'Freedom or Slavery?' (1921)

From the April 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Born in a world that is tainted and rank with disease;
Bred amid squalor and sunk in monotonous toil;
Almost inhuman, like beasts that are laden and led.
Is our fate fixed? Shall there ne'er be cessation and ease
For our torn, weary feet? Shall we ne'er have the strength to recoil
From the sad death-in-life, where to live is to envy the dead? 

Beauty of nature and art, of fame and creative joy,
Nothing of these do we know, nor care we to understand;
Love that is truly has touched us and passed us by.
Chain-laden slaves are we, whom our masters can crush and destroy
At their wayward, whimsical will, with a negligent wave of the hand,
In the way a wanton child might crush and torture a fly. 

Is there no God to help, no Zeus, or Jahveh, or Buddh?
As well might our prayers be made to an image of wood or stone,
Hear, then, the truth; be sure you shall find it discordant and crude.
But harmony creeps through the discord, and a light in the crudeness gleams—
Freedom is our for the taking, and the power to take our own. 

Out of the wreck of a world that is falling into decay,
Rise, if within you dwells a spark of the will to dare;
Come in our ranks and work, and fight, and if need be die!
We have nothing to lose but our chains. Of a surety comes a day
When a choice must be made at last, when we break the fetters we wear
Or retain them still, slaves proud of our slavery.

F. J. Webb.

9 months of Labour rule (1965)

Editorial from the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month, Great Britain elected the first majority Labour government in its history.

July 1945 was a time of jubilation for the Labour Party; but it was also a time of reckoning. Their two previous administrations―in 1924 and 1931―had been minority governments, and had been able to blame their failures onto their dependence on Liberal support in the House of Commons.

The Attlee government had no such excuse. They had a massive majority behind them and they were determined to carry out the programme they had cherished for so long. Many Labour M.P.s said―and perhaps some of them even believed―that the day of Socialism had dawned.

Reality was cruelly different, and it exposed Labour Party theories for what they were. The 1945 government were committed to running British capitalism, and they did this in basically the same way as the Tories would have done.

They fought the working class over wages. They used every weapon they could to break strikes in the docks and the coalfields. They launched the nuclear rearmament programme (which, says the Labour Party now, is based on a discredited nostalgia for outdated imperialism).

Some Labour ministers of those days became famous as political buffoons and failures. Others wore themselves into their graves. British capitalism stood undisturbed. And in the end the electors showed what they thought of Labour's attempts to run the system, by turning them out of office.

By 1964 the memories of Labour government had grown dim enough for the workers to want to give it another try. The Labour Party cannot now excuse their failures of 1945/51, so they have simply ignored them. The Conservatives were at any rate ready in the last election to stand by their record in office, and offer it as an incentive to put them back in power. Labour's record is so bad that they kept a shamefaced silence, and quietly forgot the Attlee government and their disasters.

Now once again we have a Labour government, and once again they are in the toils. British capitalism is providing them with many problems―financial, economic, international. They are disputing with the working class over wages. Many of their policies―on the Bomb, immigration, taxation-―have been reversed.

And one again, like their predecessors in 1945, they are failing to solve the problems of capitalism. As this becomes more and more apparent, Labour Party support is declining, in spite of all their gimmicks and vote catching publicity.

Of course, the Labour government are looking for excuses. Mr. Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, for example, thinks that all the troubles are due to a deficiency in our morals:

“It is only when the nation realises and understands that there are underlying moral standards to which we should be obedient, that the Labour movement is going to achieve everything it wants to achieve . . .”  (Speech to the Co-operative Congress, Edinburgh, 2/6/65.)

Mr. Gunter is the man who said, on election night last October, that the Conservatives should be thoroughly ashamed of their victory in Smethwick. He is also the man reported (The Guardian 31/5/65) to be pressing now for "drastic measures" to further restrict the intake of immigrants into this country.

This is representative of the complete reverse of Labour policy on immigration. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Gunter thinks about the morals of a party which alters its line so cynically.

But however the Labour Party may twist and turn, its fate is sealed. Whether its policies are changed or not, whether they are applied or discarded, capitalism will continue. And with capitalism will also go its inescapable problems.

The only way to remove those problems is to abolish capitalism and replace it with Socialism. And that will happen only when the working class throughout the world have seen through the distortions and the failures of all the capitalist parties and have consciously and unitedly opted for Socialism.

QED (BBC1) (1984)

TV Review from the January 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

QED (BBC1)

This fascinating programme traced the improvement in British workers' living standards achieved through advances in technology over the last 35 years. The film was very effectively put together, showing the 1948 sequences — both original footage and reconstructions — in black and white and those if 1983 in colour. Heinz Wolff, the narrator, acted the two central characters — the lower income worker and the prosperous businessman.

We first saw him entering a typical house of the former in 1948; the tin bath on the outside back wall, 5 amp wiring just sufficient for lighting and the wireless—certainly no electric fires or any of the appliances we now take for granted. Instead of a vacuum cleaner, the carpet sweeper; instead of the 'fridge, the ventilated larder cupboard; a bicycle the only personally owned means of transport. We then switched to the businessman getting out of his car, going into his centrally heated home, and switching on the rather primitive television set. His wife is in their all-electric kitchen with 'fridge, washing machine and food mixer. The maid uses the Hoover and does the ironing.

What a contrast in 1983! The "working class" home now boasts all mod cons, including colour TV and video (Wolff does not say how much of this evidence of "affluence" is owned by the worker and how much by the HP company), and ownership of a car is almost taken for granted.

On the surface the differences have been greatly eroded. However, Wolff then points out that this rise in living standards has been made possible by the great strides in technology. The days when production was simple (and labour intensive) and most of us could do our own domestic repairs have given way to high technology, labour savings and the inability of most of us to understand "how things work". This, incidentally, with the high cost of getting any sort of repairs done, leads to built-in obsolescence resulting in more frequent replacement purchases, which is good for business.

Wolff then asks: What shall we do about the unemployed to make them again feel useful members of society? From a non-socialist, his answer is quite remarkable. To paraphrase him: in a sensible society we would turn them into caring people; we need teachers, nurses, people to help look after the elderly, handicapped and infirm. There is a multitude of worthwhile (but not profitable) ways of working, but he ends his programme with the words: "That future is further away than we think".

We say it need not be. If the programme made viewers aware that there is indeed a solution to the problems of capitalism and that advances in technology should benefit all and not just increase the profits of the few, then we are one small step nearer to that future—the establishment of socialism. Then work will be judged only by its usefulness to the community and workers will not be forced to be idle, feeling useless and unwanted, because no profit can be accrued from their work by the employer.

Eva Goodman

World View: Hot War in the Caucasus (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

If anything, the end of the Cold War has given even the least enlightened of us a geography lesson. Most of us are now all too familiar with names like Basra and Bosnia, Zagreb and Sarajevo and Mogadishu and Macedonia, and we can locate them on a map without too much difficulty. Grozny and Chechnya are the latest example of hitherto unheard of names that have suddenly rocketed themselves into the world news. But why the tiny Caucasus republic of Chechnya?

Yeltsin and his generals would have us that Chechnya is breaking laws laid down in the Russian Federation constitution by declaring itself a sovereign republic. Therefore, they must be returned to the fold at any cost.

One wonders at the importance tiny Chechnya holds for Yeltsin, considering its size. The old Soviet Union covered a total area of 8,647,172 square miles. Chechnya covers an area of 7,350 square miles (smaller in fact than Wales - 8,018 square miles). Surely Chechnya can't be that important - or can it?

To Yeltsin, the free-marketeer, Chechnya means vital roubles to a crippled Russian economy. Chechnya is basically essential to Russia's economic interests - all the more important since Georgia and Azerbaijan, both rich in natural resources, seceded successfully from the Soviet Union.

Oil Pipeline

The tiny republic of Chechnya, land locked on three sides by Russia, includes fertile farmland that straddles the wheat fields of southern Russia. The republic is also an important rail/road trade route to other trans-Caucasus republics. But most importantly, Chechnya controls the oil pipeline that connects the Black and Caspian Seas. Chechnya also claims several oilfields and a refinery and is further invaluable for the supply of chemicals, building materials and engineering.

So, like all wars in the modern world, the Chechen conflict has profit motive at its root, in particular who controls the Chechnya's mineral wealth and strategic pipeline.

The Chechen separatists feel they have every reason to claim independence. The area was initially forcibly incorporated into Russia by Tsarist expansionists some 150 years ago, since which time they have suffered the status of t the second class citizen, their Islamic faith making them subhuman to racist Russians and having to endure travel restrictions all too reminiscent of South Africa.

Stalin hated them so much that he had the entire population deported to central Asia in 1944 on trumped-up charges of Nazi collaboration -  a venture that wiped out 60 percent of the Chechen population.

Yeltsin has since blamed Chechens for every social evil facing Russia, from drug-trafficking and black-marketeering to the current trend for hijackings.

Chechnya sparked the current conflict in September 1991. When General Dzhokha Dudayev assumed power and declared Chechnya an independent republic. This was flatly denounced by Russia on November 1 1991.

Russian hostility to Chechnya's claims to sovereignty led some Chechen extremists to carry out hijackings to force their message home. This provided Moscow with the pretext to finance and supply weapons to the anti-Dudayev forces led by the pro-Yeltsin Umar Authurkhanov, in an attempt to nip Chechen nationalism in the bud.

Confidence in support from Moscow inspired anti-Dudayev forces to launch an attack on Grozny on November 25 last year, with the help of Russian mercenaries - an assault that was quickly repelled. What only became clear later was that the FSK (the successor to the KGB) had in fact recruited the mercenaries to fight Dudayev. The present crisis is, therefore, grounded in the covert backing Russian security forces gave to internal Chechen opposition forces. For it was the humiliation of that defeat that prompted the Russian massing of troops on the Chechen border at the beginning of December.

Opposition to the war

Polls since carried out in Russia have found that 75 percent of respondents oppose the war. The Russian media has also condemned the invasion of Chechnya, including the normally pro-Yeltsin Izvestia newspaper. On December 23, MPs in the Duma voted overwhelmingly for a halt to the war and even the army has been reported as feeling compunction pangs.

The only support Yeltsin has had for his Chechen operation has come from the parliamentary faction "Russia's Choice", the right-wing lunatic Vladimir Zhirinovsky and other nondescript opportunists. To the majority of Russians, Yeltsin, "the champion of democracy", is in reality a Stalin in miniature.

Many Russians are bewildered at Yeltsin's overnight change of character. For this is the same Yeltsin who came to world attention lambasting Gorbachev's attempt to stifle Lithuanian independence, begging army officers to disobey orders and calling on the UN to intervene.

Yeltsin, in three years, has learned quick that the rules of capitalism means that a country can only prosper if it is aggressive in defence of its economic interests. That's why the governments in the West have been so reluctant in coming forward with their criticism - because they have been doing the same thing as Yeltsin for 200 years.

John Bissett

Worker take-overs (2015)

Book Review from the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'An Alternative Labour History: Worker Control and Workplace Democracy', Edited by Dario Azzellini. Zed Books. 2015

This is a collection of articles describing – and advocating – ‘workers control’ at various points in history and in various places, particularly Latin America, today. The authors see workers spontaneously taking over workplaces as the way to a new society without private or state capitalists.

In times of economic and political chaos when factory owners lose control or abandon their factories, workers do not just sit back and do nothing. They take over the factories and try to keep production going.  This shows, as Azzellini points out in his introduction, that ‘workers do not need bosses to organize production’. But this has never lasted for any length of time.

Sooner or later ‘order’ has been restored, either by the old ruling class re-establishing control or by a new ruling class taking over, and ‘bosses’ have come back, whether the old private ones or new state ones. In some cases, however, the ’recuperated’ factories  have been given a legal basis as cooperatives producing for the market. But this is no solution.  Cooperatives, Azzelini writes in the section of his introduction ‘Limits and contradictions of the cooperative model’, ‘tend to operate within the capitalist logic of productivity and profitability … the pressure on them to a adopt a capitalist business logic is immense … cooperatives are embedded in the framework of the capitalist economy and compete on the capitalist market following the logic of profit-making … ‘

This is a better fate than being forcibly suppressed but is still a dead end. Which is why Azzelini favours a revolution in which there is a general movement of workers to ‘take and hold’ the means of production (to use the terminology of the old IWW, which surprisingly doesn’t get a mention).

A revolution led by workers’ councils would certainly be better than one led by a vanguard party but still underestimates the degree of understanding of those involved as to where they are going and ignores the need to win control of political power to permit this and/or to back it up.

Adam Buick

Sir Keith Joseph meets the SPGB (1975)

From the June 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Philippa Fawcett College 24th April 1975

Speakers: E. Hardy, SPGB, v Sir Keith Joseph, Conservative

Subject: THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM

The Philippa Fawcett is a teachers' training college. The debate was held during the afternoon and was attended by about 250 people, mainly students. Two south London newspapers and The Times had reporters and photographers present, but only the briefest of reports appeared. The following précis is from a tape recording.

Each speaker made a twenty-minute contribution. This was followed by a period for questions, to which both speakers were invited to reply. There was a final winding-up of five minutes for each speaker. The debate was attentively listened to and fairly conducted throughout.

Sir K. Joseph
Sir Keith Joseph spoke first. He devoted the first minutes to reading a statement to the press, condemning the proposal of Wedgwood Benn to use pension funds for investment purposes. Turning then to the subject of the debate he continued as follows:

There are broadly three different forms of organizing society. One, the mutual-agreement family arrangement suitable to a Kibbutz size community, but not relevant to a nation of 55 million people. Two, the Market system in which goods and services are produced and supplied according to demand by the price mechanism and profit and loss. Profit within the law under competition. Profit is a signal mechanism for moving men, women and resources from goods and services that are not required to goods and services that are required.

Three, the Command system where goods and services are laid down by a central bureaucracy. Mr. Hardy is as much against the Command mechanism as I. He is in favour of the first mechanism. The question before us is, which system provides the best guarantee of prosperity, freedom, choice and humanity. The optimum combination of all four?

In a small system of simple needs, perhaps a mass meeting could make its decisions. This could not apply to a society of 55 million people. The simple life would rule out such things as anaesthetics. How do producers decide what people want to use?

The Central Committee in a Command Society cannot make decisions that satisfy people. Are we going to spend more money on fighting pollution, for example?

The Market system is based on the proposition you only make a profit if you make and sell what people want. If you don not make what people want, you do not make a profit. This means widespread decision-making, decentralized control spread among thousands of small, medium and large firms. Central government lays down the laws for everyone in the Market system, regulates the degree of pollution.

It is perfectly compatible with humane society. Inventor, critic, reformer, writer, artist — five most crucial people — are free within the market economy.

Marx has changed history more than any individual in the past hundred and fifty years. He was supported by Engels, a Manchester business man.

How do we justify the vast profits of property? Somebody had to take the risk. The only justification for profit is risk.

Civil servants' decisions do not have to be right, they do not stand to lose. The Market system leaves decision-making to those who stand to gain if the decision is right and stand to lose if the decision is wrong. Look at Switzerland: we could be as prosperous and humane.

E. Hardy
The chairman then announced the next speaker, E. Hardy for the SPGB.

He began by drawing attention to the fact that the Market economy as described does not behave as planned.

We must remind you what capitalism is. Wealth is produced by the working class who keep society going, but they do not own the means of production, they do not own the wealth they produce. When no profit can be made, capitalism curtails production. Workers become unemployed. The normal phases of capitalism are expansion, boom, stagnation and crisis. There were twelve crises during the nineteenth century, including a crisis lasting nearly twenty years towards the end of the century.

When there is a crisis it does not mean that capitalism has gone wrong; capitalism has always behaved like this. The Conservatives have been protectionists and then free traders and turned back to protection again. In recent years they have gone in for all the variations of income policy. None of it makes any difference. Nothing can be done about it; capitalism is always the same.

There had been a growing recognition that perhaps Marx was right. Then in the years between the wars a blight fell on the world. Its name was Keynes: an undiluted tragedy from the standpoint of the working class.

Tories, Liberals and the Labour Party all believed in Keynes. Keynes said Marx was wrong. Capitalism can be controlled. You can have full employment, no more crises or wars.

The Market economy is unregenerate capitalism given a new name. They have not got capitalism under control. They have not solved unemployment. We are now in a crisis. They should go back and recognize Marx was right. Keynes was wrong. All past policies including incomes policies have failed.

The SPGB never supported nationalization, which is state capitalism. Private or state makes no difference. We are Marxist. Marx's conception of Socialism is a society where you do not have a wages system. There would no prices or profits. Production would be solely for use, and free access on a world scale. People will co-operate to produce and take out of what is produced that which they need. You cannot do anything with capitalism. It creates class conflict, industrial strife, and war. You must look for an alternative.

What is there to prevent the world becoming Socialist? What obstacle? People won't cooperate? — why can people on a large scale not cooperate?

E. Hardy put a question to Sir Keith Joseph: Do you feel incapable of co-operating for your own advantage? Sir Keith he did feel incapable. E. Hardy continued. What has Benn got to do with Marxism? Nothing. He does not claim to be a Marxist. Sir Keith had claimed the contest in the world was between Marxism and democracy. We are the only democratic party in this country.

The Tory Party has a long list of nationalization projects in its history. Rolls Royce, UCS, Post, Telegraphs, BBC, London Passenger Transport, Harland and Wolff. When Benn nationalized Court Line, he gleefully reminded the Tories it was done under an act passed by a Tory government. Nationalization has nothing to do with Socialism.

Heath had said "no rescue for lame ducks". Mrs. Thatcher advocated rescue on a temporary basis — like going in for drug addiction on a temporary basis. We do not say civil servants can run capitalism better than the whiz-kids. Nothing can be done with capitalism; if you will not go in for Socialism, you will be stuck with capitalism. It will be the same in the future as it always has been in the past.

Questions from the floor
The chairman invited questions.
Q. Under the market economy why are goods destroyed if they cannot be sold at a profit? Education is the first to be hit in a crisis.
A. Sir Keith Joseph.
Surplus food in America rescued Russia, Many poor countries neglect their own agriculture. We have crippled capitalism in this country. Negative income tax is needed to bring people to a minimum level of income to be able to buy what they need.

A. E. Hardy.
Capitalism has never produced enough for the people of the world. Capitalism has enormously increased potential. The largest industry under capitalism is the killing industry. Socialism will get rid of the killing industry.

Q. How does capitalism cause war?
A. E. Hardy.
Looking for markets. Stalin said it was necessary for Russian industry to find outside markets. Nigeria — oil discoveries were the main factor in sparking the civil war. All capitalist powers are expansionists. The bigger ones are simply stronger than the smaller ones. Capitalism and war are inseparable. Socialism will have no market economy. Capitalism not only destroys world resources in wartime, it also destroys them in peacetime. Russia and China behave like capitalist powers threatening each other with armed forces, because they are capitalist powers.

A. Sir Keith Joseph.
The war between Arab and Jew had nothing to do with capitalism. It was a war about national and ethnic identities, and possession of territories. Mr. Hardy had no world to defend.

Summing up
The chairman asked each speaker to make a brief closing statement.

Sir Keith Joseph.
How simple it is to argue for a system that is purely emotional. Mr. Hardy is arguing for pie in the sky. You cannot get all people in the world  to agree. Marx left no room for the owner, who is part of the productive mechanism, because of his willingness to take risks to ensure supply in the Market system. The investment occurs to give people what they need.

E. Hardy.
Sir Keith Joseph has to defend the shocking system of capitalism. Capitalism was only a notion when it began. All the reformers have tried to be practical and improve capitalism. They have solved nothing. The utopians are the ones who think they can do something with capitalism. You can't, you have to go in for Socialism.

H.B.

This is an abridged report of the debate. You can hear the tape recording of the debate at the following link.

The Philanthropists (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, by Robert Tressell; edited text published by Grant Richards in 1914. Complete text published by Lawrence & Wishart in 1951

This novel may come to be recognised as one of the masterpieces of this century. A novel, after all, is a piece of fiction which tells us something of life and of society. Hazlitt said about the novel: "We find here a close imitation of man and manners: we see the very web and texture of society as it really exists, and as we meet it when we come into the world." And Sir Desmond McCarthy wrote: "It is extremely doubtful whether the aim of the novel is to make an aesthetic appeal. Passages in it may do so: but it aims also at satisfying our curiosity about life as much as satisfying the aesthetic sense." If there are the criteria by which we are to judge novels, then The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists must stand very high indeed. It tells us more about "society as it really exists," and about human beings and their relations with each other—"man and manners"—than you wind in many well-stocked libraries.

For the great central relationship in our society is that between employer and worker: by it, to a greater or less degree, almost all the other relationships in society are affected. And that is Tressell's theme. In a sparse, direct style (all the more remarkable when one remembers the level of popular writing in the pre-Great War era out of which his book came) Tressell tells the story of a group of men, painters and labourers who are re-decorating a house. He follows several of them (in particular the central figure, Frank Owen) to their homes, and shows how they live. Partly through the arguments among the men at work, partly through their experiences in their daily lives, Tressell lays bare the real nature of society.

One can marvel how apposite (despite changes in inessentials) the book's picture of society is today. You may get the flavour of the book from a random quotation:

"But money in itself is not wealth," returned Owen;—"It's of no use whatever."
At this there was another outburst of jeering laughter.
"Supposing, for example, that you and Harlow were shipwrecked on a desolate island, and you had nothing from the wreck but a bag containing a thousand sovereigns, and he had a tin of biscuits and a bottle of water."
"Make it beer!" cried Harlow appealingly.
"Who would be the richer man, you or Harlow?"
"But then you see we ain't shipwrecked on no dissolute island at all," sneered Crass. "That's the worse of your arguments. You can't never get very far without supposing some bloody ridiculous thing or other. Never mind about supposing things wot ain't true; let's 'ave facts and common sense.
"'Ear, 'ear," said old Linden. "That's wot we want—a little common sense."
What do you mean by poverty, then?" asked Easton.
"What I call poverty is when people are not able to secure for themselves al' the benefits of civilisation—the necessaries, comforts, pleasures and refinements of life: leisure, books, theatres, pictures, music, holidays, travel, good and beautiful homes, good clothes, good and pleasant food . . . If a man is only able to provide himself and his family with the bare necessaries of existence, that man's family is living in poverty. Since he cannot enjoy the advantages of civilisation he might just as well be a savage; better, in fact, for a savage does not know what he is deprived of . . ."

But one would have to quote the whole book to do it justice. It makes you laugh, it saddens you, but most of all it makes you angry. It is impossible not to be deeply moved by it. If you have read it already, you will not need to be told how good it is. If you haven't, then buy or borrow a copy as soon as possible.

Alwyn Edgar

Pathfinders: Post-election Blues (2015)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia has been claiming since late last year that the Scottish referendum on independence was rigged by Westminster in favour of a ‘no’ vote (Guardian, 19 September 2014). Following up this exercise in pots calling kettles black, they have hailed the landslide victory of the SNP in the general election as proof positive that they were right. How, their propagandists want to know, could Scotland be split down the middle on independence one minute, and then vote unanimously for the Scottish National Party the next, if there wasn’t substantial monkey business going on? Many confused UK voters may be wondering the same thing.

Let’s put aside the obvious retort that if Westminster was going to rig the independence referendum why didn’t they rig the Scottish vote in the general election as well? The real answer to this conundrum is not nearly so cloak-and-dagger, though it does remain puzzling to many. Greens and especially UKIP voters woke up wide-eyed with shock and cries of ‘We wuz robbed’ on post-election day upon finding that their votes had gone en-masse down the toilet while only Tory votes had the magical power to produce MPs.

People just don’t seem to get how first-past-the-post works, despite having the whole business out at tedious length in a special referendum in 2011. If your vote isn’t for the winner, it’s the same as if you hadn’t bothered voting at all. The 2014 Scottish referendum was a close-run thing, with a 55.3 percent No vote against a 44.7 percent Yes vote on an 84.59 percent turnout. In the General Election, assuming just a two-horse race between the SNP and Labour and assuming the same voting ratio in each seat, the result would still have been a SNP landslide. That’s not how it was, of course, because there were several horses in the field to split the anti-SNP vote. In the event, Labour had just under 25 percent of the vote, Cons had 15 percent and Lib Dems had 7.5 percent. When you add this lot up and throw in the dreg Other votes it comes to about 50 percent. So the SNP landslide of 56 out of 59 seats was derived from just 50 percent of the votes. Which represents just 5 percent more nationalist fervour (or dislike of Miliband’s pink Tories) than we saw in the referendum.

No need for Kremlin Konspiracies then. But it is still surprising how surprised people are about this FPTP system. It’s as if nobody can remember the debate anymore. Matters seemed clear enough back in 2011. Aside from a lot of guff about fair representation and the hallowed ideals of democracy, the choice was between a political system that was forever locked into a swinging pendulum between two identikit parties which spent their entire decade-long terms undoing each other’s works, and a Euro-style consensus politics where political horse-trading, coalitions and compromises were the order of the day. In the one system you get a periodic rollercoaster of drama and convulsion ultimately culminating in no change, while in the other you get a lot of humdrum sameness culminating in no change. Around 70 percent of British voters chose the drama. And now they act surprised when they get it.

Socialists have varying opinions on this matter. Ultimately though, for socialism to be established across the world, and for it to work, support for it would have to be so massive that it wouldn’t make any difference what voting system was in place. There is the more vexing question of how to do voting in a socialist society, given that mathematically-speaking there is no voting system which can be ‘fair’ to everyone. This sobering fact was first established in 1950 by Nobel prize-winning economist Kenneth Arrow, whose ‘impossibility theorem’ surveyed all the possible voting systems then known and found that none could meet all his proposed criteria for fairness. Since then new contenders have come forward, or at least old ones in new livery. One of these is ‘range-voting’, a style of voting used in medieval Venice and more recently to rate YouTube videos, where you give candidates a score out of 10, or give them no score, or the same score, with the highest aggregate score giving the winner (New Scientist, 12 April 2008). But there are downsides to every system. In many, a candidate can win even if they were not most people’s first choice. Plus the systems can be gamed by strategic voting, a tactic quite likely in capitalist elections if not in socialism.

Still, this is not a question for socialists to get bogged down in. People in socialism would choose the system which delivered the greatest fairness to the greatest number. If it turned out not to work, they’d try something else. Formal voting might not even be a large factor in socialist society, since for all we know people might devise more informal ways of operating society which did not require it. How often do you see hands-in-the-air voting systems employed in groups organising a party or a picnic or a volunteer building project, after all? It might be that voting would only occur, on the whole, on the rare occasions when disputes arose, or things went wrong, rather than as a regular and ritualised social institution. How this might work, and work transparently, is not for us to guess. What is true is that we can’t make assumptions about democratic structures in socialism based on structures which exist in today’s capitalist world, where an elaborate apparatus exists mainly for show. Opponents like to caricature socialism as endless meetings getting in the way of real work. Socialists who are accustomed to today’s procedural complexities have sometimes projected similar procedures into the future, scaling them up to the level of global super-conferences and the like and thus inadvertently lending support to the caricaturists. What gets forgotten in all this is the issue of trust. As we have learned to trust scientists to do a good job, and the scientific method to expose those who don’t, so we might learn to trust other socialists to do a good job, and the socialist political method to uncover bad jobs where necessary, rather than set ourselves the impossible task of personally scrutinising every decision, every resource budget and every policy document for signs of weakness. The emancipation of humanity from wage-servitude doesn’t have to mean we all become full-time nit-pickers and bureaucrats. It could just as easily mean a welcome release from obsessing about the democratic process itself.

Paddy Shannon

The People You Meet—The Grocer (1950)

From the May 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

He was something apart from the working class. True, he was born in Poplar; indeed he lives there still, but whereas most of his neighbours live in tenements or houses he lives in the dark, cramped quarters above his shop. He is a "small business man."

He recalls the days when his kind were more numerous, when the majority of goods and services requested by those around him were supplied by such as he. Every district had its Welsh dairy, its German delicatessen and Chinese laundry. Now it's the United Dairies, Sainsbury's, Woolworth's, Forty Shilling Tailors, and of course that most villainous of all rivals, the Co-op.

Naturally he is concerned with his future. On one hand the Beaverbrook press tells him that the Labour Party is his enemy; on the other hand the Daily Herald points out that they are the protectors of his kind. He sees evidence on both sides. Beaverbrook has never vehemently attacked the chainstores, and though he has vaguely mentioned the restriction of monopolies, the bite of his venom is directed at the Co-ops and nationalised industries. On the other hand the Labour Party expose the monopolies in cement and sugar but advocate nationalisation and support its child, the co-operative. At election times he runs from one party to the other, completely lost.

Then he met an organisation that told him his kind was doomed, not by the political "right" or "left," but by the very conditions of the capitalist system. That was the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Consider the small trader. Is he a capitalist? He owns a microscopic portion of the means of distribution: Yet he is unable to live without working. Indeed, to avoid the direct supervision of a foreman or boss he works a darned sight harder than the normal worker. He is respected too. Unless he orders so-and-so from a firm they will not sell him this or that. If he deals with one firm another will not supply him with a different variety of the same ware. In other words, the goods he sells are dictated to him by someone far more powerful than himself. As a result he is no more than a glorified salesman working without a basic salary but for a hard-earned commission in the form of a narrow margin of profit upon the goods he sells. To all intents and purposes he is a member of the working class.

The decline of his kind has been a gradual but steady process. In the field of production as well as distribution thousands of small businesses have been killed by competition. One firm introduces a new technique of production. The cost of production falls and with it the price of the commodity concerned. Rival concerns must either do likewise of perish, and as through the years the competition has grown more intense, many have either fallen by the wayside or been devoured by the larger concerns. Still the process continues. The "little man" may fight but the relentless juggernaut of the system which forces capital to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands will beat him in the end.

His answer lies, like that of every other worker, in the establishment of Socialism where there will be no businesses, large or small, but production for the satisfaction of human needs.

Ronald.

The Death of a Socialist Pioneer (1968)

Obituary from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

On the first Tuesday (23 May, 1911) after arriving in Vancouver from Manchester, England, I joined Local Vancouver No. 1, Socialist Party of Canada, and there met, along with a number of other young enthusiastic socialists, "Jack" MacDonald. We became close associates, an association which lasted throughout his lifetime.

In the Vancouver Local of 1911, a Local of approximately 120 members, there were such stalwarts as E. T. Kingsley, D. G. McKenzie, Jack Harrington, W. W. Lefaux, Jack Burroughs, and many others including the mentor of the Economic Class, G. D. Morgan.

The Local at that time conducted a propaganda meeting each Sunday evening in the Empress Theatre with an audience usually of 2,000, an Economics Class on Sunday, a History Class on Monday, a Business Meeting on Tuesday, a Philosophy Class on Wednesday and a Speakers Class on Thursday with a Social Evening on Saturday, together with nightly soap-box street corner meetings usually carried by H. L. Fitzgerald (an orator if ever there was one) and Chas. Lestor—well-known in his last years to the London members of your party.

MacDonald and I together with other young members came to known as the Young Turks, and through our efforts caused the withdrawal throughout the Province of British Columbia (outside of Vancouver) of certain reformist elements which had appeared in the Party.

It might be of interest to note that the SPC was the result of the merging of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Canada (located on Vancouver Island) and the B.C. Socialist Party (on the Mainland). The Revolutionary and the B.C. were dropped from each group and the Socialist Party of Canada was thus formed.

This was around 1902 and in 1903 twenty-seven Locals existed in British Columbia alone. In that year, 1903, a Provincial Election took place and 23 candidates were put up. To me, most significant of that time was the "Election Platform", the most succinct ever offered and a pattern worthy of copy when one today is accosted with extreme wordiness of some of our election manifestos. The Platform was one short sentence: "THE ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM AND OPPOSITION TO ALL PALLIATIVES".

In time, we of the Young Turks found ourselves in the position of having to carry on most of the Propaganda and MacDonald and I, starting from scratch (with a few others) became speakers and writers. An article of some years back in the Western Socialist, "Other Times." by MacDonald, gives his opinion of those days.

"Mac" quickly developed as a propagandist both with pen and voice. Readers of the Western Socialist must know of his facility as a writer, his subtle humour, his satiric touch, his penetration into the questions of the day, his capacity for socialist analysis. I can testify to his equal powers as a Platform man. And so close did he and I become that invariably Mac would be designated by the Local to be Chairman when I was the speaker and vice-versa.

From Vancouver MacDonald went to the States, made a visit to Australia, and after many vicissitudes and a few menial jobs in and around the Bay Area, he opened a small book-shop in San Francisco, later expanding into a large one and finally into the huge store on Turk. near Market. Mac's store became famous, not only in the Bay Area, but throughout the world. It was often called "The Cross-Roads of the World" and people from many lands were visitors. During this period he organised the Jack London Labor College and many pupils went from there with a socialist education.

He debated with Ernest Untermann and according to those present I understand that Mac's attack was so devastating that Untermann's sister broke into tears.

From his early Vancouver days to the end Mac was an outstanding exponent of Scientific Socialism.

Fraternally,

W. A. (Bill) Pritchard, Los Angeles.

Cooking the Books: Property Poverty (2015)

The Cooking the Books Column from the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Property poverty’, read a headline in the Oxford Mail (30 April): ‘Soaring rents leave workers no chance to buy their own home.’ The article explained that workers were unable to save money for a deposit to begin buying a house or flat because ‘soaring housing costs mean Oxford workers are spending increasingly high proportions of their wages on renting a place in the city.’

Capitalism is in fact based on ‘property poverty’ for the vast majority, but not necessarily of a ‘property’ to live in, but property in the means of production, property in assets that yield an unearned income. Workers will never be able to afford to buy enough such property so as to be able to live off the income without having to sell their ability to work on the jobs market.

In that sense, the wage and salary working class is a property-less class even if some do, after years of hard work as an employee, eventually come – by finally paying off the mortgage – to own the house or flat where they live. But even this seems to be becoming ‘unaffordable’ for increasing numbers of better paid workers. Not that owning your own home makes you a capitalist any more than owning your own car does.  Neither are income-yielding assets.

‘Affordable housing’ was a term much bandied about during the election campaign. It’s one of those things nobody can be against: who would not be in favour of lower house prices and rents? But the term also has a precise, legal definition: any rent which is less than 80 percent of the market rate (still unaffordable for many of course).

Property companies building houses and blocks of flats for profit are not going to invest in building any for people who can’t afford to pay a rent that will bring them the going rate of profit. Left to themselves, in the present state of the market they would build only luxury flats. To try to get round this, planning law allows councils to make it a condition for getting planning permission that the property company agrees to provide some ‘affordable’ housing as well. Councils can’t impose this and so have to negotiate it, with the property companies being in the stronger bargaining position as if a council asks for too much ‘affordable housing’ they can simply walk away. In effect, they are being asked to pay for planning permission, a modern, institutionalised, legal equivalent of the backhander that notoriously used to be paid to councillors and council officials.

The Labour Party’s election promise to make housing ‘affordable’ was to bring in rent controls. The proposal was modest enough: no increase in the rent above the rate of increase of inflation for three years (and then the landlord could ask for what the market would bear). It was met by howls of protest by those investing in housing for profit.

‘The Association of Rental Letting Agents (ARLA) said that three-quarters of its members feared the plans would "see landlords exit the market and reduce supply" … The British Property Federation has warned that the rent control plans "could deter much needed investment in the housing sector"’ (Daily Telegraph, 27 April).

But it’s true. Rent controls, by keeping rents below what the market would bear, would mean that there would be less profit to be made out of building or letting housing for rent. Inevitably, given the nature of capitalism as a profit-driven system, this would mean less investment in housing building. Less profit = less production. It’s simple, if stupid.

The Party in Wartime (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

I AM OPPOSED TO WAR.  A phrase uttered by hundreds of thousands, including the handful of Socialists — members of the SPGB. To the many an emotive reaction, and empty words when the crunch came. To the few, a logical stand from their Socialist convictions, and as valid in time of war as in peace.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain since its formation has been opposed to war. Opposition because war is the normal development of capitalism. A system based on a market economy; on competition; on a quest for raw materials and outlets for finished products. As we are opposed to capitalism in all its forms, we are opposed to war. A review of the Socialist Standard, particularly during the war years puts on record our attitude. Meetings were held — yes, during the war — putting our point of view. A masterly pamphlet The Socialist Party and War is available from our literature department. No one can doubt our stand.

But what of the individual members? In 1914-18, pro-war hysteria, blatantly whipped up by the Government, Church, etc, rebounded on our members with their "unpopular views". Many went on the run, Some ended up in prisons. Our organization was stretched to its limits. But we came through determined more than ever to uphold the Socialist cause.

In 1939-45 most members of military age registered as conscientious objectors. We argued our case at the Tribunals — a political objection to war. Not the namby pamby attitude of the pacifist or the hypocritical stand of the religious. Our was not an easy task. Tribunals often found it impossible to accept the Socialist objection to war, and so again, members refused to obey the Courts.

Some went to gaol; others on the run — no identity cards, no ration books. Some finished up as land workers. The fields of East Anglia were the scene of many a discussion between our members and the traditional agricultural workers. Again, not an easy time for the Party organization. A bomb put paid to our Head Office and we moved to a temporary home in the plushier W.1 district. Those members still around carried on with indoor and outdoor meetings. The Socialist Standard never missed an issue. Some members were killed — bombs have no respect for political commitment.

In this special issue a few personal reflections. A spell in Wormwood Scrubs Prison; two other party members also in residence but in a different wing — no communication. Outdoor meetings at Beresford Square, Woolwich, where 75 per cent. of the audience were in uniform, listening sympathetically to the Socialist case and this included our attitude to war. A screaming bunch of Communists in Hyde Park, voicing their opposition to the war. They had not heard the radio announcement of Hitler's invasion of Russia, and the consequent change of policy by the Communist Party, now in favour of prosecuting the war with all speed. Meetings in Hyde Park brought to a sudden halt by the sirens and bursts of gunfire. The use of Lyons Corner House (unknown to the management) for many a meeting of the Propaganda Committee.

We all have our stories to recount. But above all the SPGB never wavered in its opposition to WAR. And its opposition to the greater problem — capitalism. The only voice for Socialism was heard loud and clear.

Cyril May

"The Year of the Bomb" (1955)

From the February 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Friday, the 31st December, 1954, saw the publication under the above heading of one of the most blatantly tendencious articles that has ever appeared in the Manchester Guardian. It was like the Daily Worker in reverse, and we feel sure it is an augury of what the Soviet bloc must expect throughout the coming year in the verbal war between East and West.

The article points out the terrible effects of the H-bomb, in particular "that the biological consequences are uncertain. Some scientists say that radiation may cause the birth of deficient or deformed children . . . " The article then goes on to point out that people "have begun to grasp what these bombs mean. They have begun to ask whether any government could ever use such weapons. The answer, a bitter and unhappy answer, is that some governments might. We cannot count on a Communist Government respecting the interests of common humanity." The article also mentions the millions murdered and imprisoned in Soviet labour camps in Northern Siberia.

No one could detest the Russian system more than we Socialists—and what was said about Russia is quite true, but it is equally valid for the Western Powers. Apart from the fact that the first concentration camps were set up by the British in South Africa during the Boer War, and the slave labour in the Crown colonies, it is also a fact that the first atom bombs were dropped by the Americans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The effects of the bombs at the time were unknown but it was known that they would be devastating. The biological consequences in the case of the Atom bomb were and still are uncertain. The same held good for the Atom bomb then as for the H-Bomb now, And who knows what genetical monstrosities may not turn up in the future, caused by the Nagasaki and Hiroshima handiwork? Yet all this was done ostensibly on behalf of "Democracy" and the "Western Way of Life". There was little respect for "the interests of common humanity" in that particular instance.

All this of course contrasts rather strangely with the one-sided article in the Manchester Guardian. The truth of the matter is that when property is threatened governments everywhere fall over themselves in their haste to protect it, and use every weapon at their disposal in that endeavour.

Who drops the H-bomb first, and where, is dependent upon whose interests are threatened and how much—and it might be the Western powers who do the dropping again! Whoever drops the H-bomb (if it is dropped), East or West, we can be sure that it will be in the interests of "Peace", the Eastern or Western "Way of Life".

As Socialists we have continually pointed out that the only solution to A-bombs, H-bombs, and all the other horrible instruments of modern warfare is to get rid of this capitalist system, and replace it with a society in which the means of living are held in common and equality of access prevails. Then, and only then, with the abolition of this system, with its racial, religious, national, class and individual antagonisms and prejudices, can we live a life where social harmony and equality will be an established fact; and war, poverty and insecurity a thing of the past.

Jon Keys

A Scottish Red Herring (1939)

From the August 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

The self-styled democratic champions of the British Empire are wont to ignore the violence and intrigue which have contributed to its upbuilding, not only abroad, but in these islands.

When their attention is called to these factors by foreign dictators they take refuge in the feeble excuse that it all happened a long time ago; an excuse which seems to make very little impression upon the spokesmen of movements for "national liberty."

In the case of Ireland we have had violent examples, recently, of the bitterness which still survives (in spite of a partial self-government), as a result of centuries of oppression. In Scotland a similar sentiment takes a more pacific, but none the less definite form.

The Scottish National Party is endeavouring to enlist the support of workers there, on the ground that they are worse fed and housed than their fellow-slaves in England, and that there is a larger proportion of their number out of work. It proposes a whole series of reforms for the special benefit of workers in Scotland, such as increased wages, shorter hours, better housing, and public works, holidays with pay, etc., and with this avowed end in view, calls for the restoration of the Scottish Parliament, which voted for its own extinction some two hundred and thirty-odd years ago.

Our readers will notice the extremely moderate nature of the claims and proposals of this Party. It dare not, in face of patent facts, suggest that the position of the English workers is a happy one, in spite of centuries of self-government and generations of working-class enfranchisement. It does not claim that Home Rule for Scotland will abolish unemployment, slums, underfeeding, etc; it merely hints that they can be reduced thereby to the English level. Scottish workers may well ask themselves whether it is worth their while to go through so much to get so little. Other reform parties in the past, such as the Liberal and Labour Parties, both in England and Scotland, have at least held out a more glittering bait than this. Hence, perhaps, no stampede of Scottish workers to the National Party has so far been recorded.

Moreover, the logic of the Nationalists, even with regard to their limited claims, is decidedly faulty. It is notorious that there are several districts in England, chiefly in the North, knows as depressed areas. These areas can show more intense degrees of poverty than obtain in certain other parts of the country. Is this to be explained by saying that the Government is concentrated in the hands of Southerners or is situated in the South? Would the state of affairs be appreciably altered if an independent seat of government were set up in Barnsley or West Hartlepool?

In their leaflet "Crisis!" the Scottish National Party bemoan the extent to which work has been transferred from Scotland to England soil by the railway companies, and the number of factories which have been closed in the former country as compared with the latter. It may not be out of place to remind them that English capitalists do not hesitate to close works in Lancashire and open others in India or China, when it proves profitable, and no British Government has shown either ability or willingness to interfere with this process. Capitalists are not primarily concerned with geographical boundaries or the nationality of the people whom they exploit.

On the other hand, the Scottish nation, whether independent or united with England, is divided into classes, as is society elsewhere. It is this division which accounts for the existence of the evils from which the Scottish workers suffer. English rule did not account for the fact that the depopulation of the Scottish Highlands led to the congestion in its industrial slums. The Scottish chieftains themselves turned out their own clansmen in order to make way, first for sheep and later for deer, in order to fill their own pockets. The notorious Duchess of Sutherland, for example, had 15,000 people hunted out in the six years 1814-20, and called in British soldiers to enforce the eviction. The political union merely facilitated the development of capitalist robbery with violence.

Thus the history of Scotland, while differing in detail from that of England, followed the same general course. By their divorce from the soil, a nation of peasant cultivators were converted into wage-slaves, exploited by a class ready to convert the world into one gigantic market. The forces of competition thus let loose may be held in check to some degree by national legislatures, but no final solution for the havoc they create can be found along such lines. The problem is essentially an international one, and must be internationally solved. That, however, calls not for National parties, but for parties in all countries which clearly recognise the common interest of the workers of the world, namely, to achieve their emancipation as a class.

When the workers get upon the right track of understanding their position they will cease to worry their brains over comparatively trivial differences in their conditions, whether as between nations or between districts or separate towns. They will recognise that they suffer varying degrees of poverty because at present they exist merely to produce profits for their masters, and that it is a matter of comparative indifference to them whether these masters are English or Scots, Germans or Japanese.

Their aim will be to abolish masters of every nationality and to organise the production of wealth for their common good.

Eric Boden

Racist myths (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rather like Arctic explorers throwing chunks of meat off the sledge to distract the pursuing wolf pack, British governments during the 1960s and 1970s enacted a series of immigration laws designed to assuage a racist appetite which was threatening to devour quite a few parliamentary seats. Whatever else was said about them, it was black immigration the Acts were intended to reduce. It was argued that for the government to be seen to be doing this would take the sting out of the racist propaganda that Britain was about to be engulfed in a human flood from Africa, Asia and and the West Indies. Another way of putting this would have been to argue that passing racist laws would actually reduce racism. All three big parties were clear at the last election that there is no going back to the days of free immigration for anyone from the old colonies. The Tories, as might be expected, promised tougher curbs on entry; the Alliance said they accepted the need for immigration controls; and the Labour Party dressed up their betrayal of their supposed principle of international solidarity in a promise to run a system of "firm and fair" controls. As a sop to any anxieties caused by the Immigration Acts and the human cost of this attempt to appease racism, Race Relations Acts were introduced, supposedly to ensure that those immigrants who were allowed to come here should be free of discrimination. 

Racist violence

The first immigration Act was passed in 1962 and the first Race Relations Act in 1965. But just as laws cannot eliminate poverty or slums or disease so they fail to abolish prejudice. It is no longer legal, for example, to end an advertisement for accommodation with the phrase "Sorry, no Irish or coloureds" as was once common - but that should deceive nobody. A recent series of TV programmes exposed the different treatment received by two journalists in Bristol, obviously related to the fact that one was white and one black. Anyone with an interest in the subject does not need such programmes to inform them that prejudice still festers; they do not need to witness the sickening bigotry of the man in the Bristol pub who intoned "There's a nig-nog on the fireplace" when the black journalist came quietly into the bar. The anger and disgust which this kind of behaviour provokes could persuade many people that they should be out "smashing" racism, breaking up demonstrations, driving racists off the streets and outlawing their organisations. It is not that simple; for just as racist ideas cannot be blanked out by legislation neither can they be affected by attempts to outdo the racists in repressive tactics. Anyone who relies for their kicks on regular punch-ups with National Front skinheads may find this boring but if we are able to tackle racism effectively it must be through understanding its dimensions, its background and its place in this society.

In the days when racism meant the Nazis trying to wipe out the Jews, or the Ku Klux Klan's grisly madness in the Deep South, or the white minorities in countries like South Africa and Rhodesia holding down the black majority, British politicians often took comfort in the assumption that it was not happening here, not through any special enlightenment among British people but because their tolerance was not being out to the test. In any case the omens were not promising, in view of the prejudice against Jews which had long operated in this country. When the Commonwealth immigrants began to arrive here, starting with the West Indians in the early 1950s, working class racism proved to be easily stimulated, with the additional factor that these victims of discrimination were so easily identifiable. It is not possible, in 1988, to argue that the situation is any easier; apart from the prejudice there is also a lot of persistent racial violence in large towns with a large black population. 

Violence often springs from panic - a frantic, impulsive, incoherent response to difficulties which are imperfectly understood. For example, the slogan "Britain for the British" is easy and punchy - good for demonstrations and carrying a clear implication of violence and repression. It expresses the theory that life in Britain would be a lot better - less poverty, better housing, more accessible medical care, full employment - if only British people were allowed to live here, But who are the "British"? How are they defined? What would be the practical effects of keeping out everyone who did not fall into the definition and even if that were possible, when we had a country inhabited only "British" people would they in fact own it? The slogan, trumpeted so confidently on many a racist march, betrays a deep misunderstanding of society, of how it works and why.

Political opportunism

Working class panic in this matter has been mirrored by that among their political leaders. Perhaps the most notable example was the reaction to Enoch Powell's infamous speech in April 1968. This ex-professor of Greek, with his supposedly ice-cold logical mind, spouted fanciful images of dear old ladies cowering receiving parcels of excrement through their letter boxes and of the River Tiber foaming with blood. Powell's speech received a reception among some workers which bordered on the rapturous. This man who prided himself on his uncommon aloofness was suddenly in touch with the common people; gangs of dockers and market porters marched through the streets to testify to the fact. Less glamourously, the speech touched an unhappy chord in the Labour Party's memory, of the loss in 1964 of the parliamentary seats at Smethwick and Leyton, apparently because of their reputation for being soft on immigration. Their reaction was to rush through another Immigration Act, clearly aimed at hampering the influx of Asians from Kenya and Uganda , which could be done only through the redefinition of British nationality. The Labour Party had come a long way, since the days when Hugh Gaitskell so vehemently denounced the Tory 1962 Immigration Act, comforting his members with the implication that their party would never stoop to any similar denial of international solidarity.

Racist lies

It says a great deal about the "values" of this allegedly civilised society that an idea as widespread and destructive as racism exists without any strong theoretical support. To begin with, if the theory of race -  that human beings are divided into distinct groups with varying abilities and behaviour - is at all valid it should be possible to say what constitutes a race, what are the limits and what decides which race a person belongs to. In fact there has never been any agreement on this, which is why the "experts" have differed so widely in their estimates of the number of races in existence. Are the "British" a race on their own, which would indicate that there are an enormous number of races in the world, or are they part of a larger, more widespread race? People who do not profess to any expertise on the subject, but are sure of the validity of racism, operate on a rather cruder level. Some complain that black people are lazy while other resent what they see as blacks taking over "white" jobs. Jews were once sneered at for a supposed deficiency in martial eagerness; the recent activities of the Israel armed forces has caused that particular myth to be replaced with another, about their innate belligerence.

Among those who have tried to legalise racial boundaries confusion has reigned; at the beginning of the century in the Southern states of America the legal definition of a negro varied from state to state, so that a person could change their skin colour by crossing a state boundary. More recently, the attempts of the South African government at race definition end, somewhat despairingly, in the formula that a white person is someone who in appearance is obviously white or generally accepted as white but excludes any person who, although in appearance obviously white, is generally accepted as coloured. Perhaps this is a clear, workable definition to the lawyers and politicians of Pretoria but other people may well find it an impenetrable muddle.

All this makes the entire concept of racial purity, that favourite object of all racists, look decidedly shaky. Racial purity could come about only through a group keeping themselves genetically exclusive, which would mean living in rigid isolation and breeding only within the group. To achieve that would mean a separation from the mainstream of human activity - which is, after all, so much a matter of migration. It is true to say that humans have always been migratory. In primitive times they spread over the earth in search of sources of food; later there was the enforced migration of slavery; and later yet the movement from one country to another to meet a demand for labour. Today, under modern capitalism, rapid travel and communications answer the needs of developed industry and commerce. So human migration, with its consequent cross-breeding, is a fact of life; to stand aprt from it means to stagnate - which is another way of saying that genetic mixing has been, and is, beneficial to human society. In Britain, whatever the National Front may think, the situation is beyond recall for this is a country with a long history of exporting and importing people. It is nonsense to talk about the "British race" in the sense of a group with an exclusive, unmixed genetic background. The "culture" which racists are so ardent to defend is the outcome of centuries of cross-fertilising among humans, in response to their material situation; it has nothing to do with our genetic construction.

Modern prejudice

Why then is racism so potent a political force? Why, to give a most recent example, did Le Pen win such support among French workers in the last presidential election? To answer these questions we must begin with the fact that the present social system is responsible for a world disfigured with impoverishment and insecurity. For the majority of people getting a living means submitting to exploitation through employment - holding down a job. Their poverty compels them to compete for work, for housing, for social services. They are frustrated and angry about the difficulties in the business of survival, which they sense would be simpler and happier and in the same way they know that most of our current problems are avoidable. Not unreasonably, they think in terms of simple solutions, such as alleviating poverty with extra resources. But the knowledge that there are obstacles to this provokes their frustration, which can be most easily worked off by passing their own responsibility for what happens in society onto some scapegoat or other. Thus modern capitalism seethes with prejudice - against women, children, the disabled, the old, the unemployed - and most prominent among these is the bigotry of racism.

The man in the Bristol pub would probably die rather than agree to it, but his crude racism was really an expression of his need to understand why he has to live as he does. In that sense, he inherits the centuries-old problem of how to justify racism. The slavers amassed enormous wealth from their pitiless human trade (which did so much to make Bristol the thriving port it once was) and the slaves suffered so terribly on the Middle Passage between Africa and the Americas and then on the plantations, that there had to be theories about the inborn inferiority to excuse it all. Religion was not reluctant to help out in this, giving divine solace to any consciences which could not be settled through a perusal of the balance sheets. It was the same for the white minorities in Africa, who protected their sumptuous privileges and disproportionate political power by reasoning that the blacks were simply not fit to rule and therefore benefited from having white people on their backs. Slave labour was also at the root of the ruthless persecution of negroes in the Deep South, which continued on its savage way a long, long time after the slaves had been theoretically set free. The imperial expansion of British capitalism (another of history's examples of migration) depended on the annexation of territory backed by an overwhelming military force. Huge fortunes were made a few people from this repression of millions. Little wonder that they excused it all as an historic example of an advanced, cultured people selflessly carrying enlightenment and progress to a primitive rabble.

Class divisions

So racism is not the ordered theoretical structure which its proponents would have us believe. It has no sound basis and its concepts are laughably inconsistent. It is not rooted in genetic inheritance but springs from material surroundings, a part of social history. It should be enough to leave the matter there, except that racism flourishes as a malign obstacle to human progress. It can be more than a matter of, say, a British worker getting angry at what is seen as immigrants taking over "our" towns, "our" shops, "our" dole offices . . . The memory of Nazi Germany's meticulous rounding up, transportation and murdering of millions of people is too clear for that. This is what racism at its extremities is capable of but at all levels it is a denial of the reality that there is only one useful division to draw among the human race and that, in this society, is based on class. Capitalism's social structure has a minority owning the means of life and maintaining their position through exploiting the majority. Exploitation - working for the owning class -  is the majority's only real means of living; they depend on paid employment and that is the source of their poverty which, if they cannot be employed, can attain a desperately low level. On each side of the class divide there is a unity of interests, even though it is not always realised or operated. Capitalists of all "races" or nationalities have the same interests and this goes for the workers as well. The interests of each class however are antagonistic to those of the other; the division is not then between black and white or Jew and gentile or whatever, but between capitalist and worker.

Workers who don't understand why capitalism condemns them to impoverished lives are all too ready to blame their problems onto other workers, from other towns or from other countries or of other "races". This is an exercise of blind futility for after all the misconceptions, after all the efforts to reform capitalism into a problem-free system, it is clear that the need is for a radical change; nothing less than the abolition of class society will do. This is perfectly possible but it requires a united resolve among the world's working class, reflecting the fact that their interests are as one, to establish a society based on common ownership of the means of life. Socialism will be  world of freedom and co-operation, in contrast to capitalism's repression and conflict.

Nothing should be allowed to obscure working class unity nor to hamper its struggle to set up the new social order. We know enough of racism, and of what it does to human beings, to reject it as a destructive, anti-social force. There is a better way; we have a world to win and little time to lose.

Ivan