Police Brutality in Manchester (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tranquility of the city of Manchester has recently been disturbed, owing to the somewhat militant attitude adopted by its carters, to obtain the outrageous wage of 25s. per week.

The capitalist Press, ever ready to paint in livid colours the vices and shortcomings of the proletariat, has enjoyed itself immensely; the strike has given the smooth-tongued, facile penned journalist data sufficient to fill a thirty-two page liar chock full. Proprietors have revelled in the abundance and quality of the matter contained, and, of course, there is the increase of circulation.

But while they have deprecated the gluttony and greed of members of the working class demanding 25s. a week, they have poured vials of eulogy upon those patient and long-suffering individuals, the police. We read of them "doing their work admirably," and "under such great provocation," too.

There is, however, another side to this picture, a side hidden by our pure, non-partizan (!) Press.

We (by "we" I mean two Socialists) wended our way to the city's centre, really to study the psychology of the mob, and seeing a body of police patrolling a narrow street, we stood and awaited developments.

No one seemed inclined to bloodshed, and had not the facts been known one would have thought here was a coronation crowd waiting for the appearance of the King.

But presently a banana-skin hurtled through the air and alighted on a constable's helmet. It was enough. The policemen's nerves, strained to breaking-point by the terrible ordeal of having to stand scowling at a half-starved, unarmed mob, could stand no more. Their long-suffering patience collapsed, and at the command of an officer to "charge!" on came the myrmidons of the Law like a blue fury.

Waving their batons they swept the crowd before them, hitting right and left, one burly "slop" missing by a inch the head of a seven-year old boy.

The crowd rushed past, and as we were stationed against the wall we thought it advisable to stay there. Presently an old man, bent and unable to hurry, shuffled across the road. He gained the centre of the street when he was struck two severe blows on his sides by a couple of "patient" policemen, and fell to the ground.

My comrade was unable to restrain his sympathy upon witnessing this cowardly brutality, and he hurried to the old man's side, and turning to the constables, protested against such inhuman methods. No sooner had he spoken than he was struck down from behind, and lay bleeding in the road.

The following morning the Press reported that an old man had been trampled on by the crowd, and lay in a critical condition.

Another instance, "Where are you off to?" said an officer to a man with a work basket. "Home," was the reply. Then the uniformed brute took the poor fellow by the coat-collar and threw him back.

"I'm going home, sir" the victim of this rough treatment said, and for that he was dragged off to the police station, and next morning was fined 10s. 6d for disorderly conduct.

"Police Entertained to Luncheon at the Exchange Cafe by Chief Constable," ran a heading in a Manchester paper.

"One knew that they would uphold the traditions of the police force, and one could not help but be delighted that no complaint whatever had reached the Chief Constable of any man amongst them." — Councillor T. Lewis (Manchester Chronicle, 10.7.11).

My comrade a letter to the Press explaining the circumstances under which he was injured and uttering his protest, but that letter was never published. No wonder there are no complaints.

Occurrences such as these show plainly that the capitalist Press, like Law and the armed forces, is merely an instrument in the hands of the capitalist class to maintain their ascendancy, and shows once again the urgent need for, and the value of, the SOCIALIST STANDARD.

J. H. Lamb

Correspondence: S.D.F. tactics in Lancashire. (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade,

The branches of the S.D.F. in the Rossendale Valley have been sold by the Executive Council of that body.

These branches: Rawtenstall, Crawshawbooth, Bacup, Haslingden and Waterfoot, having been assured of sufficient money to bring out a Parliamentary candidate, adopted J. F. Green, and his candidature was sanctioned at the last Annual Conference of the S.D.F. Suddenly, and without consulting the Rossendale branches, it was announced that J. F. Green had been adopted as the candidate for South Bristol. The branches thereupon wrote to J. F. Green who did not reply, and also to the Executive Committee. The latter's reply was quite up to the "revolutionary" standard of S.D.F. action during recent years. They regretted they could not contest Rossendale because of the expense (the branches say they have half the amount ready) and because "they do not think it wise to put up a candidate against Mr. 'Lulu' Harcourt, as he is about the only member of the present Liberal Government who has added prestige to his name"!

What has caused this change of front on the part of the S.D.F. Executive? It cannot be altogether a matter of branch funds, because, as stated above, the branches have promises of half the amount and, moreover, at the quarterly meeting of the Executive held on October 20th, a deputation from the Leigh branch was received and asked for a candidate to be put forward to contest the Leigh Division. This request was complied with. Is it that the S.D.F. Executive has come to a secret understanding with the Liberals? During the Municipal elections in Rossendale local Liberals stated that J. F. Green would not go to the poll, and that the S.D.F. were only "kidding." Did they know more than the members of the S.D.F.? I believe that Messrs. H. M. Hyndman, J. F. Green, and other prominent members of the S.D.F. are also members of the National Liberal Club. Has there been a bargain? and if so, what has been bought and what has been sold? When J. F. Green was withdrawn from Rossendale and announced for South Bristol prominent Liberals said, "The S.D.F. will run no candidate for Rossendale." What did they know?

Yours fraternally,

Moses Baritz.

Manchester, Dec. 16th, 1907.

Oil and Slaves. (1913)

From the February 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The oil age is coming. Year books, financial journals, the sharks of Throgmorton Street, together with the rest of the interested, "far seeing" exploiters and worshippers of the golden calf, are eagerly discussing the possibilities of oil as a motive force, and how much more profit they can grab by its use.

It behoves the working class to consider the question also, because it is they who are going to suffer, as usual, from what would be a boon and a blessing to all were the toilers sufficiently enlightened and determined to make it such.

The "Diesel" engine has already proved itself capable of propelling ocean going steamers, and will doubtless be in general use in the near future. Look at this: "The engine room staff of the 'Selandia' consists of eight men and two boys. No firemen required. No boilers needed. No loading with bunker coal for the voyage."

How our masters must rub their hands with delight when they think of the saving of wages, extra cargo space, cheaper ships, and many other advantages. How the thoughtful fireman must curse when his job disappears, and the boilermaker when he reads: "No boilers required." How joyous the coal-porter must feel when, instead of fifty men engaged in coaling a ship, he see the engineer turn on the oil cock and fill his tank in a few hours! Oh! the unspeakable happiness of the lightermen and railwaymen at the thought of not having to transport any more dirty coal to the docks! What joy dwells in the heart of the miner as he thinks of the near future when oil competes fiercely with coal, and thousands of him are saved the trouble of squabbling over "abnormal places," having gained the displaced wage-slave's normal place—the gutter.

The "Selandia" saved on her first voyage to Bangkok a sum of £1,200 for fuel alone. She is only a small ship. The saving on great liners will be commensurably greater, as will the numbers of "hands" displaced. Great is oil!

A Royal Commission with Lord Fisher at its head was appointed in July last to enquire into the possibilities of oil-driven "Dreadnoughts" (many torpedo craft already use oil), and the remarks of "The Times" were significant when announcing its appointment. "If," said that paper, "oil as a fuel and oil-driven engines were adopted exclusively as the result of the Commission's enquiries, not only might great economy be effected, but fewer men would be required to attend the engines and there would be economy in space and weight." Yes! indeed. It will be splendid they sack half the "black squad" of the navy, and what an inspiring sight it will be when the enemy's shells drops into the oil tanks!

Already it is announced ("Lloyd's Newspaper," Jan. 12) that a large tract of oil land in New Brunswick has been acquired for the Admiralty at a cost of £2,000,000, to supply oil fuel for the Navy, and that a chain of storage depots is being built round the coasts. Mr. Keir Hardie will now be satisfied, I anticipate.

Then, again, the railway companies are going in for oil from sheer necessity, having been badly hit by the motor lorries. Sir Sam Fay, manager of the Great Central Railway, declares that "we shall soon see oil-driven cars running on all the railways and supplanting the steam engines." Of course, he says nothing about the supplanted firemen—doesn't interest him a great deal.

Altogether, the advent of oil as a fuel will have a far-reaching effect upon the working class, and its moral effect for them is obvious. Every great labour-saving invention or discovery—and the use of oil as a propelling agent has been made possible by the invention of Dr. Diesel—spells unemployment for thousands while capitalism lasts. Many are flung "out" to accentuate the competition of those "in". When the workers will it the work will be flung out instead, lessening the labours and adding to the leisure and pleasure of all.

We call it Socialism, this condition of affairs wherein every invention will contribute only to the comfort and happiness of the whole people. Work for it, for there is no hope for the slave class in any other direction.

Wollie.

Labour and the reform of capitalism (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government of 1945-51 was the highwater mark of one strand of activity within capitalism, the triumph (much of it temporary, as we now know) of one school of thought on the question of how capitalism should be run. Its significance cannot be understood without knowing the background from which it sprang.

The population of each separate capitalist country is divided into two classes: the minority, who own the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the majority, who operate all those means – factories, mines, offices, transport systems, banks, media and so on - but do not own them. This minority of owners constitutes the ruling class, and the rest of us constitute the working class.

The owners, however, are not a monolithic block, all having exactly the same opinions. Naturally, they all believe that the capitalist system is divinely ordained, and will last for ever. But they do not all have the same ideas as to the best way of running the system from day to day, or year to year. Many factors can cause disagreements within the ruling class. Some are internal, some are external.

Internally, there are always two main schools of thought. All capitalists want to get the most out of their workers, obviously. But what is the best way of doing that? Some think they should rule largely by fear. Toe the line, accept long hours, low wages, and poor conditions, they say to their workers, or out you go. And if you can’t get a job, you can join the unemployed – who, this school of thought believes, should be treated as harshly as possible.

Alongside the “treat-’em-rough” school is the “pretend-to-be-nice” school. One basic reason for this school is the desire to avoid the harmful consequences of the alternative - disease spreading across class boundaries, and decrepit recruits for industry or the armed services. But apart from that, some capitalists think that more humane methods are more profitable in the long run. Less primitive conditions in the workplace, a bit better treatment of families, somewhat less harsh handling of the unemployed, will all pay dividends, they think: be nice to your workers, and they will be nice to you, says this philosophy.

External factors also cause differences of view within the ruling class. When capitalism’s continuous conflicts lead to open warfare, with its clashing armies and bombing raids, its heartless slaughter of civilian populations and its massive destruction of towns and cities, the capitalists within each country often draw closer together, and feel they must strengthen their state as a bulwark against the threatening dangers from foreign capitalists which have now been made so obvious. For instance, when there is danger from abroad, and armies may have to be transported quickly round the country for the benefit of the country’s capitalists as a whole, then ruling class opinion tends to believe that the country’s transport systems should be in the hands of the state – the executive committee of the capitalist class.

The General Election of July 1945 came at a time when war, and its dangers, was in the forefront of public debate. There had of course been an enormously destructive war across Europe (and elsewhere) in 1914-18. When that ended, there was a huge feeling of relief: it must have been a fit of madness, people thought, and could never happen again. It was, in fact, “the war to end wars”. But then, only a score of years later, a second even more destructive global conflict erupted – so close to the first that some men actually had to fight in both, and certainly many families suffered in both. The electorate after the first war, in November 1918, returned the victorious wartime premier, Lloyd George, with a large majority committed to a return to the status quo; but in July 1945 the wartime premier, Winston Churchill, was defeated, and the Labour Party gained 393 MPs, compared with 213 Conservative and 12 Liberals. Labour formed a Government, and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister.

Stronger state

After two catastrophic world wars within only thirty-one years (1914-45), the preponderance of opinion within the capitalist class moved over to the support of a stronger state. The state had already been dictating much of the country’s economic activity during the war, under the direction of the Conservative-majority Coalition Government. A series of Acts of Parliament after 1945 took much fuel and transport into state ownership, and in many ways gave a formal framework to what had already been happening (owing to military necessity) throughout the six years of the Second World War. The Government took over what it regarded as essential services to support the other industries, which of course continued in private capitalist hands. It nationalized the Bank of England, coal, and civil aviation in 1946, electricity and transport in 1947, gas in 1948, and iron and steel in 1949.

Conscription into the armed forces, and compulsory direction into “essential industries”, e.g. munitions, during the war, had revealed that the working class were neither as well educated nor as healthy as they should ideally have been if they were going to supply the maximum of rent, interest, and profit to the owning class. A soldier who is not physically fit enough to join an attack on an “enemy” army, or skilled enough to read the instructions about how to operate a heavy machine gun or a tank, is not much use to the high command. The peace-time worker, too, has to be active and knowledgeable in order to operate modern machinery. So reforms were pushed through in health, creating the National Health Service, which (as the Labour Government boasted at the time) cut down the number of days lost to industry through illness. In education, the school-leaving age was raised to fifteen in 1947, and the Labour Government implemented Butler’s Education Act (passed by the Conservative Parliament in 1944), which created a tripartite system of grammar schools, technical schools, and secondary moderns, all of them free, with entry based on the so-called “eleven-plus” exam. These schools in effect aimed respectively at supplying office-workers, skilled manual workers, and the rank-and-file of the labouring population, to service capitalist industries. (The capitalists themselves continued to send their offspring to “public schools”, that is private schools outside the state system.)

Measures were taken to give a degree of social security to the whole population, “from the cradle to the grave”: a policy which put into effect the 1942 Beveridge Report, written by a Liberal. This social security, plus the free Health Service, meant that the great majority of the population, the workers, were kept in reasonably good condition, able to operate the industries of the country, and not likely to catch infectious diseases which could spread to the owning class. (Germs do not believe Mrs Thatcher’s assertion that there is no such thing as society.)

A very large part of Labour’s reforms was accepted by the Conservative governments which followed the Labour Government after 1951. This is not to say that all opinion within the ruling class supported nationalization; some voices still spoke out in opposition, and decades later nearly all of this carefully-constructed apparatus of state capitalism was dismantled and returned to the ownership of private capitalists. The capitalist organization of industry, of course, was undisturbed. The whole of the great nationalization debate had been simply about whether to have particular capitalist industries owned by the state, acting on behalf of the whole capitalist class, or by particular individual capitalists.

Much of the so-called Welfare State, however, has been preserved throughout the following half-century by Governments of whatever complexion. It has been recognized as benefiting the operation of British capitalism, and therefore it is still here.

The Labour Party claimed that their reforms were Socialist. The Labour Party fought the 1945 General Election on the programme outlined in its manifesto Let Us Face the Future, which declared that the Labour Party “is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain” and so on: hardly language which Labour’s leaders would use today. Though this was the “ultimate purpose”, the measures which it actually proposed (and, to do it justice, the measures which it actually carried out) were those described above. Its ringing declaration was one thing; its immediate objectives - the nationalizing of half a dozen fuel and transport industries, and health and education reforms - were another. Despite its fine-sounding claims about its “ultimate purpose”, the Labour Government of 1945-51, like every other Government, in practice merely tried its hand at running capitalism.

Why did that Government claim to be Socialist? The over-riding reason is that no ruling class can ever tell the truth about its own system. No owning class is ever going to say to the people at large, “You go on working and producing, and we’ll go on taking off you what you produce”. Instead, every ruling class seizes on whatever philosophy, or religion, or system of belief is currently popular or persuasive, and claims it for itself. When the British bourgeoisie made its first attempt to grab power, it claimed to be merely promoting Christianity (Cromwell called one battle “a crowning mercy” from Heaven). Many European countries, two or three centuries ago, proclaimed that Catholicism, or alternatively Protestantism, was their guiding light. When the French bourgeoisie took power, it claimed to be bringing in Liberty Equality, and Fraternity. The twentieth century saw a number of state-capitalist revolutions in Eastern Europe, Russia, and China, during which the revolutionaries claimed that they were introducing Communism, and Democracy (in some cases to the extent of putting Democratic in the official name of the country). In the Middle East, the ruling class of many countries claim that they are marching under the banner of Islam. In the same way, the Labour Government of 1945-51 claimed (as we saw) that they were going to introduce a “Socialist Commonwealth”.

Anyone who wishes to find out what is really happening in the world must first learn to distinguish between talk and action.

Alwyn Edgar

The Educational Cuts (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Educational cuts suggested by Mr. R. A. Butler, and put into effect by the Minister of Education, Miss Florence Horsbrough, have raised a great outcry from many quarters. Perhaps the most vociferous sections have been the teaching profession and supporters of the Labour Party.

We look at the matter from the point of view—what fundamental effect will it have on the workers' position? But this is not the reformers' attitude. This prompts a further question—why in fact are we educated at all?

"Teacher's World" of 16th January, 1952, can perhaps throw a little light on these questions. An editorial article headed "Freedom" shows us the extent to which freedom can be practised. It is quite clearly stated that "this is the true freedom of the teacher to teach how he thinks best. But what he teaches is not, and never has been, left solely at the choice of the teacher." Who, then, decides what the teacher has to teach? Let us return to the article—"Curriculum, inevitably, must conform with the law, with public policy and with convention."

The last statement is further elaborated by being applied to three aspects, namely religion, politics and language.

"It would be wrong to leave teachers in maintained schools, or even Eton, free to play the tunes of atheism, paganism or gnosticism. For this is a Christian country. It is the policy of the State that the generality of its people should be Christian."
"Nor is it possible to give teachers the utmost political freedom. The tunes of communism, fascism, nihilism and anarchy are not to be played by teachers in county schools. It is public policy that the young of this country shall be educated as democrats."
Even the language of education is decided by public policy. Children must be brought up to speak English—or Welsh with English."

To sum up, then, the law, public policy and convention intervene in the educational system through the state. Since the state is the expression of the capitalist class, it must pursue an educational policy in their interests; it must ensure that there are at all times sufficient replacements for that vast army of wage-workers so necessary for the profit-motive system. In other words, the children of to-day are educated with a view to their being being the workers of to-morrow.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not seek to reform the education of the workers; it seeks to abolish the present system of society, Capitalism, and with it the educational policy which it creates. In its place we would establish a system of society where the education for our children will not be determined by the interests of a ruling class, but will be in harmony with an administration which satisfies the needs of all mankind.

Margaret Hopwood 

Greasy Pole: Catching a Crabb? (2015)

Stephen Crabb MP

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

Although he was out of step with his own declared standards of order – which included training ex-soldiers as teachers to impose stricter discipline in the schools – the former Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove in March 2014 gave voice to his opinion that David Cameron's inner cabinet included such a concentration of Old Etonians as to be 'ridiculous' and comparable to that of Robert Gascoyne – Cecil, Lord Salisbury, whose cabinet at the beginning of the twentieth century '... was known as Hotel Cecil. 'The phrase “Bob's your uncle” came about and all the rest of it. It is preposterous'. It was shortly after this outburst that Gove was moved from Education to become the Tory Chief Whip and then, after the 2010 election, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice so that his attendance at certain traditional events requires him to appear in robes that an outsider might consider to be as preposterous as those of any ceremonial Old Etonian.

Beard

But among Gove's colleagues on the Tory benches there is Stephen Crabb the MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire and Secretary of State for Wales, whose background and ready smile clearly place him outside the ranks of the blue-blooded but preposterous. For Crabb was brought up by a single mother – his father's violence in the family led to the parents splitting up – on a council estate in Pembrokeshire; as a student he spent his holidays working on building sites. He was first elected in 2005, winning the seat from Labour in what had been a 'Tory-free zone' and went on to increase his majority in 2010 and 2015. He was promoted to Secretary of State after his predecessor David Jones was sacked – a result of Jones' persistently combustible contacts with the Welsh Administration. There is another Tory MP in Pembrokeshire but he is Simon Hart who, in contrast to Crabb, went to public school and agricultural college and was for ten years Master of the local Hunt (the less respectful locals are inclined to lump the two MPs together as Crap and Fart). Another way in which Crabb distinguishes himself is that he has a beard; he is in fact the first Conservative Cabinet minister to be so adorned since the Fourth Earl of Onslow, an Old Etonian who in 1903 was President of the Board of Agriculture. But Onslow's beard, with his handlebar moustache, was bushy and abundant while Crabb's is cropped and trained; during Prime Minister's Questions he sits on the Front Bench inviting one of the cameras to swing towards him and he smiles – or rather the beard smiles. Its message is that he is contented with his record so far and expects it to see him into an exultant future.

CARE

In the beginning Crabb was a youth worker in London, going on to apply what that experience taught him as a marketing consultant at the London Chamber of Commerce. His first taste of the Commons was as a parliamentary intern – which then, as now, was a demanding but unpaid job - for an organisation called Christian Action Research and Education or CARE. There are now some 20 MPs using this service, supplied by CARE free of charge for work such as research and organisation. Crabb has one on his staff but there is no mention of it in his current biography website. CARE describes itself as a 'Mainstream Christian charity bringing Christian insight and experience to matters of public policy' but others prefer a term more in tune with its association with the 'mission' of the American pressure group Focus on the Family of 'defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide'. These 'truths' involve a theory that homosexuality is a disorder which all-right thinking people would strive to 'cure'; opposition to equal rights, including marriage, for same sex couples, to the processes of assisted dying and to the repeal of the infamous Section 28. There are five MPs who have broken their contact with CARE, one of them describing its policies as 'deeply offensive'.

Food Banks

As part of his avowed intention to alleviate poverty, even as a staunchly ambitious MP, Crabb became a trustee of the Pembrokeshire Action To Combat Hardship. One of the starkest and most debilitating symptoms of hardship right now is evident in the growing dependence on food banks. Foremost of the charities in this field – the Trussell Trust – states the problem clearly and without doubt: between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2015 they distributed three days' food on 1,084,604 occasions, feeding some half a million people, which represented a year-on-year increase of 19 per cent. Of the people they helped some 44 per cent were in emergency through delays in, or cessation of, their benefit payments. Crabb's response to this crisis of need was to vote to reduce the benefits of social tenants subjected to the infamous bedroom tax. And to vote against raising welfare benefits in line with price rises. These votes were a part of the government policy to inflict even worse damage on the people already suffering extreme poverty. At the same time they improved Crabb's chances of working his way up the Greasy Pole.

Expenses

And then there is the matter of his expenses. He claimed over £8,000 on a second home to refurbish a flat which he then sold at a considerable profit; then he 'flipped' a claim for a house which he was buying in Pembrokeshire and a room in another flat was classed as his second home. His justification of all this was that he had not '...claimed for things like plasma TVs, even though the rules allow it' and then that an official in the fees office had encouraged him in the manipulation: 'Steve I'm looking at your allowances and you've spent hardly anything... you'd get more for your allowances if you switched'. In all during four years he claimed £67,633 in second home expenses. These details must have been of some interest to anyone struggling to survive on what are called welfare 'benefits' and food bank 'charity'.  And to anyone interested in the flexibility of what Crabb presents as his 'Christian honesty'. To be recalled along with the 'honesty' of the others like Michael Gove, Simon Hart, David Jones . . .

Ivan

The advance of technology (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last decade is noted for its achievements in science and technology. Our age is one of continuous discovery, yet the problems of humanity seem to be intractable. Technical advances are relative. The used of flaked flint tools by primitive man is no less spectacular than the building of nuclear reactors by present-day man. The beginning of language is no less momentous than communication by telstar satellite. Primitive man's innovations took tens of thousands of years to become perfected, today the momentum of technological and scientific advance is staggering.

Our age is dominated by savage contradictions. America and Russia may be on the brink of sending men to the moon, yet two-thirds of the world's inhabitants have not enough to eat. Scientists have the skill to dissect living cells 6/10,000ths of an inch in diameter, but disease is still a major human affliction. Despite international communication men are divided by nationalism and race prejudice. Illiteracy and ignorance abound; violence, competition and privilege are the keynotes of the age. Workers fulfill economic functions that have no personal meaning, for them society is a prison house of economic servitude where hopes remain denied.

This then is the contradiction of today: In the field of science and technology men have asserted their genius more often than not towards anti-human ends; in the field of human relationships they have abysmally failed. Why?

Science serves the ends of the capitalist system. It serves the military might of nations. It serves industrial efficiency not by satisfying community' needs, but by intensifying the exploitation of the working class. In dealing with today's problems so-called social service is fettered by the prejudices of private property. It refuses to recognise that the cause of these problems is capitalism itself. Under socialism science will serve the whole community.

Capitalism has almost engulfed the whole world. Every nation is involved in world trade and cannot escape the influence of international power politics, with its alliances and war preparations. Technical innovation goes on apace, augmenting military might, intensifying the labour process and maximising the exploitation of the worker. This drive for greater technical efficiency is basic to capitalism's insatiable thirst for profits; humanity's real needs are not considered. 

As commodity production spreads it diffuses its own ideology and culture. Industrialisation destroys the village communities with their rich cultural traditions. People are concentrated into towns and are set to work in factories, clocking on, clocking off. TV, the cinema, pop music, suburbia and the "Jones", slums and overcrowding, are all features of what is becoming a universal way of life. And with all these go the so-called welfare and public services; "free" medicine, education, national assistance, etc.

Fifty years ago the British worker, the Chinese peasant and primitive African were living in different worlds. Today they live very similar lives. The same social problems are increasingly conditioning them. They are all cogs in the machinery of capitalism, and are exploited in the same way. Their diet and their language may be different, but the workers day-to-day material problems are essentially the same.

On the other hand, the tremendous development of the means of mass communication have made the world smaller. The worker is forced to widen his perspective. For the first time it becomes possible for him to communicate intelligibly with workers throughout the world. The Socialist demand for "one world, one people" becomes supported by the development of the productive forces of capitalism itself.

One may lament the break-up of the old local traditions, but capitalism has no time for sentiment when it devours technically backward communities, brutally converting them into commodity producers and reducing all values to money ones.

Seemingly, apart from Socialism, nothing can stop the further expansion of capitalism. It subjugates great numbers of people to wage slavery, but then it also destroys the worker's insularity, forcing upon him experiences and problems shared universally by the whole working class.

Our propaganda must show that these problems can be resolved by the working class uniting and working for Socialism. Under capitalism science and technology have flowered mainly to serve the interest of capitalist profit making. This is the great contradiction. Mankind has the know how, yet poverty, misery and the threat of war remain.

The barrier of private ownership must be destroyed, and the means of living (aided by science and technology) be used to satisfy the needs of mankind.

Pieter Lawrence

Prods vs Papes in Glasgow (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1878 the City of Glasgow Bank crashed to financial ruin. In the same year the Scottish Roman Catholic Hierarchy was restored by the Pope and Charles Eyre became Archbishop of Glasgow. Protestant extremists, such as members of the Orange Lodges (who even today see almost every calamity as part of a global papist conspiracy), probably saw some connection between the two events. Whatever they thought they were certain of one thing: the restoration of Catholic Hierarchy was nothing less than "papal aggression". In response they protested in Glasgow Green. The Army was sent to prevent rioting but fortunately, for Glaswegian working-class skulls, the troops were not called into action.

The main factor leading to both the restoration of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and the religious intolerance in Glasgow was the vast influx of Irish immigrants who, since the 1840s, had been entering the industrial areas of Britain to escape the famine. From December 1847 to March 1848 alone, about 43,000 Irish arrived in Glasgow, "a mass of broken wretches".

These immigrants were generally unskilled workers who had been forced to live in conditions even more squalid and degrading than those of the indigenous proletariat. They were able, therefore, to subsist on lower wages and consequently occupied the worst slums in the city.

It is a matter of fact that competition for employment between the Irish and the similarly unskilled Glaswegian workers led to a fall in wages for the latter. The native workers did not fail to notice this and, in their brutalised ignorance, blamed the Irish. That the majority of these unfortunate Irish workers adhered to the Roman Catholic brand of religious superstition, instead of the Protestant, was yet another focal point for hatred. The presence, too, of immigrants from the North of Ireland led to violent feuds of the Orange and Green variety among the Irish themselves. Added to this was the quarrelsome nature of the various Scottish Protestant sects who were already squabbling among themselves and were quite prepared to enter into hostilities with the adherents of the "one true church".

Nowadays, in Glasgow and the South of Scotland in general, fewer people are committed to any form of religious superstition; "of 20,000 Roman Catholics registered in Clydebank, only about a third attend church regularly" (Current Account, BBC1 Scotland, 25 February, 1982). Similarly an even greater proportion of those describing themselves as Protestants will only be seen inside a church at their funeral.

This decline in church attendance may seem encouraging, but unfortunately "religious" bigotry still flourishes among many of these non-churchgoers in the form of allegiance to certain football teams" Glasgow Rangers ("Prods") and Glasgow Celtic ("Papes"). These unfortunate and bigoted workers blame each other for all manner of social problems and it is almost incumbent upon Socialist Party of Great Britain speakers in Glasgow to criticise King Billy, the Queen, the Pope and the Catholic church in one breath lest, by reference to one alone, it is assumed by one side that we are in alliance with the other. Sellers of the Socialist Standard in Glasgow pubs must beware of the occasional IRA-supporting Catholics and UDA-supporting Protestants, neither of whom will hesitate to kick one's head in if given the chance; and there are certain pubs, particularly in the East End, into which we dare not go. Regular readers of the Standard will recall that our propaganda meeting of 29 July last year (the Day of the Nonsensical Nuptials) was disrupted by a frenzied gang of Orange thugs and it is a likely attack upon us by some papal-jerseyed hooligans which will prevent us from holding a similar meeting on June 1 (the day of the mumbo-jumbo at Bellahouston Park).

A woman from Livingston, West Lothian, told us (Current Account, BBC1 Scotland, 25 February 1982) that she has no need to think about anything she finds too complicated " . . . the priests, the bishops, the archbishops and the Pope are better equipped to deal with this kind of thing. To advise me". An old man, asked what his religion meant to him, was not quite sure except that he knew it was "great"  . . . "You must go to the chapel". When asked if he had ever rebelled against the church he replied: "No! Rebel? No! No!", as though shocked that anyone could conceive of such a thing.

A widow then informed us that her wayward husband's death-bed return to the faith convinced her of the existence of god. Although she was prepared to listen to other people's opinions, she was not prepared to change her ideas in any way: "I do respect other people's religions . . . I am willing to listen to other people, but I feel, basically, we were all Catholics at one time and . . . it's more the pity that they lapsed from our faith, for maybe good reasons, but basically we should all be Catholic and there's nothing in our religion that I want to give up." ("No Surrender!" seems to be a Catholic slogan as well as a Protestant one.)

The above examples of Catholic "thought" clearly illustrate the harmful effects of religious belief. The Catholic church and the Orange Lodge are very good at producing ignorant, docile and fervently religious wage-slaves, and so long as workers remain in these organisations so long will they neglect to deal with the cause of their poverty.

A leaflet, issued by the Orange Lodge in protest against this month's Papal visit and the Catholic Church's insistence on having its own schools, declares: "As absolute ruler of the Roman Church, Pope John Paul II bears the ultimate responsibility for this disgraceful school "apartheid" (Leaflet: Why Should We Welcome This Man?—He is no Friend of Ours). But responsibility for this lies with those workers who believe the superstitious twaddle preached by the Pope and who therefore find it necessary to obey his instructions to send their children to schools which specialise in the Catholic form of indoctrination. The Protestant variety of religious indoctrination is carried out, not only by their churches and the state schools, but by the juvenile section of the Orange Lodge.

Pastor Jack Glass (who thinks even Ian Paisley is "pro-romanist") also sees the Pope's visit as a major problem, so much so that he stood in the recent Hillhead by-election as the candidate for the Protestant Crusade Against the Papal Visit (388 votes—lost deposit). Another group of religious maniacs has been holding a series of meetings with titles such as "The Papal Visit Examined Doctrinally; the Papal Visit Examined Politically" (Glasgow Evening Times, 6 march 1982). They say: "Does not the sacrifice of our martyred forefathers suffer a grave insult by the permitting of the Pope to come . . . ". On March 24, in Bellahouston Park, about 20 Protestants tried to prevent the uprooting of some trees for the Pope's visit and one woman was arrested while trying to chain herself to a tree. It is most regrettable that so many members of the working class consider it worthwhile to waste so much of their time. It is also regrettable that so many others are eager to see the Pope and will pay £5.00 each to hear his inane incantations.

Socialists hope that the Pope's visit will fail; we hope the lapsed will stay away from the church and that believers will continue to decrease in number. There are no reasonable grounds for belief in the supernatural, or in gods, just as there are no grounds for belief in the existence of pink elephants, leprechauns, fairies or flying pigs. Socialists actively oppose all forms of religious superstition not only because such beliefs are unscientific and act as a barrier to understanding the society in which we live and its historical development, but also because of the socially divisive nature of religion. Workers who suffer from the delusions of religion are prepared to kill their fellow-workers in time of war; there are churches in America where blacks are not allowed; women are often considered subordinate to men and the Catholic Church will neither allow its women to become priests nor decide how many children they will have (although many Catholics now ignore the Pope's ruling on the latter).

The Catholic Church, with its roots in feudalism and its still feudal structure, has adapted very well to capitalism. It has shareholdings in many major companies throughout the world including those producing armaments. Nowadays the Vatican is a major financial institution and it is not surprising that the Pope is such a vehement supporter of capitalism. Only three years ago Pope John II warned his priests in South America against a too injudicious support of workers and peasants in their struggles against poverty.

Had not the Catholic Church an appalling record as a force against social progress, were not the Pope a pedlar of reactionary views and religious nonsense, socialists would still not welcome him. Like his opponents in the Orange Lodge, he is no friend of ours.

Johnny Cadillac

The Enemy on the Left! - Jean-Paul Sartre (1973)

The Enemy on the Left Column from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apart from the conventional left, the Labourite and Communist elements, the pseudo-socialist political scene is also cluttered up with a plethora of fringe-leftists who call themselves Trotskyists, Maoists, International Socialists etc. and who (insofar as one can follow their varying lines) claim to be lefter-than-left or more socialist than thou. (Alice's answer to the Mad Hatter is perhaps relevant. She could not have more tea because she hadn't had any yet. Similarly, these proliferating groups cannot be more socialist than the Labour Party which is not socialist at all. Though it is true they could not be less, either.)

It is difficult to keep up with these endlessly splintering groups and practically impossible to gather what they really stand for but perhaps one can begin by mentioning an interview in the Guardian recently with Jean-Paul Sartre "widely acknowledged as the greatest living philosopher". (Not so long ago, the title of world champ was claimed for Bertrand Russell whose most philosophical moment had occurred when he mooted the dropping of an atom bomb on Moscow. Not bad for a life-long pacifist. If only Marx was still around to re-write The Poverty of Philosophy.) This French genius, hero of the would-be revolutionary students, now, it seems, calls himself a Maoist. What he was doing all his leftist life, before Maoism was thought of as a creed, the interview does not make clear. One recalls that at various times he has quarrelled with the French Communist Party and at other times he has supported them — including times when the Stalin terror has been at its most ferocious; but you can't really expect leftist philosophers to bother themselves with such trivia as the fact that 200 million Russian workers were held in a tyrant's grasp and untold numbers were being frozen and worked to death in forced-labour camps. One also recalls his association with Russell in the so-called Tribunal to try America for war crimes in Vietnam (of which there was no shortage, of course) which really boiled down to support for the victory of that kindly, freedom-loving "communist", Uncle Ho.

The interview, though it occupies four columns, never gets round to asking the Great Man why he is a Maoist or indeed what kind of an alleged socialist that animal is supposed to be. So one can only fall back on the assumption that the Maoists stand for the sort of régime that exists in China today: where Mao makes it clear, both in word and in deed, that he is himself a Stalinist. So we have the farcical position that the revolting students of 1968 who called the French Communist Party "Stalinist shit" are now personified by a philosopher who stands for Chinese Stalinist shit. A rose by another name indeed. But of course that sort of muddle is the inevitable fate of those who lurch from one fashionable nostrum to another without ever giving themselves the time to work out the real lesson of the present jungle world, in Russia, or China, or the West — that capitalism is the enemy and only an understanding proletariat can do anything about it.

Clearly, the workers will never learn that lesson from a Professor of Maoism. Instead of getting knowledge in their heads, their heads will be broken by the brutal arm of the state. For our Maoist makes it clear he does not hold with the "legal action" of voting and although he does not spell out what means the workers should adopt, it is clear that our Maoists are enemies on the left indeed.

L. E. Weidberg 

What’s wrong with capitalism? (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

We could fill several issues of the Socialist Standard with details about the problems caused by capitalism, but let’s see how much we can say within the confines of a single article.

One pervasive aspect of capitalism is poverty. By this we do not mean destitution, as when people literally cannot afford food or clothing or a place to live. There are certainly plenty of homeless people in Britain, but poverty is far more pervasive than this. It involves people not having access to what they want or need, and having to make do with second- or third-best. Shopping at a cheap supermarket,  waiting for the sales to buy what you want, telling the kids they can’t have what they’ve set their hearts on - all these are examples of poverty. So is living in a house that’s too small for your family, or booking the cheapest holiday you can find. And so is working after your anticipated retirement age because your pension will not be big enough. Another illustration is the amount of debt with which people get landed, an average of £16,000 for each man, woman and child in the UK, and therefore much more than that for many individuals. Every day around a hundred people become bankrupt - the ultimate expression of how poverty causes people to live beyond their means.

It’s not just that the vast majority are forced to go without; it’s also that a relatively small number of people live in the lap of luxury. This inequality is not a matter of your neighbour having a bigger car than you or being able to afford two yearly holidays abroad. Instead we are referring to the millionaires and billionaires who own land, companies or shares, and don’t have to worry about two-for-the-price-of-one offers or whether they can afford a night out on Saturday. These people live in grand mansions, probably have a holiday home or two as well, own their own private jets, and employ armies of servants to look after them. Moreover, it’s not they who do the useful work in society: those who drive the buses, teach the children or work in factories or offices are the ones who suffer poverty. Socialists argue that there are two classes under capitalism: the working class (who work for wages and always struggle to make ends meet) and the capitalist class (who receive their income from rent or profit and get the lion’s share of wealth). Belonging to the working class is what makes you poor.

It also means you are likely to suffer from stress of one kind or another. This is partly the result of the daily fight with poverty, but there are many other sources of stress for workers. Many jobs are boring or dangerous, and many more offer little satisfaction to those who do them. Worrying about deadlines or targets, or feeling at the whim of your boss’s moods - all these increase the stress due to employment. And the farther you climb up the “career ladder”, the chances are the more responsibility you will bear and hence the more stress you will encounter. Add to this the insecurity of many jobs and the consequent fear of unemployment. Then there’s the stress of the daily journey to work, whether by car or public transport. Life under capitalism means worries and more worries.

A term sometimes used for people’s general feeling of unhappiness and rejection is alienation, a notion intended to cover the idea of rootlessness, of not belonging to a community, of being isolated, of seeing no real goal in life, of being powerless under the wheels of the capitalist juggernaut. Capitalism views people not as human beings with feelings and desires but as economic units, only useful if you can create profits. So people far too often relate to each other by means of money or comparable considerations (what’s in it for me?), rather than by cooperating with other humans. We are essentially viewed as individuals, not as part of a society. Many social ills can be attributed to alienation, from casual violence to suicide. The pressures of capitalism are not just financial but permeate all aspects of a dog-eat-dog social system.

One reason why people feel stressed and alienated is the lack of democracy which obtains under capitalism. It is true that in Britain there is more or less free speech and the opportunity to elect councillors and MPs. But there is no real democracy in the sense of people having control over their lives. Rather, we are subject to the decisions of others, both within and outside our workplaces. Decisions about shutting factories or moving an office to another part of the country are taken by a small group of bosses rather than the people most closely affected. Often it is the impersonal force of the market which determines what happens. Companies may be closed down or merged because they do not make “enough” profit, not because they do not produce anything useful. All political and economic decisions, whether about the siting of houses or quarries or new roads or whatever, are made within the context of a social system that puts profit above human need, and in such a system there can be no proper democracy, however many democratic institutions exist.

We mentioned above that many jobs are unhealthy and even dangerous. The violence inherent in capitalism is yet another problem thrown up by it. Industrial accidents and the violence perpetrated by many of those on the receiving end of capitalism’s oppression are vivid illustrations of the system’s shortcomings. There is also the ever-present danger of full-scale war. In the course of the twentieth century the nature of warfare changed, from a situation where victims were primarily combatants to one where it is now overwhelmingly civilians that are killed or maimed. Consider too that wars are fought in the interest of the capitalist class, as in the quest for sources of raw materials - oil wars are just a particularly clear case of this. Workers therefore kill and are killed on behalf of a bunch of wealthy parasites.

It is true that capitalism has had a tremendous transforming impact on the world, and that workers nowadays live longer and more rewarding lives than those in the days before the development of industry. However, comparisons should be made not with the distant past but with the present and future potential of Socialism. Judged by this yardstick, and on its own terms, there is so much wrong with capitalism that it is more than high time it was done away with.

Paul Bennett

Small Talk (2000)

A Short Story from the September 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is not language and communication something we most of us take for granted? Not until now have I found cause to dwell on how precious an asset is this tool we have to bring us closer to our understanding of one another.

For example communication is indispensable to rage. Rage without the right words to communicate it with is hollow, redundant, rather like the ranting of a small child who has not yet acquired the ability to speak coherently. It is small wonder that toddlers stamp their feet, wail and lie down on the floor and scream until they are blue in the face. It is because the necessary tool, words, has for the time-being eluded them. The tantrums usually grow less as the child develops speech. A few times lately I have yearned to lie down on the floor and scream when the words I had hoped I was using came over as though I had downed a bottle of Scotch beforehand. But in so many ways is speech abused, used sometimes for the egoistic pleasure of hearing the sound of one's own voice, or to dominate whatever situation one finds oneself in. How often do we actually listen to what another person is saying, concentrating without interruption on what they are telling us? I am bound to admit that I haven't—always. Now that I have to listen through no choice of my own I find that a lot of people talk a lot of drivel, and that those who talk the most drivel are the least likely to listen to anybody else.

We all know that small talk is useful to warming up the proceedings when we first meet new people. The expectation is that small talk will lead to big talk and we will shortly be having marvellous conversations about the important things of life. Have you noticed that this sometimes doesn't happen and the small talk becomes even smaller talk the next time you meet and the time after that too? Then it dawns on you that they really do regard The Weather, their holiday in Greece last year and their new make of car as vital topics of conversation. But by this time they have begun to count you as among their best friends. Your silence has been misinterpreted. You are a good listener because you are stunned by their eloquence.

People come to visit me. For most of the time my speech defect precludes me from joining in on the chat. If it is just one person visiting they have to persevere with me. He or she will often sit embarrassed but brave, straining to comprehend what I am getting at. If there are several visitors then they will throw caution to the wind and talk to each other. Often a nod or a wink in my direction is to show that they know I am still there. So I have little alternative but to listen and it is then that I grieve for my absent power of speech.

People not only talk drivel but they talk repetitive drivel. There is a tendency to repeat the uninspiring, unoriginal, mind-deadening rubbish they were verbalising a few seconds before; I guess in case it wasn't received the first time.

It's not asking for much. There must be some social aspect of the world that has struck someone at some time or another. It needn't be Existentialism or Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I would merely like to hear some opinions expressed about the world, the country, our lives and how they're run. Questions are there to be asked, but, no, apart from a mention of a child abduction (how many children are slaughtered on the roads every year is not so interesting) our interaction stays dreary—even The Weather is dragged out for a re-assessment.

Not a very long time elapses before I cease to attend. It is excusable in a sick woman that she should suddenly close her eyes and shudder. Only those who know me very well will know why I shudder. It is the acceptance of the status quo. No matter how much exploitation, hunger, injustice and war exist in the world and no matter how little power the working class has over its management, the wretchedness continues and so few of us have made any effort to analyse why. Now that the fact of the impermanence of living is staring me in the face I have become impatient with the foolishness of human existence.

Heather Ball

How to join the fight for Socialism (1993)

From the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not sure whether you are a Socialist or not? Perhaps you're interested but worried about joining a bunch of raving lefties who will tell you what to think and do? The Socialist Party wants only free thinking, committed members who understand what Socialism will mean for them.

Many of you are socialists already. But some of you aren't, or are not sure of you are. This article is addressed to the last tow groups. If you're in the first group then you might consider whether what follows could help you to convince others to become socialists.

There is a very simple answer to the question "How can I become a socialist?" Answer: give up supporting capitalism. "But I don't support capitalism". Yes, you do. You vote for parties that stand for keeping or reforming the present system, not abolishing it. 'Well, I like the idea of socialism, but it'll never work (not in my lifetime anyway, because it's against human nature, you won't get people to work without money, they'll grab everything if it's free, etc, etc)".

Of course it won't work if people continue to think like that - if you continue to think like that. The case for socialism is that capitalism - the present world, social, economic and political system - has failed and will continue to fail to deliver what it promises. It is a class system that divides people into owners and non-owners of the means of wealth production and distribution. It produces extremes of poverty and riches, starvation in a world with enough food to feed all its peoples, environmental destruction and degradation in pursuit of profit, wars that benefit no-one except power-seeking leaders and arms manufacturers and sellers.

Yes, it does look easier to change things bit-by-bit than to hold out for a completely different system. But it only looks easier. Change Party A's administration of capitalism for Party B's and you may notice a few differences. But the basic problems remain. The new broom comes in to sweep clean, but it soon makes the same mess as the old one.

A better world
If you are a socialist you will have to put up with being called an idealist, an eccentric, or worse. So what? Idealists are people who have a vision of a better world: socialists are practical idealists who act to achieve that world. Eccentrics are people who deviate from normal forms of behaviour. Do you want to conform with normal forms of behavior such as going to a job that no sane society would require people to do (financial disservices, armed forces, and so on), voting for parties that deal in bribes and threats, believing that hospitals have to stop doing business because they've run out of money?

The Socialist Party of consists of men and women who have got together for a common purpose: the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. There were socialists in the world before the Socialist Party was formed in 1904, and there are people who are socialists today outside the Socialist Party (we'd like them in). We don't have leaders who tells us what to do and think -  we have our own fully democratic doers and thinkers. We are not a narrow sect who demand faithful allegiance to every dot and comma of our "doctrine". We don't have a doctrine, although we do have a set of principles, originally formulated in the language of 1904, to support the achievement of our sole object of socialism.

Understanding vital
We don't seek to sign up as members everyone who comes to our meetings or who we pass in the street. If you show some interest in socialism we'll talk with you, offer you our literature and invite you to our meetings. When you want to take part in helping to achieve socialism, we'll invite you to discuss membership with us.

Although we need a lot of money to do the things we want to do - especially for the costly but very worthwhile Euro-election socialist literature distribution campaign next year - we won't pressure you to give the Socialist Party money: your work for socialism is more important. The Party is organized in branches and groups around the country, and if there is one reasonably nearby you'll find support from mixing with people (call them comrades if you like - it's not compulsory) who share your views.

Finally, as socialists we don't agree with each other about everything. Come to our twice-yearly conferences and you'll hear some (hopefully) good discussions. But you will run the risk of being invited to take part in those discussions.

Stan Parker

Pathfinders: The Biggest Question? Don’t Ask... (2015)

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

Science is good at asking the big questions, the ones that make even Earth's tumultuous politics look trivial. Science journalists are also good at asking big questions, but usually during slow news weeks and usually without any kind of decent answers attached.

New Scientist recently led with a cover article entitled 'Ten discoveries that would transform what it means to be human', featuring ten speculations which would supposedly revolutionise human life on Earth (8 August).

They proceeded as follows. What if we can't know everything (worst case: we're no worse off). What if we could talk sheep, dog or dolphin (worst case: we'd be vegetarians). What if aliens exist (if they're smart they'd avoid us). What if we could upload our brains (a digital copy of you is not you though, is it?). We have no free will (yawn, not that again). We came from outer space (panspermia merely adds a step to the existing origins debate). We could prove God exists (yawn, again) etc etc.

These aren't revolutions, they're fillers dressed up as thrillers. They would not involve any sea-change in social behaviour. At most a few religions would be mildly upset or excited, until they adapted like the oily amorphous creatures they are. For socialists, this is toenail gazing. Meanwhile in the middle of the room, farting gently and wagging its trunk and big ears, a very large question stands quietly waiting to be noticed.

What if we could end conflict and deprivation on planet Earth?

If science is so good at asking the big questions, why doesn't it ask this? Is it perhaps because it's not a scientific question, in some sense? But change the terms to refer to cancer, or wildfires, or global warming, and it's obvious that scientists ask questions like this all the time.

But perhaps it's a different kind of question nonetheless, because unlike cancer, wildfires or global warming, everybody knows that conflict and deprivation are so intrinsic to our global economic system, and to all known preceding systems, that their abolition would clearly imply a set of political changes so radical and so huge that 'revolution' is an entirely appropriate word to use. The very idea is so potent that it makes many people nervous, not just scientists.

So the too-easy answer would be that scientists don't care or dare to ask questions that might annoy their bosses and funding organisations, or that might make them look like loony lefties (although such concerns didn't bother Einstein). This is slightly odd, given that statistically most are liberal or left-of-centre in their thinking, but apparently keeping very quiet about it. Another too-easy answer is that scientists suffer (as all humans do) from group-think, a compulsion to conform to orthodoxy, or fixation error, a tendency not to see the big picture, and of course good old confirmation bias, the tendency to believe what you already think (New Scientist, 15 August). But any argument that puts all the blame on them can't be the whole story.

Why don't scientists ask politically explosive questions? Because, from their point of view, the answers appear to lie outside the domain of science, in the realms of politics or religion, where nothing can be demonstrated with a pie-chart or a meter reading and rhetoric and moral posturing take precedence over empirical fact. In short, political viewpoints including ours are unfalsifiable, i.e. there's no way to prove that they're wrong.

To be falsifiable is, in the Popperian school of thought, to be scientifically valid and thus worthy of scientific attention. To attract that attention, we would have to show by what criteria, and in what circumstances, our case for non-market common ownership and democratic control could be disproven. Which is not as easy as it might sound. It's no good suggesting some giant and unfeasibly expensive study, like running socialism for fifty years inside a sealed bubble in Argentina, and it's no good stipulating vague 'proofs' without saying how they are to be found (eg. 'prove to me socialism can't work and I'll abandon it').

And what would we call 'proof' anyway? Suppose that scientists discovered, say, a gene for aggression. Would we accept that as proof, and abandon our ideas about peaceful coexistence, or would we create a theoretical work-around to accommodate it, as religious people commonly do, or blithely disregard it as Steven Pinker does in The Blank Slate? Suppose that a computer simulation of socialism showed that it always broke down and devolved back into capitalism. Would we accept that as proof, or would we suggest instead that the computer model wasn't sophisticated enough, or possibly that the researchers (no doubt funded by capitalist corporations) had rigged the test? Is there a failure condition which is so comprehensive and unequivocal that, were it met, we could have no possible riposte, no get-out clause, no 'ah, but…'?

Gravity is falsifiable. Just allow yourself to float spontaneously into the air, and the job's done. Evolution is falsifiable. As the biologist JBS Haldane once famously retorted, just dig me up a dinosaur with a fossilised rabbit in its gut. The Periodic Table, electromagnetism, E=MC², all falsifiable, therefore all valid theory. Could socialist theory match that? No it couldn't.

But neither can capitalism, of course, which generates an abundance of evidence of its own failings every minute of every hour of every day, evidence which people are remarkably adept at ignoring or explaining away. So no proposed social system is falsifiable. You can't test socialism in a lab, under randomised double-blind conditions. But does that mean it's unscientific, and that scientists and science journalists are therefore right to avoid consideration of it?

No it doesn't, and here's why. Science can be said to proceed via the dislodging of unsatisfactory theories and their replacement by theories which better account for the observed phenomena and are better able to predict outcomes. In this sense socialism is a valid scientific theory. It is evidence-based, it explains events in capitalism consistently better than capitalist theoreticians can manage, and it predicts long-term outcomes better (eg predicting that Government A will not solve unemployment and Government B will not abolish booms and slumps). It's an effective tool of analysis, but also a compelling tool of change, offering a simple and utilitarian set of knowable and predictable parameters instead of the myriad, volatile and unpredictable parameters which produce chaos, suffering and destruction in money economies. For scientists to ignore such a tool is worse than negligent, it flies in the face of the very principles of scientific enquiry.

Paddy Shannon

About Books (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some old-timers in the Trade Unions together with a few in the rebel fringe of the Labour Party, even a few of the older members of the S.P.G.B. have been heard to claim that certain novels read in their younger days were the means of guiding their steps in the direction of Socialism.

Foremost amongst the books which are accorded this honour is Robert Tressall's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists." We have been asked a number of times to draw this book to the attention of younger readers of the SOCIALIST STANDARD, although, if a person is already a reader of the SOCIALIST STANDARD he will not glean much education from Tressall's book. But he will get a world of fun and a clear insight into conditions in the building and house decorating trades during the first decade of this century.

The book was first printed in 1914 and has been continuously reprinted ever since. It is a story written round the life and work of an imaginary Frank Owen, a house painter and a Socialist (if we excuse a little confusion in his theory) and the small band of his workmates. Owen takes every opportunity in arguments with his mates to expound his Socialist ideas, doing so very simply and effectively for the reader, but hopelessly for his mates.

Certain chapters in the book are more than humorous, they are uproariously funny and there is deep tragedy, too. It is argued by some that this is the story of Robert Tressall's own life. Certainly Tressall was a house painter and, from what little we know of his life there are grounds for the claim. If you are one of the very few who have not read this book, do so. It is still in print and in plentiful supply. If you are one of the old ones who read it years ago, read it again. We have just re-read it before writing about it and we had great fun.

Another book that gets commended for similar reasons is Jack London's "Iron Heel." This is an altogether different book from Tressall's. It has been published in many editions since it first appeared nearly fifty years ago and the latest is still to be seen on bookstalls.

Jack London tells his story through the mouth of the wife of a man called Ernest Everhard who was a "Socialist" who would fit very nicely into the present day Communist Party. It is a story of the development of Capitalism in America projected into the years ahead of the time of telling. It tells of the ever increasing exploitation and subjugation of the workers by a capitalist oligarchy called "The Iron Heel," of the hardening and sharpening of the class struggle and of two bloody insurrections that result in the defeat and massacre of the workers.

Despite the quite good lectures and arguments of Ernest Everhard and some of his associates, this book would never, on its own, convert anyone to Socialism. Its main appeal is emotional and by that means it might urge a man to study class society seriously. But a worker whose approach to social problems is purely emotional is ready prey for political parties which rely on the emotional upsurge of their supporters and not on a clear understanding of working class interests.

A third book in this category is Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," also still in print after forty-seven years. This book was mentioned in these columns in May, 1953. It os a story of the American stock yards and, although it is a remarkably fine story, the same criticism applies as to Jack London's book.

Whether these books are useful to put in the hands of a non-socialist worker with the hope of leading him, by their guidance, along the path to an understanding of Socialism, once he is on that path he will enjoy reading them and we have little doubt but that most convinced Socialists have read them. If they haven't, then we can recommend them to an honourable place on the book shelf.

W. Waters 

Halo Halo!: Catholics and Aliens (2015)

The Halo Halo! Column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

A question in the Guardian G2’s ‘Notes and Queries’ column (where Guardian readers respond to each other’s queries on anything that happens to be puzzling them) recently asked ‘If  there is intelligent life out there, what are the chances that it might believe in God?’

Following the recent news that exoplanet Kepler 452b appears to be remarkably Earth-like, the Vatican appears to have the answer. The Pope, it seems, is way ahead of the rest of us on this and has been prepared for the possibility for some time. In addition to the squad of exorcists the Vatican keeps on the payroll to deal with earth-bound satanic beings, they apparently also have their own astronomers to keep an eye out for aliens who presumably, if not already Catholics, could be converted.

‘If there was intelligent life (on another planet) I don’t see that as a contradiction with the Christian faith’, said one Vatican astronomer. ‘If God created aliens somewhere out there, then the Vatican is in no position to say Jesus wasn’t for them too’. (Independent 2 August). And another, back in 2010, informed us that ‘aliens who seek baptism should receive it from the church, because any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.’

And according to another 2008 Independent article, Fr Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican priest in charge of the stargazing department announced that ‘Alien life would be part of God’s creation’ and aliens would be ‘our brothers’. So in partial answer the Guardian’squestion of whether they are believers, any aliens planning to visit us can rest assured that they are already being eyed up for baptism into the Catholic Church. No doubt a few can be recruited into the priesthood too. They’ll fit in well.

How the aliens will react to this news though, if it turns out they are already devout Martian Mormons, Moonies or Moslems for example, Saturnalian Salvationists or Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses from Jupiter we’ll have to wait to find out.

To clarify the situation then, let’s visit www.ufointernationalproject.com/latest-news/5th-june-2015. They sound as if they’ve got their finger on the pulse of the latest alien/ufo facts.

‘The Catholic church has been pondering over whether there indeed is a far more technologically and intellectually advanced sentient species elsewhere in the galaxy’. They tell us, ‘Pope Francis, apparently, believes so and according to rumour he will not only announce his intentions to prepare the human race for ET contact, BUT he will (according to many rumours) denounce the international corporate capitalist system, that is currently contaminating the planet with toxic consciousness and greed and making us all slaves to the dollar’.

Well, that sounds interesting. These ‘far more technologically and intellectually advanced’ aliens probably won’t need any lessons from the Pope about capitalism, but once their conversion to Catholicism starts, what will they make of the bible account of creation? Fr Funes, the chief stargazer, doesn’t think that will be a problem though. ‘The bible should not be held to account for its lack of scientific accuracy’. He says.

They’re obviously counting on the aliens being as gullible as they think the rest of us are.

NW