How Not To Do It (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak. (Allen Lane, 35s.)

Edward Luttwak is deliberately deadpan about this book. His aim, he says, is to produce something along the same lines as a cookery book which will enable "any layman equipped with enthusiasm—and the right ingredients—to carry out his own coup . . . if, as a result of this book, a greater number of people learn how to carry them out this is merely a step towards democratization of the coup—a fact that all persons of liberal sentiments should applaud."

In fact, the work is a good deal better than his introduction suggests. Although the second half is largely given to a study of the actual mechanics of the coup and the military strategy needed to make it a success, the earlier sections are an absorbing study of the factors which make a coup d'état possible. Much of this is of indirect interest to socialists.

Fortunately, Luttwak does not ruin his analysis by confusing the coup with social revolution. He goes out of his way to stress that the coup is "a seizure of power within the present system". He also recognises that the essential pre-condition for the coup d'état is economic backwardness and the mass political indifference which results from it. Thus, while the December coup in Brazil succeeded because of the lack of political involvement of the mass of peasants and workers, in an advanced industrial country such a seizure of power could only be permanent if it were accepted by the working class. To illustrate this, Luttwak refers to the Gaullist coup of May 1958 in France, which was successful for this reason, and to the parallel attempt by Generals Challe, Salan and others in April 1961. The latter was aborted by the massive resistance of the workers in France.

In the world today every country is to a greater or lesser extent capitalist, having to trim its economy to the world markets—but only in the advanced areas is this achieved thanks to the working class. In the bulk of what is called the "third world" capitalist economies are being developed without any involvement by the mass of the people; except, of course, as beasts of burden—as producers of surplus product. Luttwak has noticed one symptom of this—the fact that, since almost any form of political awareness is confined to a small fraction of the population, the coup d'état comes into its own. On the other hand, in industrialised areas capitalism is maintained precisely because the working class accepts it as the only possible way of running society and uses its votes to express this conviction.

The implication of this for working class intent on capturing political power go deeper than merely exposing the irrelevance of the coup d'état as a strategy for socialists. It means that before socialism can be established the majority of workers must be committed to setting up a new form of society and must have a clear idea of what this involves.

John Crump

Cooking the Books: What is Capitalism Like? (2015)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever people think of Russell Brand – and you either like him or you loathe him – he has at least put apologists for capitalism on the defensive. One of these is the owner of a medium-sized business called Ian Baxter who wrote an open letter to Brand in the Times (8 December) under the headline ‘Capitalism is to prosperity what breathing is to life’.

Introducing himself,  he said he was a capitalist: ‘I  invest capital in my business expecting a return. The bigger the better.’ Yes, that is what capitalism is about – investing capital with a view to profit. And a capitalist is someone who lives off profits.

According to Baxter, ‘capitalism is a force for good’. It puts money into the bank accounts of employees. ‘It puts the food on our tables.’  It ‘enabled the world to meet the millennium development goal of halving global poverty by 2015 five years early.’

Capitalist firms do put money into their employees’ bank accounts. But this is not charity. It is payment for something the employees have sold them, namely, their mental and physical energies, their labour-power. It’s not philanthropy either. As Baxter said, firms invest capital ‘expecting a return’. Without the work of employees there would be no returns. In fact, since the only way wealth can be produced is by humans applying their mental and physical energies to materials that originally came from nature, workers create the whole of a firm’s added value, including the return on capital. Their work is the source of profit and that’s why they are employed.

So, you could say that capitalism is to exploitation what breathing is to life.

Capitalism ‘puts the food on our tables’. Presumably he means that, in pursuit of profit, capitalist firms arrange for food to be grown, transported, stored, and sold to us. This is indeed how capitalism works. Food is produced for sale with a view to profit but only to that extent. Capitalism will only put food on your table to the extent that you can pay for it. The more you can afford to pay the more and better the food you will get, and vice versa, the less income you have the less and poorer quality food you will get. And if you’ve no money at all, tough luck. Capitalism will not put any food on your table and you’ll have to starve or rely on charity.

Which brings us to global poverty. We all know that millions of people in the world are starving. After all, we saw all the appeals over Christmas. Less well known is that the world already now produces enough food, if distributed differently, to end starvation, and that the capacity exists to produce much more so that starvation could be ended without needing to take from some to give to others. So, why, if capitalism is so good, are there millions of people who are starving?

The millennium goal of halving world poverty may have been met but if capitalism did this, why did it stop half-way and not end global poverty entirely? We already know the answer:  it is not profitable to grow food, build houses, provide health care or clean water for people who cannot pay for them.

Baxter can’t have it both ways, attributing to capitalism all the good (or non-bad) things that happen under it while ignoring the bad things. In the 20th century capitalism caused two world wars in which millions died, not to mention the lesser wars and slumps.  So, why not ‘capitalism is to war what breathing is to life’? Why not ‘capitalism is to economic crises what breathing is to life’? Why not indeed.

Confessions of a Dorking housewife (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was born and brought up in the South of England, in an area where the wealth and privilege of the minority of people are fairly easy to see. Like the majority in the area, however, my background was working-class. Unusually, my father was an avid Labour Party supporter and, as a child, I heard many of the arguments against the capitalist system. I was led to believe that the only answer to the basic injuries of capitalism lay in the hands of a Labour government.

In the years of the Wilson governments in the 1960s it became clear to me that Labour was basically no different from the Conservatives, but I had no idea where to find a real alternative to obviously bankrupt ideas. Then I went to Tower Hill one weekday lunchtime in 1967 to listen to the speakers. There, beside Lord Soper and at a greater distance from a man who swallowed fire and swung a long cain around his head at great speed, stood a speaker from the SPGB. It could hardly be called the still small voice as he was highly voluble, attacking fiercely the hecklers who shouted at him.

I found his arguments cogent and the party case was, in my view, based on sound commonsense. His words were particularly interesting to someone who had been waiting in vain for the Labour Party to tackle the multifarious problems thrown up by capitalist society: poverty, war, racism, famine, industrial relations, unemployment, drug-taking, disease — the list is endless. It is a widely held view that young people are often "left wing" but as they grow older (and by implication, more sensible) they move inevitably towards the "centre" then often on to the "right wing" of the political spectrum. However, if you understand the arguments of the SPGB you are unlikely to move anywhere else.

My experience of work and motherhood has taught me more about a woman's place in capitalism and its intrinsic conflicts and difficulties. So as my life goes on I want to work just as urgently for a socialist world where we can all share the better life. Why don't you join the struggle with us?

Juliet Jeffreys 

Marx and the Sunday Times (1963)

From the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some readers of the George Schwartz column in the Sunday Times of September 15th will have been surprised to see a headline “But Marx didn’t say so” and still more surprised at the opening paragraph:

“The process of enlightenment goes on apace, and at such a pace that one is apt to be bedazzled. I say this somewhat ruefully because an article in the current number of the Economica on “Marxian Value Reconsidered” almost persuades me to become a Marxian.”

Schwartz quoted extensively from the article in question to show, among other things, that Marx never believed capitalism would collapse through breakdown in a crisis; on the contrary, as Marx himself put it: “There are no permanent crises,” and that Marx did not accept a theory of general over-production.

“The trouble arises,” says Schwartz, in his paraphrase of Marx, “because the economy does not progress evenly. The very dynamism of capitalist enterprise brings about miscalculations and disproportionalities. The respective equilibriums of the various lines of production are constantly being disturbed and the conflict periodically leads to a crises which necessitates a transformation of the system.”

At this point Mr. Schwartz draws back from his passing feeling of affinity with Marx and offers to discuss amicably with the ghost of Karl the problem of seeking corrective action for capitalism’s maladjustments.

The article from which Schwartz quotes is by Thomas Sowell of Rutgers University USA, and in the August issue of Economica (London School of Economics, 10s) Sowell sets out to explain (with numerous quotations and references to sources) the meaning of Marx’s law of value and its place in the general framework of his analysis of capitalism, and to show how Marx’s approach to economics differed from that of other economists. Sowell also examines Marx’s views on crises and disposes of some common misconceptions-to the surprise of Mr. Schwartz. It may surprise both Sowell and Schwartz to know that recognition of the wrongness of the “collapse” theories is not new for the SPGB. In the 1932 crisis, for example, in a short pamphlet “Why capitalism will not collapse,” earlier crises were examined and the conclusion drawn:

. . . there is no simple way out of capitalism by leaving the system to collapse of its own accord. Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organize politically for the conscious purpose of ending capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely from one crisis to another.

At that time leaders of the ILP and the Communist Party were hysterically proclaiming the imminent collapse of capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Party News (1981)

Party News from the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

To relieve the awful boredom of the day of the Great Yawn, Wednesday 29 July, members of Glasgow branch of the SPGB arranged an outdoor meeting at our regular venue, Royal Exchange Square, under the title, "The Royal Wedding—Who Cares?—We Don't!"

While the majority of the audience were sane people seeking escape from the dose of undiluted royal nuptials poured out by press, radio and TV, unfortunately there was also present a sick but sizeable minority of "loyalists". The members of this latter group, although obviously present as an organised gang, were either too shy or ashamed to say which organisation they belonged to or, to judge by their behaviour, which institution they had escaped from. However, their insistence on accompanying our speaker's opening remarks with a tuneless rendition of God Save the Queen, their ignorant assertion that we were catholics, associates of the IRA and "baby-murderers", all provided fairly obvious clues to their provenance; there is surely only one organisation whose members assume that all its opponents are catholics. This undemocratic mob of protestant hooligans, literally howling with rage, spent the next half hour demonstrating their declared intention to break up the meeting.

The most articulate statement expressed was, "What this country really needs is a strong right-wing government that will clear out all the papes and darkies and leave it for the protestants". This of course from one of their intellectual heavyweights who unfortunately must have skipped Sunday- school on the day they were told about the missionaries; otherwise he would have known that just like sone "whiteys", some "darkies" are a bit unclear in unclear in the head and have the misfortune to be protestants too.

During all the chorus of abuse and physical threats the SPGB speaker presented the socialist case firmly but reasonably. His patience was exhausted, however, when the ravers in the audience came down again with another serious attack of the god savers' blues and, in the interest of both good order and musical good taste, he brought the meeting to a close.

This may seem to have been simply another victory for ignorance over reason, but we derive some cheer from the knowledge that the majority of the forty or so people in the audience, having read our poster, wished to know more about our views and had deliberately chosen to attend the meeting rather than waste time at home or in the pub watching the nonsense of the wedding. Most of them remained till the end despite the undemocratic behaviour of the loyalists, whose noise in fact attracted people who might otherwise have passed us by. So, if victory at all, it was not a very famous one, even tinier than that historical non-event that the Orangemen celebrate so noisily when the British summer overheats their brains.

There is a tragedy in the above episode; not the fact that our meeting was briefer than intended, but that ordinary working men, in every other way just like ourselves, sharing our poverty and hardships, should be so blinded by irrational prejudices that they fail to see that it is capitalism, not the pape/protestant/darky/whitey next door, which is the source of their problems and that the only sane solution is socialism, not shooting, assaulting or deporting fellow workers.

There are of course many established institutions in capitalism—the press, radio, TV, schools, universities, churches—part of whose resources are dedicated to reinforcing those prejudices that divide workers. It may seem then that the SPGB is a puny weapon with which to oppose such powerful and manipulative instruments; but what we have going for us is a force much more potent than either our own little organisation or the head-fixing apparatus of the establishment. That is the power of ideas generated by capitalism itself. For no matter how its PR men and women try to dress it up, the system is beyond the control even of the owning class in whose interest it operates and it is in the long run impossible to conceal the anti-social nature of capitalism from the working class, at whose expense and by whose acquiescence alone its continuance is possible.

Campbell McEwen

Editorial: Cost-effective Schooling (1987)

Editorial from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The "new realism of the enterprise culture", that fashionable phrase from capitalism's shabby intellectual boutique, has been fairly slow to catch on among the nation's professional educators, who are presently suffering a collective hangover from the excessively optimistic and surreal Sixties, when comprehensive schooling, egalitarianism and "letting it all hang out" were in vogue. The incompatibility of these ideals with the needs of modern capitalism has ensured that it has all been stuffed firmly back in again with a vengeance. Not content with cutting educational budgets to the bone, or amputating whole limbs infected with pink irritants like sociology, the government is now adroitly laying at the teacher's door some of society's uglier manifestations, from glue sniffing to granny bashing. And since the natural remedy for such ills is an injection of healthy competition, that nice Mr Baker stayed behind after school one day and wrote a curriculum designed to produce an endless chain of midget entrepreneurs, all constantly tested for quality and equally at hone with isosceles triangles, mating habits of sticklebacks, Shakespeare's sonnets . . . For good measure, parental "choice" is to be extended by fostering greater competition between schools that no self-respecting member of the ruling class would let his char ladies near, let alone any offspring.

The liberal intelligentsia has responded to these measures with indignant shouts of "philistine". Backs against the wall and hands on heads, they argue that the disinterested pursuit of knowledge has long-term economic as well as social benefits for capitalism, that the withdrawal of funds from non-vocational courses is a short-sighted policy and an attack on the traditional values for which higher education, in particular, has always stood. It is a variant on the defence employed by what is called the "arts community", who complain vehemently about cuts in their funding and maintain that investment in "culture" is good for Britain and a boon to the Exchequer, as well as the stamp of a civilised society. Pleading their case in capitalism's terms is unlikely to move those who hold the purse-strings, however, since adjectives such as lean, utilitarian and cheap represent the quintessence of realism in what we are daily reminded is a fiercely competitive world.

In one sense, then, logic is on the side of those who now wield the knife. The main and self-evident function of schooling ("education" is a blatant misnomer) is the sorting out of the young into the social slots they will occupy in adult life. The schooling system is required to become more and more a super-streaming system, constantly shifting its students into channels where their past performance suggests they belong, treating people and knowledge in the way capitalism's technological world treats everything: as if it could be processed. The big lie is that opportunities are equal, that everyone gets on by dependence on their own abilities and will to succeed. If the products of public schools brush shoulders in the City with sons of East End lorry drivers, it is still likely to be as one opens a car door for the other. The best that's wanted for little Johnny or Tracy is a world and class away from the privileged life of the elite who, when they hear the word "culture", simply reach for their cheque books.

What we are not suggesting is that changes in the organisation of schooling in a class society can bring no benefits for the majority, or that the dominant ideology is consciously imposed from above on all social institutions. The ethos and values of capitalism permeate all aspects of our waking lives and a complex network of factors determine whether they are digested whole, chewed over or rejected altogether. An individual teacher may well be concerned with what children learn, but he or she is one face in a world of "right-thinking" people and school systems record only the marks children get. Individuals will differ in their ability, talent and determination in any society, but it is equally obvious that social background and schooling determine whether and how much they will be paid for the sale of their physical or intellectual powers, which in turn will largely determine where they can live, with whom they associate, and the rest of their life style. Exceptions merely confirm the rule.

The selective function of schools implies losers as well as winners and, increasingly, selection is for life; attempts to disguise this reality are destined to failure (comprehensive schools did their poor best and need not try harder). What employers are demanding are precisely the qualities that today's public schools are inculcating - a more technically qualified and disciplined workforce; which is why we are seeing attempts to force state schools to follow in their footsteps, to remove the distinction between education and training, and accept that schooling needs to operate on a more cost-effective basis. All this may not be new, but the difference this time is that the government appears willing to give them more of what they want.

What is not new and cannot change is the essential nature of capitalism. Schools take into compulsory custody millions of innocent children, dull their imaginations as best they can, force them to suck up quantities of secondhand information, qualify some for entry into other institutions, and commit the rest to a lifetime of servitude and hard labour. In a conveyor belt world dominated by competition  they can operate in no other way.

Material World: Greenland - To Modernize or Not? (2015)

The Material World Column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For much of human history, capitalism was not humanity's economic system. For 95 percent of human history, primitive communism was the economic system, hunter-gatherer communities without classes, sharing wealth communally. Various pockets of primitive communism still live on around the world and one example is the traditional Inuit communalism. We should, however, think twice about using such a pejorative term as ‘primitive’. How could people last for thousands of years in the most inhospitable climate on Earth if they aren’t geniuses? The Inuit figured out how to turn bones into tools, how to turn skin into warm clothing, how to feed their families for generations. They have learned to adapt to nature which has allowed them to thrive for centuries.

In American Nations, Colin Woodard describes the Inuit culture and lifestyle. Most tribal land in the far north is owned in common under a form of title that prevents it from ever being sold to an individual or exploited in such a way that diminishes its value to future generations. There is no private property, although an individual family has three personal possessions: a tent, coverings and a sled. Everyone is allowed to responsibly use the people’s shared land, but it is thought the height of absurdity that any one person should ‘own’ it. Inuits still hunt, fish and gather and the food plus the implements associated with them are generally regarded as common property. If a hunter kills a seal, it’s handed over to whoever needs it. Villages have communal larders that anyone can access — free of charge or accounting — because food cannot belong to one person. It is the Inuit custom that you should never thank someone for food ‘Up in our country we are human!’ said the hunter. ‘And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow.’

Alliances between non-relatives are formed and maintained through gift giving and the showing of respect. An example of this is the often repeated but rarely understood offering of a man’s wife. It is a form of gift giving where a head of household offers the opportunity of sex with the most valued adult woman of his household. The woman has the power to refuse, in which case respect will be through a different gift. Community ties are strengthened during the winter months, because individuals would not be able to survive the long harsh winter without the help of others. Throughout the winter, there is a continuous series of communal feasts. After large animals are caught, such as whales and walrus, the entire district is invited to the feast. In Labrador, Greenland and throughout the central regions, when the resources of a house have surpassed the ‘normal’ living standards, this wealth must be re-distributed to poorer individuals. If the tribe engages in a commercial enterprise, the proceeds belong to everyone.

Modernisation

Today global warming is unlocking potentially lucrative revenues from natural resources under Greenland's seabed and icecap, which according to international experts is home to large oil and gas deposits as well as other minerals. Do you go on trying to preserve what is left of the old Arctic hunting and fishing culture, although it’s already so damaged and discouraged that it has contributed to the highest suicide rate on the planet (one in five Greenlanders tries to commit suicide at some point in their lives)? Or do you seek salvation in modernisation and economic growth (while keeping your language and what you can of your culture)?

One of the party founders of Inuit Ataqatigiit (Community of the People) has opted for the former. ‘If you want to become rich, it comes at a price,’ says Aqqaluk Lynge who didn't want to pay that price, and under the Inuit Ataqatigiit administration (2009-2013) all mining was banned in Greenland. Apart from the environmental costs of large-scale mining operations, Lynge said, the many thousands of foreign workers they would bring in would have a devastating impact on what is already a very fragile Greenlandic culture.

The Prime Minister who took over in April 2013, Aleqa Hammond of the Siumut (Forward) party, chooses the latter. She thinks modernisation has gone too far to turn back and it is better to gamble on solving the current social problems (like suicide) by enabling everybody to live modern, prosperous lives. The Siumut government has issued more than 120 licences for mining and petro-chemical projects including a huge $2.5 billion open-cast iron-ore mine that would produce 15 million tonnes a year.

Few Greenlandic Inuit have the skills or inclination to acquire senior jobs in all these enterprises, and most will not want the hard, dirty, dangerous jobs of the workers in the mines and on the rigs. The rampant alcoholism and drug use, and the suicides that plague the Greenlanders are unlikely to be cured by throwing money at them as compensation for a life without meaning and the eventual extinction of their communal traditions.

ALJO

Action Replay: The ‘Absurd’ Goalkeeper (2015)

The Action Replay Column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his youth the French writer Albert Camus (1913-1960) played in goal for Racing Universitaire d'Alger (RUA) junior team from 1928 to 1930 (he was born and brought up in Algeria which was then part of France). They won both the North African Champions Cup and the North African Cup twice each in the 1930s. It was the sense of team spirit, fraternity, and common purpose that appealed to him but any aspirations to a career in football disappeared when he contracted tuberculosis when he was seventeen.

During the Second World War Camus joined the French Resistance cell Combat, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. He became the paper's editor in 1943 and continued to edit it after the war until 1947. It was a leftwing paper but critical of the Communist Party. He began to frequent the cafés in the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris where Sartre and other French intellectuals used to gather but his criticism of the Communist Party did not win him friends there.

His rejection of the Communist Party's doctrine was strongly expressed in the Rebel published in 1951, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution. This brought about a final split with Sartre. Despite this, Camus has continued to be categorised as an 'existentialist' but he rejected this description and felt that because we lived in an absurd world, he would be better described as an ‘absurdist’

When he was asked in the 1950s by a sports magazine for a few words regarding his time with the RUA, his said that 'what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport and learned it in the RUA'. he was referring to the sort of simplistic morality he wrote about in his early essays, the principle of sticking up for your friends, of valuing bravery and fair-play which still survives in the amateur game.

Kevin

Mutineers (2015)

Book Review from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Mutinous Swine'. Past Tense, 2014

This adapted reprint from John Taylor Caldwell’s biography of Guy Aldred Come Dungeons Dark records the story of the resistance of the conscientious objectors in Wandsworth Prison towards the end of the First World War. Thankfully, it is largely devoid of Caldwell’s obsessive hero worship of the disputatious and divisive Aldred, focusing instead on the industrial unionist and ex-SPGBer RM Fox. It is, however, still marred in places by Caldwell’s Strange Misuse of Capital Letters. If the point of the pamphlet is to demonstrate the efficacy of direct action, the prisoners seeking by means such as hunger strikes and refusal to obey prison regulations to obtain concessions, it fails signally. Although direct action can be of use in achieving limited objectives, the results here were minor to say the least, redress being only obtained by the post-war amnesty. Nonetheless, the pamphlet is a good read, as indeed are most publications of the group, and provides a valuable antidote to the 1914-18 blood-and-mud remix currently peddled elsewhere.

Kaz

A conceited Fabian (1990)

Book Review from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialism of Bernard Shaw by Harry Morrison, McFarland, Box 611, Jefferson, NC, USA, 1989.

Some readers may be surprised by the title, particularly if they realise that at no time in his long life did Shaw seem to have grasped the concept of socialism as a classless, moneyless society which has been the object of the Socialist Party throughout its existence. In this work the author, although a lifelong socialist himself, has used the word socialism in a wider sense to include individuals and ideas popularly believed to be socialist.

Recalling that Shaw's involvement in politics began over a hundred years ago, to talk of his "socialism" has a justification which would be absent in the case of those putting forward similar views today. Despite his lack of consistency, and what the author calls "extreme volubility to the point of literary diarrhoea", Shaw was often, through his plays and other works, an effective propagandist against the cruelties and absurdities of the capitalist system. Also, at least in Shaw's earlier years, the panaceas of the left, such as nationalisation, could not be answered convincingly by contrary example, unlike today. Thus most of those who advocated short cuts to socialism were perfectly sincere, had a good understanding of the nature of capitalism, and were often effective propagandists against it. Even Engels, though realising that state capitalism remained capitalism, wrote in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific of the state becoming "the national capitalist", following which the capitalist relationship would "topple over." 

What comes out clearly from this book is Shaw's own conceit, his total inability to accept that the so-called "common working man" could play a constructive part in the establishment and operation of the future society. This inevitably led him to take up a similar position to Lenin who, as is well known to our regular readers, believed that the working class could not rise above a trade union level of consciousness. This trait was shared by many of Shaw's associates in the early days of the Fabian Society, including Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Shaw's elitism led him in due course to support, with some enthusiasm, dictatorships in Russia (after initial doubts, he and the Webbs were "converted" on a visit in 1931), Italy and Germany. This concurrent admiration for both Fascist and "Communist" tyranny in fact showed perfect consistency. This point is emphasised by the details given of Mussolini's years in the so-called Socialist Party of Italy. Shaw's own elitism led him to admire the operation of dictatorships in which the chosen few organise the many and heaven help those foolish enough to kick against the pricks. Shaw did not go so far as to support the Holocaust, but he did support the practice by dictatorships of liquidating active political opponents, as for instance in the preface to his play On the Rocks.

The author tries to determine how much Shaw absorbed of Marx's writings from his personal reading of them. Clearly something stuck, but Shaw was always a hedger of bets. He also appears to have lacked the degree of application required to master Marxist theory. However the main obstacle was again Shaw's conceit, which made it impossible for him to accept the democratic concept that all able-bodied citizens can and must take hold of society and shape it in their own interests.

The last chapters of this readable book deal with Shaw's views on religion, Darwinism and patriotism, followed by the relationship between Marxism, Fabianism and Shaw's views. The question is posed as to whether Shaw was an echo or caricature of Marx. We won't spoil the game by giving the answer, but can offer no prizes for a successful guess.

In an Appendix two articles are reprinted from the pen of Socialist Party member Clifford Allen, these having appeared in the Western Socialist in 1943. The first replies to a review by Shaw of a new edition of Marx's selected works, this review having been published in the Daily Herald that year. The second answers a letter written by Shaw to the Western Socialist in reply to Allen. In this letter, reprinted on pp. 70-71 of this book, Shaw unwittingly summed up the political futility of his long life.

E. C. Edge

World Socialism (2003)

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are two main reasons why socialism has now to be thought of, and in the future will be organised, on a world scale. First, capitalism is a world system, so the system that will replace it will have to be on a similar scale. Second, any attempt to set up socialism in one country only is doomed to failure.

To elaborate a bit on those reasons, it is clear that capitalism is increasingly a world society. Although it began some five or six centuries ago in a few west European countries, it had already spread in Marx's time around a large part of the globe. Today there is hardly anywhere in the world that is untouched by the profit system. There are vestiges of feudalism, slavery and even tribal society in some places – these may survive (at least in their touristic aspects) for a while. But they are insignificant in terms of power relationships and dominant ideas.

The idea of socialism in one country has been put forward as a more achievable aim than the admittedly more ambitious project of socialism on a world scale. With such a small number of socialists up against the dominant structures and ideas of capitalism, why not concentrate them in one area and give them a better chance of success in at least that area? If capitalism were not such a well-integrated world system, with its ruling-class beneficiaries determined to defend it and its working-class supporters as yet unwilling to consider any alternative, then something could be said for “socialism in one country”. But that slogan is really no more than a call for reform – attack the tiger one claw at a time and perhaps it will succumb.

Given this, socialists around the world need to communicate with each other and exchange information and ideas about how best to develop the socialist project.

Since the first Socialist Party was established in Britain a hundred years ago, the development of communications technology has proceeded apace. This development has been primarily in the interests of capital – for war and business purposes. But it also enables socialists around the world to be in better touch with each other. A century ago airmail was unknown and international telephones a primitive and expensive luxury. Today socialists are starting to use new communications technology for exchanging ideas.

But the kind of world socialist movement that is needed in the short term is very different from what will be evolved in the longer term. In the longer term it will no longer be just a question of communicating ideas but of an international political organisation linking large-scale socialist parties from all parts of the world, a revival, on a socialist basis (and with a more suitable title), of the International Working Men's Association of Marx's day.

Stan Parker

Greasy Pole: Mandy and Christine (2015)

The Greasy Pole Column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

There can't be many ex-pupils of Sharmans Cross Secondary Modern School in Shirley, Solihull responsible for coining a phrase which, for its terse penetration of a barricade of hypocrisy, has endured for fifty years and merited its originator a place in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Or whose later judgement of one of her 'affairs' when she was fifteen was 'I was an enthusiastic participant in what struck me as a perfectly pleasant way to spend an afternoon...the worst I could be accused of is bad judgement and a healthy libido...' We are discussing here Marilyn (more profitably known as 'Mandy') Rice-Davies who in the early days of Harold Macmillan's Nineteen Sixties never had it so good in numerous contacts with older, richer, more famous men. And who, when she was informed by a barrister in court that the Third Viscount Astor from Cliveden in Buckinghamshire denied that he had been one of those men retorted 'Well he would, wouldn't he'. She died last December, after a life she recalled as 'one slow descent into respectability'.

Astor

Rice-Davies' family moved to Solihull for her father to take a job at the Dunlop factory. She seemed older than her years and moved to London, became a dancer at Murray's Club in Soho, met Christine Keeler to replace her in the home of the notorious persecuting slum landlord Rachman. 'It was dislike at first sight' was how she described her original contact with Keeler; 'I enjoyed her company and learned never to rely on her for anything'. Which did not deter her from being one of a threesome sexual service for any client who was rich and energetic enough. During this time she was introduced by Keeler to, among others, Lord Astor and Stephen Ward – a highly successful osteopath. For some people Ward was cynically plausible and indiscreet, always ready to work a deal to promote the situation in which he was a favoured therapist for, among others, Paul Getty, Colin Coote and Frank Sinatra and a clutch of politicians including Churchill, Eden and Gaitskell. Meanwhile among Keeler's attendant men was Yevgeny Ivanov who was the Naval attaché at the Russian Embassy.

Profumo

In July 1961 the Astors threw one of their lavish parties at Cliveden, attended by the customary slew of notables including John Profumo, the Tory MP. The assembled guests made their way down to the house swimming pool which was close to a cottage rented by Ward. Taking a refreshing dip – made more so by having her swimming costume mischievously removed by Ward – was Christine Keeler. Before she left that evening with Ivanov, Profumo had made a note of her telephone number, which he used to facilitate an affair. At that time Profumo was very much a man with a future. He had been to Harrow School and then Oxford where while 'studying law' he found time to be a member of the vandalising Bullingdon Club. He was elected as an MP and in May 1940 he joined 30 other Tory MPs in a vote which effectively led to the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. The Tory disciplinarians in the House were not pleased; one Whip spat on Profumo's shoes and the Chief Whip snarled at him that he was '...an utterly contemptible little shit'. Notwithstanding this he remained in favour with the leadership; although he lost his seat in Kettering in the 1945 Labour landslide he was later elected for Stratford-on-Avon. It did not take long for him to squirm his way up the Greasy Pole to the extent that he was tipped as a future Foreign Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was Secretary of State for War when he was sexually linked with Keeler and the fact that she was also involved with Ivanov accentuated concerns about security. Meanwhile in Westminster Profumo developed a reputation as a persistent womaniser, accustomed to excuse his absences from home as due to late night sittings in the Commons. His wife, the film star Valerie Hobson, complained about him instructing his tailor to fashion his trousers so as to hint at his unusually large penis.

Trollop

The Westminster rumour mill ground hungrily into the Profumo/Keeler scandal with the Labour MP George Wigg particularly active. In March 1963 the Whips decided that enough was enough and one night in the small hours they hauled Profumo out of bed to insist that he came clean. But the most they could manage was a denial which Profumo was to read later that day to the Commons, part of which said: 'Miss Keeler and I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintance with Miss Keeler.' But when this was read to the House it only aggravated the problem. Typically, Wigg '...left the House that morning with black rage in my heart because I knew what the facts were'. In addition when the police interviewed Keeler in their investigation into Ward on charges of ‘living off immoral earnings’ she confirmed having a sexual relationship with Profumo. It did not then take long for him to give in; during what might have been a conciliatory trip to Venice he confessed all to his wife and then to Macmillan. On 5 June he resigned. Among a flood of similar comment The Economist asked '...may the government, or rather the Prime Minister of Britain be about to be overthrown by a 21-year old trollop?' The police had also been active and Ward appeared at the Old Bailey on what was very doubtful evidence. Just before the day of it all being summed up he committed suicide at his home. Tory MP Alan Clark, whose own adventures made it difficult for him to overflow with any delicate sympathy, later blurted that the whole affair had '...exposed their (Tory politicians') essential rottenness'.

And so we return to Mandy Rice Davies and her enduringly perceptive phrase. That all happened fifty years ago but it is no better now. We have David Cameron claiming the ability to control the vagaries of capitalism. And Ed Miliband desperate to convince us that his party is even more capable. And Nick Clegg striving to make us forget the Lib Dem's record of deception. About each and all of them we must declare:

He would, wouldn't he?

Ivan

Editorial: Whatever is Happening to the 'Middle Class'? (2015)

Editorial from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Was it really only a generation ago that Tony Blair was telling us that we are all middle-class now?  Today, few can be unaware of the widening gap between the incomes of the owners of capital and the rest of us, or that since the credit crunch of 2008 wage and salary earners have been afflicted by a massive slump in their incomes.  To find a comparable situation, say the TUC researchers, it would be necessary to go back to the experience of our Victorian great-grandparents in the 1860s and 1870s. Back then, Disraeli had written of a country starkly divided into two nations, the rich and the poor.  Today, it seems, under the power of global capital, we, their inheritors, inhabit a planet divided into two worlds. 

So what, in this time of polarising incomes, has happened to the middle-class?  Who, indeed, are the middle-class?   Despite Tony Blair’s convictions, most people, when surveyed, are reluctant to pigeon-hole themselves into class categories, no longer certain, perhaps, how meaningful they are.  For working people in the middle-income groups, however, one thing is certain.  They are not doing well.

To be sure, they have not done as badly as industrial workers and those on low pay, but they have received serious blows to their incomes and expectations.  In the months after the 2008 crash of the big banks, there were massive lay-offs of financial services workers.  And since then, the squeeze on middle incomes has been relentless.  Like everyone else they are working harder and earning less.  Their expectations of a secure career, a comfortable pension and a good return on savings have been dashed.  More and more of their income is being eaten up by childcare and commuting costs, while private health care for the family, and foreign holidays are becoming a distant memory. With the soaring cost of private education and university fees, there is concern over the kids.

And yes, what about the kids? The children of the middle class are increasingly taking jobs well below their educational attainments.  That time as a barista is now looking less like an entertaining stop gap between university and a professional career, and more like a dead end job. They are beginning to understand that the ‘cost of living crisis’, zero hours contracts and surviving on the minimum wage are now no longer concerns only for blue collar workers.  Not for them, any more, is the desirable home they grew up in.

Tyler Cowan, an American economist predicting the destruction of the middle class, may or may not have consulted his crystal ball accurately, but it nevertheless appears that the super-rich owners of capital are only getting richer, and the poor are remaining poor or getting poorer.  And like their Victorian forebears, those in the middle income-bracket are increasingly fearful of falling into the ‘abyss’, a formless underworld of poverty and destitution. With declining incomes and job prospects, the withdrawal or reduction of benefits and reports of over a million people now accessing food banks,  that does not seem an unreasonable fear.

Obituary: Irene Robertson (1989)

Obituary from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sadly we have to record the death in Italy of Comrade Irene Robertson, long-time comrade and partner of Max Judd. Irene joined the Party in 1943, arriving at socialist ideas and conclusions on a totally independent basis. Max joined some while later and they met at a Party dance. In spite of sometimes being less fit than she would have wished, Irene took on various tasks including Branch Secretary at Lewisham, Election Agent at Bromley, writing to the local press, canvassing the Socialist Standard on doorsteps and up and down blocks of flats in the Lewisham area. She always made clear her political views, quite bluntly at times, not always making friends by so doing. Her socialist ideas were the main driving force and sustenance of her life and she and Max spent much time discussing the daily horrors of the brutal and vicious society we live in, or perhaps considering some current topic being debated within the Socialist Party.

To Max, son Carl, and brother John, we send our condolences.

P. Hart for South West London Branch

How socialism can increase food production

From the April 1984 issue of the World Socialist

The statistics which arise persistently throughout the world from the problem of malnourishment and starvation, exceed all other measures of death and misery. Yet whilst this is the problem from which humanity in 1984 suffers most, the solution to it in socialism would be straightforward, taking relatively little time.

World capitalism can enter up on the debit side of human suffering hundreds of millions of dead from lack of food. Despite the abundance of labour, technique and productive resources, the absolute numbers of men, women and children dying from lack of food are greater than ever before. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation state that in 1974/5 a conservative world estimate of seriously undernourished people was 435 million. This was 75 million higher than 5 years previously. UNICEF state that 40,000 children are dying every day from starvation or malnutrition related-disease, or annually around 15 million.

Malnourishment is not only a problem of "underdeveloped" countries. Within the EEC, 30 million workers are living below the poverty line, which means living on less than half the average income for those countries. This results in impoverished diets, a reliance on cereals, starchy root vegetables and sugar. The London Times reported in July 1983 that "Thirty-two million of the (American) population of 233 million are graded as below the poverty line, but the mayors say that soup kitchens are not keeping pace with the hungry". The London Sunday Times reported in August 1983 that some pregnant women in Hackney, London, were consuming only 1,613 calories per day during the first 3 months of pregnancy as against their needs of at least 2,100 calories. The FAO definition of "seriously undernourished" is a calorie intake of 1,600 calories per day and less.

Malnourishment exists in every country of the world because under world capitalist production, food is produced as commodities for sale at a profit on the market. Food production is not organised directly for human needs, it is geared to market capacity where profit is realised. To support the market the EEC destroys food every year, and maintains a policy of restricted food production. In 1982, American farmers took 82 million acres out of food production.

HUMAN NEEDS AND SOCIALIST ACTION

A great deal of discussion about socialism centres on how needs will be determined in the absence of markets, money and prices. How will decisions be made about production? Needs are socially given by the nature of existing problems. The objective of socialism is to organise society directly for human needs and therefore support for socialism must be on the basis that we take over the means of production and resources, and then concentrate the priorities of social action on the areas of greatest human need.

This element of material necessity is a pressure on what social ism is bound to do. This existing material position pre-empts the important social policies of socialism and these policies are not therefore subject to arbitrary choice. The socialist movement is bound to formulate its programmes of action for dealing with problems in advance of the capture of political control and foremost amongst these actions will be the increase of food production from the present artificial scarcity in relation to sufficiency for human need.

This is not to suggest that every option open to world socialism for increasing food production is determined mechanically by the pressure of necessity. The socialist movement is committed now to the overall policy of increasing food production within socialism, but within this overall policy of action, the need for particular democratic decisions will arise.

DECISION-MAKING

The organisation of the production of food must be considered together with the social procedures for decision-making. The working class organised for world socialism, acting consciously and politically, will take over the various State machines of capitalist governments and immediately adapt these structures for the purposes of useful world administration. This will mean the capture of the machinery of government at the various local and national levels, and the conversion of these State instruments of government into local and regional councils, with the present United Nations Organisation providing a ready-to-hand administrative facility for a world council.

Centralised State control is hostile to democracy. The present position whereby governments impose their decisions on the wider population will have to be replaced by a system of decision-making and action where the decisions flow from the broadest social base to make up the democratic view of the community. This is the reverse of the present system of centralised state control, and it is what is meant in the socialist object by "democratic control . . . by and in the interests of the whole community".

In practice, this means that the basic unit of social organisation, and therefore of decision-making will be the local community. The local community will elect its delegates to the local council, and these persons will be delegated the responsibility of local administration. One procedure could be that these members of the local councils could elect, from amongst their numbers, delegates to the regional council. If this procedure were to be adopted then it would follow that the regional council would elect from amongst its numbers, delegates to the world council.

This system of electing delegates to the various councils would have to include machinery whereby these councils could be instructed by poll. On an everyday basis, matters could be left to these delegates and provided that the numbers were enough they would reflect general opinion. But circumstances could arise where these various councils would want to ascertain precisely the view of the whole community on specific issues. The same machinery could be used to challenge a council decision.

The poll of the community would be the final arbiter on all social issues requiring a social decision. On this basis we would have a system whereby local communities would instruct their local councils, the sum of local council opinion would instruct the regional council, and the sum of regional council opinion would instruct the world council.

SPHERES OF DECISION-MAKING ABOUT PRODUCTION

The three spheres of decision-making, local, regional and world, are an adaptation of existing structures; they also coincide with the different scales on which production is required to be organised.

We need local agriculture, and the local work of producing useful goods according to local needs and work preferences. We also need local services. Also we need world bodies, mainly for the organisation of the extractive industries such as oil and metals, and then world transport, world communications, control of space, energy supply etc.

Between the local and world scales, regional organisation will be required. This would be particularly for the manufacture of component parts and assembly of goods and equipment. Tractors, for instance, would be produced regionally and distributed to the various localities covered by that region.

Democratic decision-making must be integrated with the organisation of production in the local, regional and world spheres, and applied as a priority to the need to increase food production. We can envisage ways in which firstly, local communities can increase food production; secondly how this local food production extends to regional manufacture, and thirdly how this also extends to world productive organisation.

LOCAL FOOD PRODUCTION

To overcome the problem of scarcity of food on a world scale we estimate on the basis of all the available evidence that socialist society will have to increase food production by at least 60% as a short-term target.

The production of the great variety of vegetables, salad crops, fruits, oil seeds, spices, animal produce, fish farming etc., could be organised on a local basis. In local communities, the knowledge and unique experience of working particular soils exists. Those individuals with this experience would be given the assistance required to organise the ways in which local food production could be increased. In its first period, the greatest advantage that socialism would enjoy would be the availability of extra labour, which would be released as a result of the ending of the useless functions associated now with the running of capitalism. With the availability of all the people at present engaged in insurance, finance, banking, commerce and competition, plus the present labour wasted in armed forces and armaments production, the state bureaucracies and the millions of unemployed, socialism would be able to at least double the numbers of people available for useful production throughout the world.

By immediately concentrating greater numbers of people on the work of increased local food production results could be quickly achieved, especially with labour intense methods of cultivation. In the short term this would be appropriate, since the work of providing more mechanised equipment would take time.

FOOD PRODUCTION AND REGIONAL MANUFACTURE: AN EXAMPLE

Having emphasised that socialism could quickly increase local food production by more people getting on with this work, at the same time, regional manufacture would also be applied to this priority of production. A great advantage to local food production in the temperate climates would be the use of greenhouses. By this method it is possible to more closely control the conditions of cultivation, extend the season of growth, and diversify the crops. In response to the desirability of local food production for local consumption, local communities would want to construct greenhouses. But obviously, not every local community would have its own glass-works. Glass would be produced on the regional scale of manufacture, and we assume that the existing glass production facilities, taken over by socialism, would be under great initial pressure to supply glass.

Arising from this position of a widespread requirement for glass, decisions will be called for. Once durable greenhouses are in place in local communities they will be available for use over a very long time. Production for need, in the position of inherited scarcity is a pressure to produce, but it also embodies a limit to production. At a certain point local communities have sufficient greenhouses for their purposes.

In response to this very high peak of initial requirements, the region could increase the means of production, that is, build more glass works to increase the productive capacity. But as a prudent society, socialism will not want to create massive over-capacity. This would be increased production facilities set up to cope with the high peak of initial requirements but then soon becoming redundant. This has to be set against the consequences of not increasing productive capacity, which would be that the high peak of initial requirements would take longer to supply. Getting the balance of this right would be one of the decisions which would have to be made.

In socialism, since this matter would involve regional production facilities, it would come within the framework of decision-making of the regional council. Those who have taken on the responsibility of running the regional glass works would put all the relevant information in front of the regional council together with the various options which arise from that information. On this basis and in consideration with possible information from any other relevant source, the regional council would make a decision, bearing in mind that the regional council will be made up from delegates from all the local communities of that region.

This example of glass production is one of how a social priority, the need for more food, extends from local organisation to regional organisation, and also how food production extends to manufacture.

The work of setting up local greenhouse cultivation would extend to regional manufacture but it would also extend to organisation of production on a world scale. Greenhouse structures require rigid supports. Socialism would be unlikely to use timber. It is not a durable material, it would require a lot of maintenance, and moreover, socialism has to plant trees not cut them down.

A metal such as a durable alloy could be used, and also suitable would be plastic. Plastic is a product of oil extraction, and this would be organised by a world body. Obviously the regional facilities for converting oil into oil products already exist, but we are bound to have a world oil body monitoring the process of extraction and use in relation to the reserves of the material.

Demand for oil products would flow from many needs. A particularly important use of oil will be with plastic water pipes, arising from the need to supply piped clean water to the entire world's population. Working with the world council, and in association with other world bodies, the world oil body would have to assess how best this material could be used in respect of the wide range of initial needs, and also in respect of other possible solutions.

The sequence of productive activities we are describing is initiated as a response to needs in local communities, and as with such items of food production equipment as tractors, flows through regional manufacture of components and assembly, and then to the supply of basic materials from the extractive industries organised on a world scale.

WORLD CEREAL PRODUCTION

Whilst the great variety of foods included in vegetables, fruits, salad crops, oil seeds, spices, animal produce, fish farming, etc., are most suitable for local production for local consumption, the basis of agriculture is cereal production. In response to the urgent need to increase world cereal production, socialism is bound to take a world view of the problem. The present world bodies which could be adapted for useful organisation are the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Wheat Council.

With the continuation of world capitalism, it is accepted by the FAO that no remotely feasible rate of economic growth could eliminate serious undernourishment in the forseeable future. The FAO have predicted that a continuation of a 2.8% increase in agricultural production given for 1977 (it is lower than this now) will result in an increase in the numbers of seriously undernourished from 435 million to 590 million in the year 2000 with the position rapidly worsening into the 21st century.

These projections assume an increase in the world's population from the present 4,415 million to 6,199 million during the sixteen years between now and the year 2000. It must be emphasised here that the cause of the problem of world hunger and malnutrition is not one of numbers of people in the world. The problem is entirely the result of the motive of capitalist production—profit, and the operation of the world capitalist market, and cannot be understood by an alleged imbalance between numbers of population, availability of labour, technique and productive resources.

The International Wheat Council monitors the world production of cereals or grains. Their work is aimed towards achieving a balance between world production of grains and market capacity so that wide fluctuations in the world market prices can be averted. In its present work, the International Wheat Council is not the least interested in human needs except as they are expressed as market capacity. As with the FAO, the forward projections of the International Wheat Council about world grains production and market capacity are equally pessimistic in respect of satisfying human needs.

In 1980 world production of all grains was 1.45 billion tonnes. This was an average per person of the world population of 329 kilograms for all grain uses.

The projected figures for the next sixteen years to the year 2000 for world grain production given by the Council are 2.177 billion tonnes, which with assumed population increases, will amount to a total grain use of 357 kilograms per person.

Not all grain use is that of direct consumption. Of the average per capita consumption of grains in 1980 of 329 kilograms, 162 kilograms was directly consumed, and the remaining 167 kilograms was used as animal feeds, brewing, etc. Behind these figures for average world total grains consumption exist wide differences of real individual consumption. These differences range from 203 kilograms per person in the "developing countries" to an average of 588 kilograms per person in the countries of Western Europe, USA, Canada and Australia.

However, again within these populations, different levels of consumption apply as a result of class differences and the different positions of individual workers. On existing patterns of food consumption, determined by individual access to the market, and the limitations of that access according to relative poverty so far as workers are concerned, the present world production for a world market of approximately 1.6 billion tonnes, forms the background against which 30 million people die every year from lack of food.

Whilst forward projections of the operation of the world capitalist market are subject to many unpredictable variables the projections of current market trends put out to the year 2000 by the International Wheat Council is one which must assume over 500 million deaths from lack of food over the next 16 years.

The standard of food consumption which is average in Western Europe and North America is based upon a total grain use of 588 kilograms per person per year. (With 138 kilograms being used directly as food, and the remaining 450 kilograms being used for animal feeds and all other uses.)

On these existing patterns of food consumption, and to bring every individual on the planet up to the standard of food consumption which is average in Western Europe and America, socialism would need to increase world grains production from the present 1.6 billion tonnes, which is world market capacity, to 2.6 billion tonnes for human needs on present world population numbers. For a world population of 6,000 million, projected for the year 2000, socialism would need to produce 3.6 billion tonnes of grains for human need, as against the projected 2.2 billion tonnes for market capacity.

With socialism, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, working in cooperation with the world and regional councils, would be responsible for coordinating this work of increasing world grains production as an urgent priority of action. There is no shortage of potential productive land, though the necessary work of preparing this land for cultivation may take some time. Irrigation schemes, for example, would require the FAO to cooperate with other world specialist bodies as world wide cooperation was swung behind the concerted effort to deal with hunger and malnourishment. A great deal could be accomplished in the short term with improvement of storage facilities and safe control of pests and disease.

TIME SCALE FOR SOCIALIST SOLUTIONS

With a more equal distribution of inherited scarce supplies of food, together with a more efficient use of these supplies in terms of nutritional values, socialism could stop people dying from hunger immediately. This would be the immediate measure that world wide socialist cooperation would implement.

Alongside this more equal and efficient use of scarcity, local initiatives would be of crucial importance. Local democratic action could be concentrated on increased local production with more people using existing land resources for more intensive production. This would be the most immediate way of increasing production, and the main thrust of socialist action could centre on these local initiatives, and upon the results of this would depend how far socialism would progress towards sufficient supply. However there can be no doubt that within a period of up to 5 years these local initiatives would transform the position.

Together with these measures at the local level, the FAO as a world agency could organise aid and assistance for those areas of the world where the means of agricultural production are underdeveloped. The work of bringing more productive resources into cultivation presents itself mainly as the irrigation of semi-arid soils. With world cooperation and concentration of action on this priority, socialism could reduce the time usually taken to complete irrigation schemes, when they are undertaken under world capitalism within the constraints of the market system. Socialism could count on bringing in extra land for cultivation, even for the most elaborate of irrigation schemes in something like ten years.

COMMUNICATION OF NEEDS TO PRODUCTION AS A WHOLE

At the present time of world depression, the economic signals sent to production units within the world market system are substantially those which indicate stoppage of production. This applies to world cereal production. Using information put out by the International Wheat Council, the United States government in 1983 agreed with farmers that they should take 82 million acres out of food production, which is approximately 100 million tonnes of grains forgone, as a result of the operation of the market. Self evidently this is in reverse of the direction that we need to go to provide for human needs.

With production for use the indications to production are those of need, not market capacity and profit. Production for use will operate as a sequence of productive activities, arising as a response to need in local communities and extending to different scales of production in accordance with necessity and practicality. Needs will be communicated as quantities of things in line with social priorities, and will pass through as applications of different labour to all the necessary sequences of productive activity in the local, regional and world spheres. In the first instance needs are an indication to produce, but they also define the limits to necessary production.

Socialism will take over from capitalism an existing structure of production and this will be the material basis from which the development of socialism will begin. Initially this will take the form of the adaptation and expansion of the useful elements of existing production. To begin with, the socialist community will impose its priorities of need on this existing structure.

This will be an essentially self-regulating system whereby the usefulness and therefore the continued part played by any element of production will be determined by the factor of need, expressed as quantities of things, and passing through all the interdependent parts of production as a whole. Each particular part of production will be responding to the particular demands placed upon it. It is a system which is self-adjusting over time on the basis of experience. Each part of production will know what its position is in relation to this demand of need. If stocks accumulate, then this will require the adjustment of reduced production and if there is a time delay in supply, then this, self evidently, will require increased production.

OVER-PRODUCTION

In respect of so-called overproduction there is one difference between production for the market and production for use, which has an important bearing on organisation. If a part of capitalist production overproduces for its particular market this generally results in crisis which can lead to depression. There is overproduction of world grains in relation to the market and this has resulted in 82 million acres being taken out of production in America. The farmers who would otherwise have been producing on these millions of acres, would also otherwise have been in the market themselves for their own particular supplies. They would have stopped buying these supplies and in this way the chain of stopped production spirals down to other parts of production.

Whereas overproduction for the market is a problem for world capitalism, overproduction for human need in socialism would be a positive advantage. In respect of the world availability of basic materials, production for use could aim to stockpile supplies of these in excess of immediate demands. Whilst there would be no point in going on and on stockpiling greater reserve supplies, nevertheless current production could aim to top up the reserves of basic materials, as they were distributed for consumption to every region and local community throughout the world.

With a well developed world storage system socialism would stockpile a reserve supply of grains in excess of the needs of current consumption. Given such storage facilities, grains are durable, and easily transported in bulk without damage.

SOCIALISM—AN ADAPTABLE SYSTEM

Production for use and democratic control is adaptable. Different productive activities can be organised in different ways according to practicality and according to the importance of the activity as it affects the whole community. All sorts of spontaneous activities could arise in different local communities between enthusiastic individuals. At the same time it will be necessary to take a world view of cereal production, the use of finite materials such as oil, and metals, and also a world energy system.

For these reasons, the organisation of production for use must be adaptable within a world which is integrated, with the basic unit of social organisation being the local community.

Within this integrated system we have the facility of organisation for any need or purpose. It can provide for the spontaneous initiatives of individuals or small groups, and at the same time it can deal with the important problems where society as a whole needs to take a larger scale and more long term view. The anarchy of current world food production shows the urgency of a new system now.

Pieter Lawrence (Britain)