Let's Protest! (1967)

From the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism creates many problems and subjects the working class to all kinds of pressures. What is somewhat puzzling about the whole painful business is that, despite so much experience in protesting and all the accompanying disillusionment, people still persist in trying to deal with individual issues in isolation and make little if any attempt to relate either one problem to another, or to relate all the problems to a common cause. It seems that for every outrage committed by capitalism, and for every inhumanity and frustrated need, there is a group of people ready to mushroom into an organisation and start protesting.

Socialists are not opposed to the idea of protesting as such. What concerns us is to get it into its social perspective so as to achieve a more fruitful form of expression. The fact that the horrors of capitalism do produce some response in terms of protest demonstrations etc., is more hopeful than an attitude of indifference.

But, unless workers learn from previous fruitless experiences to avoid going over the same ground again, nothing is gained.

Take, for example, the biggest mass protest movement to spring up since the war, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. CND spread rapidly and enlisted the enthusiastic support of tens of thousands of young people. It received wide publicity through all the modern media for mass propaganda and to many people its success seemed assured. Instead, CND reached a peak and declined. Almost all the energy and enthusiasm are lost and the vacuum filled with despair. The situation existing at the end is as bad, or worse, than when it started. Nor is this the whole story, because CND and similar bodies are prone to internal strife, as the factions of which they are made up fight among themselves.

In such organisations, emotional appeals take the place of a clear understanding of the social system within which they work. Personalities and leaders are indispensible to these groups.

The basic weakness of protest movements is that when they come to realise that their aims demand political expression, they are forced to take their place alongside the existing reformists in the general clamour to mitigate some particular evil within the framework of capitalism. Thus they inevitably get involved in helping to perpetuate the very conditions which give rise to the evils against which they protest.

Furthermore, they all share one common illusion — that capitalism can be made to work in such a way that its worst effects can be avoided. It is quite wrong to assume that politicians can at will adopt policies which would remove the problems endangered by capitalism. In this country, the Labour Party is the classic example.

Starting out back in 1906 with high-sounding phrases like “the greatest good for the greatest number”, Labour saw themselves as a workers’ party. The plight of the working class was clear enough to see. They suffered from unemployment, poverty, slums and wars. Their wages were always insufficient, their conditions miserable and insecure.

The trade unions struggling on the industrial field felt they needed a political party of labour so that their voice could be heard in Parliament. Then, with trade-unionists representing the workers on the floor of the House of Commons, wages and conditions would be defended. The Tories and Liberals were parties of the boss and of landlordism, but — “once we get a workers government in” — things will change.

There was certainly plenty to protest about — there always is, and the Labour Party embodied the hopes and dreams of a generation. Under its large umbrella, where there was just about room for anyone, there were many protest groups rolled into one. So long as you felt indignant about some damn thing you were all right. Never mind if you understood nothing of the workings of capitalism, and the more vague you were about Socialism, the better.

The emotional attitude of hating the Tories and blaming it all on them, was enough to satisfy the ambitions of those at the head of this blind unwieldy mass. Well, if ever the chickens came home to roost, in this case it was with a vengeance.

It is a pitiful spectacle, to see the Trotskyists and the so-called Communist Party still urging workers to vote Labour in spite of all that has happened, only to find themselves protesting against the policies of the very people they have helped to elect. Of course, the reason Trotskyists and Communists can see no further than the Labour Party is because they are reformists themselves and if they got into power, nothing fundamental would be changed.

This fact is demonstrated by Russia, China and the Eastern European countries, where all the basics of capitalism exist, but unfortunately they don’t know how to interpret the evidence.

Events have turned full cycle. We now have in power the former champions of protest — the political voice of trade unionism. Their commitment to capitalism is total. Their vicious attacks on trade unions which do not fall in line with their ruthless legislation is equalled only by their cynical attitude to workers on strike.

They are at the helm now, running capitalism. Mr. Wilson has made it clear; ‘‘We intend to govern”. This means looking after the interests of the British capitalist class at home and abroad. It means engaging in the international struggle for markets and natural resources. It means building armaments and, if the rat race threatens vested interests, sending workers to war.

It inevitably means clashing with the workers — trying to get them to work harder for less. This is the only way to “govern” in a society divided into classes. This is the only possible end for any group of protesters who stop short of seeking to remove capitalism.

Socialism demands that a conscious majority of workers shall organise to get it. The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain and its Companion Parties are the beginning of that organisation. If we lack the glamour of the bigger parties, we also lack their disillusionment.

Harry Baldwin

These Foolish Things . . . (1997)

The Scavenger column from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

American bad dream

In 1994 every US resident between 18 and 65—that is 150 million people— received at least 17 offers of credit cards  . . .  A survey by the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, reveals that over the past three years the number of families running up credit card debts on annual incomes of less than $10,000 (£6,250) has more than doubled from 11 percent to 24 percent. And the number of personal bankruptcies has reached a record 1.1 million. The average bankrupt is aged 30 to 40 with an annual income of $25,000 to $35,000 and up to $40,000 in credit card debt. Typically, this person will have between 10 and 12 cards with a credit limit per card of $3,900. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 23 March.)

Out of sight . . .

Government scientists have decided against further research in to a cluster of leukaemia cases around one of Britain’s most powerful FM radio transmitters. The decision comes five years after the Guardian first revealed an unusual number of cases near the BBC’s TV and radio transmitter at Sutton Coldfield north of Birmingham. The existence of the cluster was confirmed by a subsequent government funded study published, after a long delay, in a US journal this year . . .  the effect was to ensure that the UK press did not cover the story of the Sutton Coldfield cluster. (Guardian, 29 May.)

Wage slavery

About 200,000 employees in the West Midlands—12 percent of the region's working population—receive no paid holiday . . .  One in five get only 15 days annual holiday entitlement and 25 percent work more than 48 hours a week. (Evening Mail, 28 February.)

A class act

Lloyd’s insurance market is bracing itself for the biggest wave of City job losses since Big Bang in 1986. More than 200,000 workers face the sack as some of the worlds largest insurance brokers merge with former rivals. The massive cost-cutting drive has been triggered by the Aon corporation, a US insurance broking group already embarking on extensive takeovers in London and the US in a bid to become the world number one. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 6 April.)

Penury

Elderly people in state-funded care homes are left with barely a third of what they need to pay for personal needs such as clothes and toiletries . . .  The personal expenses allowance of £14.10 a week compares with £38.78 needed to meet the ‘‘modest but adequate” outgoings of someone living in a residential home, according to the research for the charity Age Concern. (Guardian, 24 April.)

As we say . . .

Differences between the three main parties are wafer-thin—a matter of nuance rather than fundamental approach. That may be because we really have little choice about where we go from here. Politicians are merely trying to fool us when they claim they can change our lives for the better at little cost, fearful that if they tell the truth we shall turn against them. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 27 April.)

                                                                                                                         The Scavenger

                                                                                                                                       

Cooking the Books: But Who Owns the Machines? (2016)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared of Capitalism, Not Robots’ wrote Alexander C Kaufman, the Business Editor of the Huffington Post, last 8 October. Hawking didn’t actually use the word capitalism but he might as well have done:

‘If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever increasing inequality.’

In one sense we are already in this position of being able to produce ‘everything we need’. Not that machines operated by robots could now produce this on their own, but  in the sense that machines operated by human labour could. But the outcome will depend on who owns the machines.

Hawking is envisaging what might happen, with ever-increasing mechanisation, in a society where the income of those who don’t own machines derives from working for those who do. One scenario is that, as production becomes more  mechanised, fewer workers will need to be employed and so more and more people will have to depend on miserable state hand-outs to survive instead of on not so miserable wages.

He also offers an alternative scenario where the machine-owners are obliged to share their income, presumably though taxation, to provide an income and services for a growing number of non-employed. There are already groups advocating this but it is not going to happen because it goes against the economic logic of the system where production is geared to  making profits with a view to accumulation as more capital rather than to satisfying people’s needs.

How likely anyway is the first scenario of growing mass unemployment? This has been predicted many times but has never actually come about. Production and employment have continued to expand over time, even if in fits and starts. The growth in productivity resulting from mechanisation is not as fast as is often thought, only of the order of 1 to 2 percent a year; which is slow enough to allow the labour displaced to be reabsorbed in other activities (including machine building).

Also, if increasing mechanisation were to lead to steadily growing unemployment this would have the effect of slowing down the introduction of machines. The mass unemployment would exert a strong downward pressure on wages and make it profitable for the machine-owners to employ workers rather than machines.

A minor example was reported in the Times (14 December):

‘Garage owners said that the number of car-washing machines has more than halved in the past 15 years because they are struggling to compete with migrants doing the job by hand…. [T]he number of automated “rollover” car washes in Britain has more than halved, from about 9,000 to less than 4,200 in 2015. It is estimated that the number of dedicated handwashing sites has ballooned from 4,000 to at least 20,000 over the same 15-year period.’

So, while the effect of mechanisation under capitalism might not be as bad as some predict, the full benefits of it will not be able to be enjoyed until the machines are owned in common by society as a whole. Then, and only, then will they be able to be used to turn out plenty for all, to be distributed in accordance with the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. This will never happen under capitalism, however much people lobby for (or against) it.

Obituary: Jack McDonald, 1889-1968

Obituary from Western Socialist #4, 1968

The socialist movement, small in numbers as it is, has within its ranks a fair representation of so-called civilized man. The majority are not noticeably vocal, nor do they have the ability to express themselves in writing. Another section, albeit possessing certain talents for communicating ideas, are unfortunately constrained to keep their propaganda activities at a minimum, even in some cases to the extent of secrecy. Finally, there are those, all too few, among us who have the knack for imparting knowledge and who have neither the compulsion nor the desire to keep their mouths buttoned. Such was Jack McDonald, without doubt one of the very finest teachers and propagandists in the history of the World Socialist Movement.

A column in the "San Francisco Chronicle" dated July 6, 1968, informs us that: "Bookseller McDonald Dies at 79," as the result of being struck by an automobile near his home in Oakland, California on July 1, 1968. The column deals briefly with his colorful life and states that he was always proud of his one-time membership in the "International (sic) Workers of the World" and that he was a "life-long radical and supporter of Marxian socialism."

We do not know who authored the column but it was obviously one who was ill-informed. At the time of his death Jack McDonald was a member of the National Administrative Committee of the World Socialist Party (U.S.), was proud of his membership for many years in the organization, and was a steady contributor of articles and financial support to "The Western Socialist." Although Mac had many close friends among Wobblies and other radicals he was, himself, not a "radical" but a scientific socialist. A perusal of his articles through some 35 years of "The Western Socialist" will show that he knew the difference and explained the difference.

As one who knew McDonald personally—although as far back as 1937 and 1938—and who maintained a steady contact with him via mail in connection with his manuscripts to "The Western Socialist" the news of his sudden death came as a tremendous shock. It seems to me that anyone around today who knew Mac—even if only through his writings—did not think of him as old, or aging. He seemed a living example of eternal youth. It will be difficult, indeed to replace him as a consistent writer of readable and informative articles. He had the ability to break down a variety of important subjects into terms that won the interest of the average reader of "The Western Socialist". The scope of his subjects was so vast, in fact, that to read all he has written is almost to acquire the basics of a liberal education. And advancing age did not seem to slow his output. Certainly he has been a source of inspiration to other writers in our movement and I, for one, am only too happy to acknowledge my personal debt to him.

Over the years prior to his retirement from active duties at the store, McDonald’s Bookstore was a sort of permanent meeting place—a rendezvous for socialists and for various types of radicals who knew him or knew of him. They came from near and far. And McDonald was never one to permit the cash nexus to interfere with this fact of life in San Francisco. He had time for his customers and his comrades. He was widely known, himself, as a socialist; had spoken for many years at both indoor and outdoor (soap-box) meetings; and had conducted the Jack London Labor College. Despite his socialist activities he was widely respected and liked, by non-socialists and foes of socialism as well as by comrades.

Jack McDonald was noted, among other things, for a fine sense of humor and for the knack of converting a funeral oration over a departed comrade or friend into a cheerful—rather than a gloomy—chore. Not having been privileged to attend his cremation I would like to end this obituary with an anecdote which Jack personally related to me in 1937 of how he had become acquainted with socialism.

As a young man in Western Canada Mac had been a Sunday School teacher. It came to pass, that a socialist Member of Parliament from Alberta, one Charles O’Brien—referred to by McDonald’s pastor as an "emissary of the Devil"—was scheduled to address an audience on the evils of capitalism. McDonald, curious to see and hear an emissary of the Devil, attended. Whether or not O’Brien looked like the Devil he apparently possessed a Devilish gift of persuasiveness. At any rate he converted McDonald from Christianity and if O’Brien never accomplished anything else of consequence in his own career he should be remembered by us for that one feat. The socialist movement has been richer because of it.

As of 1968, we are still a distance from our goal—as far as outward appearances are concerned. But, as did Jack McDonald, we are going to go on punching. Our sympathies go to his family.

Harmo.

Is A Socialist Policy Applicable To America. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Correspondent’s Letter and Our Reply.

Crockett, California.

I am an interested, though at present unaffiliated sympathiser, in fact an adherent to the principles and programme of your party, and have been in the recent past aligned with small study groups both in Detroit and in New York, patterned very much along the same line as your organisation in point of principles.

The question I am about to ask may or may not be fatuous, or ambiguous, it may even have been already gone over in your columns several times in the past year. I have not been able to get copies of your paper in a long time, but now that I live adjacent to San Francisco, I can get the “Standard” at McDonald’s book store as often as it comes, hoping that my query is given an airing in an early issue.

The Kautskian position is, as I understand it, fully endorsed by the S.P. of G.B., particularly where it emphasises the prime importance above all things of political action in the form of parliamentary representation, and by using the constitutional camouflage of the bourgeois state, as a means to attain power. All schemes, such as military coups de etat, are in that case foredoomed, and in the final analysis Socialism as Marx has it, must come about only through the efforts by and for the immense majority. Otherwise, it is not Socialism. Agreed. 

Is the editor able to answer a question that only has to do with America? If so how would he deal with a political situation at present, such as it now exists in the United States, that on the surface of it, and as far as the interests of the proletarian revolutionary movement is concerned, is well-nigh hopeless? I have run across this continent time and again over a decade, and have conversed with countless numbers of workers everywhere, besides reading contemporary periodical literature, giving a more or less accurate expression to the prevailing psychology of the American people. The popular notion is growing, and by now has become well-nigh universal, that political campaigns, election promises and programmes, ballots and everything else that goes with it, is hopelessly corrupt, and the very mention of Socialists, as a trial proposition, in way of political power, elicits no response.

The power of big business and the seemingly impregnable position of finance and industrial capital has, as it were, completely cowed and rendered tame the immense majority of the people in the United States. In the face of all this, what is there to be hoped for, if we are to go by what Kautsky tells us, and assuming that American “prosperity” breaks down in a year or two and renders living almost insupportable for millions who are now employed, and are living in a fools' paradise, to hear them talk, how is that condition going to bring about a swing towards anything that resembles intelligent co-operation in the working-class?

Can the inhibitions and ingrained superstitions of an idiotically ignorant and proud people such as the average Anglo-Saxon and Celtic, native American, be overcome and give way to a change of sentiment from that of extreme egotistic individualism to that of a class-consciousness in its correct sense in anything less than another generation? Does biology, and several other sciences, that deal with man, his physical and mental make-up, give us any hopes for a possibility of any much to be hoped for, sudden change, or at least a mental condition that will even listen to Socialist propaganda ?

I am not in the habit of transcribing articles, or writing anything, and you can condense this as you see fit, and answer it as far as you are capable of doing, living as you do, so far away from these conditions as they appear to me. In short, will Kautsky’s premise fit this country. I close hoping that you will give this due consideration and I remain,

Yours in revolt,

M. Wasson

OUR REPLY.

The above letter sets out by associating us with Kautsky’s attitude, and as the latter has continually shifted his ground politically, we must decline to be identified with such an anti-Socialist as Kautsky has shown himself to be.

Kautsky has, however, offered unanswerable criticisms of Lenin’s views on democracy and dictatorship, and no doubt our Californian correspondent has these points in mind.

The main question in the above letter deals with the application of Marx’s (and therefore the S.P.G.B.’s) policy to the United States. Socialist policy naturally depends for its application upon the conditions prevailing in a country, but those who argue that conditions in any country warrant an entirely different policy to ours, generally fail to deal with the so-called-differences in conditions between this and other countries.

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers in U.S.A. offers no permanent hindrance to our Socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas amongst the masses is a phase which is true of every country for a time.

Economic development has rapidly converted the United States from a prairie into a nation of vast companies, where the largest and latest plant and machinery is in use, each employing many thousands under one roof.

The comparatively recent industrial growth and commercial expansion of the U.S.A. offers one reason for the so-called “better conditions" of labour. This is partly responsible for the lack of interest in social change amongst the workers there. This lack of interest, however, is not simply a reflex of “better” conditions, but a result of capitalist propaganda by press, priest and schoolmaster, which is more powerfully and carefully used in American life than perhaps any other country, to mould the working millions to capitalist views. The extremely careful selection of and control over teachers in school and college to avoid any advanced political views being taught, is notorious. Then we have the intense campaigns always subsidised to naturalise the immigrant arid “educate” him into worship of American institutions. The unexampled dominion of a vast newspaper and magazine press pouring out lies to cloud the “popular” mind is an immense factor in working-class ignorance there.

The primitive and highly-organised and well-financed religious bodies of America still have a remarkably large influence in U.S.A. These agencies of propaganda employed to keep the workers submissive, are effective because temporarily the conditions in the United States have not caused deep and lasting discontent. If a collapse of conditions causes vast discontent, can anything be hoped for if the working-class are ignorant of Socialism?

Such is the question asked by our correspondent.

Discontent in itself is not sufficient. We had 6 or 7 millions out of work in America in 1921 and 1922, but they were largely seeking charity or temporary relief whilst hoping for better times. They did not revolt though the Communists there told them the factories would never re-open, and that the revolution was on the way.

The insecurity of work in a country so highly productive and so scientifically organised in production as America is a very important element in the workers' life, and the growing experience of this in recent years does play a part in the workers' education. The apparent slowness of change in ideas amongst the workers there is evidently one of our questioner’s stumbling-blocks.

If he expects vast and rapid changes amongst the majority in a few years he is likely to be disillusioned. America has profited by European decline since the war, and has captured many of their markets, especially those on the American continent, and so for a while she will be able to keep the wheels turning. Apart from that aspect however, there is the fact to be faced that conditions in so vast and so recently developed a country as the U.S.A. cannot change the individualist outlook to a Socialist one overnight.

The conditions for generations bred an optimism and an individualism amongst the migrating settlers, and only continual experience of the insecurity and suffering of capitalist development can be effective in turning them to Socialist education for enlightenment.

Our experience and general information shows that interest in Socialist ideas and desire for social change does grow in the United States. The vast literature, even of Marx and Engels (apart from the more popular) which has been sold in America is an example that all is not as black as our questioner thinks. One large factor in their backwardness is the deliberate use of the labour leader over there as well as here, to confuse and mislead the worker. From Gompers down to the Communists parading as left-wing labour leaders, these have all been well used to side-track the worker. And as recent revelations and many “raids" and trials have shown, prominent Communists over there have been used by the authorities to preach violence by minorities, and so frighten wage-workers away from even the name of Socialism and Communism.

That conditions are likely to develop anti-capitalist views amongst the workers in U.S.A. is so well-known to the capitalists there that they have spent fabulous sums in controlling almost every agency of education and opinion, including the labour leader.

The open and constant use of the wealth of the few to control affairs by so-called corruption is inevitable, especially in the U.S.A., where the relatively few large owners do not enter into politics themselves, but hire the lawyers and professors to run affairs in their interest. Politics in America are as corrupt possibly as trade union officialism there. This, however, will not prevent or influence the awakened worker once be realises that economic and political action are essential for him, and that neither political or economic action are in themselves corrupt or need ever be corrupt once the workers understand and control the economic and political organisations for themselves and in their own interest.

With the overwhelming mass of the population in America being workers and possessing the majority of the votes as they do, there is no hindrance to them controlling the State machine in America for themselves once they want to and know what to do with it. There is no other way but control of political power in U.S.A., and the stupendous economic development of that country cannot but quicken what has already commenced—the ripening of the working-class mind, and the eventual acceptance of the Socialist position.

Adolph Kohn

Boffin the night away (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the heading “Britain’s Biggest Daily Sale” the Daily Mirror recently told us something important. Well, important enough to run to 3 pages on Wednesday 8 March and 2 pages on Thursday 9 March. Now that’s important and no mistake.

Who could resist it? I mean, a question like “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?”

Forget the heart, you sneer (for after all it is the Wednesday tea-break in the Heart Attack Machine Factory). How about her income? Now there is something worth capturing. Princess Margaret has a £50,000 annual income. Having squandered your 7p on the Daily Mirror you want the goods. “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?” You want a short, easy, fool-proof method.

Well it seems a distinct advantage, if you are in the Princess heart capturing business, for your old man to be well-heeled. We are informed by the biggest daily selling newspaper “Roddy’s brother Dai, older by 18 months, is fascinated by sport and hunting. Even these days, he will race home to the family’s 2,000 acre estate near Abergavenny, Gwent and hunt with unashamed zeal much to his father's delight”. Roddy wasn’t interested: "I am not particularly interested in killing small animals.”

So there’s a clue. Be a sort of gentle guy. Oh, and by the way, make sure your old man has 2,000 acres. Dustmen don’t capture Princess’s hearts.

O.K., you say, the guy isn’t a dustman so what does he work at? The biggest selling daily is ready to inform you. After all, knowledge is power.

The Daily Mirror is a little vague on this one though: “. . . a fair haired young landscape gardener (and would-be pop singer). . .”

The would-be pop singer is easy. Who isn’t? The Saturday nights of Clapham and Maryhill ring to the bath-room echo of plenty of potential Jaggers and Bowies. Gardener? No sweat there either. Their income is as poor as yours.

So what’s the Princess heart-winning ingredient? Let’s take a look at big brother—yes, the fox-hunting one. Whatever else you could say about Roddy Llewellyn’s occupation, his brother could never be accused of gardening.

Vagueness creeps over the biggest selling newspaper again. “Dai has done a variety of jobs. From the travel business (“I wore a bowler and stiff collar in those days”) to his present endeavours which involve boosting British goods in the US”.

But if they are vague on the work-life of the brothers they describe as “Two of Britain’s most intriguing bachelors” they are quite specific on the love-life. How do you think they became Britain’s top-selling newspaper?

They tell of Dai and one of his mates pulling a couple of “very English, very debby girls” in a nightclub of course. Dinner and on to another club. He then hired “a famous Latin-American singing group” to accompany them to Annabels and the Clermont Club. . . . and then on to a friend’s house.

And so to bed. In this case “eventually Dai and his companion ended up making love to the two girls side by side on a huge bed. while the group stood round serenading them—stark naked.”

To all dustmen, engineers, school teachers, labourers and other ungrateful workers who may be reading this—a word of warning.

If you want to find out how a section of society can lead this sort of life-style don’t read the Daily Mirror.

Oh, sure, they’ll give you details of Roddy’s visits to Barbados, Istanbul and Acapulco. You’ll get the details of "Dai’s 4 or 5 cocktail parties in a night...” 

But to find out why you live the dull repetitive life you do; while Dai can say “My motivation is simple. Eat, drink and be merry—I genuinely don’t care what people think. I believe I should experience everything in life that is possible”—don’t look to the top selling newspaper.

Better take out a subscription to one of Britain’s lowest selling newspapers—The Socialist Standard.

For only in this newspaper will you read that the Dais and Roddys of this world lead their jet-set lifestyle only because you—the useful members of society —provide the wealth that makes it possible. Dai’s income comes from your endeavours. The wealth you produce is more than you get back in the form of a wage or a salary. The surplus you produce makes it possible for these parasites to live the way they do.

All this is bad enough, but the Daily Mirror going on about how Princess Margaret refers to her parasite boyfriend as “my darling angel” and similar gushing nonsense, is to add insult to injury.

The one piece of information to emerge out of the whole silly story is the item . . . "He’ll (Dai that is) eventually take her home, indulge in a bit of “boffing” (current upper class slang for you know what) and drive her home.”

Boffing. Now there’s a new one.

Next time the gaffer tells me that I'm not working hard enough. I can reply “Away and boff yourself.” 

Let’s hope he doesn’t read the Daily Mirror.

Dick Donnelly

Bubbles of blood (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was pulling into a motorway service station somewhere south of Birmingham when the radio announcer said that in 20 minutes' time there would be an interview with a prizewinning Cuban poet. I made a mental note to miss it. I had my coffee, got back into the car and drove off As I switched on again without thinking, the interview was just starting. I couldn't change stations at that moment as I was having to concentrate on changing lanes on the motorway. By the time I'd done that and I was overtaking in the second lane, it was too late. The interviewer had explained that Jorge Valls Arango had just spent 20 years as a political prisoner in a Cuban gaol His prize was for poets undergoing censorship or repression. He was not going to talk about his poetry but about his life in prison in Cuba. I was hooked.

Valls struggled to put together the words to describe what he had been through, but the limited halting English somehow made his story more riveting — and more harrowing. He had been released seven days before, thanks to pressure from the PEN International organisation He had been imprisoned for attempting to defend a friend accused of collaboration with the Batista regime which Castro had overthrown The fact that Valls had himself been in Batista's prisons made no difference.

He described Castro's prison as being slightly different from hell. "From hell you cannot get out but from prison you may die and get out", he declared, and such moments of grim humour made his narrative all the more compelling and authentic. The physical violence against prisoners was horrible, he went on, as were the periods of desperate hunger. But the worst thing was the "psychical and moral violence" — the constant provocations, the time spent in complete isolation, the years spent in small crowded spaces with little air or sun, the sight of others being cruelly tortured or executed. These conditions had driven some of his companions mad and others to suicide. He quoted from one of his poems called Blood.

I am up to my neck in rising blood.
It's a black and sour blood.
I am tied up with a rope of blood.
I am speaking with a voice
     made of bubbles of blood.
I am being heard by five ears of blood.
1 am travelling in a blood-smeared car
1 am disintegrating into worms of blood.
The worms grow and multiply . . .

Towards the end of the interview Valls began to talk about his religious convictions and how they had sustained him through his captivity. His expression was just as powerful but it was an area of experience with which I could not identify. Still, I thought, how could you deny someone suffering so prodigiously the right to find his own source of strength and consolation?

I was still speeding along the motorway when the programme ended. I switched off. Nothing could follow this for the moment. I began to think about the kind of country Cuba was. I had to admit to myself that I didn't know much about it. I would try and find out when I had the time.

I found out more quickly than I expected, for in the same week a six-part TV series on Cuba began, looking at 25 years of rule by Castro. The first programme told me that the Cuban Constitution said: "All have equal rights and equal duties". But clearly some had more equal rights than others — in particular the ruling elite, most of whom were family and friends of Castro, and the ten per cent of the population who had membership of the Communist Party, an honour extended only to the select few The "less equal" members of Cuban society, the series showed, included the majority of the working population who were allowed no freedom of movement in jobs or residence, no trade unions and no freedom of expression or political opposition, and for whom rationing of food, clothing and petrol was a way of life. Even less equal were the 3,000 or more political prisoners, to whom Amnesty International had been denied access since 1977. and the many thousands of others in the 68 gaols of a country which has a population about a sixth the size of Britain

Not that the programmes shed an entirely negative light on the country. Castro's rule had brought certain benefits to the majority of people much improved health care, increase of life expectancy from 55 to 70, a 96 per cent rate of literacy. Such improvements are not to be sneezed at but they must also be seen in a broader context that of a state which demands total conformity of ideas, locks up its dissenters and throws away the key, and confers privilege and status on a minority of the population while officially denying that such privilege and status exist. Is Castro's Cuba therefore fundamentally different from any of the world's other one-party states? Ask Jorge Valls Arango what he thinks.

                                                                                                                                           Howard Moss

(A transcript of most of the interview with Jorge Valls Arango was published in the Listener, 26 July 1984. A social and political analysis of Cuba 25 years after Castro's revolution appeared in the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard and is available on request.)

Greasy Pole: Throwaway Minister (2016)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Where’s fookin’ Menzies?... Come on, where is he?... just to let you know, I’m not fookin’ having’ it…’ was how Labour Deputy Leader John Prescott warned Tony Blair about the rumours that the Lib Dem Leader was to be included in the government. And some years after that… ‘the meeting was friendly enough. He ended up offering me just about every job that was going – including the Foreign Office – except the one that I held. I said no’ – which was not John Prescott but Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling discussing with Gordon Brown the Labour Leader’s plan to replace him with his favourite Ed Balls.

Eton And Cambridge

It is habitual for political leaders when they are imposing the disciplines of exploitation upon the rest of society to resort to an individual style of expressing themselves, in words as well as actions.  An example  is Oliver Letwin,  who is now the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a history of episodes as Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Home Secretary, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Politics has always been part of the Letwin family’s expectations; his father became Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics and his mother has been described by a close friend as ‘humourless and energetic, argumentative and exceedingly right wing’. It was a family unlikely to place their child at a local state school so little Oliver had to learn about life and impoverishment at Eton. He then went to Cambridge where he joined both the Liberal Club and the Fabian Society – a conflict not made any more digestible by his apology: ‘I am sorry to have to tell you that this was because I was interested in the thoughts of Liberals and Fabians (and still am) rather than because I was ever a Liberal Democrat or a Fabian’.

Broadwater Farm 

Letwin’s first attempt to get into Parliament was at the essentially London Hackney North and Stoke Newington, against  Diane Abbott who was even then a rebel notorious enough for him to protect his ambitions by moving  in 1992 to Hampstead and Highgate, although that was where  another charismatic woman – Glenda Jackson – was entrenched. After all that effort he was probably due for a better prospect and he was given the chance at Dorset West but by the time of his first contest there, in 1997, he had a reputation for serial blundering so that his first majority was down to 1840. Among the earliest of his gaffes in 1985, when he was in Thatcher’s Policy Unit, was to support the vote-haemorrhaging Poll Tax. Although he was liable to be on the receiving end of a barrage of eggs if he spoke up for it in public, Letwin recommended that Scotland should be a ‘trail-blazer’ so that the tax could be used throughout the country if ‘the exemplifications prove… it is feasible’. Another disastrous piece of his work at that time was his part in commenting on the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985, when PC Keith Blakelock was killed. The riots were sparked off by the death of Cynthia Jarrett while the police were searching her home in Tottenham and were a predictable outcome of the particular poverty and despair of that area of London. But Letwin was joint author of an assessment that the cause was ‘solely by individual character and attitudes… new entrepreneurs will set up in the disco and drug trade… refurbished council  blocks will decay through vandalism  combined with neglect…’ This report was at first restricted as private; when it was released in December 2015 Letwin admitted  that ‘some parts’ were ‘badly worded and wrong’ and he apologised for ‘any offence these comments have caused’– the impact of which must have been diminished by the thirty year gap since the riots .

Hapless

Another of his efforts at joint authorship was in 1988, with John Redwood, of a pamphlet which justified the subsequent privatisation of the NHS, by both Tory and Labour governments and preceded his proclaiming that ‘The NHS will not exist under the Tories’. But the results of his efforts as one of the key advisers to Tory governments have not always been as he wished. During the 2001 general election he advocated a £20 billion reduction of the proposed Labour government’s spending. This was regarded as regressive and socially harmful, to the extent that Letwin feared his standing was under threat. He went into a period which Alistair Darling recounts as ‘A hapless Tory shadow minister, subsequently a member of the Tory cabinet, had played into our hands in 2001 by suggesting that the Tories really wanted to cut £20 billion from public spending. He went into hiding. The whole election campaign was dominated by the media search for this man. Oliver Letwin was finally tracked down at a garden party dressed in a Roman toga. We could not have paid for such a boost to our campaign’. The incident was reflected during the election when Letwin’s majority was reduced to 1414, classifying  the seat as marginal to a threat from the Lib Dems. In April 2011 he blurted to Boris Johnson that ‘We don’t want people from Sheffield having cheap holidays’- which may, or may not, have referred to Sheffield MP Nick Clegg.

Sensible

Among  his posturing and threats about the behaviour of others (provided they are not from the ruling elite) in October 2011 Letwin dumped a batch of papers,  including personal and other security matters, in a waste bin in a public place, as exposed when he was photographed in a park close to Downing Street. This was at first excused on the grounds that he was in the habit of rising early, going to the park and dealing with some of his paperwork there. It did not take long for this defence to be shredded, when details of the contents of the documents, some of which were seriously sensitive, were revealed. A spokeswoman for David Cameron had to concede that ‘Clearly it’s not a sensible way to dispose of documents’. Except that it has not been just documents which Letwin has disposed of during his career in power.

Ivan

Letter: Distortion (1997)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Distortion

Dear Editors,

In ALB’s review (Socialist Standard, April) of the Anarchist Communist Federation’s pamphlet Beyond Resistance—A Revolutionary Manifesto for the Millenium he states that the “ . . . ACF proposes punishment beatings". Nowhere in the pamphlet is there such an advocacy of such an appalling tactic (interestingly, you failed to quote, because you could not find such a quote). Nowhere in its magazine Organise!, in its pamphlets, at its public meetings, indeed anywhere in its propaganda is there a single mention of such action and no member of the ACF has ever advocated such actions. It would be like saying that the Socialist Party advocates shaving heads of people who fail to vote for you. Similarly where in our description of building a culture of resistance does the ACF exclude any section of the working class. What we advocate is a situation where all sections of the working class can take part in a vibrant culture of resistance where peoples self-confidence, self-organisation and creativity are built up. We have always argued against lifestyle anarchism, and it is devious and crass of ALB to attempt to identify us as lifestylists. Obviously your reviewer failed to read our pamphlet closely enough. Let people decide for themselves by reading our Manifesto.

Ron Allen (ACF member), 
London E1

Reply:

Our claim was based on the following passage from page 13 of the pamphlet:

"... we are involved as working class people in struggling for better community facilities, for resistance to police presence on our streets, and for working doss self-activity in dealing both with the authorities and with anti-social elements in our communities. But at the same time we point out that the enemy is the capitalist state, and so we oppose putting faith in soft-cop community leaders or self-appointed community controllers, such as gangsters or paramilitaries" (emphasis added).

Correct us if were wrong, but this is saying that “anti-social" elements (presumably, burglars, muggers, joy-riders, drug-pushers, child molesters and the like?) should not be dealt with by the police but by working people living in the same area where these "elements" live and operate. The pamphlet doesn't actually say how they are to be "dealt with" but things such as beatings, head- shavings. tarring-and-feathering, tying to posts, sticking notices on front doors, curfews and chasing out of town come to mind. Or was it "soft-cop measures such as counselling, supervision and community work that was being envisaged?

You say. as an individual member of the ACF, that punishment beatings are out. Other ACF members

don't appear to agree with you. such as the author of the article "Yobs and Boot-Boys" that appeared in the Oct-Dec 1994 issue of Organise! who wrote.

"None should cry over the odd hospitalised copper: they had it coming. And if Kenneth Clarke were found stabbed to death one day, we’d feel the same sense of elation we did when Ian Gow and Louis Mountbatten got their comeuppance”

The writer then went on:

" . . .  we should support each other in our communities against anti-social crime . . .  we should take inspiration from Derry in the ‘60s, the mining villages and Brixton frontline in the ‘80s and the bailiff busters in the ‘90s and build a real neighbourhood watch which will keep the yobs out even if they are in uniform. Then the only people who will ring the police will really be grasses and not frightened pensioners.”

The reference to Derry frightens us—and most of us are not even pensioners. This letter page is open for you to reply but don’t forget to specify how the ACF proposes to deal with persistent offenders and those who refuse to accept what is decided should be done with them.— Editors

World View: Is there a threat of fascism? (1997)

From the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1995 Presidential election, the Front National received just over 15 percent of the vote. But the FN achieved its greatest success in the municipal elections, in June of that year. It captured the councils of Marignane. near Marseille. Orange near Avignon, and the naval base of Toulon, all in the south of the country. In many other towns and cities, the FN received between 30 percent and 48 percent of the votes cast; and by the end of 1995. the party had 2.000 members sitting on local municipal councils.

In February this year, the FN captured Vitrolles in a dramatic municipal election victory, where Catherine Mégret, wife of Bruno Mégret, who hopes to take over the Party when Le Pen finally stands down as leader, achieved almost 53 percent of the second round votes (against 47.5 percent for the reformist‘‘Socialist" Party candidate), and became mayor of the town. Catherine Mégret did not empathise the Front's policy of the forcible expulsion of at least three million immigrant workers: in such an area, it had no need to do so. Many of the electorate are pieds noirs, former French colonists from north Africa who, in the main, support the Front National.

The Front's main support is in the south-east and south-west, the Paris banlieue (formerly Communist Party-controlled municipalities) and region and, to some extent, the Germanic Alsace area in the north-east of the country. The FN has the support, particularly in those areas, but also elsewhere, of youngish, "white" unemployed males, and petit bourgeois, poujadist, small shopkeepers who are continually losing out to the giant supermarket chains.

Although the FN has recently attempted to woo organised workers, and has even formed its own "trade unions" among the police prison warders and the RATP (Paris) transport workers, it has traditionally opposed strikes; and its influence among "blue collar" workers is weak. The Front National has opened up soup kitchens for unemployed ("white") workers, outside, for example, the Gare St. Lazare in Paris! There have, however, been fewer FN-organised mass demonstrations in recent years.

Is the Front National a Fascist party? Even some anti-Fascists have found this difficult to answer.

It is extremely nationalistic; and it even adopted Clovis, the barbarian chief, who converted to Christianity, and became the first Catholic king of Gaul. It is populist; and it includes among its members both right-wing conservatives who support "Thatcherite", free market economic theories, as well as supporters of a corporate state and economy.

At the same time, the FN has been able to accommodate many former members of small Fascist and neo-Nazi parties and groups. The inner "core" of the Front National is both racist and Fascist. Indeed, the long-time leader Jean-Marie Le Pen regularly proclaims the “inequality of the races", and also rants against what he calls “the worldwide Judeo-Masonic conspiracy” (see Le Monde and the Guardian. 5 March). And, like may Fascists, he has an extreme inferiority complex.

The Front National is unlikely to obtain the support of the majority of French workers. But with unemployment officially at 12.7 percent (probably more than four million), and many more workers feeling insecure in their jobs due to increasing redundancies and short-term contracts (as in Britain and elsewhere), together with the irrational nationalism and fear of "foreigners” (actually over 40 percent of all French people are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants), the FN is able to get a sizeable minority to believe mistakenly—and stupidly—that immigrant workers cause unemployment.

Peter E. Newell

'The reign of images and Spectacles' (1997)

Book Review from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond Resistance—A Revolutionary Manifesto for the Millennium by the Anarchist Communist Federation. £2

Socialists can agree with the first half of this pamphlet in which capitalism is criticised and the alternative society to it outlined. On the other hand, we can't agree with the second half where the ACF sets out how they think the alternative society will come about and what they think revolutionaries should be doing today.

The crisis of capitalism is correctly analysed not just as an economic and an ecological crisis, but also as a crisis of civilization whose features are a “collapse of community spirit and solidarity; the false cult of individualism as opposed to individuality; law of the jungle as the rule of life; poverty of real thought; the reign of images and of the Spectacle (e.g. consumerism, wars and famines as televised 'entertainment', the whole of life as a commercialised show); crisis of artistic creation and recycling of old recipes in the market of culture and entertainment; disenchantment and melancholy; cynicism".

The alternative to capitalism is seen as a society in which "all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community".

So far, so good. But how to get to such a society which we call "socialist" but they call "anarcho-communist"? The ACF see violence as the only way and we are offered a nightmare vision of the revolution as a re-run of the Spanish Civil War on a world scale but in which, this time, the good guys win.

There is nothing appealing or inspiring about this. Just the opposite in fact. The prospect of the next century being one in which a world civil war will break out, with all the death and destruction this would involve, is positively off-putting.

Fortunately, this is not the way to socialism. Certainly, the ruling class in all countries will have to be forced to give up their power and privileges but by mass popular pressure, including voting out their political representatives.

As to their strategy for today, the ACF want to build up a "Culture of Resistance" amongst the working class, but their conception of the working class seems to be restricted to young male workers who live on council estates or in inner-city areas. At least, it is to this section of the working class that their appeal is directed, with its emphasis on resistance to "police presence on our streets” and on dealing with "anti-social elements in our communities” (for whom the ACF proposes punishment beatings).

But what about the rest of the working class: those (most of us) who have a fairly steady job and are buying our homes from some building society? Ignoring the more representative majority of workers means that the ACF’s particular strategy for building a "culture of resistance" differs little in practice from "lifestyle anarchism" which sees anarchism not as an alternative society but as an alternative way of surviving under capitalism.

Adam Buick

For the Anarchist Communist Federation's reply, see here.

Nothing new here (1997)

Book Review from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Future of Capitalism by Lester Thurow (William Morrow, New York, 1996)

As a defence of capitalism and an attack on socialism, this is not a particularly unusual or original book. Dozens of similar texts have been published over the years, though the details get updated. We would not have paid much attention to it. except that from time to time it is a good idea to remind ourselves and others of the techniques by which support for capitalism and opposition to socialism is constructed and taught.

Lester Thurow isn’t anything special, either. An American professor of economics, he is described in his book's blurb as "an eminent commentator on the global economy and a shaping voice of US economic policy". (Remember that publishers routinely ask authors to draft their own blurb.)

Imagine that you are one of Thurow’s students. You have listened to him patiently while he expounded the ideas in his latest book. He invites questions. confident that they won’t be too difficult or disrespectful. You surprise him as follows.

In your book, you tell him. you write a lot about capitalism and socialism. For you. "Capitalism postulates only one goal— an individual interest in maximizing personal interests" (p.27l). Wrong on both counts! Capitalism is the system of minority private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution, the majority having only their labour power to sell to earn a living—only the profit of the privileged class is maximized. Socialism is the system of society, never yet established anywhere because it requires a majority of convinced socialists. based on common ownership and democratic control, and production solely to meet human need. What you call socialism (government ownership) is state capitalism.

You write, you go on, about the Soviet régime and claim that "In the contest between individual values and social values, individual values won" (p.5). Actually both capitalism and socialism require a combination of individual and social values. The difference is that capitalism means capitalists compete for markets and workers have to compete for jobs, whereas socialism means that all individuals (including former capitalists) have free and equal access to the wealth the world is capable of producing. You repeatedly describe socialism as a threat, as something to fear. Even when you refer to it as a challenge (p. 116) you link it with the military threat from "communism”. You should understand that, as names for the system that will replace capitalism, socialism and communism are interchangeable but that what you call “communism wasn’t really communism or socialism but state capitalism. Why should anyone fear a system that means abolishing war, poverty, privilege and exploitation of the majority by the minority?

Finally, you tell Professor Thurow, there’s a strong clement in much of what you write that can best be described as bullshit. What are we to make of this: "Given our new understanding of the tectonic forces altering the economic surface of the earth and the period of punctuated equilibrium that they have created, let’s return to the problem of constructing a capitalistic ship that will safely take us into an era" (p.326). You may wish to be all at sea on such a craft, but socialists have a much more worthwhile destination.

After this, Professor Thurow will, no doubt, be highly motivated to ensure that you don’t attend any more of his lectures.

Stan Parker

These Foolish Things . . . (1997)

The Scavenger column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Progress?

The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that there are 250 million children working, many of them in the sex trade and in industrial jobs which threaten their lives . . .  But, as it points out, ending all child labour will be a long and complicated business and some of the remedies proposed by Westerners have been counter-productive. The Harkin Bill introduced in the IJS Congress aiming to prohibit the import of products made by children under 15 is a case in point. Although the bill never reached the statute books, the threat of it caused panic in the clothes industry in Bangladesh and dozens of child workers were dismissed. The children, mostly girls, were traced and found to have moved on to more dangerous and exploitative workshops, or to have become prostitutes. The report emphasises that child labour is mainly a product of poverty and many surveys have shown that children’s work is often essential to keeping the family just self-sufficient. Guardian, 12 December.

Middle class?

The news that British Airways is to move accountancy jobs to India has more radical implications for people in the developed world than possible any other story this year. About 200 jobs are being transferred to Bombay to take advantage of wages as low as £4,000 a year against the £20,000 for their British counterparts. This is part of a rising trend for job exporting to hit white-collar workers, as education and living standards rise in emerging countries. Financial Mail on Sunday, 10 November.

Entertainment?

James Ferman, director of the British Board of Film Classification, said screen violence was a global problem. “The solution is beyond the reach of British law. The real solution is for Hollywood to wake up with a conscience. But I have my doubts—there is too much money at stake . . . Censorship can cut gratuitous acts of violence. But we cannot change the culture of violence which permeates much mainstream film-making.” Guardian, 12 December.

Can capital care?

Investment with a conscience is a scarce luxury in a hard-nosed world . . . Research by the Ethical Consumer magazine shows that, of the big banks, only the Co-operative and NatWest take environmental issues seriously when lending to companies. Most also fail adequately to consider concerns such as animal testing, factory fanning, oppressive regimes, armaments and workers’ rights. NatWest’s ethical lending policy is typical of the big banks: “We strongly believe that it is not the responsibility of lenders to police or try to manager their customers’ businesses.” Financial Mail on Sunday, 3 November.

Capitalism flourishes?

More than a third of the 3.4 million companies set up in eastern Europe with European Union help appear to have failed . . .  The EU channelled more than £7 billion of investment into eastern Europe between 1992 and 1994, the last two years for which figures are available. The survey, compiled by the EU’s statistical unit in Luxembourg, shows about 30 percent of the new companies were in Poland, 20 percent in the Czech Republic and 15 percent in Hungary . . . Two thirds have no salaried employees (the average company employs seven staff) and more than half were located in the home of the person setting up the company. Guardian, 31 October.

The Scavenger

Spiv Culture (1997)

The A Word In Your Ear column from the January 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain has become a nation of spivs and the new national hero is Arthur Daley. Only fools, horses and used-car salesman would find reason to celebrate this victory of commerce over common decency as something to be amused by. There is a foul smell of dirty money in the air and the polluters are more often than not would-be entrepreneurs with one foot in the capitalist class and the other on a banana skin. Wanna buy a fake Rolex, gov? Anyone for shares in a company that doesn’t exist? Or timesharcs? Or a chance to rob old ladies without doing time?

I happened to find myself seated in yet another Indian restaurant (“Does this man do anything else with his life?” readers may ask) and at the next table were two oafish drunks who slurred their way through several brandies and some nosh talking about how they were going to get stinking rich. One of them was involved in selling in-flight confectionery to a well-known airline. They both looked like men who had suddenly discovered that there are legal ways to get rich. “As long as we stick together... [belch]... yeah, stick together, see, and keep the product quality high ... [fart]... we’ll be able to corner the market. Trust me . . . [glug] . . . there's money in these chocolates, mate.” They ended up by shouting abuse at the waiter who had apparently been too slow with their last brandy and by handing round complimentary' chocolates to people at other tables. So, these were the crooks responsible for making money out of what loosely passes as airline food. These were the cutting edge of the enterprise culture.

These spivs were the boys who loved Maggie because she understood and delighted in the power of money. They liked Major better than Kinnock (who looked like the kind of bloke who would make a loss running a jumble sale), but they prefer Blair to Major because he talks their language. Just as the mud is the natural home of the slug, so the market is the social home of the spiv. Mind you, not the deep end. That is reserved for the multinationals. The 1990s loadasmoncy market-louts are happy to be poking around in the swamp for enough room to make a few grand and buy themselves a villa on the Costa Brava.

There is even a whole area of academia now reserved for training people to become spivs. They call it Business Studies. In fact, the study involved is how to make yourself appear as a respectable spiv. It is the most disreputable area of contemporary education. usually taught by failed bank managers and salary' slaves with earnest commitment to their slavery. It is probably one of the most useful degrees or diplomas to get in the 1990s. “History? English literature? Theoretical physics? Who needs 'em when there’s a world out there waiting to buy damaged goods?”

The myth that spivs went out of fashion after rationing was abolished and there was no black market for wide-boys to exploit is to miss the point: the true spiv never was the guy with dirty fingernails flogging rationed goods to people with money; the true spiv wears the best of second-class suits and flogs rubbish to people who can’t really afford them. The great business skill of modern capitalism is the sale of useless items by fast-talking crap merchants.

Cartoon by Peter Rigg

There is an indignity, not to mention an invidious inequality, about living in a society which rewards worshippers of the fast buck. A society which treats nurses like dirt and which allows some people to buy houses in the country, with money made from jerry-building and the sale of the cheap and shoddy, is rotten at its roots. Actually, Arthur Daley was at best pathetic and at worst a rather nasty trickster whose trickery was protected by his ability to buy a minder to keep the innocent away from him. What kind of a society acclaims such entrepreneurs? And yet look around the benches of the House of Lords and you will see more than a few of them sitting there, honoured as thieves of repute. (Remember Harold Wilson's Honours List?)

Wandering around the streets of Minsk a few' months ago it was impossible to avoid the constant pull by fast-talking street traders who were determined to flog you a souvenir tablecloth or a pair of old shoes. Their sales talk was incessant, made all the more irritating by the broken American accents and phrases they had picked up from ads on MTV. They will be tomorrow's graduates of the new business schools being set up to train a new generation of spivs in a country where the ruling crooks used to call themselves communists. No, of course it’s not just Britain which has become a nation of spivs. World capitalism is a system of international spivvery. To hell with it! 

Steve Coleman

Music and history (1979)

From the February 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The key to the understanding of social change is the materialist conception of history. Applied to music we find that the changes that have come about in this form of art reflect conditions of different social systems.

Ideas about music being the flower of Western culture have long since faded. Today it is generally accepted that music originated among primitive people, that it is linked to the cultivation of the earth, and that its basis is rhythm. We get the same evidence from China, Africa. India, and all parts of the world. The Hamites of the Nile Valley, for instance, used two joined sticks to chase away pests from their crops. Later these clappers were used to accompany dances to ensure the fertility of the crops and to aid work on the land.

About a thousand years later civilizations entered the valley. A class of priest-kings ruled over a multitude of subjects. Trained musicians in the courts and temples chanted praises to agricultural deities. Isis and Osiris. There were slight changes. New music was brought in when the Hyksos came with their drums and castanets. Other Semitic nomads introduced a form of the lyre.

Similar trends are apparent in the histories of all peoples. Beginning with fertility rites, music undergoes various changes as private property societies develop. It becomes religiously chant-like, a music designed to inspire awe and the acceptance of servitude to a ruling class. In China the starting point of musical theory is the “foundation tone”. It is a sacred, eternal principle, the basis of the state. A note of definite pitch (fa) supposed to give protection against public disorder.

When the Greeks came to the Mediterranean Isles they evolved a system of partially developed maritime commerce based on chattel-slavery. They established a reputation for knowledge and culture. But this was possible only because the vast wealth of the patricians enabled them to lead leisured lives. Beneath all the elegance festered the horrors of slavery. In the proud villas privileged musicians sang to aristocratic families. The teachers of music formulated their doctrine of the “ethos”, their belief in the ethical power of music, its ability to affect character for good or ill. So important did this doctrine become that performances of music were regulated by law.

When Greece became a province of Rome the conquerors adopted Grecian music, but did little to improve on it. The Empire was spread far and wide and there were few periods without war. Consequently the character of music was more martial. Military bands accompanied the army playing brazen wind instruments; the trumpet or clarion for the cavalry, the tuba for the infantry. Massive victory celebrations and gladiatorial combats were orchestrated with suitable sounds.

A few centuries later the Empire began to disintegrate. Rome was torn by class war and many saw salvation in the new religion. Constantine’s Edict of Milan gave Christianity state countenance, but many centuries passed before the new church was firmly established on a new social basis. This was the feudal system, with its hierarchy of power and privilege. The Frankish conquerors— tribal chiefs and petty kings—had castles built; they guaranteed protection (against raiding Vandals) to the freed slaves and others who had acquired a little land. The “protectors” eventually became warrior barons, who often fought one another and even found control by the king irksome. The king himself was continuously at odds with the church.

The earliest forms of western music are closely bound up with the church of Rome. The first forms were taken from ancient Greek songs and the chants of the Hebrew synagogues. Gregorian chant was derived from such sources, and an important factor in the prevalence of this music was the organ. This instrument, a development through various stages of the syrinx, the flute and the bagpipes was put together in Alexandria in the third century. Thus it may be said to have fallen into the lap of the church, and there is nothing surprising in the discovery that the first religious chants reached Rome through the Byzantine church. They were solemn chants in syllables—each syllable having one note. The choirs were not supposed to sing for the sheer love of singing. The expressed ideal was the glory of god.

Whatever this may have meant to the singers there is no doubt about its meaning to the priests. During the middle ages clerical possessions were enormous; churchmen owned at least one quarter of the land.

Towards the end of the middle ages music was still primarily a concern of the musicians employed by the church. However, by the turn of the 14th century composers had the technical means at their disposal to enable them to compose their own works. For a century French and Flemish composers led the way in Europe, and this raises the question why at different periods do some nations appear more musical than others? The answer, so far as the middle ages are concerned, is that the great cities of Flanders enjoyed a prosperity unparalleled in those times. They were great commercial and financial centres. This period in England was a time of disillusionment and disgrace for the established church. The corruption of religious orders was rife. At the same time wealthy merchants endowed large musical establishments, there came a development of instrumental music and practical instructions for the amateurs of the rising middle class. Music was losing its mystery.

At the end of the middle ages we see the more profound effects of the Renaissance on music. Printing had bloomed into established publishing houses, and this increased the chances of musicians. Their works were less anonymous and more correctly performed, and they felt free to borrow from predecessors. New manufactures included the clavichord and the harpsichord. The period is full of such changes. The bourgeoisie had not yet attained political power, but their commerce and wealth grew rapidly and they gained the interested patronage of the king, who soon commanded greater wealth than the merchants. One result of this was the royal patronage of the arts and sciences; another was the Civil War. In the not so distant future lay the Industrial Revolution. But the struggle between religious and secular ideas lasted at least for another century.

The distinction between religious and secular music settled for a period in the baroque, the balancing of contrasting forms. The church leaders saw the propaganda value of the new style. Its most successful form was the fugue. Three or four melodic lines were commonly used, and the main melody subjected to all the tricks of innovation known to the old composers. The king of this style was J. S. Bach. He invented no new forms himself, but used the method of imitative counterpoint. or taking a theme and changing it by adding or subtracting notes . . . He permitted himself almost anything. It was the most inventive form of musical imitation devised. His output was enormous. Handel wras another master of this style.

But it was the 17th and 18th centuries that saw the rise and culmination of the revolution in social and cultural thinking in Europe. The “Enlightenment” was the outgrowth of the continued rise of the bourgeoisie, an attack on established religion, feudal forms of political power, etc.

In music the demand was for ‘naturalness' and a more direct appeal to the emotions. This was the Romantic challenge to Classical music, which had ruled the roost from about 1750 to the first decades of the nineteenth century. Broadly, the Classical stood for political absolutism. the rule of order, nobility and sophistication. The feted composers worked in the employ of kings and wealthy aristocrats, who desired a style that would reflect the grace and beauty of their lives and the permanence of their rule. Haydn's and Mozart’s works were examples of the classical ideals of balance and beauty. Beethoven inherited the forms from them, but he expanded and developed them with skill and energy.

The Romantic movement swelled up in the turmoil of the French Revolution, and the wars that followed. It expressed the ideals of the middle class in the final days of feudalism; of “liberty, individualism, and nationalism”. The rising class took over the power of the aristocracy, became the ruling class. Among other acts they set up their own establishments, including new schools of music and concert halls.

The flow of romantic music had various national flavours as the bourgeois of Europe sought to follow in the footsteps of France. Strangely enough England seems to have been largely unaffected by this movement. But the explanation is quite natural. The England capitalists, having won power a century earlier, were currently enjoying economic growth and prosperity. They were in no need or mood for revolution.

Music has been called an international language. Yet the links with Nationalism still survive, because the national state is a bourgeois structure. It is constructive to read how such a ‘musical heritage' was built up in the United States. Very large sums of money were outlayed on musical colleges, institutes and orchestras, which are now in full bloom. A vast library of American folksongs was collected, mainly Anglo-Celtic in origin. Even Negro spirituals, with words and tunes adapted from Scottish and Irish melodies, were included. The claim is made that it all has an American flavour. The idea is to establish a separate musical identity, something they can make the public believe “this is ours”.

Nationalism as a cultural force certainly fell in influence after the Second World War. Some say this was due to the bourgeois sense of guilt. Enthusiasm for Wagner seemed to have dimmed among the intellectuals. And traditional concepts came under strong attack. Especially is this so in Latin America where musical nationalism has been pushed into the background. On the other hand Russian composers have had to toe the nationalist line. Shostakovich, for example, being bullied into the linking his works with the “achievements” of the USSR.

Of the future of music a fear has been floated that atonality, electronic sound and computerization will destroy the art of music. Will it matter? The pioneers in these fields have expressed the view that all sounds should be at the disposal of all who would like to compose. Such freedom would not be at variance with a socialist society.

Charles Kincaid