only be replaced by the world system of socialism.

Socialism is a democratic concept and it can only be established by conscious, democratic socialists. Leaders cannot get socialism for the working class. Indeed, the SPGB urges workers to reject all leaders and do your own thinking for yourselves. The emancipation of the working class by the working class itself is what we stand for. When the workers of the world understand and want socialism they must use their political power—in many countries this makes use of the ballot box—to take social power away from the capitalists and their representatives and to place the means of life in the hands of the whole community.

The socialist revolution is not an unattainable ideal. It can and will happen when millions of workers all over the world recognise their class interests, form socialist parties and use the political strength which they have. Once a majority of workers are resolved to establish socialism there is nothing that can effectively stand in their way. That is why the SPGB is solely concerned with the propagation of working class consciousness.

The SPGB is unlike all other parties in its organisation. We have no leaders, as a party of conscious members needs no chiefs to tell us what to do. All of our affairs are open to the scrutiny of the public. We are a political party, concerned with socialist propaganda; we publish literature, dealing both with general and specific matters; we attend opponents' meetings to state the case for social sanity; we put up candidates at election time in as many constituencies as is practical; we organise lectures and outdoor meetings to spread the understanding of socialist ideas. In short, we do whatever is possible to further what we believe to be the only worthwhile cause which is open to the working class. To join the SPGB you must be a committed socialist; applicants for membership are only admitted if they are considered to understand the case that we stand for.

We in the SPGB don't like being unique and different. We don't relish the fact that we are a small party which does not include millions of workers in its membership. We are certainly not complacent or proud about the fact that we are small. But we are proud of the fact that we have been consistently correct about what we have said for over seventy-five years. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is different.

Between the Lines: From the land which gave us Rupert Murdoch . . . (1988)

The Between the Lines TV Review column from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1988 is the year when TV discovered Australia in a big way. Firstly, it discovered that Australia was "discovered" two hundred years ago. Complete historical nonsense, of course: Australia was settled by its native Aborigines for about 30,000 years before the white "civilisers" arrived to murder them and leave who remained in apartheid-style reservations.

So TV has celebrated the land which produced Rupert Murdoch, the Bee Gees and Dame Edna. Fortunately, BBC2 offered a chance to avert our eyes from the revolting pictures of Charlie and Di's state visit, with her modelling with a team of beefy surfers while he discovered a whole new variety of plant life to enjoy conversations with. (Most of the latter are believed to be employed in the British Embassy.)

Instead, we could watch John Pilger's quite brilliant three-part documentary, The Last Dream which told, with passion, something of the real history of Australia. Pilger described how the Aborigines were peaceful people who lived at one with nature with respect for the land. And how the land was stolen, leaving them today as the lowest strand of the working class in a nation which cannot cope with a culture of sharing. Unemployment and alcoholism are very high among the Aborigines who survive.

In the second programme—the best of the trilogy for its uncompromising exposure—Pilger tore to pieces the long-standing myth that Australia is a classless society. He not only told us about the millionaire parasites like Kerry Packer, Alan Bond and Rupert Murdoch—he showed us them dining in celebration of their good fortune of being capitalist rulers in a land of illusory equality. Dining with them was Bob Hawke, the Labour Prime Minister of Australia.

Pilger lost no time and spared no detail in exposing the anti-working class attitudes and policies of the Labour government. Nobody could have watched the documentary without seeing through the lies of Hawke, who claims to be a socialist and the workers' friend. John Pilger seems to entertain some illusions about previous Australian Labour governments but he cannot be faulted in his demonstration that the present one is simply an ally of Australian capital against Australian labour.

In the third programme Pilger dealt with the Australian war record, placing special emphasis on its part in Vietnam, where the Australian state acted as an unrespected military servant of US imperialism. Pilger pointed out how Australians have always been sent to die in other people's wars. What he meant was that Australia has been subordinated to the needs of other national capitalist interests. True as this may be, the really important point (not made by Pilger) is that workers in all countries are always fighting wars which are not their own. Some capitalists win and some capitalists lose but it is always the workers who die needlessly.

The series ended fittingly with the singing of what the present writer at least regards as the greatest anti-war song ever written: The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle, himself an Australian. If you have never heard the song you should go out of your way to do so; if you have a chance to see a repeat of the Pilger series it is a must for workers who want to find out the history of what really happened to our class.

On the subject of working-class history and great music, the Channel Four documentary on Woody Guthrie, which was shown in January, was another classic: it would have been good to hear Pete Seeger singing Guthrie's This Land Is My Land (the uncensored version which deals with the iniquity of private property) while Pilger was describing the "discovery" of the Aborigines by the British plunderers.

In addition to TV's celebration of Britain's imperialist past, 1988 has also seen one of Australia's tackiest commodities hit the peak-time screen. Neighbours (BBC1, 5.35pm, Monday-Friday) is the soap opera devised to make Crossroads look like something on the Oxford English Literature syllabus. It is viewed by 14 million people daily. As a depiction of working-class life in Australia it is an unfunny joke.

Where are the unemployed workers? Why do no black Australians ever appear? Do Australians really spend most of their lives incessantly bitching against one another? Is there something in the air in Australia which makes sentimental music appear every time the tension heightens? (Tension-heightening in Neighbours is a euphemism for one of the characters threatening to kill the little girl next door and her parents, or another woman finding out that her grand-daughter—whose existence she didn't know about until the episode before last—is in fact her husband's mistress's child.

If you ever over-indulge on the lager at lunchtime and can't be bothered to stick your finger down your throat, why not make a rush for the telly and watch Neighbours? Personally, I don't give a XXXX what 14 million viewers say—I think the programme is written by the bloke who writes Bob Hawke's speeches: he should be put on the next convict ship to New Zealand and left to die of boredom.

Steve Coleman

Mixed Media: Hull Ferens Art Gallery (2014)

The Mixed Media column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hull Ferens Art Gallery

The Ferens Art Gallery in Hull which opened in 1927 is a great example of how impressive a municipal art collection can be outside the metropolis. In fact this gallery has A View on the Grand Canal (1728) by 'Venetia Vedutista' Canaletto, one of many ‘views’ which were once in demand by the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie as souvenirs of the Grand Tour, and one of the few in an English municipal collection.

Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring (1943)

Impressionist Laura Knight's evocative Dressing the Children (1906) portrays a woman dressing children by firelight in a kitchen with a cat in the centre of the picture. It was painted in the cottage of an ironstone miner and his family in the fishing village of Staithes on the Yorkshire coast where Knight lived in an artists’ colony. Knight records in her autobiography how she saw in the cottage 'greater poverty and misery than it seemed possible for anyone to bear.' The family relied heavily on Knight's income, and eventually she and her husband gave the family five pounds to buy a horse and cart and to set up a fish selling business. Only part of the loan was repaid, the remainder was offered as a gift. In the Second World War Knight was a 'War Artist' and painted the iconic feminist Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring.

The semi-abstract Keith Vaughan's Coastal Defences (Seaford, East Sussex) (c1959-62) is abstract assemblies of two dimensional geometrical shapes although Vaughan always rooted his paintings in observed reality, and was never completely abstract. There is a Henry Moore sculpture Working Model for Seated Woman (1980) which is a figure seated on a solid but low block base for support with her cloth-bound knees forced upwards by the pose.

Niccolò Renieri's baroque St Sebastian tended by the Holy Irene (1625) is in the style of the great Caravaggio with its strong lighting contrasts (chiaroscuro) and a preoccupation with the human body. A Roman warrior, the legend goes, Sebastian served in the private guard of the Emperor Diocletian, who sentenced him to be shot with arrows as punishment for his Christian faith, but as he lay dying and wounded he was found by the Holy Irene and nursed back to health. This painting is a very popular piece of work in the Ferens Art Gallery due to its striking nature and scale, it has been described as 'one of his most successful works, perhaps even his masterpiece.'

Steve Clayton

Cooking the Books: C, V and S (2012)

Cooking the Books column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

British Gas customers have been receiving a diagram with their bills which answers the question “where does your money go?” It shows that 56 percent goes on “gas bought from wholesale market”, 21 percent to “delivery to your home”, 10 percent to “government obligations and taxes”, 8 percent to operating costs, leaving 5 percent as “our profit”.

What does Marx make of this? To explain how capitalism works he employs three basic concepts, C, V and S. C stands for what he termed constant capital, V, for variable capital, and S, for surplus-value. By constant capital he means that part of total capital that is invested in factories, machinery, materials and energy.  Constant capital merely transfers its value (hence the name, ‘constant’) to the new product, either in one go or gradually through depreciation. Variable capital is that part of total capital that is invested in the purchase of labour-power and produces a greater value than its own (hence the name, ‘variable’).  This comes about because the exercise of labour-power is the source of new value.  The value that variable capital produces over and above its own value is S, surplus value.

From this Marx derived various explanatory concepts. S/V was the rate of surplus value or rate of exploitation. S/(C + V) was the rate of profit.

Some of Marx’s concepts can be translated into the categories of conventional bourgeois economics, except that Marx’s analysis is in terms of values whereas conventional economics is in terms of prices, which in practice are hardly ever the same. With this proviso, S + V corresponds to what conventional economists call “added value”. But there is a complication, even in Marx, regarding C. It can mean either total capital invested or only that part of constant capital that is transferred to a product in one process of production. Any confusion can be avoided by confining the “rate of profit” to the first case and introducing for the second the concept of “profit margin” as S/(C + V + S) even though this is not in Marx explicitly.

In his Guardian column (23 April) Aditya Chakrabortty drew attention to a study by the Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc) on the “Apple Business Model”. He highlighted the fact it cost only $178.45 to assemble an Apple iPhone in China whereas it was sold in America for $680, “a whacking gross margin of 72%” as he put it.

There was, however, something more interesting in the article itself (which can be found on the Cresc website). Here the authors employ the concept of “labour share of value added” (LSVA), defining “value added” as “Labour costs including social charges (L) + cash surplus (C) (calculated as depreciation and amortisation + interest paid + profit retained & distributed)”.

The authors quote figures to show that “in the long run, US manufacturing LSVA has been declining unsteadily from a 70% level since the early 1980s to reach 55% in 2007; the German decline started later but there is a full 10 point difference between the 75% level of the early 1990s and 65% level of the early 2000s”. In China, on the other hand, “manufacturing LSVA ratios are currently at an extraordinary low level of 27.2% in 2007 and an estimated 26.2% in 2008.”

It’s good of conventional economics to provide us with a tool for calculating the rate of worker exploitation, since LSVA is L/(L + C), the equivalent in Marx of V/(V + S), from which the rate of exploitation S/V can be derived as C/L.

The Middle East War: A Letter to a Kiev Cousin (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear K,

I know that this letter won't reach you. Only if I were to express myself in subtle allusions might such a letter pass the censorship of the State Capitalist Russian Empire. But what I have to say must be said loud and clear. You may not hear me, but others will.

At last you hold an exit permit in your hand, your ticket to the promised land. In struggling for it, you were thrown out of your job by your bureaucratic bosses, who then sent you to labour camp for a year on a charge of parasitism. It goes without saying, as they say, that you were guilty of being without a job — innocent people are not arrested in the Soviet Union, which has no unemployment anyway — as is well known! But tomorrow you board the train for Prague — destination Jerusalem.

Who can blame you for wanting to get out? For centuries the Ukraine has been the most deeply anti-semitic area of the Empire. Even now a Jew is occasionally knifed to death in the main square of a small market town while the "honest Soviet people" and the police look on. More commonplace are the occasions when your fellow citizens — not all of them, but enough — content themselves with spitting on the ground as they pass and muttering something about the Yids.

But I must admit to being out of sympathy with some of your complaints. While recounting how your kids have been discriminated against in education and work, you bemoan that since the war the professions of Party bigwig, secret police desk-murderer and high Army officer are no longer open to Jews. But your Old Bolshevik grandfather, who fought in Trotsky's Red Army which suppressed the White pogroms in 1919 and later perished in a Stalinist death camp — your grandfather thought that he was fighting for a society of free and equal comrades, without exploitation or oppression of any kind, in which words like soldier, police, wages, boss would have become the obscure jargon of historians. Yes, but he forgot the technical and cultural preconditions of the Communist dawn, so far removed from the realities of a backward peasant country. In the State Capitalist despotism which arose to carry through industrialisation he was for a time a key administrator. Could he have imagined your strange complaint in his youth?

When you get out, you'll be leaving behind your sister, a convinced supporter of the Soviet system. A Party member, she thinks that the system is basically sound, a bit perverted but objectively progressive and so forth. She prefers to do her military service in a Soviet uniform, as you prefer to do yours in an Israeli uniform. And every four or five years the real thing.

Take care as you make your way to Israel. Young men and women, calling themselves Palestinian freedom fighters, may try to kidnap and shoot you. They know nothing of the Ukraine or of how you lived there. To them you are one more Zionist coming to usurp "their" land. In fact, though their parents tilled the soil of Palestine, it always belonged to the landlord, not to them. When the army, which you will soon join, drove them out into neighbouring territories, they refused to settle and take compensation, and were encouraged to dream of a triumphal return to the ancient focal region of religious superstition and fanaticism. Vegetating in the misery of the refugee camps, they have become as misty-eyed Zionists as you. For they also long for the day when their dispersed "nation", the Palestinians living throughout Europe, the Americas and the Arab world, will be ingathered to Zion. And brought up their children to take patriotic revenge on you.

If they ever manage to "re-Arabise" Palestine, they will still be disinherited slaves of the minority who own and rule the earth, privately and through the State. But they may have the satisfaction of slaving for an Arab employer under "their own" Palestinian flag. Will the splendours of national liberation start to fade for them then?

And what about you? In Kiev your family lives in an apartment smaller than a room for one in the brand-new hotel for foreign tourists. In Israel you imagine being welcomed into a beautiful house in golden Jerusalem. You'll probably find yourself in a hastily-built apartment in a new town on the desert edge. When you fall behind in paying the rent — for it may take a while for you to resign yourself to taking the sort of job available — you will be thrown out on the street by the bailiff. You will be disciplined by a new boss, preached to by new politicians, led to the slaughter by new generals. Your freedom will consist in the bailiff, boss, politician and general being Jewish. You will no longer be suspected of disloyalty, unless you "act against the Jewish nation" — but you will learn to shun others as alien.

You know that the fourth major Middle East war, the worst yet, is in progress as I write. It began as I set out on a week's coach tour of Italy. The idyllic Isle of Capri used to be an exclusive resort of the capitalist class — a small fortune (tens of thousands) is still required as a condition of residence, but recently they have let in a few package tourists. The group I was in was among the first to be granted this honour.

A few hundred miles across the Mediterranean I knew that relatives of mine on one side, and friends on both sides, were killing one another on the blazing hot sand, strewn with metal wreckage and human carrion. I'm boycotting newspapers until the end of the war, but headlines are written on the news-stands which I can't help seeing. Like "human wave attacks". Think what that means.

In my mind the war means mainly the Sinai front. This is the front I've heard people speak of. Three Cairo students I knew at university are there — if not already dead. With one I never discussed politics. The second was cynical. The third (in private) sympathised with Israel. He had an extensive knowledge of Jewish history, told me that Egyptian soldiers taken prisoner by the Israelis were so impressed by their treatment that they refused to fight them again. My Israeli friends, those still alive, are in that minority which sympathises more or less openly with the Arabs. From them I have heard stories of Israeli torture prisons, of Israelis who have openly boasted how they blew up Iraqi synagogues in order to stampede the oriental Jews into Israel. Then there's the persecution of Copts and dissidents in Egypt, the Nazis working there . . .

Recently a young drifter in Libya, unable to hold down a job, concerned with the plight of the Libyan Jews, wanting to show the Israelis that not all Arabs want to throw them into the sea, hijacked a plane and took it on a personal peace mission to Tel Aviv, where he is now safely in prison — thinking what? Ghaddafi and Golda Meir were for once in agreement in diagnosing him insane. They should know. And the furore in Israel over two elite paratroopers who, sensitive to the position of Arabs inside Israel, spied for Syria! These people reverse the usual illusion, and make of the "enemy" country their ideal homeland. They have resisted the conditioning to which their fellows succumb. As their experience broadens, we can hope they will reach a more Socialist position — a plague on both your houses!

Back on Capri. A fellow traveller — mild-mannered and chivalrous, the perfect English gentleman — comes up: "You're Jewish, aren't you? Is the war going well? I hope your side is winning."

"I don't. Since when do wars go well? Whoever wins, my side loses."

This reply confused him. It took him several seconds to close his mouth. This same man, in a conversation about pollution, commented within earshot of coloured fellow tourists — "On the subject of pollution, what shall we do with our coloured friends who are polluting the country?" Perhaps he was considering gas chambers. But he was very embarrassed when challenged. There's hope for Socialism yet.

Arriving back in England, the driver of the bus taking us from the airport to the terminal treated his passengers to an analysis of world affairs. Passing through a Jewish area he commented: "All these Israelis have gone to fight their war. I hope they win it soon, or we're bound to get dragged into it. And they can stay there, as far as I'm concerned." Perhaps my astonishment was the product of a sheltered life?

There is no need for me to expose the mythical and unscientific nature of nationalist ideologies in the Middle East. The Jewish Zionists debunk the Arab Palestinian "Zionists" with excellent scholarly analysis, and vice versa. Literature available from the Al Fatah office, Zionist bodies and so on.

Until the hold of nationalist and racist poison on the minds of the world's workers is destroyed, it will not be possible to live the full and satisfying life of Socialism. Stand up for yourself as a human being and fight for the only worthwhile end — the achievement of a free humanity. And when you come to Western Europe, why not stay rather than go on to Israel? Corpses in the sand cannot, among other things, work for the Socialist revolution.

Yours,

STEFEN.