Proper Gander: Fiscal Exercise (2014)

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

Considering how important our income is in shaping our life, talking about it can feel more embarrassing than a conversation about genital herpes. Channel 4’s How Rich Are You? aims to encourage some fiscal debate with its mix of interviews, pundits, comments from the studio audience and lots of statistics. Even when jazzed up with flashy graphics, the show’s stats give a depressing picture of our divided society. For example, poorer people die up to 12 years earlier than the rich on average, and just five families have as much wealth as 12 million other people. The widening gap between rich and poor is explained by a tendency for an increasing proportion of wealth to end up as capital rather than being paid as wages. This is illustrated with a replica of a machine built during the 1960s at the London School of Economics, which pushes cold tea through pipes into containers marked ‘taxes’, ‘capital’, ‘labour’ etc to represent how money flows round the economy. While much of this data would benefit from clarification, and terms like ‘rich’ and ‘wealth’ are often left fuzzily defined, the clear message is that the capitalists are still winning the class war. As one member of the audience says, while a minority are laughing their way to the bank, he’s on his way to the food bank.

One of the show’s richer contributors suggests that to get assets, you should ‘get off your fucking arse’, as if that’s how he acquired his inherited booty. As economist Dr Faiza Shaheen points out, effort and talent are less important in determining our income than the circumstances we’re born into. Social mobility has reduced as wealth inequality has increased. So, it’s now harder to break free of the constraining opportunities and life expectancy we grow up with. Dr Shaheen gives plenty of examples of how wealth inequality damages our wellbeing, but her disappointing conclusion is only that too much of a divide hinders capitalist growth. And presenter Richard Bacon’s two-penn’orth is to say that we need some rich people for society to function. Unfortunately, capitalism itself isn’t questioned by those participating in How Rich Are You?, only how it’s administered. Despite this, the programme still reminds us why the system doesn’t work in the interests of the majority.

Mike Foster

Obituary: Vic Heaven (1980)

Obituary from the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

For over forty years the socialist cause has been kept alive in Bristol by a trio of members with a happy collection of names—Force, Flowers and Heaven. Our small era came to an end when Vic Heaven died on 22 April, aged 81.

Vic joined the army as a boy trumpeter in 1914; political maturity came a decade later. In 1925 he became a socialist and gave his war medals to his children, saying "Here, you can have these begging irons as toys, they're only fit for standing on the pavement with and selling matches". A nice sense of proportion made him keep and cherish the eleven medals he won as an amateur footballer.

Soon after joining the Party he teamed up with a Comrade Howell. Heaven and Howell used to delight in walking around Bristol and calling out to the navvies digging trenches "when are you blokes going to realise that you're being exploited?" The night before Howell died of cancer he threw a party and Vic was pleased to play the piano as Howell sang the Red Flag for the last time.

I first met Vic in 1935, when I was studying for holy orders and was walking through Bristol with my vicar. Heaven was there, selling the Socialist Standard, and he put the case to us. After hearing it, the vicar intoned pompously, "young man, you are 200 years before your time". With his lightning tongue Vic flashed "old man, you are 2,000 years behind the times!" My religious belief evaporated.

Later Vic became a civil servant with the Ministry of Labour, and this cramped his public propaganda work. Nevertheless, he was pleased to have advised every conscript who passed through his department during the second world war of the alternative to fighting for capitalism.

On retirement Vic kept a beautiful cottage garden and, amid the pear trees, he would talk socialism with all his visitors. "The world's first socialist candidate, Clifford Groves" holidayed there; and "Fellow Worker White", so-called because anywhere, and without warning, he would shout "fellow workers!" and gather an audience to hear the socialist case.

Our sympathy and gratitude go to Vic's four daughters, who looked after him in his latter years.

J. Force

Brotherly Love in the U.S.A. (1930)

From the April 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Sinclair Lewis, the author of "Babbitt," "Main Street," and other widely read novels, dealing with life in the U.S.A., was on the spot during the recent embittered struggle between mill-owners and cotton workers at Marion, North Carolina, one of the new industrial areas in the Southern States. He was inspired to write a pamphlet, "Cheap and Contented Labor," in which he tells of some of the incidents of industrial conflict as it is waged in America. It is written in simple, direct language, and is a powerful indictment of the unrestrained brutality of the employing class when they believe their interests to be endangered.

The operatives were on strike for an increase in their wages of 13 dollars a week—a starvation wage at American prices.

No sooner had the workers struck than all the forces of capitalist suppression were turned against them. Armed militia fired upon them on the least provocation. Hospitals refused to tend their sick and wounded. The law courts discounted their evidence, and charges were fabricated in the favour of the employers. Parsons ranted and demanded public whipping posts as a punishment for the "agitators."

General housing and social conditions in Marion are appalling, and call to mind the conditions of the mining and cotton districts of England in the early days of English factory development. Mr. Lewis, who has visited the Lancashire cotton districts, says that the condition of the workers there "is the abomination of desolation," but, he adds, these are "some three or four hundred per cent. superior to those of the workers in Marion." To any who are acquainted with the cotton districts of England such a comparison is enough.

We are also told that the conditions of the mill-workers of Marion are representative of scores of mill towns in America.

However, America still is a land of "prosperity and golden opportunities"—for the Capitalist. For the workers—slavery.

Mr. Lewis wants to abolish this slavery, although in this pamphlet he does not tell us what are his own views on the method of doing it.

H. W.

Dreaming spires and screaming tyres (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A resident of the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford describes the background to the recent riots there.

For a week during the summer Blackbird Leys, a housing estate in Oxford, was catapulted (and I choose that word carefully) to the the forefront of public attention after a sudden and apparently spontaneous outbreak of violence. Rioting occurred and petrol bombs were thrown when police tried to break up crowds of young people who had come to watch a display of the driving of stolen cars, something of a local pastime. Why did this happen? What is the origin of this conflict with authority in the shape of the police which is such a feature of Blackbird Leys? And why did it erupt on this occasion, as it never had done before, into such open violence?

The violence and conflict was not the product of simple material deprivation; unemployment at 9 percent, but this is not the highest in Oxford. It was more subtle; to do with things which are more intangible; boredom, police insensitivity and the alienation of a whole category of people from mainstream values, opportunities and ideals, and the establishment of a youth culture with its own values which are irreconcilable with the bourgeois values of the wider society.

Blackbird Leys is a large featureless 1960s council estate with a population of around 9,000 which, although it is technically part of the city of Oxford, is attached to the south of Oxford, outside the main Ring Road, in a way which gives it the definite appearance of being an afterthought, something which is artificial and created, not something natural or organic but an excrescence, manufactured to cope with a category of people somehow left out of mainstream society. This feeling of exclusion both physical and social is real and tangible. The actual situation of the estate—you have to go there specially; it is not on the way to anywhere—is mirrored by social exclusion, the feeling of being somehow outside the rest of Oxford and not integrated into the community at large.

The estate itself is oval-shaped and lacks any proper social centre or focus. The nearest thing to this is "the oval"—roads around a rectangular space with trees which functions as a traffic island. It is around this space that most of the driving stolen cars for excitement and danger takes place. The whole estate with its long straight roads is laid out in a way that encourages this joy-riding and speeding. Recently humps that were put in by the City Council to slow traffic down on these long roads have made joy-riding even more exciting and have only served to inconvenience legitimate traffic.

Blackbird Leys was originally built to house Oxford's population overspill and to serve the nearby Cowley car plant, an ambitious programme of public building which one could never imagine happening today. The reality was quite different: it was not built with people and their real needs in mind and was a planning failure. Blackbird Leys is now perceived as an area which is "bad" and which concentrates Oxford City's unwanted into one area, a sort of semi-unofficial social asylum, housing, for example, those with criminal records, and "problem" families. Not surprisingly it also has a high immigrant population. It is also large enough to have its own social differences. Away from the centre are streets of mostly privately-owned houses whereas nearer in and closer to the centre are the more regular and featureless council properties.

Blackbird Leys also borders on to the south Oxfordshire countryside with its picture-postcard villages. Garsington is one of these and is a particularly exclusive small village (exclusive in a real economic sense—it excludes others from participation in its way of life and in its attractiveness) with its beautiful small church, manor-house and thatched cottages. From the centre of Garsington can be seen a swathe of green country which suddenly turns grey and out of which rise tower blocks. The contrast is striking, both between the grey and green and between the life of some and the life of others. From the centre of Blackbird Leys one can see a pleasant green wooded hill which speaks of an otherness to the regularity and featurelessness of the area.

This real sense of difference both from the city and the country only serves to heighten the isolation of the residents. If you have money you can participate in the richness and variety of life, you can live in attractive surroundings, and if you don't you are demeaned and devalued and such things as pleasant surroundings are not seen to matter or to be important—or necessary. These social differences will surely be exacerbated even further by the new development of Greater Leys, a private development starting to enclose Blackbird Leys from the south. This is an estate which is very different, both qualitatively and quantitatively from its larger neighbour. A no-man's-land separates the two and walking across it there is a feeling of stepping from one section of society into another.

Police clampdown
The immediate trigger for the Oxford violence was a long-planned police clampdown on the persistent problem of joy-riding and the opportunity which this gave to frustrated, bored excluded young people in hot weather for a confrontation with authority. By coming in as they did, as a posse, the police made themselves a target for violence and aggression. They were perceived as representing mainstream culture and the interests of the privileged and powerful rather than those of (this particular section of) the working class. Thus they presented a symbol of authority against which the original trouble was a reaction.

This insensitivity made the situation much worse. At the height of the trouble the estate crawled with police spoiling for a row and television camera-crews (I saw some from Germany) and journalists from the national press falling over themselves to film any sign of violence. This turned a fairly small-scale confrontation into one played out for a national and international audience. This, of course, electrified the atmosphere and prolonged the trouble.

Various superficial attempts have been made to improve the situation on the estate. These concern the symptoms but not the underlying disease and, in fact, the situation cannot be resolved within capitalism at all. The wide oval in the centre of the estate where joy-riders do their handbrake turns has been narrowed in a way which has made the featureless, impoverished centre into even more of an eye-sore. The tarmac extensions to the pavements look ugly because no attempt has been made to harmonise them with the existing pavement. Pathetic attempts like this make it more difficult to express the symptoms of the underlying disease, which is capitalism, an economic system, which separates people from each other and makes them compete in a cut-throat way for the necessaries of life; it creates an underclass which never gets a look-in to the better things of life.

What is needed is a wholesale change, a revolution, and end to the misery of private property and the inevitable inequality which goes with it; a new system of society which integrates everyone and distributes its wealth according to the reasonable needs of its members. This new socialist society would abolish at a stroke the problems of deprivation and exclusion of Blackbird Leys and inner-city areas. It would enable the wasted talent of those who are presently excluded on economic grounds from a proper participation in the life of society to be properly developed. The energy squandered on destructive and anti-social pastimes like joy-riding could be put into activities which are more rewarding, fulfilling and socially useful. Young people have much energy, enthusiasm and intelligence and the loss of this is a tragic waste, for society and for those who never fulfil themselves. What is really needed in Oxford is not condemnation from the Home Secretary, nor more police or re-designed pavements but a fundamental change in society.

Iain Jamieson

The Myth of National Characteristics (2014)

From the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

There once was a very bad TV situation comedy called 'Mind Your Language'. The basis of this unfunny comedy was a well-meaning hero teaching an adult night class the English language to a cliché-ridden group of non-English speakers. Stereotypes abounded.

There was the sexually attractive French girl in a short skirt, the randy bottom-pinching Italian, the very proper but dull German and a wide variety of stupid Orientals and Asians. The whole thing was complete nonsense and it says much for the better informed prospective audience that the whole thing sunk without trace after a short run. Although this particular attempt at national characteristics failed the notion that whole groups of people from a particular geographical area are genetically programmed to behave in particularly predictable fashion is very widespread. It would be almost impossible to watch TV or read a newspaper without observing a reference to 'Latin temperament', 'Germanic thoroughness', or even 'American brashness'. In journalism so-called national traits are the norm. In tabloid journalism like theSun or the Daily Mail they are almost mandatory. What lies behind this crass affectation? After all journalists are not stupid and they must recognise the wide variety of human foibles and unique behaviour patterns that exist amongst people. The basis of this pernicious poison lies in the misguided nationalistic aims of the mass media. These means of communications exist not just to sell and make a profit they also have a very important function to perform for the owning class.

It is imperative for the smooth functioning of a class-divided society that the working class imagines that they share a common identity with their exploiters. Thus we have deluded wage slaves on the last night of The Proms puffing out their chests and chanting 'Land of Hope and Glory'. This is a world-wide illusion. BeProud That You Are British or exulting in the American Way of Life are all of a cliched pattern.

It is impossible to imagine how capitalism would function so smoothly without the poison of nationalism. In the event of an economic crisis we must learn to buckle to and beat Johnny Foreigner. In the event of a war we must fight and die for 'our country'. In reality of course the working class have no country. It is an accident which country you were born into - it is probably even an accident that you were born at all. There is nothing to be proud or ashamed of the country you happen to live in. `

So wake up to reality, Bertie Wooster! You are not British. Put your non-existent monocle away and stop sticking out your pinky when having a cup of char. Aunt Agatha isn't going to call shortly.

RD

Cooking the Books: Hard Work, Taxes and Profits (2014)

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

In an article in the Times (30 October) David Cameron pontificated about having a moral duty to reduce taxes:

‘Every single pound of public money started as private earning. Every million in the Treasury represents a huge amount of hard work: early morning alarms, long commutes, hours spent on the factory floor, the office, the hospital ward or the classroom.’

The first sentence is not true but the rest is.

As the government as such produces nothing it does have to get all its money from elsewhere. However, it cannot be said that ‘every pound’ comes from ‘private earning’ if by this latter is meant wage and salary earners.

The government’s money comes from two sources: taxes and borrowing. Governments borrow from financial institutions but what these lend it can hardly be described as ‘private earning’. It is money capital accumulated from past profits, i.e., from past ‘unearned income’ (as the Inland Revenue used to call it in the days before spin).

As to taxation, some comes directly from taxes on profits, once again not ‘private earning’ but unearned income. Even the taxes paid by workers fall in the end on employers (though ‘paid’ is probably not the right word here as, with PAYE, workers never see it and what they have to live on is the take-home pay that goes into their bank account). A tax on wages is an indirect tax on profits as it increases the cost of recreating a worker’s labour-power and so what the employer has to pay for it. Economists have long known this but politicians are reluctant to acknowledge this as it blows apart their myth that we are all taxpayers together.

On the other hand, that ‘every million in the Treasury represents a huge amount of hard work’ is true. The hard work described by Cameron is the source both of the taxes that ultimately fall on profits on and of the accumulated profits that governments borrow.

So, if there’s any moral duty involved because of the ‘hard work’, it would not be to reduce taxes but to reduce, in fact eliminate, the unpaid hard work of wage and salary workers which produces the profits that governments tax or borrow.

In any event, Cameron’s moral high ground begins to crumble when he sets out another reason for reducing taxes on profits:

‘We know the economic case for cutting taxes: in a competitive world we cannot afford to carry on as a bloated, high-taxing, welfare-heavy nation (…) We have to fight the notion that you can endlessly suck more taxes out of businesses and bite the hand that feeds.’

That’s a rather different argument – that taxes on profits have to be reduced so that businesses operating from Britain can remain competitive on world markets. It’s an admission, too, that capitalism is governed by the quest for profits and that governments have to go along with this, even at the expense of the welfare of those they rule over.

In fact, how come that ‘welfare’ has become a dirty word under capitalism? The dictionaries define it as ‘the state of faring or doing well’ and ‘good health, happiness and prosperity’. Capitalism, on Cameron and the other politicians’ admission, is not geared to pursuing these objectives but to pursuing profits. It’s profits before welfare, which is why capitalism must go if we are to have a true welfare society.

The War in Ukraine (2014)

From the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second in our three-part series on wars currently going on due to capitalism

The Ukraine Defence Minister stated 'A great war has arrived at our doorstep, the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War Two' (Independent, 2 September). The war in Ukraine in 2014 rose out of the 'Euromaidan' protests in Kiev in November 2013 when Ukraine under pressure from Russia backed out of a trade deal: the Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. For the pro-European Ukrainians EU membership is seen as synonymous with democracy as opposed to membership of Russia's Customs Union: the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Armenia. The divisions in Ukraine are basically a conflict between two groups of the capitalist class over the choice of the external orientation of the country; toward Europe or toward Russia. As a carrot Russia promised Ukraine $15 billion in loans and 30 per cent discount on natural gas prices.

Ukraine is the 'bread basket of Europe' with its extensive fertile farmlands of rich black soil (chornozem black earth) and the vast fields of wheat, barley, rye, oats, sunflower, beets and other grain and oil crops. In 2011, it was the world's third-largest grain exporter, and according to a 2013 forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ukraine is poised to become the world’s second biggest grain exporter in the world, shipping over 30 million tonnes of grain out of the country last year. Ukraine also has a well-developed manufacturing sector, particularly in aerospace and industrial equipment, nuclear power generation and hydroelectric generation, an advanced rocket systems industry plus the old industries from the Soviet period of coal mining, steel, and metals. It also has its own proven, significant, but yet totally undeveloped shale gas reserves.

East or West?

For the Russian capitalist class Ukraine is the 'near abroad' and therefore within the sphere of influence of Russia. On 28 February Crimea (given to Ukraine in 1954) was occupied by Russia. Since the 1700s it has been the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet but since Ukrainian independence in 1991 the base in Crimea has been leased from Ukraine, and the leasing agreement was due to expire in 2017, and unlikely to be renewed. This would have meant Russia not having a warm water port giving access to the Mediterranean and via the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean. A great deal of Crimean real estate is Russian-owned, in late February Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development called on Russian capitalists to invest $5 billion in infrastructural projects in Crimea. Gazprom is interested in rich oil and gas deposits off the Crimean coast, as are such western companies as Exxon, Shell and ENI. In April Chevron signed a 50-year lease to develop Ukraine's shale gas reserves which probably stoked Russian fears about losing its influence in Ukraine and as a major gas market. International Business Times (8 November 2013) wrote that 'Chevron's agreement with Ukraine was supported by the US as part of its national security strategy to help reduce Russia's hold on Europe and Kiev.'

In April pro-Russian separatists in the Eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk declared themselves 'independent' of Kiev as the People's Republic of Donetsk. Russia in a throwback to Tsarist times refers to the disputed areas of south-eastern Ukraine as Novorossiya. In six months of fighting 3,000 people have been killed. This area includes the old heartland of Soviet industry with its concentration of coal and steel production; the Don coal basin known as the Donbass. Essentially Russia wants the Donbass as a 'protectorate' so that Ukraine can never join NATO or fully orient its foreign policy westward. The loss of the Donbass region which accounts for 16 per cent of GDP and 27 per cent of industrial production would be a disaster for Ukraine, whose economy will contract 7 per cent this year and may not expand at all in 2015 according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Russia Today 14 May). In August the war expanded when a new war front opened on the coast where pro-Russian separatists took Novoazovsk, a small town on the way to the strategic port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

The economic war between Russia and Ukraine meant that Russian loans were frozen in January, the price of gas to Ukraine was raised by 80 per cent in April, and Russia insisted that Ukraine pay a $2.7 billion gas debt or it would halt natural gas supplies. Also Ukraine had a foreign debt of $135 billion in 2012 with $13 billion due to be paid in 2014 mostly to European banks, and another $10 billion due in 2015. Standard & Poor cut Ukraine's credit rating describing it as 'a distressed civil society with weakened political institutions' (Bloomberg.com 28 January). In March the IMF authorised an $18 billion loan to Ukraine over two years, and the World Bank coughed up $3.5 billion, both designed to stop Ukraine defaulting on interest payments on its foreign debt. The hryvnia (Ukraine’s currency) has lost 35 per cent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of 2014.

Ukraine has not recovered economically from the world capitalist crisis of 2008-09 and further austerity is required, nay demanded by the IMF as a condition of its loans. The IMF want 'commitment from the country to undertake painful austerity measures, tough reforms and a near-certain recession as a result' (The Times, 25 February) while Reuters called it 'some harsh economic medicine' (5 March). This will mean cutting fuel subsidies, government spending, pensions, and wage freezes for workers. All this will lead to higher gas prices which are projected to rise by 50 per cent in 2014 and by 120 per cent at the end of four years, rising inflation, an increase in unemployment, and a decline in the standard of living for the Ukrainian working class.

The economic crisis hasn't affected the profits of Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine (assets of up to $28.4 billion), his company DTEK controls half of Ukraine's coal, steel, iron ore and thermoelectric industries, and is the largest employer in the Donbass. A Russian oligarch Abramov owns the mining company EVRAZ. The coal industry in Ukraine is affected by a crisis of over production which was identified in the trade magazine Coal Age in December 2013: 'A production surplus in 2013 has hurt the Ukrainian coal industry which needs to reduce the level of production, and in addition, has even decided to temporarily close about 17 percent of all mines in the country. Ukraine is the fourth largest coal producer in Europe after Russia, Germany and Poland. The Ukrainian coal industry is believed to have 4 per cent of world coal reserves, or 33.9 billion Mt of proven reserves. This is enough to maintain the level of coal mining for 2012 in the country for almost 400 years.'

As always in capitalist crises, the working class are made to pay for the failures of the capitalist system. Ukrainian miners in the Independent Trade Union of Miners at the EVRAZ-owned Krivyi Rih iron ore mine in the Kryvbas (iron ore basin) near Dnepropetrovsk in Eastern Ukraine are fighting to defend their interests as workers against attacks by the capitalist class who are seeking to make redundancies, and 30 to 50 per cent cut in their real wages. The miners oppose Ukrainian nationalism and Russian separatist ideology and concentrate on fighting against 'the never-ceasing encroachments of capital' (Marx Value, Price and Profit), but the miners have had to establish self-defence militias to defend themselves against intimidation, and attacks by lumpen elements called 'Tatushka' recruited by the Russian separatists. Essentially these are gangs of thugs organised by mine bosses to crush organised workers before the region can be absorbed into the petro-oligarchy and anarchic-capitalist state that is Russia.

Sanctions

Because of Russia's involvement in Ukraine, the western capitalist powers have imposed sanctions on Russia's capitalist economy with its large energy reserves (oil and natural gas represent 68 per cent of Russia's total exports). These commodities are under pressure as new and cheaper supplies come onto the market, and crude oil prices worldwide hit a nine month low in August. Russian capitalists targeted by western sanctions included the largest bank Sberbank, oil companies Rosneft and Transneft, and Gazprom. Their access to capital markets for any long-term funding was restricted, new exploration projects in Siberia and the Arctic were affected by barring foreign oil companies Exxon and Shell from providing any equipment, technology or assistance to deep-water, offshore, or shale projects with Gazprom Neft, LukOil, Surgutneftegas, and Rosneft. Russian gas is delivered to Europe by pipeline which probably explains why Gazprom's main business is reported not to be on the sanctions list.

Russia is the EU’s third-biggest trading partner with a cross-border trade of $460 billion, and the EU gets a third of its oil and gas from Russia with 40 per cent of that gas pumped across Ukraine. The dominant capitalist power in Europe, Germany, has an economy intertwined with Russian gas and oil exports worth more than $75 billion a year. Larry Elliott wrote that 'a key aim of Berlin's foreign policy for the past quarter of a century has been to re-integrate what used to be the Soviet Union and its satellites into the market economy. Expanding capitalism to the east was seen as both good for German business and for German security. Resistance from German industry makes it unlikely Merkel will agree immediately to Iran-style sanctions that would freeze Russia out of western markets' (Guardian 28 August). The objective of US and European capitalism is energy diversification which means to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas.

The US and EU capitalist blocs are using the military threat of a revived NATO against Russia as part of the western capitalist attempt at influencing the external orientation of Ukraine towards Europe. In September NATO announced the creation of a spearhead 4,000 strong 'rapid reaction' force, with a HQ in Poland and forward units in Poland, Romania and Estonia who have all indicated willingness to host the bases so that NATO would have a continuous presence in eastern Europe. Ukraine has decided to pursue membership of NATO, and clearly the western capitalist powers regard the Russian 'near abroad' as their own sphere of influence. The Lithuanian president said 'It is a fact that Russia is in a war state against Ukraine. That means it is in a state of war against a country which would like to be closely integrated with the EU. Practically Russia is in a state of war against Europe' (Financial Times, 31 August).

The war in Ukraine was no impediment to the NATO military exercise in Ukraine in September known as 'Rapid Trident' at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center at Yavoriv, 60 km from Lvov in Western Ukraine close to the Polish-Ukrainian border. 1,300 troops from fifteen countries including the US, Britain, Germany, Spain, Poland, Norway, and some former Warsaw Pact countries that are part of NATO's Partnership for Peace programme (non-NATO members such as Ukraine and other former Soviet Republics) took part.

Russia went to war with Georgia in August 2008 when Georgia sought to join NATO. Russia could not allow this and Russia halted NATO expansion into the Caucasus. A Ukraine integrated into the EU and NATO would encircle Russia, which was the same reason for war against Georgia in 2008. As always in capitalism the economic conflict over control of mineral resources and trade routes (such as pipelines) will be the cause of war.

Steve Clayton

(Next month: concluding article on the war in Gaza)

Editorial: The Choice is Always Ours (2014)

Editorial from the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The media have not been short of political drama to occupy them in recent months: the rise and rise of UKIP, the defections of two sitting Tory MPs , the accusations of dirty tricks, or the ‘nail-biting’ drama of the Rochester by-election.   Anyone following all this might be forgiven for thinking that the political process is a media soap centred on the rivalries and intrigues of a cast of political celebrities.  They might think, too, that it is a game of little consequence for the lives of working people whose only role in all this is to be persuaded to vote this way or that.  With the declining turnout at the polls in recent years, it seems that working people, the majority of voters, think so too. 

But then in September a remarkable 84.5 percent of the electorate north of the border went to the polls to vote in the Scottish referendum on independence.  If working people in Scotland were disillusioned with the current political establishment, then they showed themselves still strong in their belief that their future depends on having the right national institutions and leaders to run the capitalist system. Whichever way they voted, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they demonstrated their ongoing willingness to give away their power to political leaders, representatives of the capitalist class.

Then, in November, alongside the reports of political recriminations and infighting, the media sought to bring a patriotic lump to our throats by reporting on an ‘art installation’ at the Tower of London.  The installation consisted of an assemblage of 888,246 ceramic poppies, each one representing a British military death in the ‘Great’ war.  (An insult, you might think, to those conscripts among the dead who objected to the slaughter). The unintended symbolism of the event went largely unremarked, but revealed the nationalist and militarist sentiments underpinning it – for the poppies, forming a blood-red sea of lost working-class lives, were set in the defensive moat of the Tower of London,  a building deliberately erected to represent the authority of the state in eleventh-century Britain and the power of the economic elites that controlled it. 

Millions of working people of many nationalities followed the orders of their political and military leaders and slaughtered  one another on the battlefields of WWI – the ‘business war’ as it was known. Yet it was also tens of thousands of working-class Germans in uniform that helped bring the slaughter to an end by their refusal to carry on the fight. We should also remember that had the fragile internationalism of working-class organisations before the war been more firmly cemented, their pledge not to fight one another might have withstood the onslaught of nationalism. War would then have been prevented and millions of lives spared. Our past failures as a class stand as lessons to us for the future.

We always have a choice: we can continue to place our power as a class into the hands of institutional leaders who use it to pursue the narrow interests of a capitalist elite, or, we can take responsibility for it collectively and democratically, use it to further our own majority interest and, in the process, act in the interests of all humanity.

Fascism in Britain (2005)

Book Reviews from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Martin Pugh: Hurrah for the Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars. Jonathan Cape.£20.00.

Nigel Copsey and David Renton, eds: British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State. Palgrave Macmillan. £50.00.

These two books are not recommended for the various views expressed by the authors and contributors, but for the wealth of information, much of it new, on British Fascism.

The first fascisti, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, was founded in Italy in 1919; Britain’s first Fascist organisation emerged in May, 1925, six months after Mussolini’s coup. It, too called itself Fascisti, but the following year changed its name to the British Fascists. Most of its leaders were aristocrats or men from military or naval backgrounds. They were militantly anti-Jewish and, through endorsement by such newspapers as the Times, Morning Post and the Daily Mail, believed in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy as portrayed by the infamous forgery, The Proctocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The British fascists soon, however, split into even more extreme sects such as the National Fascisti and Arnold Leese’s Imperial Fascist League.

Martin Pugh demonstrates in considerable detail the close connections between the Fascist groups and parties and rightwing, and even “mainstream”, conservative politicians. The Fascists were often looked upon as more decisive Tories who. wanted a more powerful, corporate state which would, hopefully, keep the “lower orders” in control and stop “alien” immigration. Many members of the Conservative Party would also be members of one of the fascist groups at the same time. Both could be depended upon to defend the Nation and the Empire. Indeed, between the two world wars, not a few members of the Royal family, including the then Prince of Wales, were sympathetic to Mussolini’s Fascism  and later Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill expressed admiration for Mussolini, and the Prince of Wales had Nazi friends.

Of course the Fascists opposed the General Strike of 1926. In fact, as Pugh notes, they were particularly enthusiastic anti-strike volunteers, enrolling in the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, and as Special Constables. Chief constables welcomed the Fascists, but only as individuals and not as uniformed members of Fascist parties as these had hoped.

In 1920, the Conservative Member of Parliament, Oswald Mosley, crossed the floor to sit as an independent; in 1924, he joined the Labour Party. His views were already interventionist, corporatist, almost Fascist, but he was enthusiastically welcomed into the Labour Party. By 1929, Mosley was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but he soon resigned, and in February 1931 he launched his New Party.Then in 1932, after visiting Rome, he founded the British Union of Fascists. The BUF adopted the Corporate State, with the abolition of political parties, as its official policy. At this stage, Mosley and the BUF looked to Italy for their model, and it was not until 1936 that the BUF became pro-Nazi. Pugh notes that Mosley regularly visited Italy, and was rewarded with funding by Mussolini for several years. Mosley did not meet Hitler until 1935. During this period, the British Union of Fascists, which added the phrase “and National Socialists” to its title, became increasingly anti-Jewish. The BUF was organised militarily, complete with uniforms until these were banned in 1936. For a number of years, the Daily Mail, owned by Lord Northcliffe, supported the BUF and promoted Fascism.

Besides the BUF, there were still a number of small Fascist parties, as well as various “front” groups such as the January Club and Anglo-German Fellowship and, later, the Link. As in the 1920s, such groups had many Tories, rightwing and mainstream, as members. Indeed, most Conservatives, in Parliament and the country at large, were either pro-Fascist Italy, pro-Nazi Germany or, like Neville Chamberlain, appeasers, as Martin Pugh demonstrates in some detail. Many of them continued to hold similar ideas even after Britain had declared war on Germany, on 3 September, 1939. In 1940, Oswald Mosley, as well as about 800 Fascists and others considered to be pro-German, were arrested and imprisoned. But by 1942, most had been released. Mosley was conditionally released from prison in 1944. The BUF had been banned in June, 1940.

British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State is a collection of fairly short and diverse essays by various authors. Richard Maguire discusses the use of Fascists by the Conservative Government in defence of what Stanley Baldwin called the “community” in defeating the miners, and during the General Strike of 1926. And, as noted in Pugh’s book, the authorities were more than prepared to use Fascists as strike-breakers, their views being that the Fascists could be depended upon as Special Constables and the like.

Richard Thurlow outlines the formation of the Security Service (MI5), and its collaboration with Special Branch in surveillance of the Communist Party, and Comintern agents in Britain, particularly during the 1920s and  1930s. After about 1933, MI5 and Special Branch began to interest themselves in the British Union of Fascists, which hitherto they had not done. Interestingly, Thurlow points out that Maxwell Knight of MI5 had himself been the British Fascists’ Director of Intelligence in 1927. Graham Macklin discusses the attitude of the police and magistrates towards the Fascists in their confrontations with the Communists, and shows that in general they were more sympathetic towards the Fascists than the Communists. Not surprisingly, Oswald Mosley was particularly effusive in his support for the police, many of whom were anti-Jewish. Philip Coupland outlines what he calls “left-wing fascism”, in which the BUF use leftwing terminology to attract workers and disillusioned Labourites and Communists. In parts of the country this was quite successful.

David Renton discusses the so-called anti-Fascism, during the 1974-79 period, by such organisations as the Anti-Nazi League, the Trade Unions and the SWP, all of which from a socialist viewpoint achieved nothing in defeating fascist ideas and activities. Indeed, a party like the BNP today probably has as much support as did the BUF in 1935. Possibly more.

Peter E. Newell

A brief history of Public Relations (2011)

From the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are workers brainwashed by capitalism?

If you want to know the truth, you cannot rely on newspapers. We have that on good authority – in fact, on the authority of the more honest newspapers. (The more honest papers are those that are read mainly by capitalists who need reliable information about the world in order to make investment decisions, as opposed to those that are read mainly by workers.)

In a startlingly frank appraisal of the history and practice of the public relations (PR) industry, The Economist (18 December 2010) admits that PR was invented in the early 20th century to counter working-class struggles, and rising popular resentment against capitalism, by getting newspapers and journalists, until then sympathetic to the workers, on the side of the business class. American business was at the time worried by the rise of a new phenomenon: public opinion. The business élite feared this, especially as it was developing in an anti-capitalist direction, and were determined to take control of it and manipulate it for their own ends. PR’s founding father, Edward Bernays, was quite explicit about the aim: ‘the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised opinions and habits of the masses’.

That all this is true, and that the century-long and ongoing pro-capitalist PR campaign was and is a great success, to the extent that there are today no mainstream media outlets that are not pro-capitalist, is pretty much indisputable. This means that, today, newspapers and news programmes (those read and watched by the working class) are not what they appear and claim to be. Their role is not to enlighten and inform, but to mould public opinion so that it reflects the interests of the capitalist class and the state. ‘News’ is propaganda, not genuine journalism.

The truth of this has, however, led to a logical but erroneous conclusion among many radical thinkers – that the working class accepts capitalism because it has been brainwashed into it by clever capitalist PR. The argument can even take a Marxian-sounding form: capitalist society, say some Marxists, maintains and reproduces itself through the dissemination of the ‘ruling ideology’ – i.e., the ideas, beliefs and values of the ruling capitalist class – and its acceptance by the working class. The working class, in accepting these ideas, as they learn them from newspapers and so on, is thereby integrated into capitalism and comes to accept its own subordination. This theory has the added appeal, for Marxists, of seeming to explain something that stands rather in need of explanation in Marxian theory – the failure of the class struggle to materialise into the revolution predicted by Marx.

The argument is compelling but mostly false, as shown in an excellent essay by Conrad Lodziak in the journal Radical Philosophy (‘Dull Compulsion of the Economic: The Dominant Ideology and Social Reproduction.’ No. 49, Summer 1988). The essay, and the empirical data and ethnographic studies it draws upon, is obviously now dated in some respects. But its arguments are still strikingly relevant and persuasive. This article will reprise Lodziak’s argument and briefly consider its implications for socialist politics.

Dull compulsion versus brainwashing

The idea that working-class acceptance of capitalism can be ascribed to the workers’ ‘false consciousness’, Lodziak calls ‘the dominant ideology thesis’, and it is, he says, ‘taken as a self-evident truth amongst a majority of the left’. But is it true? It is, after all, a proposition capable of empirical proof or disproof. Do workers in fact believe and accept the ideas that make up the ‘ruling ideology’? The answer, says Lodziak, is yes – and no.

It is true that most workers accept certain key ideas that are essential to the continuation of capitalism – for example, they accept the justness of ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’, they accept meritocracy (the idea that it’s OK for people to rise above them in the social hierarchy if the rise is based on merit and talent), they accept that most people should get a job or career and strive to ‘get ahead’, and so on. They do not, however, universally accept or agree with other aspects of the ruling ideology, such as property and inheritance rights, principles of capital accumulation and the right to a profit, state neutrality, occupational structure, distribution of incomes, the right to manage, and so on.

At this point, a Marxist might say, OK, the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ is then justified: the working class does accept the most important aspect of the ruling ideology, which is the acceptance of the inevitability of working for wages. But this is not so, says Lodziak. To prove the ‘dominant ideology thesis’, you must show not just that workers accept certain ideas, but that those ideas are sufficiently important to them for them to commit to the ideas and act upon them. And this is where the thesis falls down: ‘the required degree of ideological motivation appears to be absent amongst a majority of the populations of advanced capitalist societies’. Instead, what you find is ‘an absence of belief’: passivity, resignation, bewilderment, confusion, disorientation and marginalisation are all more important in determining working-class actions than so-called ‘false consciousness’. And the explanation for this passivity is easier to find in ‘largely publicly identifiable features of the social environment’ than in ‘some mysterious process of class brainwashing or collective hypnosis’. 

The ideas which do dominate working-class thinking tend to be those ‘directly relevant to the practical and immediate demands of the everyday life-world as experienced’ – ideas related to things over which workers do have some control, such as deciding whether to resign and look for a new job, or wait for a promotion; whether to get married, or divorced; how to organise home life and what to do with free time, and so on. Workers’ thinking is, quite understandably and sensibly, focused on finding security, and avoiding insecurity. This is impossible without building relations of dependence and subordination with an employer, the state, or a breadwinner. Workers are materially, not ideologically, subordinated; economic necessity and state coercion are more important than ideology. Workers do what they do because they must – not because they’ve been tricked into thinking it’s a good idea.

This also goes some way to explaining why Marx’s prediction of revolution was premature, and why workers often eschew ‘oppositional’ politics. ‘Workers rightly believe that opposition may lead to redundancies or closures, and that it may be impossible to get another job.’ And the more intolerable the alternatives are, the worse the prospect of unemployment is, the worse pay and conditions workers will be prepared to accept – explaining the present government’s determination to push through punitive benefit reform, even though unemployment is on the rise.

In short, the consciousness of the working class is best understood not in terms of ideology, but in terms of ‘needs-based motivations’. By talking in terms of indoctrination, the left displays an ‘insensitivity to the lived experience’ of the working class.

Political conclusions

We in the Socialist Party are often accused by our opponents, and even sometimes by our supporters, of not having made any progress in our 100-year history. What the foregoing arguments should have made clear is that it is not within our power to make the kind of progress demanded of us. The working class generally is ideologically indifferent, and accepts capitalism because it must. The only thing that can disrupt this to the advantage of socialists is, says Lodziak, ‘effective oppositional practices inscribed with oppositional viewpoints’ – in other words, the development of the class struggle. We can contribute to the development of this struggle, and we do, but it is not within the power of a small party such as ours to determine its course. The failure of sufficiently large and powerful oppositions to arise is down not to a lack of energy or dedication on the part of socialists, nor the absence of a sufficiently clever socialist advertising campaign, but to the power of economic necessity and state coercion.

This article may seem to have argued itself into a corner. If all this is true, what can be done? The answer may not satisfy socialists who understand the urgent need for radical change, but it is inevitable all the same: we just keep struggling.

Lodziak has three other main concluding points of advice for any socialist opposition. (The commentary that follows the advice is of course ours, not Lodziak’s.)

First, participation in organised politics must be made sufficiently attractive to entice people out of their privatised worlds. This means that the boring treadmill of reformist politics and the ridiculous sectarianism, authoritarianism and leadership-dominated activity of Leninist sects is out. Of course, the Socialist Party has not been wildly successful at attracting people, but it is a commonplace on the left that we have at least managed to be human and charming, make our meetings places of free and open discussion, and our activity the result of freely arrived at decisions and voluntary activity. Our members tend to join and remain members for life; most rival leftist outfits operate a ‘revolving door’ policy.

Second, ‘effective opposition is, amongst other things, always an effective ideological opposition’, which means engaging in a ‘vigorous and continuous ideological contestation in the public sphere, not only in challenging the dominant, but also in the advocacy of oppositional alternatives’. Again, we cannot claim sufficient success in this area, but we have at least taken the challenge seriously, unlike the left generally, which is content to pander to prejudice rather than challenge it, propagate the ruling ideology rather than contest it, and mock the advocacy of alternatives as utopian. Credibility for socialism, says Lodziak, can only come from ‘the relentless public display of commitment to oppositional alternatives, and from the unwillingness of agents of opposition to compromise principles’. Yet again, the Socialist Party, unlike the left, can lay claim to a proud history of doing just that.

Third, we need to demonstrate the relevance of socialism to the needs of the vast majority. Most people will not struggle or even vote for abstract things or ideas, says Lodziak, but will fight to win material benefits to improve the quality of their lives and guarantee the future of their children. This might seem to argue against the Socialist Party’s case. Indeed, we are often accused by our leftwing opponents of doing nothing but try to win support for abstract ideas. This is not true: what we have tried to do is show that many of the material benefits people are fighting for are only possible of realisation in a socialist society. If what you want is a pay rise, then you can join a union. If you want to fill the lonely, empty nights, you can join an evening class or the local darts team. And so on – workers will need no advice from socialists on these counts. But what if you want a full and satisfying life for you and your children – with meaningful and enjoyable work, plenty of free time to spend with your family, friends and loved ones, and to pursue your interests and passions, a life free of stress and anxiety and boredom (if you’re lucky), and of extreme poverty and violence and war and environmental catastrophe (if you’re not)? In that case, you will have to think carefully about what socialists say. What we say is that this is a laudable aim – indeed, our rightful inheritance as human beings – but is impossible to achieve under capitalism.

This is clearly a difficult argument to make, especially to ‘ideologically indifferent’ workers. But we live in interesting times – capitalist crisis is to a large extent making our argument for us, and making it more strongly and reaching more people than we have ever been able to. As the foregoing arguments should have made clear, crisis can have the effect of making workers feel even more insecure and therefore even less likely to become socialist. But it also calls into question the viability of the system, and makes it more obvious than ever that it cannot satisfy our needs as human beings. This crisis has a dual potential: it makes aspects of the socialist case for us, even as it threatens to drive the working class further into the welcoming arms of capitalist domination and exploitation. Which way it goes is down at least in part to what socialists and workers think and do over the next decade. Our work as socialists is therefore more urgent than ever.

Stuart Watkins

Loud-Mouthed Upstarts (2008)

Book Review from the September 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who runs Britain? How the Super-Rich are changing our lives. By Robert Peston, Hodder & Stroughton. 2008.

According to Peston, currently the BBC’s business editor, it’s the new super-rich of private-equity and hedge-fund capitalists. They run the country in the sense that the present Labour government feels the need to kow-tow to them for fear of them taking their businesses elsewhere:

“Much of this book is about how New Labour in Government has never flinched from the view that economic disaster for the UK and electoral disaster for Labour would be inevitable if the super-wealthy ever felt their interests were under attack in the UK. Blair and Brown are true believers in one of the main commandments of the Book of Globalization: ‘Thou shalt not be seen to use the tax system to take from the well-heeled, for fear of driving them and all their valuable capital into exile’”.

A number of these capitalists have been given knighthoods and peerages and – this came first of course – have made very generous contributions to the Labour Party amounting in total to millions of pounds. In fact, they – rather than the trade unions – funded Labour’s last three successful election campaigns. Peston’s chapter on the dealings between Blair, Brown, Lord Levy and those he call’s Labour’s “plutocratic benefactors” can only confirm disgust and contempt for the leaders of the Labour Party for the lengths they are prepared to go just to stay in power.

The new super-rich come across as a bunch of loud-mouthed upstarts who buy companies, “rationalise” them at the expense of the workforce, and then sell them, pocketing a huge personal profit for themselves. Their profit is personal because they own their own companies outright and so have a much freer hand to do what they want, not having to comply with the normal company law that applies to “public”, shareholder-owned companies.

Although he criticises them for not paying their fair share of taxes and as a potential threat to political democracy, Peston cannot disguise his admiration for them, seeing them as fulfilling an essential role within capitalism of channelling capital into the most profitable lines of activity (instead of it stagnating in long-established businesses run by stuffy ex-Etonians). He wants the managers of pension funds to behave in the same ruthless way towards the companies they’ve invested the funds in, so as to bring in more money for present and future pensioners.

His chapter on pensions – and the run-down of final-salary company pension schemes – is instructive. Employers originally set these up to retain the loyalty of their salaried employees, but over the years governments have imposed so many obligations on them (frozen pensions, pension transfers, taxes, etc) that it has become no longer worth their while keeping them going. So they have been disposing of them to, among others, private-equity capitalists who hope to make a profit out of investing their funds.

In other words, reforms aimed at protecting people’s pension rights have had the opposite effect. Employers have walked away, leaving workers without the desired protection. Another lesson in the futility of reformism.

Adam Buick

Carry on Campaigning (2012)

From the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Single issue campaigners ignore the root cause of the problems they highlight and continue along the road of calling for a reform here and there.

Looking back is enormously important to understanding what must be done to avoid repeating earlier mistakes. Unless deliberate steps are taken to change the ultimate direction of politics and economics then people’s needs and welfare will continue to be treated as of lesser import to the overall system. The challenge is more than overcoming an unending string of 'single issues.' It is recognising the overriding necessity for a coherent, viable system which finally serves the people –a truly social system.

As individuals, it's possible or even likely that certain 'single issues' strike a chord which are more personal or pertinent than others. However, until the realisation hits home that they are all the result of capitalist norms and that it is the cause that has to be dealt with, not the effects, we, as 'the 99%' will continue along the road of calling for a reform here and there, and inviting for ourselves and future generations more of the torture we vowed to end.

Shortfalls

The shortfalls of capitalism, in the news big time last year, have been expressed loud and clear around the world.  Numerous items for serious discussion which are generally labelled political, economic or social have been raised but which can rarely be considered in one of these areas in isolation. The links between these three areas and between the separate issues are more of a tangled web than isolated connections.

Consider the connections here in matters which would be seen by activists as environmental problems: mountain top removal for coal, deforestation for monocrops, localised industrial pollution of water, air and ground, depleted uranium contamination from wars, nuclear waste from energy production, etc. All are primarily urgent social problems for reasons of serious risk to the short- and long-term health of workers and their communities but which have been subsumed by the imperative of business and 'the market' to continue making profits - economic considerations come first. Politics being so intricately bound to capitalist economics, politicians are required to make decisions to uphold the system and keep it running as efficiently and profitably as possible. Whichever single issue is selected for scrutiny a similar pattern appears –when it comes to the crunch, decision time, however, the vast majority of politicians smothers it with platitudes and toes the economics line.

When problems related to work are considered it is found that what concerns the worker is different from what concerns the employer. Everything, every angle, every detail, every aspect is decided according to economics. Hourly pay; sick benefits; overtime; final pension; holiday, and paternity or maternity leave, and contracts are for the employer to break or change –not the employee. Time for breaks and lunch, penalties for late arrival, sudden lay-offs, unexpected redundancies, late meetings –you name it, they decide. Trades unions may manage to fight off some of the worst pay cuts, reduce some of the workforce losses and maybe claw back some previously lost advantage, but overall they are fighting an endless, losing battle. A brief scan at statistics clearly shows which side is winning. A social system would approach the work situation from a different perspective: what work is needed to be done by and for cooperating communities, how it can be shared out, satisfaction at work, full participation in decision making and common ownership of all the means of living.

Identifying the cause

When broken down, it can be seen that the stand-alone 'single issues' all spring from a common root, that of the world capitalist system which places the economy and politics above social considerations. One of the more noticeable factors common to popular demands being made around the world is that individuals within the occupations and uprisings have taken note of the indisputable position of the vast majority –'the 99%' –and are protesting and rejecting it.

It is unacceptable to them to be without a voice or proper representation; to be denied free speech within supposed democracies; to have banks and too-big-to-fail companies bailed out whilst witnessing record numbers of house repossessions, unemployed, and children in poverty; to witness increased spending on the military, and huge hikes in the cost of further education; to see social services and public sector personnel hammered; to have all kinds of deals and social contracts reneged on as political and corporate interests refuse to grapple with the problems of climate change; and on and on ad infinitum.

End not mend

Anyone who has tried to remake a garment, repair a complicated bit of carpentry, refashion an item from mismatched pieces or in any way attempted to put something back together so that it works well when it didn't fulfill its function properly to begin with will know that it's far simpler to start from scratch and create a new item. So it is with capitalism and reformism –bin the idea of trying over and over to reform something that has never worked for the vast majority, tweaking it a bit here and there and then having to have another go at it a few months or years down the road when it comes apart again. Far better to use the combined energies of all those seeking a better way of living and working, one based on people as social beings, to organise together according to real democratic principles to bring in a new social system altogether.

If we are seeking an end to the current structure of relations which puts economic matters at the forefront of each and every issue and which is supported wholeheartedly by the current political system then it follows that we are determined to pursue a system organised for the benefit of all –one where social need is the guiding principle. Many social movements and activists go a long way to pointing out just such failings as have been written about here but most fall at the last hurdle. They will reveal the reasons for failure clearly enough; the capitalist economic system that doesn't work for the mass of the people, the logic of which sets out deliberately to fail many. They talk about, suggest, even demand actions to socialise, to redistribute or more fairly distribute assets, jobs, wages, access to land and the means of living but fail to see they are calling for something from a system that can't respond to their demands because of its innate logic.

Making any significant changes calls for a thorough understanding by the majority of a different kind of politics. A raising of awareness of how participatory democracy can really change the status quo to a democracy that is actually, noticeably, determinedly and deliberately organised to reinforce the social aspect by placing the satisfaction of human needs, not economics, at the forefront of all decision-making. This can only be achieved by first removing the primary cause of previous failures, that is, by removing the capitalist system itself. The system of socialism, by its very principles, is a whole lot simpler than that which has had to be endured daily within the capitalist system. Removing the prime motivation of continuous accumulation by ending all incentives or inducements for pecuniary advantage in favour of free access for all empowers the majority. This broad democratic shift to revolutionise the political and end the economic will complete the transformation to the new social system.

Janet Surman

Marx was righter than this (2011)

Book Review from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Marx Was Right. By Terry Eagleton (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011) £16.99

Was Marx right? As Terry Eagleton points out in the preface to this book, of course he wasn’t. No thinker gets everything right, nor can any reasonable person expect them to. But was Marx “right enough of the time about enough important issues to make calling oneself a Marxist a reasonable self-description”? In this sense, Eagleton says the answer is yes. And Eagleton is right.

As Eagleton puts it, you can tell capitalism is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism – people become aware of capitalism in crisis, just as an illness or injury makes you newly aware of the body you always took for granted. Thanks to the crisis, people all around the world are talking about capitalism again. How can this discussion become deeper and better-informed? Well, in all kinds of ways, but we can hardly ignore Marx’s body of work, which has “for long [been] the most theoretically rich, politically uncompromising critique of that system”, as Eagleton puts it. Marx was the first person to “identify the historical object known as capitalism – to show how it arose, by what laws it worked, and how it might be brought to an end”. That must surely be of interest to those who are wondering whether capitalism has a future.

What, then, could be more welcome and timely than a book that demonstrates why Marx was right, in what ways he was right, and the relevance of his ideas for political action? And who could be more relied upon to write a witty, engaging and accessible account of this than Terry Eagleton, the author of many justly popular books on subjects related to Marxism, and of regular witty essays and polemics pricking the pomposity of many of our culture’s most unjustly respected liberal thinkers? It would seem to be the perfect book for our time, written by the person perfectly placed to do the subject justice. Sadly, Eagleton lets us down.

Marxists reading this book may think twice about just what it is they’ve signed up for. Virulent anti-Marxists will wonder where all (what they consider to be) the most devastating arguments against Marxism are to be found. But most importantly, non-Marxists, politically interested, anti-capitalist or disillusioned working-class readers, are highly unlikely to be convinced by it either. Eagleton makes no effort to carefully define what Marx’s thought was, nor to compare it with the reality of everyday life under capitalism. Marx’s supreme achievement, as Eagleton says at the start of his book, was to identify an historical object known as capitalism, and show how it worked. But in the book’s 258 pages, we do not hear a word about Marx’s thought on that subject. We do not hear once just what capitalism is, or how it works. Instead, we are just exhorted to believe, from various vague pronouncements and polemical swipes, that capitalism is mostly a very bad and unjust thing. Quite why it is bad, or quite why it leads to such results, we are none the wiser.

As for what socialism is, we hear much more about that. But anyone who is familiar with Marx’s arguments about what capitalism is will wonder just what the difference between capitalism and the various forms of “socialism” Eagleton champions is supposed to be. Even if you’re not familiar with Marx’s arguments on this, anyone who reads Eagleton’s apologias for the Bolshevik dictatorship in Russia and Mao’s China would be quite justified in snapping the book shut and concluding that their prejudices were quite correct after all: that Marx and socialism were things to be avoided at all costs. For Eagleton, these “socialisms” were “botched experiments”, a disgustingly coy way to describe the blood-soaked, anti-working-class tyrannies that imposed state-led, capitalist industrial development on economically backward countries. Whenever Eagleton does bump up against the occasional sensible argument, he quickly dismisses it as “ultra-left”, and veers off to the right – to the rightwing deviation, the senile disorder, of Leninism. Perhaps that’s why Eagleton can find room to mention approvingly or critically just about everything that has ever been dignified with the name of socialism apart from the idea, put forward by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, of the “communistic abolition of buying and selling”. Genuine socialism is just too ultra-left for him.

This book is, then, a bitter disappointment and a wasted opportunity. The capitalist West is just emerging from a long period of illusion. As Eagleton points out, the illusion was not so much a deep belief in capitalism, but a disillusion about the possibility of changing it. “What helped to discredit Marxism above all, then,” says Eagleton, “was a creeping sense of political impotence. It is hard to sustain your faith in change when change seems off the agenda…” Change is back on the agenda. Marx’s analysis of capitalism remains as astute and relevant as ever. But if you want to know why, you’ll have to go to better sources than this book.

Stuart Watkins