Hayter of the Trots (1972)

Book Review from the June 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hayter of the Bourgeoisie, by Teresa Hayter. Sidgwick and Jackson. £1.95.

This book is written by the daughter of the one-time British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir William Hayter. The first few chapters are an account of her personal history (childhood, education, etc.) leading on to her work with the Overseas Development Institute. While with the ODI she visited various parts of the underdeveloped world and saw at first hand the poverty and misery there and which contributed to her growing "politicization".

During her stay in the third world she came to the conclusion that the cause of all this backwardness was the dominance over the economy and the local politicians by the "imperialist" nations (America, Britain, France, etc.) and that the so-called aid programmes were really another form of imperialism in that they bound the third world nations more securely to the economies of the western exploiters.

Thus she came to write a book on the activities in this connection of the World Bank in Latin America. The ODI refused to publish this and it was subsequently published by Penguin as Aid as Imperialism. As a result of all these experiences Hayter jettisoned her liberal fallacies and became a "revolutionary". Alas, all this means is that she has embraced all the old Bolshevik fallacies instead and has joined the Trotskyist IMG (International Marxist Group).

The blurb on the dust jacket tells us that Hayter's current ideas were formed through identifying with the third world. This is nothing new for Trotskyists since, basically, they are trying to fulfill the historic task of the bourgeoisie ( the completion of the capitalist revolution) in those parts of the world where the bourgeoisie are too weak to do it themselves. Hayter and the IMG support all "national liberation" movements on the assumption that national liberation will weaken the imperialist nationals, cause a major economic breakdown, and so precipitate the working class into revolution. Leaving aside the absurdity that a frightened, politically working class will opt for Socialism (more likely to support reaction as in Germany in 1933) we should point that the author has devoted part of this book and all of Aid as Imperialism to showing that exploitation continues in other forms after independence anyway! And even if America loses all influence in, say, Vietnam does she think that the vacuum will remain unfilled by some other imperialist power, perhaps Russia or China? Indeed, when French interests were kicked out of the Far East after the second world war all that happened was that America moved in instead.

When dealing with the Russian revolution Hayter displays either a remarkable capacity for naivety or downright dishonesty. She claims "In Russia Soviet democracy survived longest in the areas where the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party was strong" and mentions Lenin arguing that "workers' councils must be set up everywhere, whether or not there were members of the Communist Party". In fact exactly the opposite happened. The Bolsheviks closed down trade union and peasant bodies which they couldn't control, shot down people who demanded that unpopular Bolshevik-dominated soviets should be subject to recall, and dissolved the democratically elected Constituent Assembly which Lenin had been clamouring for until it failed to produce anything like the anticipated Bolshevik majority.

Trotskyists, Hayter included, are fond of the theory that the revolution only degenerated with the coming of Stalin and that the Communist Party had hitherto practised "democratic centralism"—democracy within the Party (even if nowhere else). Indeed, during the wrangles between Stalin and Trotsky over the throne vacated by Lenin, Trotsky, the dazzling intellectual, complained that Stalin was suppressing his views; but Stalin, the plodder, simply ran rings round Trotsky by pointing out that he had never complained when other opposition groups had been suppressed at the Tenth Party Congress in 1921. Both Lenin and Trotsky turned a blind eye to murders committed by Bolsheviks and to the packing of factory meetings and soviets by Bolsheviks who had no right to be there. And it was Lenin, not Stalin, who introduced the dreaded Cheka which Hayter rightly calls "an abominable abuse of everything that Marxism stands for". The truth is that "degeneration" began straight away since Lenin and the whole Bolshevik theory could allow nothing less than a complete dictatorship over the proletariat. 

Although Hayter criticises the "Great Man" theory of history at Oxford she seems to have swallowed it herself. How else can we explain her claim that the "revolution" in Kenya failed because of the treachery of one man, Jomo Kenyatta? And in France in May 1968, again everything hinges on the leaders  . . . if only they had been Trotskyists instead of the traitorous Stalinists. She also has some strange notions about economics although this may be due to her determination to see heaven on Earth in Cuba. She actually claims that money is becoming unimportant there, because, owing to the widespread scarcity, no one can buy much anyway!

All this is bad enough, but when she turns her attention to what life will be like "after the revolution" (which she thinks she will be achieved at the barricades with guns and petrol bombs) then she really goes haywire. She correctly points out that the Left is always reluctant to describe what it means by Communism, so she sets out to redress this need. Apparently society will be run by workers' councils and not by the latter-day Bolsheviks. In case the reader is worried by what happened in Russia she hints that because Britain has "relatively democratic traditions" (which Trots have always said are a sham) then there should be little post-revolutionary violence. But the whole population will have to be armed. Whatever for? To ensure that the capitalists don't stage a comeback! What supermen the left make these capitalists out to be.

Despite the abundance of technical and natural resources which mankind now has at its disposal, we are told that the abolition of exchange relationships and the introduction of production for use is "a remote ideal" so the wages system (rationing) must continue with, in good Leninist tradition, equal wages for all. Perhaps it is just as well that the Left don't try to describe Socialism more often, There's enough confusion on that score already.

Hayter's book is nevertheless a good buy for anyone who wants to have just about every error in the Trotskyist repertoire conveniently placed between two covers.

Vic Vanni

Socialism v. Peacemongering. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The so-called "Peace" propaganda of to-day is associated by most people with Socialism and the Socialist Party.

The plain fact, however, is that Socialism has very little in common with it, and judged by the essential features the two movements are as the poles apart.

What is distinctive about Socialism that separates it from all other movements of social activity ?

Briefly, Socialism differs from other phases of social thought in that it stands for the overthrow of modern society based upon class ownership of the necessaries of life and the building up in its stead of a society of wealth producers owning the means of life in common. What, on the other hand does the "Peace movement" specially signify? It stands for an alteration in diplomatic methods between various capitalist Courts, and at the present time it is in favour of stating the terms upon which the combatants are willing to declare "peace."

Socialism fights for the removal of a system of society which works out to the detriment of the many. The "Peace Crusaders" are out for an alteration in the method of government whereby the wars between capitalist countries can be reduced or abolished.

Socialism declares in favour of a new system wherein capital and capitalist governments cease to be. "Peace" propagandists by no means unite in condemning capitalist society, and they are mostly opposed to a change in the system altogether.

What is the Socialist attitude to war? It is that war as we know it is produced in the main by the conflict between the interests of capitalists of various nations. It is born of the rivalry between sellers of goods for profit, and it can only die when selling for profit is abolished. In other words, Socialist theory holds and capitalist practice proves that only by ending the entire capitalist system can war with all its attendant horrors cease.

War, in the words of the "Peace" propagandists, is due to secret diplomacy, misunderstandings between Courts, and a vicious newspaper Press. These things, however, are but results of the workings of the system itself, and whilst the latter remains, the effects, in the shape of secret diplomacy, etc., will continue.

This article is being written in mid Atlantic, away from all books of reference, and consequently exact quotations cannot be given. But the reader need only refer to the literature of the Union for Democratic Control and the Peace Societies for confirmation of the statements made.

Consider the personnel of the Peace advocates and see what sanction of Socialism there exists amongst them.

Mr. Ponsonby is one of the most noted of the Peace persuaders of the day and he is a Liberal M.P. Mr. Trevelyan is a late Minister of the Liberal Government and resigned upon the occasion of the declaration of war. Mr. John Burns resigned his Cabinet membership upon the same occasion. Lord Morley left high office at the same time. Mr. E. D. Morel has never been associated with Socialism and is simply a reformer who, when occasion calls, can be quite as much an Empire builder as the most notorious supporter of the war. Witness his appeal for British versus French sovereignty in the Congo. (See "The British Case in the French Congo," by E. D. Morel.)

All sorts of appeals are made to the Socialist Party to join forces with these "anti-war” organisations, but it is deaf to all such cries. Not because we do not yearn for the cessation of the war. By no means so. Socialists above all others realise the horrors always following in the train of war. We know and feel the wreckage of human ties, the break-up of family life, the sorrow and suffering arising from the brutal carnage. But there are two important reasons why we cannot associate with the various "Peace" and "Stop the War" organisations.

Firstly, because we abide by the dictates of the class struggle. Because we stand for Socialism and they do not. Because we refuse to associate with those who support the capitalist class during "peace" time and who fight for the subjection of the working class. Therefore we cannot ally ourselves with these capitalists and clergymen, ex Cabinet Ministers and would-be Cabinet Ministers. We refuse to lower the Socialist flag to march with the enemies of Socialism. We know that, given of the realisation of the whole of the Peace parties' programme, the horrors and misery of working-class slavery would be left untouched for the better. The very men who seek our help for "peace" now would be amongst the first to "war" on the working class.

The second reason for which we cannot unite with the stop the war movement is that it is impotent for its very object. Even if we held that it was policy to unite to stop the war it would be foolish to join in the programme of these societies. What machinery have they for stopping wars ? None. Appeals to capitalists are their general methods. They propose to leave in power the makers of wars, the capitalist class. They intend to continue the profit-making system which itself produces commercial rivalry and inevitably international warfare.

Surely it is not now doubted that wars are born of the fight for spoil between capitalists. Throughout the last hundred years the economic objects of the various wars has stood out so clearly as to compel even capitalist writers to admit it.

Men such as the War Correspondent of the "Daily News," H. N. Brailsford, in his "War of Steel and Gold"; the member of the late Liberal Government, John M. Robertson, in his "Psychology of Jingoism " and "Patriotism and Empire"; the "Daily Mail" War correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, F. A. McKenzie, in his "Tragedy of Korea." These and a list of others can be quoted to show that wars are caused in the ultimate analysis by the struggle for trade and territory by the master class.

Listen to the present clamour for "capturing the enemy's trade," putting a tariff upon enemy's goods, and such pocket appeals and judge the truth of the Socialist view.

If you wish to stop all wars you must stop all commercial competition and to do this you must work for Socialism.

Adolph Kohn

Direct action: reformism by blows (2000)

From the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Five Days That Shook The Labour Government in September should have given the advocates of "direct action" to further the interests of the environment, animals and disadvantaged groups something to think about. Other minorities can play at this game too and some of them can wield this weapon much more effectively in terms of disruption caused and notice taken. In a battle to "reclaim the streets" between environmentalists and their bikes and failing businessmen and their lorries and tractors who will win?

Sectional interests

The fuel tax protest by lorry owners was clearly a purely sectional issue with one group of small capitalists trying to shift, by direct action, the burden of taxation from them on to other sections of the capitalist class. No wonder the government, as representative of the general interest of the capitalist class as a whole, felt that it had to stand firm and insist that this was not the way to decide how the tax burden should be shared amongst the various sections of the owning class. If they conceded on this one, who would be the next sectional interest to try the same tactic (as the weaker, or less far-sighted, French government discovered)?

The government stood firm and the lorry owners did back down, realising that they were in no position to win a full-scale trial of strength with a government able to mobilise emergency powers and the armed forces. Nor was it in their interest to set a precedent by toppling an elected government. Knowing this the blockaders' leaders were shrewdly able to turn their retreat into a propaganda victory by quitting before the state moved against them and while they still enjoyed a high degree of popular support.

That popular support, however, was not for their sectional interest of saving their failing businesses but for the idea of bringing petrol prices down by reducing the tax on fuel. This tax is, technically, an excise duty, i.e. the government establishes an artificial monopoly which allows the oil companies to sell their products at a monopoly price; only they don't get to benefit from this as the government creams off the resulting extra profits as the tax. The oil companies really are, as they protest, only collectors of this tax for the government. Actually, the price of petrol has gone up, but largely because the basic pre-tax price has. Having said this, a reduction in the tax would of course bring the price at the pumps down to some extent. Lorry owners and the motoring public would be happy but the government would find its revenue cut and, to maintain its expenditure, would have to increase some other tax. This is why it can be said that what the lorry owners were trying to do was to shift the burden of taxation from them to some other section of the owning class.

 Only the Greens made a stand against the demand to reduce the duty on petrol; if anything, they want it increased so as to discourage the use of petrol- and diesel-burning cars and lorries. They have a point. Burning fossil fuels is not the best use that could be made of them. The individual motor car has become an irrational means of getting to work—and, increasingly, even getting around—in urban areas. Long-distance freight should be carried on the railways. A comfortable, efficient and comprehensive public transport system is the rational answer. All this is true, but the problem is not going to be solved under capitalism where what happens is not decided by what is in the best interests of the community since there is no community but by the play of market forces supplemented by the lobbying of sectional interests. It is certainly not going to be achieved by "green" taxes and subsidies as advocated by the Green Party. What is required in fact is a complete change in the basis of society to create a real community through ending the division of society into classes by establishing common ownership and instituting production purely to satisfy human needs instead of for sale on a market with a view to profit.

The visionless thing

But talk of a "complete change" in the basis of society is precisely what is rejected by the campaigning charities and environmentalist activists. This wasn't always the case. In the not-so-distant past both the Labour Party and then the Green Party did talk in terms of changing society True, this was only as a long-term prospect, but the idea of an alternative society was there. Now this has gone and those of us who are left proposing this are denounced as "unrealistic" for continuing to advocate a "big solution" when supposedly there is none.

Isn't there? Let's suppose for a moment that there isn't. What would that mean? It would mean that we'd have to continue with what we've got—capitalism, to give it a name, if that's not too "ideological"—and try to make the best of it, as individuals and as sectional interests. Political parties have already become rival groups of professional politicians with virtually identical policies and certainly identical practices, offering themselves as the best managers of the system. So it would mean that politics would be reduced to pressure group politics as different sections of the population tried to persuade governments—whichever the party in power—to make changes in their particular sectional interest or, in the case of campaigning charities, of the disadvantaged group they have chosen to champion. Political action would consist of lobbying, backed up from time to time by direct action, for reforms in the sectional interest of some group.

This is not an attractive prospect but it is one that is, somewhat surprisingly, championed by a number of people who are severely critical of capitalism. What they like is the idea of "direct action" as such. This, they think, is the way to get improvements; electoral action via local councils and parliament, they say, doesn't get you anywhere. But "direct action" is merely a method, a tactic, not an end in itself and can in fact be employed for different ends. In the present political context it is being advocated as a better way to get reforms than elections. May be it is, but maybe it isn't. One powerful argument as to why it might not be has just been demonstrated: those with the biggest vehicles can reclaim the streets more effectively than those without. In other words, with direct-actionist, pressure group politics, those who can exert the most pressure will tend to come off best, and it is the more powerful who can generally exert the most pressure.

 In any event Socialists don't get involved in this argument because it is one amongst reformists as to the best way to obtain reforms while we seek to end capitalism not reform it. Our view is that those who concentrate on trying to obtain reforms within capitalism—whether by direct action or through the electoral process—are on the wrong track. What is needed is precisely what most of them refuse—and in fact have consciously rejected doing—and that is raising the issue of an alternative society as the only framework within which the problems for which they are seeking short-term relief can be solved.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: After the Revolution (2012)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In its Review section of 17 December the Guardian invited various artists and others to design new banknotes. The subject was introduced by the anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber who broached the question, “what will money look like ‘after the revolution’? How will it function? Will it exist at all?” He wrote that with the exception of Pol Pot “no state socialist regime ever attempted to eliminate money”, adding, “none, in fact, even attempted to eliminate wage labour.” Which is true enough (though we’d call them ‘state capitalist’).

Graeber blames this on Marx:

“For Karl Marx, money ultimately represented the value of human labour, of those energies through which we create the world. It was a way of measuring and parcelling it out, though, in the process, allowing those who controlled the resources to play all sorts of tricks and games. Since socialist systems insisted that labour was indeed sacred and the source of all value, it would have been hard for them to simply stop paying people for their work. The usual idea was to keep the money, just remove the games.”

This is indeed what the rulers and supporters of these state capitalist regimes thought. But it wasn’t Marx’s view. His Labour Theory of Value was a theory to explain how capitalism works, not a model for a post-capitalist, socialist society. He did ague that work was the source of all economic value and that this was measured and represented by money. But he regarded this as arising only where wealth is produced for sale, as under capitalism. In socialism, where there would be production directly for use, there would be no economic exchange value and so no money.

In his early philosophical writings Marx identified money as one of the two main manifestations of human alienation (the other was the state) and looked forward to its abolition in a communist society where human values would apply: where the standard by which something would be considered ‘valuable’ would be human welfare.

Marx also fully endorsed the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System!” a system which he, just as much as Graeber, regarded as a form of slavery. That the state-capitalist regimes retained the wages system was sufficient proof in itself that they were not socialist.

Graeber went on to say that “money could equally be conceived as a ration chit. Here’s a coupon redeemable for so many loaves; here’s one for butter; here’s one that can be traded for anything” and that “what they’re calling a ‘free market’ turns out to be one where everything is rationed.”

Quite true. That is what the market system is, but does he think that money can be done away with?

Graeber has his own theory of the origin and nature of money and has written a couple of anthropological tomes on the subject. He doesn’t agree with the theory that money originated to facilitate trade, but argues that its origins go back further as a means of measuring what farmers and artisans owed temples in places like Ancient Mesopotamia and even further back as a means of settling social obligations (e.g. dowries) in pre-state societies.

Be that as it may, in his Guardian article he does say that we should ‘perhaps make basic necessities freely available, and provide coupons for the more whimsical stuff’. As a good anarchist he is against these coupons for non-essentials being issued by some central body but by individuals and groups producing such goods.

No doubt in a socialist society people will produce ‘whimsical stuff’ for each other, but why would they want to issue and be paid in circulating chits? Why would they not apply the ‘generalised reciprocity’ that anthropologists define as “the exchange of goods and services without keeping track of their exact value”?

“Socialism in Paddington” (1912)

From the October 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the above heading a somewhat demoralising discussion has been carried on in the columns of the local Press, during which the S.P.G.B. in general and the Paddington Branch in particular have been favoured with the biased opinions of certain "well-educated, reasonable people," such being duly appreciated and assessed at their true value.

Undoubtedly much of this anonymous animosity was created by the wilful misrepresentation and historical lies that the cunning Anti Socialist and his co-partner, the Christian Socialist (!) are endeavouring to spread in this locality of extremes. In particular, a "Socialist" curate has been making himself conspicuous in that devilish direction by attempting to discredit our party by stating that "the S.P.G.B. is an obscure little sect, numbering (at the most) some 200 members in the whole of Great Britain."

As several supporters of our propaganda enquired whether such was true, a letter from the present writer was published in the local Press, in which it was pointed out that if the membership of the S.P.G.B. did not exceed 100 that of itself would not prove that the Party's principles were wrong.

It is clear that this genial cleric pinned his faith to numbers and not principles, and that his conception of a Socialist body is one that commences its career with a million members and dwindles down to a few choice spirits to perpetuate the species.

The sycophantic attitude of these "Socialistic" sky-pilots becomes apparent upon reflection. They are Anti-Socialist spies seeking to permeate the Socialist movement with the chloroform of a dead religion. It is all humbug to say that Socialism is based upon Christianity or "the Sermon on the Mount," because neither Theism nor Atheism can be the basis of a social system.

Another correspondent put forward the suggestion that the time had arrived when their united energies should be concentrated against "the only party worth talking about; the party of revolutionary Socialists ; the S.P.G.B." He proposed immediate action being taken to smash the branch up, because he felt convinced that when the S.P.G.B. citadel has been demolished and the rubbish cleared away, the Socialist movement in Paddington will cease to be a fighting force, and will gradually fade.

This hostile announcement acted like a tonic on the branch, who replied by advertising a series of lectures on Socialism at the "Prince of Wales," Harrow Road. It was proclaimed that our object in holding these lectures was to give citizens an opportunity to discuss the question of Socialism and all its implications, and we invited opponents to attend and submit questions, or state their case against us from the platform. With what result ? The week's mission was a great success. Large and attentive audiences listened to the exposition of Socialism, and the collections and sales of literature were very good. And from the enquiries that were made concerning the party the branch confidently expects an increased membership.

Our Secretary is at all times ready to enlighten any wage-worker who is desirous of joining the Socialist Party. If there is any doubt or difficulty that wants explaining, now is the time to have such matters cleared up. Our branch meeting is held for that purpose among others, and we cordially invite our fellow workers in Paddington to bestir themselves, throw off the shackles of superstition and ignorance, and join with us in securing our emancipation from the thraldom of capitalism by the institution of Socialism.

Ben Carthurs

Erich Fromm and Free Access (1972)

From the June 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those confronted with the Socialist proposition that goods and services should be freely available for people to take according to their needs often react by claiming that this wouldn't work because, first, nobody would want to work and, second, people would grab more than they needed so that shortages would again develop.

There are simple answers to these objections. First, the threat of starvation is not, and certainly should not be, the incentive to work. If some work is so unpleasant that nobody would freely choose to do it then it ought to be done by machines or not at all. Second, people only tend to be greedy and to grab in conditions of scarcity. If food and clothing were freely available in abundant quantities people would soon adjust to taking only what they needed just as they do now with tap water.

We are not alone in putting these arguments. For instance in 1966 Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst and writer, wrote a short essay in a book called The Guaranteed Income. Next Step in Socioeconomic Evolution? edited by Robert Theobald. This is the idea that, in order to maintain consumer demand in the face of the mounting unemployment some expect automation to bring, every American citizen should be guaranteed a minimum income. This is in fact a futile proposal to try to reform capitalism so that it can cope with abundance. Fromm wasn't too keen on the idea, but did answer the possible criticism that a guaranteed income might reduce the incentive to work. He wrote:

“I believe, however, that it can be demonstrated that material incentive is by no means the only incentive for work and effort. First of all there are other incentives : pride, social recognition, pleasure in work itself, etc. Examples of this fact are not lacking. The most obvious one to quote is the work of scientists, artists, etc., whose outstanding achievements were not motivated by the incentive of monetary profit, but by a mixture of various factors : most of all, interest in the work they were doing; also pride in their achievements, or the wish for fame. But obvious as this example may seem, it is not entirely convincing, because it can be said that these outstanding people could make extraordinary efforts precisely because they were extraordinarily gifted, and hence they are no example for the reactions of the average person. This objection does not seem to be valid, however, if we consider the incentives for the activities of people who do not share the outstanding qualities of the great creative  persons. What efforts are made in the field of all sports, of many kinds of hobbies, where there are no material of any kind !”

 and

“It is a fact that man, by nature, is not lazy, but on the contrary suffers from the results of inactivity. People might prefer not to work for one or two months, but the vast majority would beg to work, even if they were not paid for it.”

Precisely. The guaranteed income would, however, reduce the incentive to be exploited by an employer — which of course is why it will never be introduced.

Fromm went on to propose what he considered a better idea: "the concept of free consumption of certain commodities".

“One example would be that of bread, then milk, and vegetables. Let us assume, for a moment, that everyone could go into any bakery and take as much bread as he liked (the state would pay the bakery for all bread produced). As already mentioned, the greedy would at first take more than they could use, but after a short time this 'greed-consumption' would even itself out and people would take only what they really needed.”

Despite his good refutation of the objection that free goods and services would lead to widespread grabbing, Fromm is still thinking in capitalist terms as can be seen by his reference to the State paying the bakery money.

Fromm regards himself as a socialist, but is really only a member of the reformist Socialist Party of America. But what we can't understand is why, having taken the argument this far, he doesn't go all the way and advocate Socialism where, on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by all the people, wealth would be produced in abundance and voluntary, enjoyable work and where money would be abolished with everyone having free access to what they needed to live and enjoy life. After all, he has no argument to put against this.

Action Replay: Games, Shops and Springboards (2014)

The Action Replay Column from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

They’re called The Friendly Games but they have plenty of rivalry, flag-waving and drug-taking, just like any big international sports gathering. The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, which finished early last month, have been hailed as a major success for the city, for Scotland, and for the Commonwealth.

And of course it’s not just, or not even mainly, about sport. The buzz word is ‘legacy’ (see legacy2014.co.uk). VisitScotland, the national tourist organisation, emphasised that the Games would be a boost to tourism in both the host city and the whole country. Tourism is apparently worth £11bn a year to the Scottish economy, but there is hope that that can be increased, with the Games acting as a springboard (in a sporting metaphor, of course) for yet more visitors. £560m has been spent on the Games, with this seen as investment for the future.

On the negative side, Atos, notorious for implementing in a particularly harsh way some of the government’s austerity measures, was chosen as one of the Games partners, which many Glaswegians saw as adding insult to injury. Parking restrictions were suddenly introduced in places, as a further instance of the Games having priority over local residents. Parts of the city have been prettified (street cleaning, planting flowers, etc) but this has been confined to certain spots, such as those on the marathon course.

One of the most deprived areas of Glasgow is the East End, where many of the Games events were held. New houses and hotels were constructed in place of existing buildings, but one resident complained that the result was that there were ‘nae fucking shops’ (Guardian, 2 August). A day centre for adults with learning difficulties was demolished to be replaced by a car park; the council said this was to provide ‘a more efficient service’ (the standard justification for practically every cut or restructuring).

The real test, no doubt, will be to see if the Games, and the Scottish team’s performance, has any effect on voting in the ‘independence’ referendum. Nicola Sturgeon, head of the Yes campaign, pointed out that Scotland had won a record number of medals, as if this would somehow influence people’s voting intentions. Still, it’s probably as relevant to workers as arcane arguments about the retention of the pound.

Paul Bennett

The Great(er) Emancipator — Frederick Douglass (2013)

From the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Hollywood is ever ready to demystify the Civil War, it should give Frederick Douglass the star treatment.

How can you make a film about Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery and leave out Frederick Douglass? Steven Spielberg found a way, apparently, in his recent film Lincoln.

The film’s screenwriter, Tony Kushner, reportedly said that he had to leave out ‘dramatic scenes with Frederick Douglass’ as a ‘trade-off’ for focusing the plot on Lincoln’s 1865 effort to round up enough lame-duck Democrats in the House of Representatives to pass the Thirteenth Amendment (abolishing slavery). Kushner recalled that when Spielberg suggested limiting the film to this topic, both laughed at what seemed ‘an insane idea’ because the ‘whole movie was just going to be a bunch of guys talking.’

The insane part, though, is not the bunch of guys talking—a refreshing change from the bloody bore of the war itself—but the relative insignificance of an abolition debate at the very moment Sherman and Grant’s armies were uprooting slavery in fact. Spielberg chooses the denouement, after Gettysburg and Lincoln’s landslide re-election, and just a few months before General Lee’s surrender.

Spielberg and Kushner, by most accounts, have made the best of their material, but their ‘trade-off’ sounds like a bum deal. Why not keep Frederick Douglass and choose a more dramatic episode? Any number of points during the Lincoln administration could shed a sharper light on his politics and the debate over slavery, and the presence of Douglass in each case would heighten understanding. 

Setting the film even a few months earlier, to look at Lincoln’s re-election campaign, would have raised the dramatic tension: the stakes then were still high. Douglass feared that an election victory for the ‘revived’ Democratic Party, led by Gen. George B McClellan, would prevent a ‘final settlement’ to the conflict, leaving it ‘to tear and rend the country again at no distant future’—and he campaigned vigorously for Lincoln.

Even more interesting is the 1860 Presidential campaign, whose outcome sparked the war. Douglass campaigned for Lincoln in that election, too, but with many reservations. ‘With the single exception of the question of slavery extension’, he wrote at the time, ‘Mr. Lincoln proposes no measure which can bring him into antagonistic collision with the traffickers in human flesh,’ and offered the prediction that, ‘The Union will, therefore, be saved simply because there is no cause in the election of Mr. Lincoln for its dissolution.’ This illustrates the wide gap between Lincoln and the abolitionists at the time. Douglass’s prediction was wrong, of course, but only because, ‘the South was mad, and would listen to no concessions.’

And then there are the eventful months leading up to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. A film set then could examine how the war’s necessities, more than high-blown principles, led the Lincoln administration to (finally!) take the first cautious steps toward abolition. Douglass welcomed the Proclamation, but found it ‘extremely defective’ and ‘not a true proclamation of liberty but one marked by discriminations and reservations.’ Including his views would help brush a few cobwebs off Lincoln’s much-praised but half-hearted executive order.

Any one of these settings seems more promising than Spielberg’s odd choice, but there is probably method to his madness. Narrowing his film down to the Republicans’ debate with the demoralized Democrats at war’s end, rather than with principled abolitionists at its outset, would seem to spare the director the ordeal of grappling with Lincoln’s evolving policy. Instead, he can present viewers with the more familiar sight of political arm-twisting and horse-trading over an issue that is, by that point, a near formality. That level of politics may be more ‘relevant’ to our own, but really that is an argument against choosing it, dramatically speaking.

Better Fred than Abe

An even better idea (Steven, if you’re listening): Why not cut out Abe Lincoln altogether and make Frederick Douglass the star?

His life, stretching from 1817 to 1895, is full of gripping, conflict-ridden tales, intertwined with the drama of slavery’s demise and the rise of industrial capitalism. For dramatic plot lines and entertaining dialogue, the screenwriter need look no further than Douglass’s brilliant, overlapping accounts of his own life: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life & Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).

The story of his life begins in eastern Maryland, where he was born in a ‘dull, flat, and unthrifty district . . . surrounded by a white population of the lowest order, indolent and drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who seemed to ask, Oh! What’s the use? every time they lifted a hoe.’ His grandparents raised him several miles from the plantation where his mother and other slaves toiled, and where he was sent around age seven or eight to begin working himself. Douglass had the good fortunate to be removed from the plantation—‘before the rigors of slavery had fastened upon me’—and sent to the home of his master’s relative in Baltimore, where a somewhat freer atmosphere prevailed. Except for a harrowing period back on the plantation, where he worked in the fields and plotted a (failed) attempt to escape to the North, he remained in Baltimore. And in 1838, disguised as a sailor, Douglass escaped by train from the city to New York.

He settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, working on the shipbuilding docks as he had done in Baltimore. Within a few months of gaining his freedom he was a subscriber to The Liberator, the abolitionist newspaper of William Lloyd Garrison, whom Douglass met in 1841 at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket. The impromptu speech Douglass delivered there created a sensation and launched his career as an abolitionist agitator, beginning with his work as an ‘agent’ and lecturer for Garrison’s Anti-Slavery Society.

Douglass, to the consternation of some, soon outgrew his role as ‘escaped slave,’ which his ever-growing eloquence as a writer and speaker made ‘unconvincing’ to many audiences. He also outgrew, or grew apart from, his mentor, Garrison, rejecting his general aloofness to politics and his insistence that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document. After returning from a tour of England, Douglass moved to Rochester, New York, away from the sphere of the ‘Garrisonians,’ and in 1847 began issuing his own newspaper, The North Star. He would continue to publish a weekly or monthly newspaper over the next fifteen or so years, under a number of different titles.

There is something thrilling, especially to socialists, about the abolitionist movement around the time Douglass entered it. Unlike typical reformists, with their laundry list of incremental improvements, the abolitionists aimed to uproot an entire (semi) mode of production, and would settle for nothing less! And they set about the task with passion and patience, using the written and spoken word as their weapons.

As the 1850s progressed, the abolitionists found that the tide of history was finally beginning to flow in a direction more favourable to their cause. The great national crisis was coming to a head. These are cinematic years of constant political and social upheaval: the disintegration of the Whig Party, the rapid rise and fall of the Free Soil and Know Nothing movements, and the birth of the Republican Party, while the nation staggered from one patched-together compromise and crisis to the next until the election of Lincoln. The Civil War itself is far less gripping than the decade that preceded it, and no one trained a keener eye on the political currents than Frederick Douglass.

Of course, the story of Douglass during the Civil War is also immensely instructive. His writings at the time and his later reflections reveal how reluctant Lincoln was to do more than merely preserve the Union. From the outset, Douglass urged the President to wage an ‘abolition war’ and was deeply frustrated by how long it was taking the ‘slow coach in Washington’ to get moving in that direction. He berated the Republicans because they ‘fought with the soft white hand, while they kept the black iron hand chained and helpless behind them; that they fought the effect, while they protected the cause.’ But Douglass believed the necessities of the war would turn Republicans into abolitionists, wisely appealing to their pragmatic interests rather than their sense of morality. His analysis proved correct in the end but the war also turned Douglass the abolitionist into a stalwart Republican, which he would remain until his death.

After the war, as Garrison was disbanding his Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass felt that there was still work to be done; that the aim had been ‘not merely to emancipate, but to elevate the enslaved class,’ and that the former slave was now ‘free from the old plantation’ but with ‘nothing but the dusty road under his feet’ and a ‘slave to society.’ But his efforts to aid black workers were hampered by his loyalty to the Republican Party. This blind support for the party of industrial capital painted black workers into a corner, and allowed the Republicans to take their votes for granted. The contradictory position Douglass found himself in, as black leader and diehard Republican, sets the tone for his last three decades—a period of history that revealed how the Civil War freed capital from its chains, too. 

An inspiration to wage slaves

Knowing Hollywood, and its hankering for hagiography and historical melodrama, it’s just as well, perhaps, that Douglass hasn’t been given the star treatment; I would hate to see him reduced to a saint or superhero. The curious are better off going straight to the source by reading his autobiographies.

All three books bring the history of nineteenth-century America alive. But what makes them even more powerful is that while slavery may officially be dead and buried, exploitation and class rule are very much alive. You may pick up one of his autobiographies with the intention of learning about the past, only to encounter passages that remind you of your own lack of freedom as a worker—a wage slave.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to ignore the differences between a wage worker and chattel slave—starting with the auction-block tragedies that broke up slave families—but Douglass himself noted the similarities: ‘The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers.’ We need to think of ourselves as wage slaves, not to belittle the past horrors of slavery, but to keep in mind our real position under capitalism today.

The great ‘advantage’ the slave has over the wage worker, although rooted in a bleaker situation, is in having no illusions about being free. Ever since Douglass, as a little boy, learned about a ‘mysterious personage’ named ‘Old Master’ who owned his grandmother and ‘all the little children around her’ (including himself), his state of bondage was a transparent fact, and gaining his freedom an obsession. This early revelation left young Frederick with ‘something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.’

His restless, probing mind went straight to the heart of the matter, asking himself: ‘Why am I a slave. Why are some people slaves and others masters?’ The stock answer he was given—much like today’s ‘That’s just the way it is’—was that ‘God, up in the sky’ made everybody and ‘made white people to be masters and mistresses, and black people to be slaves.’ This struck Frederick as an odd thing for a benevolent God to do, and the source of the knowledge was unclear (‘Did they go up in the skies and learn it?’). Also, he knew of many whites who were not masters, and blacks who were not slaves.

But he wasn’t long in making his first great discovery that there were slaves brought directly from Guinea and those whose fathers or mothers were stolen from Africa. ‘It was a kind of knowledge,’ he recalled, ‘that filled me with a burning hatred of slavery, increased my suffering, and left me without the means of breaking away from my bondage. Yet it was knowledge quite worth possessing.’ From this he knew, ‘what man can make, man can unmake.’

How many workers today are asking themselves: Why am I a wage slave? How many would even accept that self-description? We can learn from the attitude of the young Douglass who already was scrutinizing his social world and taking the first steps toward emancipation.

Another great lesson Douglass learned at a tender age—dispelling the ‘painful mystery’ of the ‘white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man’—was that slavery had to enforce ignorance. The lesson was driven home by his master in Baltimore who forbade his wife to continue teaching Frederick how to read, saying in front of him: ‘Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world.’ Douglass drew the appropriate conclusion from his master’s ‘exposition of the true philosophy of slavery,’ knowing from that moment knowledge is ‘the true pathway from slavery to freedom.’

Along with his hard-fought struggle to develop his mind as a tool for confronting slavery, Douglass throughout his life had to fight to protect his dignity—even as a ‘freeman’ in the North, where he confronted segregation on trains and in restaurants and hotels. Douglass ignored such ‘rules’ and if necessary physically resisted attempts to enforce them, believing that the ‘way to break down an unreasonable custom, is to contradict it in practice.’

His ‘take-no-crap’ attitude dates back to his earliest experiences as a slave, from which he learned, ‘He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped easiest.’ The great turning point in his own life, wonderfully narrated in his autobiographies, came the day he physically resisted the ‘Negro-breaker’ Edward Covey’s attempt to beat him into submission. Douglass fought back, giving his attacker (who never laid a hand on him again) the worst of it. ‘I was a changed being after that fight,’ he recalled. ‘I was nothing before; I was A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be A FREEMAN.’

That fight (and the example of Douglass’s entire life) recalls lines from Byron that Douglass loved to quote, and which speaks to the working class today:

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not

Who would be free, must strike the first blow?

Michael Schauerte

Slavery and the US Civil War (2013)

From the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

150 years ago President Lincoln proclaimed the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

The Proclamation of Emancipation freed slaves in the southern Confederate states that were fighting to secede from the Union. Up until this point the declared war aim of the northern states was to preserve the Union against the attempt of the southern states to secede. The war had always really been about slavery but it was only with the Proclamation of Emancipation of 1 January 1863 that it become openly so. Slavery had always been controversial in the US and had come close to being abolished in all states in 1787. By the early nineteenth-century it was outlawed in all states north of the Mason-Dixon line (which separates Maryland from Pennsylvania) but the growth of the cotton industry in the southern states gave slave-holding a new impetus. By the 1850s these states were seeking not just to defend but to expand slave-holding.

Lincoln was against slavery but was a moderate and pragmatic politician and he hoped first to restrict slavery to those states in which it already existed but ultimately to enact a policy of abolition with compensation for slave-owners. With the victory of Lincoln and the new Republican party in the 1860 elections the long-term survival of slavery was threatened. Unable to expand production into avenues that did not depend on simple labour, slave-holders required new land to expand production and avoid land exhaustion. Without the ability to expand into new territories, southern slave-owners were doomed to a slow decline. The future of slavery in the US depended on the secession of the southern slave-holding states and so began the U.S. Civil War, a war in which around 750,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians died over the rights of a narrow oligarchy to own slaves (300,000 were slave-owners, 1.5 percent of the total US population).

A short new book by James Heartfield,  British Workers and the US Civil War (ISBN 978-0956806123, £4), looks at the attempts of the British government to intervene in the US Civil War on the side of the Confederates. Though not overtly pro-slavery this intervention was aimed at denting the power of the USA in North America and drew on anti-democratic sentiment prevailing in the British establishment at that time. The British press and politicians were overwhelmingly in favour of intervention on the side of the slave-owners. They were unsuccessful, however, in creating a casus belli to assist the Confederate states despite efforts to do so. The case being made was one of supporting a fledgling state in its attempts at independence. In this context an attempt was made to mobilise the cotton mill workers of the north-west of England in support of intervention on the side of the Confederate states on the grounds of the state of their trade due to the shortage of cotton imports from the southern states. This shortage was due both to a blockade of southern exports by the Union navy but also deliberate withholding by Confederates to provoke such intervention. Unemployment and short-time working impacted heavily on British cotton mill workers, but they refused to support the cynical attempts to engage their political support in favour of slave-owners.

With the working-class radicalism of the Chartist movement still within memory for many, a counter movement emerged to support the Union cause. This was focused on the radical Union Emancipation Society which contained a core of working class supporters. By contrast the far more establishment British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society refused to take sides in the civil war. The popular support for the Union anti-slavery cause was assisted by Lincoln’s astute political move of issuing the Proclamation of Emancipation which made the war openly about the future of slavery. Thereafter it became politically impossible for the British government to intervene in favour of slavery. Having played an important part in preventing the possibility of war in support of the Confederates, the pro-Union anti-slavery agitation fed into a renewal of British working-class radicalism which helped to secure the 1867 Reform Act. Heartfield’s book is a timely reminder of how, decades after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the British ruling class had few qualms about intervening in a war that would have secured it elsewhere for their own ends and how working class radicalism played an important part in preventing it.

Marx and Engels considered the US Civil War to be the second revolutionary phase in the history of that country, involving the end of slave labour and the expropriation of slaver-owners. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of the US constitution abolished slavery with no compensation to the slave-owners, granted citizenship to all those born or naturalised in the US and granted the right to vote and hold public office to all citizens. From its struggles with the expansionist southern slave-owners the northern industrial capitalists had emerged truly dominant in the US. With ‘free labour’ now the unchallenged form of exploitation, independent labour politics could develop in the US. As Marx put it: ‘Labour in white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in black skin.’ By the late nineteenth-century labour and socialist movements appeared to be flourishing in the US. However, we know what happened next. The history of the twentieth-century was one of the failure of labour politics and state capitalism and the marginalisation of revolutionary socialism. The US was the scene of a long battle against the rampant racism that still prevailed in the wake of slavery. It remains for the cause of the emancipation of labour to renew itself in earnest.

Colin Skelly

The ghost of Jaurès laid. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

M. Jaurès, the Blatchford of France was assassinated just previous to the outbreak of the European war. At a recent Socialist (!) congress held in Paris, a minority, composed presumably of anti-militarists, claimed that had Jaurès lived he would have been on their side and against the war. Lt. Paul Hyacinthe Loyson, advertised in the ''Daily Chronicle" as "a prominent French Socialist," tells them and us, that "it is a cheap and easy game to lay claim thus to a corpse that cannot speak."

The genuine Socialist will not take sides in this body-snatching quarrel. Jaurès' influence with large sections of the French workers is claimed by the advocates of two philosophies with little to choose between them. England possesses faithful facsimiles of both. We have the anti-militarists of the I.L.P., who are anti-militarists among other things, and may be Socialists when Socialism is too strong for them to resist it. We have, too, the "Socialist" Patriots like Lieut. Loyson and—according to the evidence he furnishes—Jaurès and the majority of French Socialists.

Lieut. Loyson's evidence is most convincing. The anti-war party of the I.L.P. might just as well lay claim to Robert Blatchford as the "Zimmerwaldians" try to appropriate the ghost of Jaurès. The latter, only a year before his death, "consecrated a book of 560 pages to the study of the best means for a democracy of waging war. A strange anti-militarist, forsooth, this theoretician of the art of fighting." We agree with Loyson, he is entitled to the corpse., and all that goes with it. As a Socialist Party we do not even seek a share in the possession of it. We not only deny the truth of Loyson’s claim that Jaurès was "the leader of international Socialism all the world over and its 'living; torch;'" we deny emphatically that he was a Socialist even. You ask for proof—permit Lieut. Loyson, who so readily supplied the evidence that discomfited the Zimmerwaldians, to provide the material that will lay the ghost he himself has raised.

"Jaurès," he says, "was, in fact, a great-realist who threw the purple mantle of his oratory only over ideas that were healthy and well-muscled. Hence he always held that a whole could only be made up of its parts and that without nations there could be no International."

There is plenty of evidence in Loyson's adulatory article, and in the writings of M. Jaurès, to convict him (Jaurès) of having been anti-Socialist. But I select the above because it is novel and supremely childish, coming from one represented as a "living torch" with none but "well-muscled ideas."

The scientists and philosophers, ancient ant modern, who have been really great, have in the setting out of their systems, been often compelled to begin with simple definitions of terms and things for the sake of clearness. That Marx commenced his analysis of the capitalist system of society by defining and analysing commodity. Euclid laid down at the outset postulates and axioms, and one of the latter was that "the whole is greater than the part." Unfortunately, few people get much further than the axioms or definitions of any science; that doe not prevent them having the greatest respect for those who have gone farther. Those who like Jaurès and Loyson, have made it their business to mislead the workers, know that an assumption of scientific knowledge gleaned from the very first pages of really great works, make a first-'class impression on the minds of the ignorant. A neat phrase conveying an questionable truth, purloined from Euclid, Darwin, or Marx, is not only impressive, not only does it give safe foothold for the mind for a space, but it imparts weight to the trash that follows, and the recipient will doubt his judgment rather than hesitate to swallow  what is claimed as an obvious deduction. It may be "cheap and easy to lay claim to a corpse," but it is not less "cheap and easy" to intersperse scientific commonplaces, cheek by jowl with false economics and capitalist shibboleths, in order to throw dust in the eyes of the workers.

"A whole can only be made up of its parts" is merely a variation of Euclid's axiom that "'The whole is greater than the part," and "without nations there could be no international" is one of the "healthy and well-muscled ideas" over which "the great realist threw the purple mantle of his oratory." Such unsophisticated and shallow reasoning—excuse the compliment—would scarcely seem worthy of notice were it not for the implication it carries. Without nations there can be no international, therefore nations are necessary—they must be preserved, that the international may not die— that false and contemptible international that writes the parasitic labour decoys in common discussion for their mutual interests; that rotten international where they exchange their experiences, their successes and vicissitudes in the despicable game of bluffing the workers.

"Without nations there could be no inter-national." In other words, without capitalism there could be no Socialism, or Socialist movement ; without classes there could be no class war; unless a small class own the means of wealth production and enslave the larger class, there can be no struggle of the slaves for emancipation, and so we might go on. Is it the struggle we want? Do we pray for the class war? Is the international—even the real international—our goal? No, Socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of life, is the objective of the Socialist. The international, when we get it, is only a means to the end. It is forced upon us because the workers will see the need for it. The ruling class will use all manner of excuses to keep the working class divided; the International Socialist movement will brush the ruling class aside like chaff. For the Socialist movement tramples down national boundaries, recognises the common link between the workers of every land— their poverty and slavery indicts the ruling-class as a robber class, establishes the fact, that poverty need not exist, that slavery can be abolished by the workers themselves, and that the quarrels of the ruling class are of no concern to the working class. 

The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality—their urgent need for emancipation. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? What tie is it that links you to the lordly capitalist ? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by the whip of hunger to produce wealth for him while you sink deeper into poverty. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. A bond of shame, a tie that is a degradation to every wage-slave, is the only nexus between classes, and patriotism is the acceptance and approval of the bond.

Capitalism in its ruthless and brutal progress breeds workers of less consequence than machines, and treats them with far less consideration. The greater the progress of capitalism is, the deeper is the poverty of the workers, the more widespread their suffering, and the more intense their anarchic struggles for existence. Their ever-increasing efficiency intensifies the struggle. Yet all that the ruling class can suggest, nay command, is more efficiency, greater efforts, and sterner self-sacrifice in the interests of trade, and loyalty to them in their scramble for the lion's share in the markets of the world.

In every land the dominant class holds sway over the lives of the workers, moving them like pawns over the chess-board of civilization. From the slum to the factory, from the factory to the battlefield with the workhouse for the huffed. The dominant class wages scientific war against the workers. It maintains the necessary physical force to break down their strikes for higher wages, and with callous irony calls it "preserving order." It provides for an army of priests to lie about the "divine purpose of the Almighty God" in creating rich and poor—the first to be charitable and the second to be patient -while, their only god is gold. The dominant class enlists from the ranks of the workers themselves all the gifted traitors who can fashion themselves into the semblance of respectable labour leaders, entrusting them with the task of educating the workers in the way they should go for Christ's sake and capitalism.

Yet, in the midst of this hellish turmoil of capitalist oppression and anarchy, when starving millions only fail to strive for Socialism because of their ignorance, "Socialism's living torch," with academic calm and dignity, assures the workers that "without nations there can be no international!" Nations first, internationalism second—and impotent: that was Jaurès' conception. As the power of nationalism to grip the minds of the worker rises, so Socialism fades. But when the warm rays of Socialist enlightenment and knowledge illumine their minds with the promise of freedom and social well-being, their hands will clasp across national boundaries, and their feet will tread them into the past. In that day the capitalist will "beat the bounds" in vain, the workers will know that boundaries and nations have no meaning or significance for them. These two, nationalism and international Socialism (and there can be no Socialism that is not international) are opposite as the poles, as antagonistic as fire and water. When patriotism and Socialism enter the worker's mind, patriotism will be quenched or Socialism will evaporate. The Socialist patriot is as impossible as the Christian Socialist. If he is loyal to the class that exploits him, he is a traitor to his own class. If he recognises and is true to his class interest, the class war will engage all his free time and energy; and he will laugh to scorn the hypocritical vaporings about the rights of small or big nations, seeing only in every nation a large or small group of capitalists—his own class being spread over the world, like an upper strata of the earth's crust, for each group to claim and exploit.

The real international will be built up on the facts of Socialism The universal recognition of these facts will mean the linking up of the world's workers in opposition to the capitalist class. That class will practice nationalism and preach patriotism just so long as it serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided. When they have to face an enlightened and united working class, they themselves will stamp out every boundary in their urgent need for cohesion and strength to meet the workers' onward march. Imagine in that day, if you can, the members of the International Socialist Movement seriously discussing the proposition that "without nations there can be no international." Such a proposition has no place in the Socialist philosophy. It is mere kindergarten babble to the Socialist. But to the anti-Socialist it serves as a premise on which to build his case for the loyalty of the workers to their exploiters. Jaurès and Loyson have both used it in that way, thereby proclaiming themselves anti-Socialist. The Socialist does not care a rap whether the capitalist class divide the earth among themselves by rivers and seas, or by the lines of latitude and longitude. What concerns him, is the class ownership, which he works and organises to abolish.

F. Foan

Paying for air – why not? (2007)

From the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Introductory note. As a researcher, I am swamped by a constant stream of Working Papers, Discussion Papers, Position Papers, Occasional Papers and Miscellaneous Papers that all sorts of schools, networks, institutes, foundations, and centres are kind enough to send my way. Most of them go straight on a pile for later transfer to the green recycle bin, but now and then one catches my eye. I was so impressed by the sheer brilliance of this “Thought Paper” by a junior economist at the Centre for Research, Analysis and Policy (CRAP) that I decided to share it with readers of the Socialist Standard. The author wishes to remain anonymous. — Stefan

Optimal efficiency in the use of any resource requires the functioning of an effective market in that resource. Everyone (that is, everyone who matters) accepts this thesis in principle, but proposals to put the principle into practice still run up against irrational fears and prejudices, hidebound attitudes, and vague moral reservations. This applies especially to the still controversial issue of establishing and regulating a market in air.

That no doubt explains why the published literature on air marketisation and privatisation is so scanty, although these topics have been the object of lively discussion among economic policy specialists, and not only at our centre.  And yet, as people are beginning to realise, the air in the Earth’s atmosphere is a limited resource like any other.

If its use is to be rationalised, the consumption of air must be subject to the discipline of the market. As in the case of wood, water or any other resource, free access to air is a flagrant invitation to profligacy and waste. Studies by physiologists in several countries have revealed that surprisingly large proportions of individuals breathe more deeply and/or at more frequent intervals than strictly necessary for adequate body maintenance.

Many of these irresponsible “free riders” encourage their children to follow their own bad example. Indeed, there are even misguided physicians who in deference to the latest health fad promote “deep breathing” practices among their patients. In the past, the purely technical difficulties of controlling air consumption confined discussion of air markets to the realm of futurological speculation.

Thus, the writer Herbert George Wells, in a story that has for some reason been considered “dystopian,” imagined a future in which the majority of the population live and work underground and, in addition to rent, pay private companies to ventilate their quarters. If they fall into arrears with their air payments the air supply is turned off until the next tenant resumes payment.

Recent developments in pharmacology give reason to hope that in the not too distant future it will be feasible to control air consumption above ground. In the most plausible scenario, a legally mandated annual dose of a paralytic agent makes respiration impossible without subsequent weekly injection of an antidote, the market in which serves as a proxy air market. Of course, the first dose of the paralytic agent has to be combined with the first dose of the antidote; it is only from the second dose that the consumer starts to pay for the antidote – that is, for air access.

The right to sell the antidote to different sections of the population could be sold at auction to the highest bidders.  Those who feel that such an arrangement is morally repugnant usually justify their stance in terms of the naive idea that a person’s access to a vital necessity like air should not depend on how much money he or she has. Presumably it is acceptable to regulate access to luxuries by means of money, but not access to the necessities of life. But this idea makes no sense in the real world. Consider what absurd conclusions would follow if we applied it consistently.

It would mean that there should be free access to food just because we have moral qualms about people starving to death. It would mean that there should be free access to housing, heating, and warm clothing just because we shrink from the sight of people freezing to death in the winter cold. It would mean that there should be free access to medical care just because we feel people should not die for lack of the money to get treated. After all, besides breathing, people need to eat and drink, keep warm, and so on. To be sure, asphyxiation is a quicker way to die than most. But that makes it more humane, not less.

What has this sort of fuzzy thinking got to do with economic rationality?

Stefan