False Real Life (2002)

Book Review from the July 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Martial arts gyms haven't seen such high memberships since the Bruce Lee-inspired Kung Fu craze of the 1970s. Boxercise and Tae-bo are increasingly catering for people who want to get fit but are bored of treadmills. Real Fight Clubs and White Collar Boxing are becoming hugely popular. Thai kickboxing and Ultimate Fighting (a no-holds-barred fighting tournament combining kickboxing and submission wrestling) now have their own slots on Sky TV. David Bowie, we hear, boxes three times a week.

A popular movie starring Brad Pitt has been a part of this trend. Here we review the book that inspired the film: Chuck Palahniuk's first novel, Fight Club (Vintage, £6.99).

I don't think Fight Club is that good a novel. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it really stood up to a re-reading, nor did it strike me as the work of art that, say, Crime and Punishment is. The historian Eric Hobsbawm says that it was only in the 1830s that literature and the arts began to be overtly haunted by the rise of the capitalist society, which he described, echoing Marx, as “that world in which all social bonds crumbled except the implacable gold and paper ones of the cash nexus”. You could argue that Fight Club is just the most recent, and one of the least impressive, additions to the trend in literature that began then. Another commodity in the cultural supermarket. That said, the reason I liked Fight Club so much in spite of its failings was because it succeeds precisely where other political novels fail. To quote the situationist Raoul Vaneigem: “Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984 and Touraine's Cinqieme Coup de Trompette push back into the future a shudder of horror which one straight look at the present would produce … Compared with my present imprisonment, the future holds no interest for me.”

And that's what Fight Club is. A straight look at the present and the possibilities inherent in it. At the heart of the book is the notion that life under capitalism is so unbearable, so alienating, that we need to put cigarettes out on our arms and get into fights just to make sure that we are, in fact, still alive. Compared with the mind-numbing horrors of the office and factory, where we stare at the clock and wish our lives away a minute at a time, almost any “really lived” experience is better than nothing. Outside of the pages of Fight Club, we can readily see this in everything from bunjee jumping to football hooliganism to Jackass TV.

The nameless protagonist of the book is an ordinary white-collar worker who goes along to his doctor because he can't sleep. His doctor says that that's nothing. If he wants to see pain, he should see the cancer patients getting by. And so he does. He goes along to all the different support groups he can find, and pretends to be suffering from the same condition as everyone else. Brain parasites, testicular cancer, etc. And he finds that he can't get by without the experiences he has there. Sharing thoughts and feelings, then crying into the cleavage of some fat bloke who's dying of testicular cancer, is a “really lived” experience, and it makes our hero feel alive for a change. He says:

“This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their chequebook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke they weren't telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something and afterward you were both different than before.”

He surrounds himself with death and pain in order to feel alive. Going along to support groups becomes, as he says, “the only real thing in his life”.

Before the fight clubs, the protagonist is the perfect worker and consumer. He goes to work in an office, he keeps his head down, he has a five-year career plan, and he is obsessed with getting all the right things for his perfect little flat, the perfect sofa, the perfect shelving unit, a set of nesting tables. “One day you own all these things,” he says. “The next they own you.” Then, when his whole flat gets blown up one day by a gas explosion, and all those things are destroyed, he turns to his newly found friend and alter ego, Tyler. After a night's drinking, Tyler takes him out into a car park and says: “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Shortly afterwards, Tyler starts Fight Club. The protagonist finds that he has never felt so alive, not even during his support groups. From then on, consumerism is no consolation compared to the experience, the “real life” thrill, of fighting another man in a pub basement. Eventually, what the Fight Clubs achieved for the individual, Tyler aims to achieve for society as a whole through his 'Project Mayhem'. Project Mayhem, as it says on the blurb on the back of the book, is a sort of “revenge on a world where support groups have the corner on human warmth”. It is also about “hitting rock bottom”—individually in the Fight Club, and collectively as part of Project Mayhem—where there is no longer anything to lose. Only once you've hit rock bottom, says Tyler, can you be reborn. Like Jesus's crucifixion.

The main character says:

“It used to be enough that when I came home angry and knowing that my life wasn't toeing my five-year plan, I could clean my condominium or detail my car. Someday I'd be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and car. Really, really nice, until the dust settled or the next owner. Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer … Maybe self-destruction is the answer.”

Is self-destruction the answer? David Lodge, in his novel Nice Work, has one of his characters say this: “All the Victorian novelist could offer as a solution to the problems of industrial capitalism were: a legacy, a marriage, emigration, or death.” To my mind, no more modern novelist, including Palahniuk, has come up with any other solution. And that's no surprise, because it's very unlikely that there are any other solutions for the individual worker. Under Lodge's category of death, for example, we can put self-destruction, and the many forms this can take, from the extremes of a bohemian or anarchistic lifestyle, say, through to the slow suicide of alcoholism, to the young murderer who Oscar Wilde praised because it was better to be someone rather than do something.

Project Mayhem's aim is the destruction of society. Its aim is to make society hit rock bottom so that it can be reborn. We don't learn much about the society that is expected to blossom from this destruction, but the few visions we do get seem primitivist in nature.

But what is it that the fighters are experiencing that is so painfully missing from their everyday lives? Of course, what a “really lived” experience is can only have meaning in relation to its opposite—which is the role of the worker in capitalist society. The worker becomes a cog in a machine, alienated both from themselves and their human nature, from their own productive activity, and from their fellow humans. This alienation makes them a slave in the factory or office, passive in their role as consumer, apathetic in the face of their exploitation and slave status, and, as Marx pointed out, quite ignorant and idiotic generally.

What is being compared is the poverty of everyday life under capitalism and the tendencies to be found in that same everyday life which we believe can only flower into a full and authentic human existence in a socialist society.

Raoul Vaneigem's book The Revolution of Everyday Life reads like a critique of Fight Club, and examines in detail how and why genuine attempts at communication and liberation can descend into nihilistic destruction, as it does in Fight Club. Indeed, the influence of Situationism and its analysis and tactics is evident throughout the novel, none more so than in the following extract, where the narrator explains to us the appeal of fight club. In fight club, the people are involved and there because they want to be there, not because they have been thrown together by a commuter train. They are participants in something they are creating themselves. There is an honesty about no-holds-barred combat that you could never get huddled in an office, where we smile at people who we'd much rather spit in the eye. Here's how it is explained in the novel:

“Fight club is not football on television. You aren't watching a bunch of men you don't know halfway round the world beating on each other live by satellite with a two-minute delay, commercials pitching beer every ten minutes, and a pause now for station identification. After you've been to fight club, watching football on television is like watching pornography when you could be having great sex.“Fight club gets to be your reason for going to the gym and keeping your hair cut short and cutting your nails. The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says….“Your aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club.”

What about Project Mayhem? I won't detail everything that Project Mayhem does, suffice to say that it culminates in a massive explosion that will blow up a huge skyscraper, and takes in smaller acts along the way, such as putting “Drunk drivers against mothers” stickers on cars. (As an aside, Palahniuk is actually a member of a sort of neo-Situationist group, whose pranks have included protesting outside pornography shops, complaining that their material is too expensive to be enjoyed by children.) What must be said however is that, whatever Palahniuk may have had in mind artistically when creating Project Mayhem, it must be stated clearly that the things he describes can in no way form the basis of a genuine revolutionary, working class organisation.

Project Mayhem, although arguably inspired by Situationism and some more primitivist strands of anarchism, is decidedly fascist in organisation and terrorist in tactics. The members of Project Mayhem are expected to obey Tyler's instructions without question, and do not even know what the aims of any specific action are. Tyler argues that Project Mayhem is like a gun: all it does is focus an explosion in one direction. In a way, that's what we want to do too. Revolutionary organisations aim to focus the explosive power of the working class against the capitalist system as a whole. The point, however, is that this cannot be achieved by a self-appointed elite. The explosion must be self-organised, and self-focusing. To quote Vaneigem again, a highly hierarchical army may win a war, but not a revolution. An undisciplined mob can win neither.

So our answer is different. The answer is not Project Mayhem. The collective solution to our collective problem is not terrorism—it is the escalation of the class war, and the end of the class war, and all classes, with the establishment of socialism. The desire to live, as Vaneigem says, is a political decision.

Stuart Watkins

Obituary: A. Young (1971)

Obituary from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have learned of the death recently of Albert Young, of Walthamstow, at the age of 64. Comrade Young represented a remarkable association with the socialist movement. His grandfather was an active member of the Social-Democratic Federation. His father, Percy, and his uncle, Byron Young, both joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain about 1906. Byron was a well-known speaker for the Party for several years before he emigrated to Australia in the nineteen-twenties, and Percy remained a member since 1945, first in the old Leyton Branch and then in Hackney.

A lively, forceful person, Albert Young kept a stall in a London market (the family were craftsmen brushmakers). He was always anxious to expound and discuss socialism, and there must be many people who remember chance meetings with him in art galleries or on trains, and the comments on society thrown out as he sold things from his stall. His special interest outside the Party was in art; he was a talented amateur painter, and went out in the country whenever possible to find subjects for landscapes. In 1968 he had a serious operation, and was able to go out very little thereafter.

Our condolences go to his family. Their socialist tradition is carried on by Albert's son, who is a member of the Party—the fourth generation.

That Word "Unity" (1944)

From the January 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

That word "unity" has a charm of its own. Ethically it symbolises an idealist condition and appeals to the gregariousness of human beings. Having this fine appeal, it is continuously used by all sorts of unscrupulous people and bodies as a cloak. We have appeals by vested clerical interests for "Christian" unity, capitalists and their Labour and Communist allies clamour for "National" unity, federationists seek "European" unity; we have got the term United Nations, and prominent statesman are clamouring for "world" unity. The charm of the "idea" of unity has produced phrases which have become of daily use, such as "there's safety in numbers," "we sink or swim together," and many other common expressions of speech. All this indicates the "social" (not Socialist) aspirations of human beings, and challenges the Victorian conception of "it's every man for himself." Capitalism being a class-divided society, Socialists can only concern themselves with what matters to the Working Class. That automatically rules out any plea for "national" unity. Realising the reactionary role of religion, Socialists cannot be concerned about "Christian" unity. Socialists seek to establish a new system of society World Wide, and this rules out talk of "European" unity, and understanding the basis of the profit-making system, with its competing combines, we cannot see the possibility of "world" unity. Is then ours a policy of despair? No! nor is it a policy of "snare." The question of "unity" has come to the front by the recent application  for affiliation to the Labour Party by the Communist Party. As Socialists we are always interested in anything applying to the working-class and parties and groups thrown up by them. This does not pledge us in their support. A group or body or organisation may be entirely working-class but that does not make it Socialist; it often is reactionary. The Socialist's question about Unity is, Will it help abolish the wages system and establish Socialism? If it will not, then it is futile except for political crooks to use as a tool.

In my days of youthful exuberance I worked for "unity." Some thirty-two years ago the Social Democratic Party decided the time was ripe for "Socialist" unity, and along with the Clarion movement (cyclists, not Socialists), a few of the I.L.P. and odd bits here and there, we established the British Socialist Party. There occurred a brief hectic period, and during the middle of the war of 1914 this "united" party split. From thence until the end of war a United Socialist Committee was formed representative of B.S.P., S.L.P., I.L.P. for "anti-war" purposes. Twelve months after the war, arising out of the Russian revolt, the leading members of the S.L.P. formed the Communist Unity Group, and in 1920 this coterie, plus the B.S.P. and odd groups round and about, formed one of three parties calling themselves Communists. In a short while a further conference was held in Leeds to unite the uniters, and the result was the brew—C.P.G.B. Ere a few years had passed these united Communist parties began to split on the continent, and in Russia itself the "Trotskyist" section was eliminated. Soon the British Communist Party began to clamour for unity. They drafted a programme (without consulting anybody else), then circularised other bodies asking them to unite—on a programme set out by the Communist Party itself. In the industrial field they played similar games. They brought about the split in the Miners' Union and the Garment Workers' Union, and established break-away unions which they cynically named United Clothing Workers' Union and United Mineworkers of Scotland. Later came the extended forms of Unity, in Popular Fronts and People's Conventions, and a whole series of groups and societies, ostensibly legitimate bodies, but in reality tentacles of the Communist Party.

Whilst addressing an outdoor meeting prior to the war the question put was, "Why don't you Socialists unite?" That is a question which must be answered. Let us try to answer. Before Socialists can unite we must be sure they are Socialists. If they are Socialists they will have a clear conception of fundamental principles. The tragic history of the workers' parties and groups (excepting S.P.G.B.) has been one of futile reformism. Every effort to achieve unity was foredoomed to failure. Time, energy and money has been continuously wasted in fruitless groupings and re-groupings. The thousand and one stunts, reform measures or immediate demands have not had the slightest unifying effect, but has merely bred bitter chagrin and disillusionment. This does not mean that Socialists do not want unity, They do, but it must not be chimerical or ephemeral, but must be solid and lasting. Such unity can only come about on the basis of correctness in theory, which will ensure correctness in practice. In no other way is Unity possible. The growth of Socialist knowledge is a guarantee of a united working class, therefore spread Socialist knowledge.

Lew.

Cooking the Books: Green Economic Policies (2014)

The Cooking the Books Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party held its annual conference at the beginning of September. According to the BBC, ‘the Green Party have sought to position themselves to the left of Labour and the Lib Dems by adopting policies such as the renationalisation of the railways, and curbing private NHS work’ (BBC online, 5 September).

Being more radical than Labour and the Liberals is easy enough and it is true that in her speech as their leader Natalie Bennett did seem as if she might have been speaking at a Labour Party Conference in the days of yore.

The Green Party, she told the BBC, is ‘the party of real change, the party with plans and policies for how to transform our economy so that it works for the common good … What we really have to do is rebalance our economy. At the moment, wealthy individuals and particularly big multinational companies aren't paying their taxes and aren't paying adequate wages. Britain is a low-wage economy. We have to allow people to get a decent return on their labour.’

This is to assume that the economy - which is capitalist - is something that a government can manipulate or mould at will, but the evidence of all past governments that have tried to do this is the opposite. It can’t be done. Rather than governments being able to change the way capitalism works it’s been the other way round. Governments have to dance to capitalism’s tune and that means putting profits first.

The Green Party may not like capitalism in its present form and want to ‘rebalance’ it, but they still see no alternative to capitalism as a system of production for profit based on wage-labour and are resigned to working within it. It is true that the sort of capitalism they envisage would not be dominated by tax-dodging multinationals but one in which the profit-seeking enterprises would be small and eco-friendly. But there is no more chance of an eco-friendly capitalism than there is of going back to small-scale capitalism.

Transforming the capitalist economy so that ‘it works for the common good’ is precisely what cannot be done. Capitalism is a class-divided society driven by the imperative for those who own and control the means of wealth production to make a profit. It can only function as a profit system in the interest of those who live off profits.

All governments have to take this constraint into account and frame their policies so as to give priority to profits and profit-making. This means that they have to back off from taxing the rich too much – to pay, for instance, for ecological measures or higher wages and benefits – in case they reduce the incentive to pursue profits and so provoke an economic crisis.

Derek Wall, once a Green Party spokesperson (in the days before they had a Leader) once put this rather well:

‘A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an instant collapse of sterling as 'hot money' and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction – the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction of a proper sewage system – would run out’ (Getting There, 1990, p. 78).

The answer is not to steal Labour’s abandoned clothes but to get rid of capitalism and its production for profits and working for wages.

Workers Socialist Party vs. Independent Communist Labour League

From the January 1938 issue of The Socialist

On Sunday, October 3rd, a debate was held with the Independent Communist Labor League, (formerly, the Communist Party Opposition or Lovestone Group). The debate took place at the headquarters of our Local Boston, 12 Hayward Place, Boston. The I.C.L.L. was represented by a Mr. Mautner, while the W.S.P. spokesman was Comrade I. Rab. The subject debated was "Whose Principles Are Correct: Workers Socialist Party or Independent Communist Labor League?"

Mr. Mautner, in his main talk laid down the major  tenets of his organization. In doing so, he said that the I.C.L.L. was concerned with the tactics and strategy for setting the masses in motion. He quoted Frederick Engels to show that "a great national movement, no matter what its form, is the real starting point of working class development," pointing to the 400,000 members of the Auto Workers Union as an example of such a movement, adding, "Some were formerly Ku Kluxers and members of the Black Legion, now they are good workers for the cause of labor." This union activity, he continued, led to a formation of a Labor Party, "something totally new." He further went on to say, "We expect to be in opposition to the Labor Party in the future, but now the problem is to break the workers from their old ideology."

Mr. Mautner spoke of reforms, recognizing that such measures help bolster up the capitalist system, but claiming, however, that fighting for reforms has value in that it teaches the working class the need for political action.

In dealing with Russia, Mr. Mautner described the situation there as a "Proletarian State" where the Russians are engaged in "Socialist construction." However, current history forces him to note "bureaucratic distortions existing there." Despite this, he claimed the Soviet state is organized exclusively for the workers, pointing out, however, that the new socialist economy in Russia had not yet developed a new terminology, therefore, "wages" really means "certificates." "The workers receive according to their deeds."

Mr. Mautner concluded by maintaining that a Labor Party program in America would lead to a Marxist program.

Comrade Rab, in his main talk analyzed the differences in principles between the two organizations. He listed the four main differences as follows: (1) The value of parliamentary activity; (2) The question of reforms; (3) The question of trade unionism; (4) The analysis of Soviet Russia.

In dealing with the first, Comrade Rab stated briefly the Party's position on parliamentary action, concluding this point by showing that the I.C.L.L. maintained that the revolutionary act comes about with the smashing of the existing state; that it must be an armed uprising led by a matured vanguard, a position contrary and opposed to that of the W.S.P. which defined the revolutionary act as the seizure of political power by a class conscious majority of the proletariat.

Discussing reforms, Comrade Rab maintained that the only way the workers can improve their lot is by the establishment of Socialism. He showed that the I.C.L.L., on the other hand, supports a "struggle for daily aims based on the existing stage of understanding."

On the trade union question, he brought out that although economic organization of the workers is very necessary in order that they sell their labour-power to the best advantage, unions have many limitations and weaknesses. Unions must depend upon numbers rather than on understanding. They cannot, in the long run, alter the downward trend of working class conditions. They are concerned primarily with wages and  hours problems rather than with overthrowing capitalism.

In dealing with the Russian question, Comrade Rab denied the existence of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Soviet Russia as accepted by the I.C.L.L. He pointed out, among other things, that the U.S.S.R. is going through a period of capitalist development and showed that the social relations of a capitalist economy exist there.

Mr. Mautner opened his rebuttal by asking Comrade Rab where there was surplus-value in Russia. Next, he denounced the use of the ballot saying, "When a Socialist Party advocates the ballot it breaks away from the principles of Socialism." "Marx stood for the smashing of the state." He insisted "what the workers need is a revolution based on soviets."

Comrade Rab in his rebuttal answered the questions raised by Mr. Mautner. Dealing with the question of "surplus-value in Russia," he defined surplus-value as the wealth that is extracted from the workers through the wages system. In Russia they have all the relationships of capital and wage labor and therefore, surplus-value. The existence of inheritance and income taxes, a banking system, laws pertaining to investments and interest, together with workers living on the barest of subsistence alongside of another group living in luxury—all go to describe surplus-value production or capitalism in Russia.

On the question of political action, Comrade Rab showed that the Socialist working class does not smash the state, pointing out also that marx in no place advocated the smashing of the state, pointing out also that Marx in no place advocated the smashing of the state, but on the contrary advocated its capture so that the workers could, "lop off its repressive features and transform it into an agent of emancipation."

Dealing with the Labor Party he showed its many weaknesses, how it was used for class collaboration, reforming and administering capitalism, and therefore against Socialist principles.

In conclusion, he called for a united front for Socialism.

According to the arrangements for the debate, the question period took place between the main talks and the rebuttals. Most of the questions dealt with the experiences of the British Labor Party.

Editorial: Capitalism's Crowning Crime. (1916)

Editorial from the July 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Masters’ Bloody Orgy

Nearly two years have passed since the European war of extermination began, and the tale of slaughter continues on an ever-ascending scale. No nation—as a nation—can hope to gain by this war; no class—not even the capitalist class, as a whole—can hope to reap pecuniary or other benefit in the end from this sanguinary conflict.

It is quite true that our patriotic masters are at present in very many cases reaping enormous profits; it is also true that the necessities, and even the sufferings, of the people provide these vampires with their chief opportunities ; yet it is the capitalist class that must pay for this war in the long run. The workers cannot. Their wages represent barely their average cost of subsistence; and though this may, as at present, be disregarded for a time, it brings in its train a degradation of labour-power and a loss of efficiency that means still greater loss to the master class. The capitalists cannot recoup themselves by continuing to substitute chaff for oats in the feeding of their beasts of burden.

The smaller capitalists, it is true, are likely to suffer most, if not all, of the loss. The big fish are feeding upon the smaller ones. The financiers and the larger industrial capitalists (they are all one, nowadays) will continue to reap a golden harvest. Small wonder, then, that the magnates are in favour of the ruthless prosecution of the war to, at least, the last Frenchman, and the last rouble. Small wonder that any peace talk is stigmatised by their literary prostitutes as a "dastardly intrigue" or a "dangerous manoeuvre," while what they call a "premature" (!) peace is condemned as "an incalculable disaster to civilization."

Mr. Henderson follows the lead. The war has meant promotion to him. His unflinching resolve to maintain his position to the very last is unmistakable. At Northampton on June 24th he reflected his own sacrifices for the Allied cause when he solemnly warned his hearers against "peace talk" by "enemies abroad who boast that the Allied Powers are conquered, and a few mistaken people at home who have done little or nothing to prevent the Allies being defeated."

Truly, the millions of men physically wrecked, mutilated, or done to death in this useless war for dirty trade weigh as nothing in the balance for these bloodthirsty servants of capital. For them the incalculable sufferings of many millions of men, widows, orphans, and dependents is a mere "regrettable necessity," an occasion for insulting and utterly inadequate charity, an opportunity for little homilies on "our" duty to "our" country. All that really matters is the security of the property and the profit of the national capitalists! Soldiers, workers, and silently suffering dependents are mere pawns in the game, in which the control of the world-markets is the stake. Even so, the state of the ''game'' is stalemate rather than checkmate; and rumour has it that peace negotiations have been entered upon, but cheated of fruition owing to discord among the Allies. Whatever truth there may be in these repeated rumours it is impossible to say, but it is equally impossible to entirely disbelieve them. The only sure thing is that meanwhile, the conflict grows in intensity, and the human sacrifice to capitalist greed more awful.

This war is, indeed, merely a phase of the great class war. It is a crowning example of the ruthless sacrifice of the propertyless of the world to the interests of those who own the world. The thieves of Europe have fallen out, and their slaves must fight as well as toil. And this fact must never be overlooked, that the wine press of capitalism crushes out the life blood of the workers to till with profit or power the bins of the possessors of the earth in peace as well as in war.

Yet even as we realise how grave and how intense is the suffering inflicted on the working class during the long drawn-out years of "peace," the mind recoils with greater horror before the vividness and intensity of the present all-engulfing murder madness of Europe. How long is this crowning crime of capitalism to remain superadded upon the fundamental and age-long industrial exploitation of the many ? How long will the workers stand it? It is not as though there were no way out. It is not as though conditions barred every avenue of hope to the workers. The capitalists are clearly parasites. Hireling workers, the slaves and victims of this hellish system, actually run the world for these parasites. Yet, chiefly through ignorance, the workers of Europe allow themselves to be pitted against each other in a war of extermination for the supposed interests of their masters. Is not the untold suffering, now and to come, of men, women and children of more importance than the interests of those waxing fat. on the profits of war stock, munition industries, or the people's food ? Are the people to be for ever sacrificed to the Moloch of capital? Surely it is time the workers used their brains in their own interests. The callous brutality, the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling class of all nations could hardly ever be clearer than it is to-day. The workers have only to discard the blinkers of patriotism to see this plainly.

National war is the inevitable corollary of capitalism. It can only be made impossible by Socialism. On every ground, indeed, Socialism is the real and living hope of the toiling millions. It alone can harmonise material interests, and make the good of the whole the immediate interest of each. Bitter experience and soberer thoughts are making increasing numbers of men and women realise that it is commercial rivalry, caused only by the capitalist system, that is the actual and fundamental cause of war. They are beginning to see that it is in reality immaterial to a wage-worker whether his employers or rulers be German or French, British or Russian. The real enemy of wage workers is not any foreign nation, but the employing or capitalist class of every country. And it is this enemy class that, in pursuit of what it thought was its interests, is still, after nearly two years of carnage, urging the working class to even madder efforts in the extermination of each other. This exploiting class has secured the concentration of all the scientific genius and energy of the world in the brutal and savage work of destruction and human slaughter. Not content with the long-continued and ruthless robbery of defenceless proletarians in what it calls peace, it now causes their wholesale annihilation in a vain effort to extend or safeguard its spheres of exploitation, and plunges them into an ever more insane intensity of conflict, until, seemingly losing almost every vestige of control over the bloody carnage its greed has evoked, it threatens to drag the last remnants of civilization ' down below the lowest depths of savagery.

John Bird Rehabilitates World War One (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, has rewritten history in his article The Necessary War (4-10 August) which states 'the First World War was an imperative conflict for Britain and France to fight as Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany would have propelled Europe back to the Dark Ages.'  It is an essay full of 1914 anti-German propaganda.

He identifies the Kaiser 'with a withered arm' as a reason for Germany starting the war. Bird writes that 'it would have been an absolute disaster for Germany to have won the First World War.' This the country that brought us Goethe, Beethoven, and Hegel. He writes Germany would 'turn Europe into an Africa; open for rape and pillage and plundering' which is ridiculous. Britain declared war ostensibly to defend neutral Belgium which had committed atrocities in the Congo Free State where natives were maimed and slaughtered for profit.

Bird dismisses the idea of 'generals who from the comfort of their officers clubs sent the masses to their death! Over the top and into oblivion' culturally epitomised in Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth. What about Haig's contempt for the working class evident in his diary entry 'mostly gamekeepers and servants' after hearing 13,000 men were killed in three hours during a battle.

He makes the ludicrous assertion that Napoleon caused the First World War. We know the 'Great Man' theory of history but Bird surely needs a dose of the Materialist Conception of History. The war was the outcome of decades of competing capitalist interests, the fact that the predominance of British and French capitalism was being challenged by Germany, French hurt pride over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and Britain's determination to halt German access to the oilfields of the Persian Gulf.  Bird needs to take a history lesson.

His article was an insult to the homeless people who sell his magazine. Fortunately the same issue carried our advertisement stating that ‘we oppose all leadership, all war.’

Steve Clayton

Undercurrents (1984)

Book Review from the March 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Arguments, (eds) D. Coates & G. Johnstone, Martin Robertson, 1983, £5.95

A book all socialists would like to write is one in which the nature of capitalist society is clearly and simply exposed, along with its supporting ideology and mythology. After reading such a book it would be impossible for anyone to listen to a speech by Margaret Thatcher without laughing: it would give everyone effective counter-arguments to racialist rantings: it would stop everyone talking about monetarism and make them consider the abolition of money as a practical alternative: in the face of its relentless logic and wicked humour all of the smarmy apologists for capitalism will be reduced to stuttering incoherence: and so on. Finally it would tear to shreds all of the common arguments against socialism and it would be printed in all languages; becoming the major work that convinced the workers of the need for a peaceful democratic revolution, co-ordinated to bring about a classless, moneyless, world socialist community.

This is not such a book. It is intended to be the first part in a series of "socialist primers" aimed at building "the protective wall of a sophisticated and widely-understood socialist counter-culture" around "the left", prior to winning the battle of ideas among the workers. So the final verdict on this project must await the completion of the series of books; meanwhile some observations can be made.

It is amazing that the editors managed to hold together a group of contributors with such widely differing views. All are united under the slogan of "a socialist alternative to . . .", but for Labour MP Frank Field a socialist alternative to the present fiscal system means a return to tax exemption in place of the personal tax allowance system; while David Coates, after Marx, criticises trade unions for not:

 . . . using their organised forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system. (p. 78).

All shades on the political left get a showing in this book, from a concern with the most meagre reform of capitalism, to a partial apology for street violence:

In claiming self-defence as a justification for employing force/violence, socialists and black organisation are challenging . . . the general claim by the state to represent the interests of the people as a whole  . . . (p. 220).

Statements like that make you feel the authors are walking an intellectual tightrope in their attempts to include as many views as possible in their chapters, for shortly after the last quotation the same author writes:

In and by itself violence can neither achieve nor sustain anything of which socialists can be proud. (p. 225).

But the statements on violence during the revolutionary transformation to socialism, if they are to mean anything at all, must make clear the conditions under which socially sanctioned force may be used against hypothetical obstructive minorities. Gordon Johnstone is finally unable to do this and has to hope that the socialist revolution will be less violent than other social transformations in history.

The reason for this and many other failings in the book is that nowhere do the authors state how socialism could be brought about, except that an overall impression is given of an accumulation of reforms leading to a more "egalitarian" society, alongside inspired work by labour leaders, plus a good deal of state confrontation, with massive expansion of workers' councils, much argument and a little use of democratic procedures.

Some light is shed on this political eclecticism by the editorial introduction:

We have asked our contributors to ensure that they make plain the nature of the disagreements on the left in their particular field, so that no section of the socialist camp need feel alienated by any gratuitous sectarianism . . . (p. 4).

I wonder what parts of this book the left will find most attractive; the penny-pinching reformism, the labour politics or the revolutionary asides? Bob Jessop argues, absurdly, that they should espouse all parts and advocates that a:

three-fold strategy requires socialists to work at a distance from the state, within the state, and against the state. (p. 105).

Crudely put it means we should smash, ignore and reinforce the state — which about sums up my response to this book. The good bits make it worth reading. They may increase as the series goes on and the authors realise that the triple advocacy of reform, bolshevism and revolution just makes a mess of socialist consciousness.

B. K. McNeeney

The "University of the Working Class" (2004)

From the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Opponents of socialism have periodically attempted to undermine the plausibility of the socialist case by pointing out that some of the pioneers of the socialist movement were not people driven to become revolutionaries through an assessment of their own class interest.

Although this argument is of little real import, Engels, William Morris and even Marx have received this kind of treatment, being portrayed – rightly or wrongly – as having been brought up in ‘well-to do’ families with a privileged education to match.

This is not a charge that could ever seriously be laid at the door of the men and women who founded the Socialist Party of Great Britain. When the founder members broke away from the Social Democratic Federation in 1904 they were in most respects representative of the rank-and-file of that organisation. Unlike the SDF's figurehead, the wealthy old Etonian, Henry Hyndman, the founder members had  occupations and formal education typical of the working class of the time.  A large number were skilled manual workers, including the core of the Party's most prolific speakers and writers. Jack Fitzgerald, for instance, was a bricklayer who went on to teach others his trade, Jacomb was a printer who – up until the early 1920s – designed and laid-out the Socialist Standard , Watts was a wood carver, while Anderson was a house painter. There were others though, of whom T.A. (‘Tommy’) Jackson was the most notable example, who drifted from job to job and into and out of employment, something typically not unrelated to their uncompromising advocacy of Marxian socialism.

What made these revolutionaries extraordinary was not just their implacable opposition to the poverty and iniquity of capitalism but their attitude to knowledge and to critical analysis. They had the keenest of senses that knowledge was power – or at least potentially so. Having no university education they were largely self-taught, prime examples of what has sometimes been called the working class 'autodidactic' tradition.

Macintyre in his A Proletarian Science commented on how members of the SDF, SLP and SPGB were at the forefront of this tradition and of how – through engagement with classic texts on politics, economics, philosophy and anthropology – they searched for an understanding of the grim society around them:

“It is noticeable that the intellectual development of our working-class activists began as a process of individual discovery . . . And in which ever direction their interests lay, these autodidacts exhibited a characteristic intellectual tone: they were great respectors of fact and intellectual authority; earnest, even reverential, in their treatment of the text; and they brooked no short-cuts in the search for  knowledge. Alongside this deference to literary authority, one must put the fact that it remained their education, for they defined both the purpose and the boundaries of their intellectual exploration and the books they read assumed significance in this light.” (pp.70-71)

Not only did these autodidacts treat their own education with great seriousness and dedication, so, in the same manner, did they seek to transmit this knowledge to others. From the outset the Party spent much time in the training and education of its members, with classes on history, political philosophy and – above all – Marxian economics.

Indeed, Fitzgerald was to claim that a key element in his own expulsion from the SDF had been that he had organised economics classes that had been conducted by workingmen like himself rather than by the Federation's leadership. Fitzgerald was among a handful of early members who had attended classes on Marxian economics conducted by Marx's son-in-law, Edward Aveling, a man who had been part of an earlier ‘impossibilist’ revolt against the reformism of the SDF when the ill-fated Socialist League was founded in the 1880s. Attendance at such education classes and immersion in relevant texts was considered a vital part of the education of socialist activists, and we reproduce an example of a typical Party education syllabus after this article.

The autodidactic tradition was still visible in the SPGB long after its foundation. As the Party expanded over time so new waves of self-educated workers joined who honed their knowledge of society, together with their ability to dissect concepts and theories, in the Party's education classes. Some of these members were as good examples of the self-educated working class polymath that it is possible to find. Adolf Kohn, who was to become a mainstay of the Party as both speaker and writer until the Second World War, fed his thirst for knowledge (and that of other members) by setting up his own bookselling business, importing socialist classics from abroad that were otherwise unavailable to members, such as those published by the Charles H. Kerr company in Chicago.

Moses Baritz, from Manchester, a fearsome Party speaker and one of its most colourful characters, travelled across the world spreading the socialist message to other English-speaking countries in North America and the southern hemisphere, becoming a recognised expert on classical music, eventually broadcasting on BBC radio and writing for the Manchester Guardian.

Other autodidacts in the Party had their lifetime pursuit of knowledge immortalised by the capitalist press: Gilbert McClatchie (‘Gilmac’) had an impoverished early upbringing in Ireland before emigrating to Britain and taking a job as a book-keeper among other things, being best known for his knowledgeable historical and philosophical articles in the Socialist Standard and his writing of Party pamphlets; on his death he was recognised by the Times for his contribution to political thought. No less an autodidact was Ted Kersley, who spent part of his childhood in an orphanage and had little by way of any formal education, but became an expert art dealer, featuring in one of the finest radio broadcasts of its kind called “The Art Trade Runner”. He received the same accolade from the Times as Gilmac, though on this occasion his decades of activity as an SPGB propagandist went curiously unmentioned.

In most respects this autodidactic tradition was just as apparent among the large number of new members attracted to the Party in the ‘hungry thirties’, and then the period during and just after the Second World War, as it had been among the founder members. The ebullient tyros who joined the Party at this time were less likely to be in gainful employment than the Party's founders because of the effects of the depression, but their thirst for knowledge was no less. When not scratching around trying to eke out a living many spent their time productively elsewhere – in libraries, education classes or anywhere else that was warm, cheap and lent itself to mental stimulation. In writing of autodidact and one-time SPGB member Harold Walsby, the sociologist Peter Sheppard described this phenomenon well enough:

“Until about the middle of [the twentieth] century alternative arenas [to the universities] did exist, sometimes if perhaps briefly eclipsing the universities in brilliance. Probably the most enduring was that provided by the little nonconformist groups of the extreme Left - anarchists, dissident Marxists and others who were energetically active from about 1880 until the rise of the New Left in the 1950s, a movement that was, or soon became, firmly located in the universities. In the 1930s and 1940s, anti- Establishment politics was located in meeting-halls, in and around the outdoor speaking-grounds, and in cafes such as those of the side streets of Soho . . . A world in which brilliant, down-at-heel intellectuals and Bohemians mingled with prostitutes and petty crooks, and which fostered complex and passionate debate and nurtured polemical powers, [a climate which] sprang into being for a short but heady time”. (www.gwiep.net/site/pshwit.html)

Until the 1940s very few Party members had the opportunity to attend university (disparagingly described by some in the SPGB as capitalism’s “education factories”). Frank Evans, who had an economics degree and Hardy, who was something of a protégé of Professor Edwin Cannan at the London School of Economics before eventually becoming chief research officer for the Post Office workers’ union, were notable exceptions. A handful of members after the Second World War attended the London School of Economics and other Higher Education institutions – mainly as mature students – but from the 1960s and 70s onwards the situation began to change more noticeably. Technical progress under capitalism and the growth of productivity associated with it led to a decline in the number of unskilled and semi-skilled workers demanded by the system and a commensurate growth in the demand for workers with highly developed technical skills, such as engineers, scientists and researchers. Parallel with this went the growth of the administrative apparatus of capitalism – the civil service, local government, the health service and of course, the education system needed to produce such workers, all needing developed specialist talents but also the type of transferable skills supposedly provided by a university education.

The expansion of Higher Education necessitated by these developments led to a change in the composition of the Party’s members that was entirely reflective of the wider changes in capitalist society. Even then, those with a developed educational background have typically become socialists despite their formal education rather than because of it and many are those who claim to have learnt more of worth about society inside the SPGB than outside it.

Perhaps today, the specialisation that characterised the knowledge of earlier Party members is not as pronounced as it was in the days when the Party would wheel out a Fitzgerald, Hardy or Goldstein to lock horns with aspirant politicians or pious academics on the finer points of economic theory. Now, the knowledge of members is probably more eclectic than it was, the product of wider reading and some advancements in knowledge associated with the growth of disciplines like computer studies and

environmental science that were previously unheard of. But the underlying Marxist education of members has still been largely the product of the desire of individual men and women to make sense of the world around them, seeking out a holistic and coherent worldview which is absent from university curricula. In this, the Party, with its reliance on formal definitions, the application of logic, and its evaluation of world events over a century, still has an important part to play as a repository of knowledge, experience and analysis of capitalism. This is why, no doubt, more than one sage has commented that the SPGB has been “the university of the working class” in this respect, perhaps now – at least almost as much – as then.

DAP

Proper Gander: Electronic Heroin (2014)

The Proper Gander Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone switching on half way through Web Junkie (BBC4) might think they’ve tuned in to a grim dystopian drama, rather than a documentary. Uniformed teenagers march through a Chinese boot camp with drab walls and blandly functional furniture. Some have been tricked into joining, or have woken up there after being drugged. All have been sent because they have been diagnosed with ‘internet addiction’, which the state claims is ‘the number one public health threat to its teenage population’. More than 400 such boot camps have been built across China since ‘internet addiction’ was classified as a clinical disorder. Web Junkie: China’s Addicted Teens follows several teenagers and their parents through the treatment provided by the Daxing ‘Chinese Teenagers Mental Growth Centre’ in Beijing.

This treatment to encourage ‘mental growth’ is a bizarre combination of lectures, drill exercises, medication, ‘self-reflection’ in an isolation room, patriotic songs and group therapy. The latter are awkward conversations between the children, their parents and nurses, mostly about their distant relationships. In one of his lectures to a class of parents, the centre’s professor connects family problems with being too pushy for academic achievements. This is the only time in the film that raises wider explanations for ‘internet addiction’ (or ‘electronic heroin’, as it’s called). The faults in society which make some teenagers prefer a virtual life aren’t discussed. Nor is the possibility that ‘internet addiction’ is a social construct, although if the centre’s authorities realised this, they would be doing themselves out of a job. The existence of these centres reinforces the definition of an ‘internet addict’ and therefore fuels the issue.

The regime at the Daxing centre looks more like that of a prison than a hospital. Despite claims of a 70 percent success rate, its inmates are mostly disparaging of its programme and the notion that they have an illness. Even if prolonged internet use has affected their relationships or motivation, getting them to sing and do press ups probably isn’t the best way to address the problem. And even if they are ‘cured’ and can rejoin society as a productive unit, they’re likely to end up in a dull office job, still sat in front of a computer for eight hours a day.

Mike Foster

Greasy Pole: Clashing In Clacton (2014)

The Greasy Pole Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jaywick is a village on the Essex coast with a stretch of golden sand. Built in 1928, it originally consisted of 'chalets' but these developed as permanent residences and the occasional holiday retreat for anyone who was in employment permanent enough for them to afford a week away to recover from That War followed by The Slump. For many it was as close to paradise as they were likely to get. But it is all different now, for Jaywick has fallen to the lower layers of poverty and decay. In 2011 a survey by the Department of Communities and Local Government stated that on the basis of poverty, crime, education, unemployment and housing it was the most deprived area in England. There is a lack of street lighting and pavements and what were parades of shops are now wastelands – empty and vandalised. It is part of the genteel Parliamentary constituency of Clacton, which was represented by the Conservative Douglas Carswell until August, when he changed to UKIP and stood down from Parliament with the stated intention of contesting the resulting by-election there.

Sofa Clique

Clacton was created as a parliamentary constituency for the 2010 election, when Carswell had a majority of 12,088. In common with a number of coastal towns, it has a higher proportion of retired people and a lesser number of those classified as 'non-white'. Votes there are cast defensively; local polls confirm support for Carswell's stand against British membership of the EU, for restricting the inflow of immigrants and longer prison sentences for repeat offenders... all of which add up to Clacton being a hopeful place for a UKIP candidate.  Among the polls the Conservative Home website predicted that Carswell would get some 56 per cent of the by-election vote as against only 24 per cent for the Tory candidate, for he promised to change things: 'Our politics is dominated by politicians. It's all about them, not the people they are supposed to answer to... First under Tony Blair, then Gordon Brown, now David Cameron, it's all about the priorities of whichever tiny clique happens to be sitting on the sofa in Downing Street. Different clique, same sofa . . . They seek every great office, yet believe in so little'.

Someone Special

Carswell is well experienced in this matter of aiming for a place on that sofa. He first contested an election in 2001, at none other than Sedgefield where Tony Blair was the Member. At the time, before Iraq and the infamous lies, there was something of a slump in the popularity of that Labour government and Carswell reduced Blair's majority by 7,500. And then in 2005, after a spell in David Cameron's office, he stood for Harwich and turned out the sitting Labour MP by 920 votes. In 2007 he was a joint- author of Direct Democracy an agenda for a new model party, which led The Spectator to include him among '...the brightest young Conservative thinkers'. In the Sunday Times in July 2008 he was hailed as '...one of the energetic young Tory modernisers elected to the Commons in 2005' and in the following year the Daily Telegraph named him as 'the Parliamentarian of the Year'. All of which, with his increasing majority in Clacton, entitled Carswell to regard himself as someone with real prospects. But every day, in so many ways, the arrogance of politicians with their bogus 'principles', their superficial 'energy', their 'modernising' is exposed to us. How does Carswell match up to this?

No Primary

After the 2010 election the Coalition agreement promised to introduce a system whereby the voters select candidates in primary elections. Carswell stated his support for this reform, in the so-called Contract With Britain. Which would have been more convincing if he had applied the system in his own case. But when he moved from the Tory Party to UKIP and resigned as an MP he said he would stand again without any mention of a primary election. Instead the matter was subject to the system he professes to despise; in fact it was even more closed – privately settled with Nigel Farage during a cosy meal in a discreet Mayfair restaurant. This took no account of the fact that there was already a selected UKIP candidate – Roger Lord, a local farmer who had been a member of UKIP since 1997. Lord complained bitterly about being elbowed aside, to the extent that he more or less removed himself from all political activity of whatever party.

Expenses

If there were ever any doubts about Carswell's resolve to make his name – and ensure himself a place further up the Greasy Pole – they would have been stilled by what the Daily Mail called his 'fearless' call for the Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin to be dismissed for his resistance to a more open system in the matter of the MPs' expenses. In May 2009 Carswell's motion of no confidence led to Martin resigning from the chair, pleading that this was 'for the sake of unity'. But Carswell himself was not backward in the scandal, for his campaign against MPs' sleaze (he complained that their standing had 'never been so low') did not prevent him being one of those imaginative claimants for 'expenses'. He began by designating a £1 million flat in London as his second home before flipping to a £335,000 house in Essex. This was followed by his claims for furniture and equipment which between 2007 and 2009 cost some £32,000. He claimed £429 for gardening and then, perhaps to reveal himself as someone with an eye for detail, 74p for a washing line from Tesco. But above all else was a £655 Maximus love seat 'in deep moss brushed cotton with extra fabric protector' for use when he moved in with his future wife.

We are fully accustomed to the sprouting of some smaller third party urging us to vote them into power because they are cleaner, more honest and reliable than the two big ones with their playing elections as a kind of gruesome Musical Chairs. We remember David Steel and his Liberals,  Roy Jenkins and his SDP. Now we have Farage and his strangely impulsive, self-incriminating lot. The signs are that come 9 November Carswell will be their first MP. But all the evidence says that he should not let this excite him into any further delusions. Which also goes for those who vote for him.

Ivan

Review. (1911)

Book Review from the January 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

"My Case," By Walter V. Osbourne, (Eveleigh Nash. Is. net.)

Ten years ago a judgement in a certain trade union case was given by the section of the House of Lords known as the "Law Lords" that became world famous as the Taff Vale case.

It was an action by the Taff Vale Railway Co. against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants to recover damages in respect to injury arising from a strike of the railway men, and the judgement was in favour of the masters.

This case was one of the greatest factors in the building up of the Labour Representation Committee (now the Labour Party) and Richard Bell, then secretary of the A.S.R.S., was chairman of the Committee during 1902.

Time's irony has brought another Law Lords; decision against the A.S.R.S., but this time levelled at the Labour Party it was so instrumental in building up. And as if to complete the sarcasm of events, Lord Farwell is one of the judges in the last case, as he was in the first.

In the November issue of this journal were given the reasons this party agree with the Osbourne judgement—so-known from the name of the individual who brought the action.

The book under review tells us singularly little that the ordinary reader of the newspapers did not know, unless we except the appendix containing the judgement of the five Law Lords. But there is a good deal of what can only be described as cant, while one or two curious statements are made.

On page 5 we are told the author started "without organisation or funds, relying wholly upon the justice of the cause" (obvious cant) while on page 18 occurs this curious admission: "It now became evident that the matter must go to the Courts. In order to obtain some standing I came forward as candidate for Walthamstow Town Council, and was returned in April 1906."

The reader may wonder what this had to do with an action that Mr. Osbourne is continually telling us was a trade union matter. The following may increase this wonder—or dispel it.

"At the Walthamstow Council I had the good fortune to meet Councillor Wilkinson, a solicitor in the City of London, who agreed to take charge of the case." (Page 28.)

Mr. Osbourne was certainly a fortunate man, for on the same page we are told "For myself, I was entirely without resources, and had no knowledge of how or where to obtain money, but after six months of persistent effort I succeeded in raising £250," and on page 29, after describing how he had lost both his case and his money in the lower Courts, he says: "Owing, however, to the great generosity of my solicitor in trusting me to raise the money eventually. I was able to proceed with the case."

And we are told that, in the Court of Appeal "our Counsel realised that they were fighting, not only for the liberty of their fellow citizens, but for the very safety of our Constituion."

My word! and we had been unaware of the danger until Mr. Osbourne became the chosen instrument for our defence.

Throughout the book the term "Socialist" is applied to the Labour Party and its leaders. Yet Mr. Osbourne must know that the Socialist Party has denounced them as anti-Socialists and misleaders of the working class, because our Party had to fight the executive of the A.S.R.S. over the exposure of the latters' action in connection with the North Eastern Railway.

These misleaders have been very busy throwing out insinuations and sneers with reference to the source of the funds Mr. Osbourne obtained. They are, of course, fine judges of "curious sources" whence funds are obtained. But on page 58 Mr. Osbourne reprints a letter sent to the Morning Post and other papers (7th Oct. 1910), challenging the Trades Union Congress to appoint an independent investigator, but although at that moment busy abusing him, the Congress did not tale his challenge up. So far as the present reader has heard, they have not replied to his letter at all—a significant measure of the worth of their criticism.

Jack Fitzgerald

Editorial: Stalin - the God who fell (1961)

Editorial from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Stalin, the final disgrace.

His simple grave now mocks the memory of the days when he was the great dictator, who could make Krushchev caper like a court jester.

It mocks, too, the memory of the fulsome praise that was heaped upon him when his pitiless rule was at its height. Here is part of a poem which was published in Pravda on August 28th, 1936:

O Great Stalin, O Leader of the Peoples,
Thou who didst give birth to man,
Thou who didst make fertile the earth,
Thou who dost rejuvenate the Centuries.
Thou who givest blossom to the spring . . . 

And this is Krushchev himself, speaking at the eighteenth Congress in 1938 on the extermination of Stalin's opponents:

. . . Our victory in defeating the fascist agents—all these despicable trotskyists, bukharinists and bourgeois nationalists—we owe above all to the personal effort of our great leader, comrade Stalin . . . Long live the towering genius of all humanity, the teacher and the guide who is leading us victoriously to Communism, our beloved comrade Stalin.

Now that the truth about the "beloved comrade" is officially acknowledged in Moscow, we can expect some more rewriting of history, just as it was when Stalin wanted to eliminate the memory of his enemies.

In England the Communist Party will be in confusion for some time. Always taking their line from Moscow, they were among Stalin's worshippers, and disregarded the facts about the Russian dictator which Socialists, and others, put before them. The latest change of policy will be hard to swallow, even for them.

In the Kremlin the power struggle continues. Perhaps Molotov and Voroshilov will go as others have gone before them. Perhaps Trotsky will be posthumously reinstated. perhaps the Soviet government will gratify the historians who see similarities between twentieth century Russia and seventeenth century England by treating Stalin's corpse as Cromwell's was, after the Restoration. We can be sure that whatever happens will be excused in the name of the "Socialist Fatherland."

The Russian workers will probably accept this, in the manner of workers all over the world. How much more hopeful if they turned the belated denunciation of Stalin to good account. For what guarantee is there that Stalin's successors will be any better than the man they are now denouncing? None whatsoever. Yet the whole argument for having leaders must be in the assumption that they are beneficial to society. If they can turn out as Stalin did, the argument for them is destroyed. There is a lesson here for Russian workers and for those in other countries.

Let us repeat what we have often said before. The Soviet Union is not a Socialist country. It is a dictatorial capitalist country. Stalin was a dictator. So are Krushchev and his henchmen. All Socialist oppose systems like that in Russia.

Capitalism, whoever happens to be its leaders, can only bring misery and fear to the majority of people. It is useless to change one set of leaders for another. The real need is for the working class to gain enough knowledge to bring about Socialism.

That will be a world without dictatorships and suppression. Socialism will be a world of freedom.

Cooking the Books: More . . . and More (2014)

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

The pre-WWI US labour union boss Samuel Gompers was once asked what unions wanted. He replied with a single word – ‘more.’ It was a good answer since that’s basically what unions are about: more money, from employers, to enable their members to live a little better under capitalism. They don’t always get this and in slump conditions have to be satisfied with aiming to get ‘not so much less’.

It’s actually a better slogan than a ‘fair’ or a ‘decent’ wage since there’s nothing fair or decent about being forced by economic necessity, as most people are under capitalism, to sell their mental and physical energies to some employer for a wage or a salary. That’s wage slavery and it can never be fair however much more workers get paid.

On 18 October the TUC is organising a national demonstration in London under the slogan ‘Britain needs a pay rise’. It’s a silly slogan, designed presumably to show that unions don’t just have their members’ interest at heart but also that of the country. But ‘Britain’ is not a united community with a common interest. It’s a class-divided society in which the ‘national interest’ is the interest of the dominant capitalist class. They, not workers, are Britain.

So, what the TUC has ended up doing is trying to convince the capitalist class that it is in their interest to increase wages. This is not self-evident, otherwise they would already have done so without the TUC needing to ask them.

The TUC’s argument is that ‘getting money back into people’s pockets is essential to securing a strong recovery.’ This is to assume that the capitalist economy is driven by what workers buy. It isn’t. It’s driven by what capitalist firms invest with a view to profit. What workers can buy is a by-product of this since the more capitalist firms invest, the more workers are employed and so the more in total that workers can buy. As Marx put it, ‘if productive capital grows, the demand for labour grows. It therefore increases the price of labour-power, wages’ (Wage Labour and Capital, ch. VI).

In any event, what the TUC is concentrating on demanding is an end to too low pay. They want the minimum wage enforced more strictly and ‘higher wages from employers who can afford to pay’, explaining:

‘We know that in many low paid sectors employers could afford to pay more without making job losses. That’s why we need new ways for unions and employers to work together to set higher wages, so that workers and businesses both get a fair deal.’

It would be nice to think that this was just a ploy to get the employers concerned to pay more. Unfortunately the TUC probably believe it and do want a ‘fair deal’ for businesses as well as workers. A fair year’s profits for a fair day’s wage! In that respect they would agree with another of Gompers’ sayings, that ‘the worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.’

Workers do need more but not just more money to live under capitalism. A lot more. The whole means of production in fact so that these can be used to turn out what people need instead of to make a profit for those who monopolise them. That will mean the end of the system of working for wages and its replacement by the application of the principle ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’

Where the B.S.P. Sucks. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Socialist Party are once again to the fore with their insistent claim that from their inception they have fought the battle of the wage-earners, though how they have fought that battle still remains for them to prove. True, they tell us that members of their organisation are also prominent members of trade unions, and staunch supporters in every fight for higher wages; that they, as an organisation, have always supported every movement for higher wages and better conditions. But if this is what they call fighting the battle of the wage-earners, then they can claim to be no more belligerent towards capitalism than the trade unions themselves.

Every new hardship inflicted on the working class calls for strenuous denunciation by the British Socialist Party, and a palliative for the workers to pin their faith to, and waste their energies on. Conscription, national service, rising prices; these and many other things only serve to encourage the inventive faculties of the leaders of the British Socialist Party. They have a separate remedy for each and in most cases it is necessary for the vast majority of the working class to act together in order to apply the remedy.

For a party claiming to be Socialist to propose to educate and organise the workers, or at least a majority of the workers, to take some kind of action against the ruling class for anything short of Socialism, is fraudulent. By such an attitude the party's original object, indicated by their name, is negated; for they must either be revolutionary and work for "the day" or they must be merely a reform party and work to put off the Revolution. The B.S.P. denies this by stating that each reform will bring Socialism nearer, but merely stating such does not prove it.

The British Socialist Party, after explaining the terrors of a proposed national service law, says in conclusion:

"The Government officers would have to assign to each man or woman their several tasks. Thus there would be no equality. In practice, of course, it would be only the men and women of the manual working class who would be sent to the factories. It is not suggested that the capitalist employers should be conscripted and put to work on fixed rates of pay instead of profits."

"Thus there would be no equality," they say. Does this mean that equality would end and that henceforth society would be made up of inequalities? Is it to be understood that the. British Socialist Party mean that equality exists to-day and that national service would abolish it? I wait patiently for some evidence of this equality, which the British Socialist Party assume to be present in capitalist society, or failing that, some justification of their own existence, with the avowed object of establishing Socialism.

Where is the need for them if equality already exists to-day ?

But perhaps they mean that there would be no equality among the workers; which, of course, would be untrue, as the workers are already on an equal footing in the sense that they must all sell their labour-power. Under national service they would have fresh grounds of equality. They would all have their tasks assigned to them by government officials.

The last sentence in the above quotation is, however, the choicest, "It is not suggested that the capitalist employer should be conscripted and put to work on fixed rates of pay instead of profits." We have to remember, in order to appreciate this remark, that it is addressed to members of the working class, who believe implicitly in the necessity of "capitalist employers." The average working man accepts the capitalist's description of himself,—one who finds the capital and the brains, without which society could not exist. Believing this much he would naturally resent the British Socialist Party's attempted sarcasm. He would say, "We must have employers, if not where is the capital coming from to run industry?" And the B.S.P.'er would either be dumb or he would have to hark back to first principles. He would be compelled to explain the nature and history of capitalism, carefully defining nearly every word, answering innumerable questions, and debating everything debatable. In short, these words, to the average worker are nonsense, they can only be appreciated by one who has already apprehended the Socialist philosophy. Until the worker understands that the capitalist performs no useful function in society he will resent all suggestions that profits are not the legitimate rights of those who find the capital that sets him to work and enables him to earn wages.

"In practice of course it would be only the men and women of the manual working class who would be sent to the factories." "Of course." Who is it that works in the factories now? The same workers who believe in the necessity of capitalists, believe also in the necessity and the justice of their enforced labour. In short, they believe in capitalism; they have faith in the system because, poor and wretched as they are, without the opportunity of working for some capitalist they would quickly starve. This is the attitude of the average worker, to whom there is a difference between employers and degrees of poverty, that is about all. He has no conception whatever of the real meaning of Socialism. By what sort of logic, then, do the British Socialist Party reconcile their literature with their name ? A Socialist party should provide the working class with a genuine understanding of Socialism; it should give to the workers the conception they lack, before it can expect them to appreciate its sarcasm.

Our opponents further say:

"The proposals for the partial control of output and the limitation of profits in controlled establishments are altogether insufficient. The situation demanded and demands that private profit-making should be abolished, that the Government should take the production of munitions entirely out of private hands and carry on that production on a real national basis under national control."

Again, while Socialism alone is sufficient for the Socialist, why refer to a certain Government action as insufficient and assert that the situation demanded something more—which something more was not Socialism? Do the British Socialist Party mean to say that their proposal would amount—to use a hackneyed phrase —to an instalment of Socialism ? But we must not suppose anything. The members of the British Socialist Party ought to know that when the Government runs an industry it runs it in the interest of the class it represents, and that the workers employed by the Government have no more control over that industry than other workers, nor have they learned anything of Socialism as a result of their change of employers. "But the production of munitions of war, whilst important, is only one aspect of the national crisis." With the British Socialist Party, national sentiment evidently comes before international ideals. "Britain for the British" (capitalists) first, and what then ?

"The great increase in the cost of living since the war began is directly attributable to the private ownership and control of those commodities on which life depends." It would have been as well if the B.S.P. had informed their readers that the private ownership of the "commodities on which life depends" is a result of the private or class ownership of the means of wealth production. Failing to do this, those readers are left to infer that only the increase in prices is due to this private ownership. Why particularise about a mere modification when every social evil afflicting the working class is the result of the class ownership of the means of life, and could all be effaced by Socialism.

"The production and supply of food and fuel must no longer remain the monopoly of those who seek to make private gain out of public necessity, and to whom the satisfaction of national requirements is always secondary to the making of profits. The munitions of life, as well as the munitions of war, must be placed under complete national control, in the interests of the nation, now and after the war."

Here the B.S.P. spokesmen have forgotten one of the cardinal facts established by Socialism; that there are only two classes in society, and that public necessity and national requirements mean capitalist necessity and requirements. Both are capitalist phrases, used with suspicious frequency in the capitalist Press. The Socialist knows that they are used in this way in order to perpetuate among the workers the belief that social relations within the nation are in the main harmonious; that class division is natural, necessary and unavoidable ; and that territorial divisions are of vital importance, as indeed they are— to the capitalist class. The B.S.P. only repeat the false and hypocritical stock phrases of the master class. Pretending to be in antagonism to that class, their hypocrisy and fraud are even greater than those whose heresies they repeat.

Moreover, they are the Socialists (!) who propose to change human nature—we have heard of them often from members of the Anti-Socialist Union. They propose that a capitalist government and class should cease to take the fullest advantage of its control over the means of wealth production and its consequent domination of the working class. The B.S.P. have yet to learn that systems are more easily changed than classes can be persuaded to relinquish their power or, knowingly, act against their own interest.

"Fellow Citizens, in. the hour of Britain's greatest need capitalism has proved a hopeless failure, and it is to Social Democratic proposals that the community has been compelled to turn."

We have only to look for the changes that have been introduced during the period of the war, in order to discover what these ''Social Democratic" proposals are. State control of those industries necessary for the prosecution of the war. If this is all the B.S.P. have to offer as a solution for working-class problems, they are indeed bankrupt as a working-class party. These changes have effected nothing even for the workers engaged in those industries. On the contrary, according to the B.S.P.'s own showing, the Government control and interference has robbed these workers of rules and customs that it has taken them " generations of collective effort against the employing class to establish." So much for "Social Democratic" proposals.

Next they say "Every stage in the great national crisis through which we are now passing has demonstrated the collapse of competitive capitalism." Do they suggest non-competitive capitalism, and do they claim that social-democratic proposals would have this effect ? If so, they will find that all such ideas were exploded by Marx long before they were adopted by them or the "Fabian Society" before them.

"Every effective step that has been taken has shown the practicability and necessity of Socialism. That is the great lesson the nation should learn from the terrible experience of the last eleven months. The system of national control and ownership, already partly applied, must be continued and extended, -and on the ruins of capitalist civilisation must be established the foundations of the Socialist Commonwealth."

We have glanced at the "effective steps" and the "national control and ownership, already partly applied" and have seen how worthless they are, either as palliatives or as object-lessons for the workers as to the practicability of Socialism. The working-man with an average amount of common-sense needs no telling that nationalisation solves no problems for him. Whatever national control may mean in the minds of the B.S.P., the postal employees and the overworked munition workers know from experience that it does not mean control by them, or improved conditions for them. To continue and extend these "Social-Democratic" proposals is, consequently, only to drag more workers within the scope of national control, and make them directly subject to the State. In so far as this is done, "national service," which the B.S.P. denounce, becomes more of a reality. They say:

"Just as on the industrial field the British Socialist Party has demanded the complete State ownership, organisation, and control of the nation's industrial resources to meet the national emergency, so in existing circumstances IT RECOGNISES THAT THE MILITARY RESOURCES OF EVERY NATION MUST BE ORGANISED FOR PURPOSES OF NATIONAL DEFENCE. It has urged, in accordance with the decisions of International Socialist Congresses, the universal military training of every able-bodied male citizen in a democratic citizen army, free from military law in times of peace, FOR THE PURPOSE OF HOME DEFENCE ALONE. Such a force could neither be used to deprive the working class of their popular liberties, nor to further the ambitions of capitalist imperialism."

As the army of every country is to be for home defence only, there can be no fear anywhere of aggression, consequently no need even for defensive armies. Why do the B.S.P. want armies? Under capitalism all nations organise fighting forces to make secure the domination of the ruling class; to clear the way for the commodities produced by the "industrial army," that they may be placed on the world's market for the benefit of the class that owns them, and, to intimidate and compel the "industrial army" to submit to exploitation. These are the uses of armed forces. Socialism, with its common ownership and democratic control of all the means of wealth production, would, by the abolition of class-ownership, destroy class domination, and armed forces would be unnecessary. Why do the B.S.P. want armies? Because they want capitalism, with its class domination, to remain. Hence the British Socialist Party are anti-Socialist. 

F. Foan