The Sentimental Socialist (1955)

From the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The sentimental Socialist, though not necessarily Christian, retains essentially the introspective attitude of the Christian ethics. He forms societies, the members of which are supposed to pledge themselves to indefinitely high aims, aims that tower above the clouds from which it requires the practised eye to distinguish them. These aims ‘won from the void and formless infinite’ seem to be won only for the sake of being handed over to the equally formless indefinite. The only shape approaching articulation into which they wreath themselves, is that of resolutions and letters. The young people of the well-to-do middle-class, for whom sentimental Socialism possesses attractions, think human nature susceptible of higher aims than the current ones, and meet in drawing rooms for the apparent purpose of passing resolutions to that effect. The sentimental Socialist desires above all things to be broad and comprehensive. Now any proposition conveying a distinct meaning is necessarily limited by that meaning; and must be taken to exclude its opposite, and a fortiori the society adopting it to exclude those who hold its opposite. But how can a society whose aims are so high, condescend to such small matters of detail as meaning? How can a man as Catholic as the ‘Brother of the Higher Life,’ or the New Atlantis Society, be so narrow as to exclude anyone. Hence in the resolutions adopted by such associations, the first requisite is the absence of meaning. All is possible in the man (or woman) who aims high enough. Danton’s motto ‘to dare, to dare, and again to dare,’ becomes in the hands of the sentimental Socialist, 'to aim, to aim, and again to aim’ at an ineffable O—Voilà tout. All this 'casting of empty buckets into empty wells and drawing nothing up’ may be entertaining, beautiful, ennobling for a short spell, but palls after a time, which is probably the explanation of the fact that the societies that start so rosy flight invariably die of inanition within measurable distance of their inauguration, though only to make way for new ones. The young men and women of our blasé middle-class civilisation require a stimulus; this stimulus may be aesthetic, philanthropic, or social. It may consist in languishing vapouring on art, on improved dwellings, on social reconstruction. Just now it wears the latter aspect. The whole movement is born of the morbid self-consciousness of our Christian and Bourgeois civilisation run to seed.”

E. Belfort Bax

("Today," March 1884.).

Rioting for reforms (1990)

From the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party has long been aware that there are organisations. both in Britain and other parts of the world, that share our view that capitalism is the cause of the major social problems confronting the working class and needs to be replaced by a world-wide socialist system based on common ownership, production for use and free access to wealth. However, organisations which hold this perspective with us are, unfortunately, often found to be deficient when it comes to having a credible strategy for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into socialism. One group, Wildcat have tried to argue that rioting helps raise class consciousness In their coverage of the Poll Tax riots earlier this year, Wildcat and a similar group of "council communists" in Manchester going under the name of Subversion have displayed a contempt for sections of the working class quite inconsistent with their professed aim of a harmonious society based on co-operation and mutual solidarity

Wildcat No.15. subtitled "Long Hot Summer 1990". stated:

Trafalgar Square will go down in history It was the most politically conscious and effective riot of modern times . . .  the rioters were not mindless hooligans They were mainly very clear about why and who they were fighting. They were disciplined. responsible and class conscious (Our emphasis)

Also:

The police were the main target. They were attacked with impressive courage and brutality . . .  the impunity with which most of the rioters were able to loot, burn, smash and occasion actual bodily harm has given a great boost of confidence to the undemocratic hooligan minority.

This is rubbish. An "undemocratic hooligan minority” beating up the other members of the working class which police are has nothing whatsoever to do with class consciousness—just the reverse.

Wildcat also proudly reproduced from a. newspaper:

A poll tax assistant hanged himself rather than face one more day of abuse from an irate public. He had only one more day of house calls to go. But instead he went home and hanged himself from a beam.

But Wildcat's wrath is not reserved merely for policemen, shopworkers or local government employees. Menacingly, they warn that:

The willing assistance of the media in providing the police with films and photos (of the riot) means that cameramen will always be among the first targets of future violent protests.

Very class conscious! But who will be the next victims of this peculiar "class justice"? Ambulance crews who go to help the injured?

Judging by some of the leaflets it has issued recently, Subversion is little better. Although one of their leaflets carries the interesting headline "Down With Poll Tax— Down With All Taxes", they seem just as obsessed with rioting and other violent behaviour as do their friends from Wildcat. In their issue dealing with the 31 March Trafalgar Square riot, they declared we support the riot 100 percent"

Their view of how riots and anti-Poll Tax demonstrations can bring about socialist consciousness is confused in the extreme. One of their leaflets reproduces two articles side by side. In talking of the Trafalgar Square riot the first one states "we regard such rioting as a positive sign" but is flatly contradicted by the second article which tells us that their group opposes all movements which are based on the acceptance of capitalism and which just want to ‘modify’ it in some way". The only way to resolve this contradiction would be to argue that the rioters were not interested in the Poll Tax but were rioting against the existence of the wages system, commodity production and other features of capitalism However, we doubt whether even Subversion could seriously argue that this was the case (and even if it was it would still be futile).

What is most striking about both Subversion and Wildcat is that they seem to be looking for “short cuts" to socialism by tagging on to the most extreme examples of working class discontent with particular products of the system. Although they seem reluctant to get involved in such campaigns run by trade unions or left-wing organisations, they are nonetheless in danger of treading the well-worn path towards reformism and single-issue campaigning that the Left have been involved in for decades.

Strategies based on riot and insurrection can play no constructive part in the development of a strong socialist movement. There can be no place for such romanticising of violence when the reality is that the coercive apparatus of the state machine is used to protect the interests of the ruling class. The first act of a socialist majority must be to take this apparatus so that the capitalist class can be dispossessed as peacefully as possible—and the socialist majority will include all sections of the working class—including the police, tax collectors, cameramen, ambulance crews and anybody else who might get in the way of the immature utopian fantasies of groups like Wildcat and Subversion.

Dave Perrin

The business of madness (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is the title of an article in Open Mind, the mental health magazine, for December 1987/January 1988. It deals with mental health "care" in prosperous, go-ahead Japan. The author. Dr Thomas Fahy, works at the Maudsley Hospital and his article is grim reading, making mental health care here, for all its shortcomings, appear enlightened.

In Japan 85 per cent of mental hospitals are privately owned. Patients can be committed on the say-so of one relative and one doctor (usually the administrator of the hospital concerned; hardly a disinterested party), which results in almost 80 per cent of admissions being compulsory. Two thirds of patients are kept in locked wards; average patient stay is over six-and-and-half years.

The system is designed not only to make money for those running the hospitals but to give profitable spin-offs to friends and relations. At the Bunoshin hospital where investigations had to be made into allegations of patient beatings and even deaths in suspicious circumstances, occupational therapy consists of eight hours work daily in the deep freeze food factory owned by the director's family. When, finally, the government enquiry was instituted.lawyers were refused access to patients and the slowness of police investigations was explained when it emerged that the Assistant Superintendent of the hospital was a member of the police group making the enquiry.

Privately owned mental health hospitals have, for a long time, been one of Japan's business success stories. Overcrowded wards and compulsory detention of patients for long periods, without any right of review or appeal, are good business. After all, when patients are paid for it would be foolish not to ensure that they are around for as long as possible. Modern capitalism is a stressful society and many families feel the burden of caring for mentally ill or feeble relatives is too great. As Etsuno Totsuka, a Tokyo lawyer who has been involved in trying to review and improve conditions pointed out, the dumping of the mentally ill may well be the necessary price of economic success.

Opposition to even the most elementary reforms is strong from interested parties who have ensured that, for instance, appeal procedures against compulsory detention will not be introduced. Considerable publicity is, rightly, given to abuses of psychiatric practices in Russia but, although the World Health Organisation suggested as far back as 1985 that the Royal College of Psychiatry could play an important part in exposing conditions in Japan, of which they are well informed, little or nothing has been heard from them. Could it be that here, as in so many spheres, it seems more important not to upset a profitable trading partner than to protect the rights and well-being of an impotent minority who are considered useless for exploitation in the profit-making process?

Eva Goodman

Myth of Industrial Unionism (1966)

From the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party attitude towards any specific political or economic organisation is determined by its basic position that there can be no social change as great, as far reaching and as demanding as the creation of Socialist society, without the conscious co-operation of the majority of the working-class. Until we reach that stage, until the wage-labour and capital relationships are abolished, there remains the vital need to safeguard working class living standards and conditions of work, and this safeguarding is rightly the task of Trade Unions. As long as a union remains a defence organisation the Socialists supports its sound actions and hits out at actions which conflict with the general interests of the workers, and as long as Socialists are few in number this is the only sound action possible. But the moment that any union claims that it is a revolutionary organisation then it must be judged from a revolutionary standpoint and the allowance made for the actions taken by non-Socialist unions are clearly out of the question.

Holding to this logical approach to the problem the Socialist Party very carefully examined the claims made for Industrial Unionism when American workers set on foot the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. The claims were that here was an organisation placed upon a class basis, free from conflict between skilled and unskilled workers, free from craft divisions, with such a resultant unity that the antagonism between boss and wage-slave could be seen clearly and met in the most effective manner. These “new style’’ unions, it was said, organised the workers “economic power" in such a way that it fitted them to take and hold the means of living when the time arose. These unions would then form the framework of socialist society and become its permanent administration. The Socialist Party was able to counter these claims by showing that no structural changes in union organisation could turn non-socialists into their opposites.

The Industrial Unions were open to all who took out membership cards; as a result their organisations housed Republicans, Democrats, Anarchists, etc., men of every brand of political persuasion. “It is useless for us here to attempt to disguise the fact that we have every shade of political opinion”, declared Delegate Murtaugh at the I.W.W. first Annual Conference. Yet the advocates of Industrial Unionism insisted that the I.W.W. was a "Socialist" organisation, one composed of "38,000 class-conscious workers" (Socialist Jan. 1908).

The I.W.W. was presented as an uncompromising force for unity, but in truth it was held together by shabby compromises and as a result it split, split and split again into warring factions. The split between the De Leonist elements and the “Bummery" section led to the existence of two rival I.W.W.’s (Detroit and Chicago) and during the active life of these rivals each side claimed that the other had blacklegged in industrial disputes. The De Leonist I.W.W. (later W.I.I.U.), though backed by the Socialist Labor Party of America, was organised on the same lines as the original I.W.W. and was thus open to all; as S.L.P. speaker, W. W. Cox confessed in the Weekly People (30 Dec. 1916) “The Workers International Industrial Union recognises no political party and it has a Republican, Democratic, Progressive Prohibitionist and Socialist Party as well as S.L.P. membership”.

The S.L.P. of A. while continually calling for clarity in political thinking at the same time approved and organised political confusion on the industrial field. As long as the politically confused were organised into the W.I.I.U. the S.L.P. was happy. In some magical way it was imagined that when the industrial unions grew strong enough they would themselves generate political clarity. The S.L.P. continued to urge the workers to “Organise industrially on the principles of the W.I.I.U.” until 1924 when, since the so-called “Socialist W.I.l.U.” had become an embarrassment, it was allowed to die.

In rejecting the fallacies of the Industrial Unionists the Socialist Party never asserted that Socialist Society would result from the actions of parliamentary delegates alone. It is completely illogical to imagine that Socialist understanding could grow to the point of political victory without simultaneously resulting in a growth of understanding and hence organisation to prepare for the taking over of industry. The Socialist Party in fact knows well that organisation is necessary for the running of industry in the new-born Socialist society. It holds also that a sizeable spread of political clear-sightedness will lead to the growth of such organisations, for when many workers want Socialism they will begin to organise and plan for the rebuilding of society prior to the capture of political power. We in fact stand for the principled, democratic organisation of class-conscious workers in contrast to the Industrial Unionist concept of industrial bodies built up upon the “open-house” principle.

For the present, however, Socialists have to act and co-operate with a majority of non-socialist fellow unionists. Socialist unionists will certainly oppose unsound actions and theories wherever these are found in the unions but we do not support the view that if the present unions were smashed then “genuine working class unions would arise in their place”—yet another industrial myth. The faults of the present-day unions result from the lack of understanding of their members and until their experiences lead them to realise the limitations of the day-to-day struggle, until they realise that within the framework of capitalism they cannot rise above their basic status as victims of the caprices of the world market these faults remain.

Melvin Harris

From America: The Hospitalization business (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

When considering a subject such as the dispensing of health care to the working class a Socialist begins with a basic assumption, one which fits the real world of our times: The working class, generally, must be kept in some sort of adequate health if it is to function reasonably well and so requires a degree of medical attention along with the other items that go into producing and maintaining labour power—food, clothing, housing, transportation, luxuries of a sort. And it need hardly be stated that the well-being of the capitalist class dictates that the costs of producing and maintaining labour-power be constantly monitored and held in check. Hence, the continual hue and cry in the USA over the question of a national health programme.

As it is, today, there are various types of plans, some privately operated, with their own hospitals and staffs, by large capitalist industries and by some labour unions. There are also the state-regulated Blue Cross-Blue Shield Plans in which many employers of labour offer their help, totally or in part, as a “fringe benefit” (or equivalent plans sold by private insurance companies). And there are the Federal and State-operated Medicare (for 65-and-over) and Medicaid (for the indigent). But these plans are all expensive to operate and, in some cases, not too satisfactory in coverage and seem to invite a large element of graft and corruption. So, because the central organs of capitalist power are deeply involved, as it is, it is all understandable why opposition to some form of national health plan in this bulwark of “Free Enterprise” is steadily eroding.

In the meantime, the Carter Administration has stepped into the hospital picture and announced that it will seek to legislate a 9 per cent, per annum ceiling on hospital rate increases. (The going in-patient rate in Boston teaching hospitals, for example, hovers around $175.00 per day plus the various extra medical and surgical charges, and steadily rising. The costs of out-patient care, too, because of the sophisticated new equipment and highly trained technicians available, reach astronomical heights which can easily cause the uninitiated in other lands to believe that American workers are indeed wealthy). And hospitals, generally and understandably, are reacting unfavourably. The dispensing of health care might be their business but the proper balancing of books is equally important in a capitalist society, even for “non-profit” institutions. “We will have to cut back on patient care”, scream the administrators. And there are some interesting observations that can be made about the business.

For hospital administrators must steer a hazardous course between what to them are twin horrors: government “interference” (excepting when such interference is requested) and unionization of their personnel. Unions have made some inroads into American hospitals but they are by no means general and their strength is certainly limited. So, it is all but impossible for administrators to blame rising fees on union demands. But this is only half of the story.

There has sprung up a lucrative business of “union busting" public relations firms that has been meeting with much success in the hospital industry. In a column in Boston’s Real Paper for Oct. 16, 1976, we read:

Last spring, Massachusetts Hospital Workers began union drives . . . The hospitals responded by calling in heavy- duty outsiders, the Chicago-based labour relations firm. Melnick, Mickus and McKeown. which three years ago at B.I. (Beth Israel) helped defeat another organizing attempt. The Hospital Workers . . . added that the consultants cost the hospitals $150.00 an hour at a time when hospital rates are soaring . . .

Certain local politicians introduced a bill in the Mass. House aimed at such practices. The following quote from Vol. V, No. 13, of the MHA (Massachusetts Hospital Research & Educational Assoc.) Monday Report tells the story:

MHA membership reacted quickly and sharply last week, helping to thwart a bill outlawing certain labour relations expenses. The association had testified before the Health Care Committee in mid-March, opposing House 2889 which aims to remove from reimbursement any costs a hospital incurs when coping with union organizing efforts . . .

The member hospitals were alerted, the Senators contacted and the bill defeated, at least for the time being and the Health Care Committee promises to “follow it closely.”

Now the problems of hospital workers will not be solved by union organization notwithstanding certain advantages. Nor will workers, generally, be benefited if and when hospitals can no longer charge off union- busting costs to operating expenses. Hospital administrators are, primarily, business people and will always fix rates at what the market will bear. They are sellers of the commodity health care and that’s how it has been and will be until the working class gets rid of the commodity society—capitalism.

Harmo, WSP, Boston.

Socialists and the Communist Party (1931)

From the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks why we oppose the Communist Party. Our general objection is that the Communists confuse the workers as to the meaning of Socialism and urge them to follow policies which are useless and dangerous.

The Communists mislead the workers by claiming that Socialism has been or is being established in Russia. The claim is false. In Russia all of the essential features of capitalism exist, and are not in process of being abolished. The workers are wage-earners, as they are here. Goods are produced for sale, not for use. Means of production are privately owned. There is vast inequality of income. Persons in administrative and technical posts receive twenty and thirty times as much as industrial workers. There is rent, interest and profit. The State capitalist industries and farms (mis-called “Socialist”) are avenues for the investment of the surplus wealth of the wealthier sections of the population. There is a great and growing investing class drawing incomes from their investments in State loans at 10 per cent, and over.

We do not condemn the Bolsheviks for the fact that capitalism exists and develops in Russia. They would have had Socialism if they could, but the conditions do not exist to make Socialism possible.

We condemn the Communist Party for pretending that Russian capitalism is Socialism merely because it is administered by Communists.

We condemn the Communists for their dangerous and futile policy of setting unarmed workers against the armed forces of the State.

We condemn the Communists for their advocacy of reforms and for their policy of telling the workers to vote into power Labour Party candidates, whom the Communists themselves admit will use their power to bolster up capitalism.

Ed. Comm.

The Poverty of Sociology (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member has written to us as follows:

   “I have just started a WEA course in Sociology and have purchased a copy of the book recommended by the author—Sociology: An Introductory Course by P. Selfe (Nelson £2).
    Page 1 defines Sociology. ‘It studies the behaviour of people in a careful and scientific way. Sociologists study the way in which a society is organized', and so on.
      On page 55 we get a photograph of Marx and a chapter entitled ‘The Marxian Theory of Class’. It starts with definitions of the two main class groups and that Marx ‘argued that to own the means of production is to be in possession of political and economic power’. It goes on to say: ‘In his interpretation of history (which he claimed was a scientific interpretation) he placed a great deal of emphasis on the struggle between the owners of the means of production exploiting the class of wage earners. He predicted that after a succession of crises capitalism would collapse, a revolution would occur and power would be transferred to the proletariat, and a more egalitarian society would emerge. His concept of class was based on the single economic dimension — that of economic power. But sociologists do not consider that this alone is a satisfactory way of defining class membership. Furthermore, many of the predictions made by Marx in relation to his theory of class and social evolution have not been borne out. One can also question the extent to which it is possible to develop a “scientific view” of the unfolding of history and a blueprint for the ideal society. If you were to draw up a plan for the perfect society, how many of your friends would find it acceptable? Marx looked towards a society in which there would be complete equality between all citizens, no distinctions of status or class, total co-operation between all members, and the gradual elimination of any form of organized govrnment — the state eventually “withering away”. Some of his ideas have been put into a novel by William Morris entitled “News From Nowhere”.’ So much for Marx!
     As this purports to be written in ‘a careful and scientific way’, would you care to comment?”

The most illuminating thing about this summary is that practically every sentence is wrong, and a WEA student who learned it by heart would have acquired a collection of erroneous ideas about Marx.

Classes and History

“The Marxian theory of class” is a theory Marxists have not heard of before. Marx laid down two detailed propositions: the materialist conception of history and the labour theory of value. The first deals with the reasons why societies take the forms they do and why they change, and the second is his analysis of capitalism.

Marx did not argue “that to own the means of production is to be in possession of political and economic power”. The contrary is true. A class cannot make itself effective as the owners of the means of production and distribution until it obtains political power. A large part of political history is about struggles to that end. Numerous examples can be given. In Britain, the upheavals of the 17th and 18th centuries were for the breaking-down of the rule of the monarchy and aristocracy as an essential to the replacement of feudalism by capitalism. The French Revolution had the same purpose. Similarly, the establishment of Socialism requires a political act, the conquest of the powers of government, to replace class ownership with common ownership.

Nor is it correct that class is based on “economic power” (or that this phrase has any meaning). Class is the relationship of groups of people to the means of production. In capitalism there are two classes only, owners and non-owners — capitalist class and working class. Rather loftily, the writer says “sociologists do not consider” that this is a satisfactory definition of class — without explaining why. Certainly society is riddled with “false consciousness” of class: do sociologists accept these conditioned evaluations, or do they seek categories in “a careful and scientific way”? However, the alleged concern is to render Marx’s view, and his done—wrongly.

The writer shows another misconception in saying that “in his interpretation of history” Marx “placed a great deal of emphasis” on the struggle between those two classes. Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Prior to capitalism, many classes were involved. The critical struggles were not between slaves, plebeians or serfs and their masters, but between existing and aspiring ruling classes. Each time the outcome was, as The Communist Manifesto says, “either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” It is the class struggle under capitalism that is a confrontation between the owners of the means of production and wage-earners.

These mistaken observations are followed by a string of assertions which might be headed “fallacies about Marx”. First, Marx did not claim that as a result of crises capitalism would collapse. The idea of capitalism collapsing is drawn from a section in Volume III of Capital, “The Theory of the Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit”; included in the chapter is a list of “counteracting causes”, which operate separately or together at different times against the tendency Marx described. Second, the sole avenue to revolution for Marx and Marxists is the working class organizing consciously: not to get “power transferred” to it (by whom?) but to take ownership and control of the means of living.

New World

To speak of a “more egalitarian” society “emerging” is completely misleading as to the nature of Socialism. Inequalities in society all arise from the single fundamental inequality between owners and non-owners of the means of production. When common ownership is established, all people then stand in the same relationship to society and its wealth. There is no question of inequalities being removed by degrees, as the words “more egalitarian” and “emerge” imply: they all go, as an organic consequence of the change.

The writer says Marx “looked towards” a society of complete equality in which there would also be “gradual elimination” of the state. It is true that when The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848 Marx and Engels had to take into account conditions which are now different; their preface to the 1872 edition observed that some measures they had proposed would be “very differently worded” after twenty-four years. They were perfectly aware, however of the state’s nature as “the executive committee of the ruling class” and that its function would end after the establishment of Socialism. Today we can say that would not be a gradual abolition but an immediate one.

The writer attributes to Marxism the idea of “a blueprint for the ideal society” and asks if people would find it acceptable. A reasonable question — only there is no blueprint; indeed, Engels pointed out that is was not Socialists’ business to provide “recipes for future cookshops”, or tell the working class what it was going to like. The outlines of Socialism, implicit in common ownership, are: complete equality; free access to all the wealth of society and consequently no money; the absence of the problems of capitalism — wars, economic crises, poverty and the countless problems associated with it. People are at liberty to infer or surmise details about work, social life and effects in personal relationships. The important point is that whatever vision is formulated is not a strait-jacket for the entire community; Socialism will afford not a single way but many ways of life. In that connection, a final error must be pointed out. News From Nowhere is Morris, not Marx. Morris said he had never read Marx; conceivably, Marx might not have cared for Morris’s enthusiasm for the mediaeval. But does the writer not think Socialists capable of independent thought?

This is, of course, only one of a great many cockeyed accounts of Marx. The majority are found in weightier works where the author is concerned to push an economic or political viewpoint and claims “scholarship” for misrepresentations. The serious thing about this book is that it is an elementary work for students, and for a good many will provide their only information about Marx. Where do these garbled snippets masquerading as “careful and scientific” knowledge come from? They are notes, passed on in endless scrappy courses. A lecturer who hasn’t read Marx gives out the notes and comments he took from his lecturer; his students reproduce them, and any who become lecturers hand them on; one writes a study-course incorporating them, and they are turned into notes again . . . It is like the party game where a message is whispered from ear to ear round a circle, for the fun of the inevitable distortions — “Going to advance, require reinforcements” comes out as “Going to a dance, need three and fourpence”.

Any WEA student is recommended to write to us for some pamphlets and issues of the Socialist Standard that will put him in the picture, as well as Marx’s own work. There is no substitute.

Robert Barltrop

A Propagandist visits Birmingham (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Euston Station was congested on Saturday, August 11th with industrial workers returning to the Midlands. after the industrial fortnight’s holiday. Workers seem condemned to doing everything “en masse" and it seems the accepted idea that a “holiday” means the mass transference of population (working class) all in the same two weeks.

The sight of hundreds of people carrying cases, all pushing their way through the same three feet wide gap of the “ all important" ticket barrier was one that typified the absurdity of Capitalism. The train, which was late, was packed beyond cattle limitation with people standing in the single gangway right up to Northampton.

Due to late arrival and missing the Birmingham Comrades no meeting was held on Saturday night, but on Sunday an excellent meeting was held. Both a Birmingham speaker and the visiting London member addressed an audience of 100 for 2½ hours. At first the Bull Ring (the public meeting centre in Birmingham) is a difficult place to speak in unless one has had some experience of places in London like Beresford Square, Woolwich and Tower Hill; there is always quite a bit of noise going on. both from traffic and from street performers who also frequent the spot, but a more attentive audience is hard to imagine. The hecklers are few, the reception of the case for Socialism is excellent, and a fair hearing is demanded by the audience if anybody persistently interrupts. At this first meeting 13s. 8d. worth of literature was sold and a collection of 10s. taken up. As is usual, all forms of Capitalism and types of government, were attacked by our speakers with emphasis laid on the black record of the Labour Party in and out of office; and no sign of enthusiasm for that party came from the workers assembled. It was also not difficult to show the real pro-Capitalist (Russian variety) nature of the so-called Communist Party. It was found necessary to stress the difference between nationalisation and common ownership of the means of production, workers being more familiar with quack reforms of Capitalism than the abolition of the wages system as a solution to their problems.

Capitalism being what it is, always in the midst of one crisis or another, there was ample current material to deal with in the strike at Austins, and the Suez Canal dispute. This latter thieves’ quarrel was illustrated to advantage by the August Socialist Standard quoting Eden as telling workers that their very existence depended on winning the “battle of inflation’’ only to find one month later that “ our’’ canal is the thing on which our lives depend.

About half way through the meeting an opponent, who had been heckling, got up on our platform to state his case against us. This largely consisted of a complete misunderstanding of the Party's concept of equality (the gentleman being a Christian told us that “God did not make us equal”) and the usual vague references to the un-Socialist constitution of “human nature.”

On other days the Bull Ring alternates with meetings and selling stalls, but another good meeting was held at Monday lunch-time. On this occasion another Birmingham comrade spoke to good effect. On Wednesday, the most promising of all meetings so far, was stopped by heavy rain after three-quarters of an hour. An audience of 150 were listening to questions and answers but before they dispersed some literature was sold.

Meanwhile on Tuesday (a marketing day) a trip was made out to Austins at Longbridge, a vast assemblage of factories, work shops and offices, which take the best part of half an hour to walk round outside. There are entrances at varying intervals with Austin Police in attendance; most of the rest of the surrounding is iron fencing with a double strand of barbed wire on top. The main idea in going was to see about the possibilities of a lunch-hour meeting, but the arrangements for this on Thursday fell through once more because of rain. While out there, however, half past five came round, which is knocking off time for some Austin workers, and with the literature case at the ready efforts were made to sell Socialist Standards. These were not very successful, it being only the second day back after the strike and holiday spending. One outstandingly curious feature of the visit was that hundreds of men from the factories and women from the offices coming out from making cars were either riding bicycles or on foot, and extra ’buses are laid on to move the queues. But for the madness of Capitalism there was a wonderful way to get rid of the reported 200,000 unsold cars, but then again, but for Capitalism such a contradiction would not have arisen.

In the evening on Thursday the visiting member went along to the Birmingham Branch meeting where, after usual branch business, an interesting discussion on present-day aspects of Trade Unionism was held.

On Friday, from 12.30 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. another good meeting was held in the Bull Ring. A Birmingham Comrade spoke again and in favourable weather 200 workers listened to our case. The following day being another Market Day, and the London members having been out to Stratford-on-Avon, the meeting did not start until 7.30 p m., having to stop after 8 p.m. due to heavy rain.

The last meeting of the visit, on Sunday evening, more than compensated for any set-backs. Starting at ten minutes past seven the meeting carried on till nearly 10 p.m. The audience was a good 200 strong and listened attentively to our speakers, 8s. 6d. worth of literature was sold, including some pamphlets (most who were interested had by this time bought the Socialist Standard) and a collection of 5s. 8d. wer taken up.

Looking back, the London member would say that the visit to Birmingham was successful and worthwhile: the support from Birmingham members, considering they have to work for a living, was excellent, and it is hoped that next year’s return visit, which he is looking forward to, will be enjoyed as much.

Harry Baldwin

Profits before life. (1913)

From the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The profits will not allow it.”

Rarely has the plain, tragic truth been so bluntly stated by a capitalist as on April 28th in the Westminster Coroner’s Court.

The Coroner was holding an inquiry into the “accident” that took place upon a building in course of erection in High Holborn.

Two and a half tons of iron was being hoisted by a crane “made to take three tons.” “ Everything was brand new ”

Henry James Matthews, a lad of 18, acting as a crane signalman, was killed as the result of the chain of the crane breaking.

After the poor lad’s brother had given evidence, the Coroner called a member of the firm that made the chain.

After great difficulty the Coroner got the makers to give evidence. The secretary of the company that supplied it offered the Coroner some certificates, but said that he knew nothing about the chain itself.

The Coroner was forced to remark that "it seems a very casual way of doing things when a man’s life is at stake.”

Finally a member of the manufacturing firm told the Coroner that he had been asked to attend ‘‘to listen to the evidence." He was asked by the Coroner : "After testing do you go over the chain to see if there are any cracks?"

The answer was a remarkable indictment of this cursed system of society, for he said:

"NO. THE PROFITS WILL NOT ALLOW OF IT”!

"I am not talking about profits,” retorted the Coroner. "I am talking about the safety of human life."

After some further questions the Coroner was led to say: "You are perfectly well aware of what you are talking about. It in no use trying to befool me. You are trying to ride round the subject."

A link of the chain was handed to the witness and he was asked why, although the link had snapped, it showed no signs of fracture. All he could say to the point was. ” It shows no signs of fracture."

The Coroner said that “looking at the surface of the link you can see it is not a fracture, and that the metal had never been properly welded."

Frederick John Parkes, Factory Inspector, said that the quality of the workmanship of the link was very bad indeed and that the metal was defective. It had not been properly welded.

Even the representative of the building company had to confess that he "found the rest of the chain not perfect."

This is the plain, unvarnished evidence, as reported in the “Evening News" (28.4.13). And it bears out to the fullest extent the charge of the Socialist that men are sacrificed to the hunt for profits. You have here the capitalist confession as given in a capitalist paper.

A lad of 18 is done to death! At an age when the sons of the parasite master class are enjoying themselves in the playing fields of Eton or Harrow, or Oxford or Cambridge, a worker’s child is manipulating two and a half tons of iron with a “brand new" but rotten chain—because the employers want “profits."

In the interest of profit women and girls are sweated in the chain-making sheds of Cradley Heath, and after years of struggle against the employers they are allowed 2½d. an hour!

The story of profit mongering is the record of the sacrifice of human lives to the parasites' interests.

Col. H. A. Yorke, of the Board of Trade, said in his report of the 19th September last, that during the year 2,934 accidents occurred due to failure of couplings—made of iron —on the railways.

"A weldless steel coupling has been tried and has given very satisfactory results, but" —(Ah, that all-meaning "but"!)— "unfortunately it costs rather more than the iron coupling. The accidents," the Colonel said, "frequently result in injuries to the men." But what matters that when it is a case of workmen's lives against PROFITS.

“ Even if a little more money were spent upon it it would still be the cheapest coupling in the world," declares Col. Yorke, but his Department, the infamous Board of Trade (of Titanic memory), being anxious only for the capitalists' welfare, lets the matter rest, whilst the murdered are carried in a ghastly procession to their eternal home.

Toilers may be slaughtered so that the “White" Star Line may pay 60 per cent, dividend. Shunters may be shunted into an early grave to enable the railway companies to make 50 millions profit in a twelvemonth. Dynamite makers may be blown to atoms (as at Pitsea last month) so that the dynamitards may give “Peace prizes." All this may be done to make a merry England for our masters.

It will only cease when the workers awake to the fact that this system stands for murder and robbery—stands in the way of the safety, the well-being, the happiness of humanity—of the wealth producers.

Adolph Kohn

The Socialist Party of Great Britain (1978)

From the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is from the new 112 page edition of our pamphlet QUESTIONS OF THE DAY which will be available later this month price 50p (65p including postage). There are new chapters on inflation and unemployment, left-wing organizations, the women’s movement and China, together with those on parliament, democracy and dictatorship, revolution, reformism, nationalization and others.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN, which is the only party in this country that stands for Socialism, was formed on 12 June 1904 by a hundred or so members and former members of the Social Democratic Federation who were dissatisfied with the policy and structure of that party.

The SDF had been formed in 1884 as a professed Marxist organization, although Engels who was living in London at the time would have nothing to do with it. At that time the writings of Marx, Engels and other socialist pioneers were hardly known in the English-speaking countries, except to the few who knew foreign languages. The SDF, however, did have the merit of popularizing in Britain the ideas and works of Marx. This was later to bear fruit in demands for an uncompromising, democratically organized socialist party in place of the reformist and undemocratic SDF.

The SDF spent much of its time campaigning for reforms that were supposed to improve working-class conditions. H. M. Hyndman, who played the major role in setting up the party, seemed to regard it as his personal possession and reacted to any criticism in a haughty and autocratic manner. The party journal Justice was owned by a private group over which the members had no control.

The opportunism and arrogance of Hyndman had already led to a break-away in 1884 when a number of members, including William Morris and Eleanor Marx, set up the Socialist League which however soon unfortunately ceased to be of use when it was dominated by the anarchists.

A second revolt led to the formation in 1903 of the Socialist Labour Party, copying the American organization of that name. At first, along with a programme of ‘immediate demands’, the SLP declared its object to be the conquest of political power but soon, under the influence of its American parent it subordinated political to industrial action.

Another revolt against the Hyndman group’s dominance of the SDF was organized by men and women who had a much firmer grasp of Marxist political and economic theory. For their opposition to opportunism they were contemptuously called ‘impossibilists’. At first they tried to use the machinery of the SDF to get the party to reform itself, but they came up against the Hyndman clique who were ready to resort to all kinds of undemocratic practices to maintain their control of the party. Conferences were packed, branches dissolved and members expelled.

Matters came to a head at the 1904 Conference held in Burnley at the beginning of April. At the Conference more expulsions took place. When the delegates of some of the London branches returned they held a special meeting to discuss the situation and approved a statement which, among other things, urged the following:

‘The adoption of an uncompromising attitude which admits of no arrangements with any section of the capitalist party; nor permits any compromise with any individual or party not recognising the class war as a basic principle, and not prepared to work for the overthrow of the present, capitalist system. Opposition to all who are not openly and avowedly working for the realisation of Social Democracy. A remodelled organisation, wherein the Executive shall be mainly an administrative body, the policy and tactics to be determined and controlled by the entire organisation. The Party Organ to be owned, controlled and run by the Party. The individual member to have the right to claim protection of the whole organisation against tyrannical decisions.’

On 12 June most of those who signed this leaflet together with a few others founded the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The constitution of the Socialist Party was formed in such a manner that what had happened in the SDF  would be impossible. The Executive Committee, elected by the whole of the membership, was to run the day-to-day affairs of the party in accordance with the policy laid down at Conferences and was required to report to the membership twice a year. All its meetings were to be open not only to members but also to non-members. The party journal the Socialist Standard, which first appeared in September 1904 and monthly ever since, is under party control through the Executive Committee. An elaborate appeals procedure —first to the Conference or Delegate Meeting and then to a poll of all the members—was written into the rule-book to protect any member charged with activities warranting expulsion.

The rule-book of the Socialist Party lays down a thoroughly democratic procedure for the conduct of party affairs. Control of policy is in the hands of the members; there are no leaders and never have been. Democratic procedure has been maintained throughout the party’s existence and is a practical refutation of those who argue that all organizations must degenerate into bureaucratic rule. In fact a democratic structure without leaders is the necessary form of any socialist party.

At its formation the members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain adopted an Object and Declaration of Principles which, without the need for any change, has remained the basis of membership of the party. Within that framework the party has worked consistently to make socialist principles known and to expose the many erroneous and dangerous theories that have attracted support among the workers.

Whose side are you on? (1985)

Editorial from the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Socialist Movement membership is a tiny minority who think in terms of a social upheaval to establish a different order of human relationships. In socialist society the attitudes which people have to each other — how they relate to one another — will be fundamentally different from those which operate today Some things which now have to be taken for granted, because life under capitalism would otherwise be impossible, will be inconceivable in socialism. Nothing, for example, will be produced for sale; there will be no presumption that society is operated in the interests of a parasitic minority. On the other hand the presumptions of socialism, such as free participation in society’s work and unfettered access to the common wealth, is totally at odds with everything which characterises capitalism.

We might put this in another way: socialism will change, among other things, how people think, in much the same way that the development of industrial capitalism changed ideas from those of mediaeval society. Clearly, we of the socialist minority have taken on an enormous task — to encourage and stimulate a world-wide change of attitudes to the extent that a majority of the world's thousands of millions of people consciously opt to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. How then do socialists — getting their living as wage slaves, struggling for the socialist revolution — think?

Socialism is a matter of class interests. It is the only political objective in the interests of the class who depend on the sale of their labour power for their living. The parties of the World Socialist Movement are the only political organisations worthy of working class support. But can capitalists also join a socialist party? And what happens if a worker in a socialist party becomes miraculously elevated into the capitalist class? Would they then reverse their political opinions, attacking the ideas they once supported and vice versa? Would those lucky workers have to abandon their membership of the party?

The first thing to be said in reply to these questions is that all people should be expected to act in their class interests. It may be that a few individual capitalists, for motives perhaps of altruism or because they cannot stomach a society of universal repression, murder and disease, decide to join the struggle for socialism in the knowledge that they are working to deprive themselves of their privileged standing in society. But as a class the capitalists cannot and do not act in this way. As a class, internationally united whatever their national disputes, they protect their position as owners and rulers. For one thing, they ensure that every effort is made to persuade the useful, productive majority that capitalism's deprivation and exploitation represent the ultimate in rational, beneficent social organisation.

It is rather different with the workers. In their case only a small minority act fully in their class interests, by joining the struggle for socialism. The overwhelming majority are on the other side. Whatever reservations they may have about the system's effects, workers in the mass agree that capitalism is the sanest and the best of all possible societies and they dismiss the idea of a classless, moneyless, leaderless, war-free system as at best a crackpot utopian dream. At elections, in their tens of millions, they affirm this attitude in their overwhelming and consistent support for the parties which stand for the continuation of capitalism.

That is to view the situation across a fairly wide, historical and social spectrum. What happens when we take a narrower view of the day-to-day and immediate events of capitalism? When we do this we can see that workers are often compelled to act in accordance with their class interests, whatever misconceptions they may have about their social standing and whatever their view on the issue of capitalism as against socialism. An obvious example of this is when workers combine to resist an attack by the employers on their living standards, or try to enforce an improvement in those standards. In such cases, where the workers are genuinely acting in a cooperative assertion of their united class interests, they have the support of socialists.

In giving this support, socialists apply a rigorous, unbending judgement of working class interests. For one thing, we look beyond those side issues which so often absorb so much attention during a strike. In the case of the coal strike, for example, there were many such side issues, which stimulated some powerful emotional responses. There was the fact that many thousands of working class people suffered extremes of impoverishment in face of the resolve of the employers and the Tory government to crush and starve them into defeat. Then there was the courageous, poignant reaction of the strikers — the communal self-help which did so much to feed and clothe the miners and their families, to keep them warm and to uplift their morale. There is evidence here of the power and efficiency of human co-operation and mutual support. And then there were the sights and sounds of the police, provoking, insulting and beating the miners.

An immediate, emotional response to this was to support the miners because we are of the same class. But not all workers' actions, no matter how courageous and inspiring they may be, are in their own interests. It is, to put it at its most tentative, debatable that the interests of the working class — as a class, internationally — were ever at stake in the coal strike. The miners may argue that some national, short-term interests were involved, which in turn raises the question of whether even those interests are served by a strike which dragged on for so long and which cost the strikers so much. Then there is the fact that those ugly, sneering, brutal policemen are themselves members of the working class, holding a job which is by definition opposed to their class interests. Miners, along with some other traditionally militant sections of the workers, are not untainted by such criticisms. Just after the war there was an organised resistance in the coalfields to the employment of Polish and Italian workers, just as there now is to the import of coal from abroad. And it was, of course, the London dockers who marched in support of Enoch Powell just after his "rivers of blood" exercise in racist demagoguery.

Workers should not, then, take up the attitude “this is my class and I stand with them through thick and thin". The class struggle is not a game. It is a deadly war between two sections of society whose interests are opposed — immediately over the division of wealth under capitalism and ultimately over the ownership and control of the means and instruments to produce that wealth.

Socialism will be a classless society of communal ownership, free access and human co-operation. To bring it to reality needs a conscious, united act by the world working class. Consciousness is not developed or raised through mental confusion; it is only hampered and diverted. Socialists struggle for the next social order through our uncompromising, searching analysis of capitalism. It is a commentary on the present state of political awareness, that this analysis brings us more often to oppose working class actions than to support them because we know which side we are on and where the workers must stand.

Editorial: Clones for sale (2003)

Editorial from the February 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

In her utopian novel Herland that was first published in 1915, Charlotte Perkins Gilman describes a society in which there have been no men for generations. Naturally, she had to assume that reproduction had become possible without the intervention of men.

In a work of literature this is of course quite acceptable but as late as 1994 her book was being criticised, somewhat humourlessly, on this point for not realising “that without the fertilisation by the male, the human race would atrophy and disappear”. As it has turned out that Gilman was not talking biological nonsense, not that in a work of utopian literature she was required to be entirely realistic: an all-woman society lasting generations is theoretically possible (whether it's desirable or likely are of course completely different matters).

In fact even in 1994 biologists knew that it was theoretically possible to reproduce a mammal asexually: by taking a cell from some of part of a body and substituting it for the nucleus of an egg cell. However, this method meant that the new individual would have exactly the same biological make-up as the individual from which the cell was taken, i.e. would be a clone. After a sheep was reproduced asexually in 1997 it was only a matter of time before a human would too. Now, allegedly, this has been done, by a clinic linked to a New Age sect.

Although there can be no objection in principle to the procedure involved – it's not playing god (since there is no god; life, including human life, wasn't created, it just evolved) – the question arises: what's the point? Why do it?

The Raelian sect say they are doing it because they believe that human life was introduced on Earth 25,000 years ago by aliens from outer space and that this is what these aliens want us to have done before they return. Obviously, this is complete nonsense, though not quite so nonsensical as the more widespread belief that some supernatural being created all life on Earth some 6,000 years ago. Others are trying to do it for more down-to-earth reasons: to make money. And that's the point under capitalism. If there's a profit to be made from something some “enterprising” person will come along and try to do it – and there is a market in providing babies for childless couples.

A fair number of commercial “fertility clinics” are already in the market and cloning might be a more acceptable procedure for some couples than those currently marketed. Hence the race to get there first and make above normal profits before others join in. The irony is that the commercially-motivated clinics may have been beaten to it by a group moved by other considerations. In fact, some of the criticism of the Raelians sounds like sour grapes as well as concern that they might have queered the pitch by provoking a backlash that will make not just commercial cloning but already marketed procedures more difficult.

Normally the media – whose aim is to make money from advertising – feign to believe that there might be something in the “paranormal” – UFOs, ghosts and other strange tales – as this has proved a good way to attract an audience and so advertising revenue. But when something serious is at issue they drop this pretence and admit, as their ridiculing of the Raelian beliefs shows, that they no more believe all this guff than do most of the rest of us.

Having said this, genetic engineering does raise problems of choice – ethical problems, as they are called – that would persist even in a socialist society. Which particular genetic disorders should be corrected, and how? How far can choosing the sex of a child go? Since there seems to be no point in it, will human cloning continue?

But the point is that in a socialist society these matters will be able to be debated and decided in a serene atmosphere, free from contamination by commercial considerations. For socialism will be a completely non-market, non-commercial society whose guiding principle will be human welfare and nothing but human welfare, not profit and money-making as is the case today.

Enoch Powell & War (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enoch Powell is no friend of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. His divisive views on race are enough to make any self-respecting Socialist shudder. Yet amongst politicians he is undoubtedly one of the more coherent defenders and theorists of the present social set-up. His opposition to government spending, for example, does not extend to the police or prison services. He is in no doubt that crime is an unavoidable part of competitive society and maintains that economies in this field can only hamper the smooth running of that system. On inflation, too, he is uncompromising. He fully understands that inflation is caused by governments having an excess of paper currency printed, an explanation given (although Enoch may not realise it) by all Socialists since Marx.

In a recent edition of the BBC’s Any Questions Mr. Powell “came clean” once again, this time on the subject of war. He expressed the view that, with nations obliged to defend their interests against possible attack by outsiders, all grandiose, well-meaning schemes to disarm or to abolish war were pie-in- the-sky; the best governments could do was to stave off for as long as possible the wars that were bound to break out sooner or later. This is a bold, objective description of conditions in the world today and we must congratulate Mr. Powell for his frankness and lucidity. What he might have added, however, is that a nation’s interests are rarely susceptible to objective interpretation. The recent tension in the Spanish Sahara is a case in point. It arose from three different nations each claiming to defend its legitimate interests. In reality the three groups are after the mineral wealth which possession of this territory would give  them. And here is the rub, for it is competition for the earth’s resources that causes confrontation and armed conflict. Do we infer from this that people are greedy or anxious to grab from others? If so, it is not natural but depends on circumstances and is not what happens in the case of wars. In modern wars leaders use the insecurity, ignorance and frustrations inseparable from competitive society to persuade the led to fight and slaughter their fellow human beings in the “national interest”, which in reality is the interest of the ruling class.

Enoch Powell is simply acknowledging what we have said: in a commercial, nation-divided world, war is inevitable. If the politicians are unable to avert wars, it is quite simply because they are committed to looking after a system that breeds them.

What is our alternative? We suggest a truly united, wholly democratic world with no nations, no money and with the satisfaction of human needs as its first priority. Impossible? We don’t think so. All that is in fact needed to bring it into being is peaceful political action by a convinced majority of ordinary people.

Howard Moss

Letter: Marx and Dictatorship. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (London, E.C.1) asks the following question:—

I notice that you class yourselves as "Marxists." How can you explain the following to be in accordance with S.P.G.B. principles. It is taken from Marx's criticism of the Gotha Programme.

The question, therefore, now arises, what transformation will the State-system experience in a communist society? . . .  Between capitalist society and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding with this there will be a period of political transition, during which the State can be nothing other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. (Italics mine.)

Can you explain what Marx meant by the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat? Does not the above quotation show that the S.P.G.B. is at variance with Marx and Engels?

Reply.

One of the questions put by our correspondent was answered by Engels himself in his introduction to the German edition of “The Civil War in France.” The introduction was written in London in 1891, on the 20th anniversary of the Commune. Translated into English, it was published in 1920 by the New York Labour News Company in a pamphlet called “The Paris Commune."

Engels’ introduction, after surveying the events of the Commune and the lessons to be drawn from it, concludes with the following words:—

The German philistine has lately been thrown once again into wholesome paroxisms by the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Well, gentle sirs, would you like to know how this dictatorship looks? Then look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Commune was an instance of majority control based upon democratic elections. There was no suppression of the newspapers or the propaganda of the minority, and no denial of their right to vote. The Communards, having once obtained control of the State, set about democratising the machinery of legislation and administration. For example, they filled all positions of administration, justice, etc., through election by universal suffrage, the elected being at all times subject to recall by. their constituents. They also paid for all services at the workmen’s rate of pay.

This contrasts in a marked way with the Dictatorship in Russia—a dictatorship not of the proletariat, but of the leaders of the Communist Party.

In Russia the electoral system is not based upon universal suffrage and democratic elections. Many persons, for political reasons, are deprived of the right to vote. In proportion to population, the Town Soviets send to the District Soviets five times as many delegates as are allowed to the Village Soviets. The elections are not direct (as in Great Britain and most countries), but are indirect. That is to say, the All-Union Congress of Soviets is not elected by the electors at first hand, but is elected from Regional Congresses, which in turn are elected from District Soviets, which are elected by the Village and Town Soviets. The power of recall, owing to the devious route it has to follow, is impracticable.

Opposition propaganda and newspapers and opposition candidates for election are suppressed. The persons who are disfranchised are subjected to severe economic disabilities. It is made difficult for them to obtain food and lodging, and various rights are denied to them. (Recently there has been some alleviation of their condition.) 

It was for years the rule that Communist Party members did not receive more than a fairly low maximum rate of pay, in this copying the Commune to some extent. It is reported now, however, that this rule has been relaxed since the middle of 1931, when the Russian Government announced a large-scale extension of the policy of inequality of pay among factory workers. It has also to be remembered that Communist Party members have been, and still are, privileged in being able to buy goods at specially low prices.

The Russian Government has for years practised inequality in the payment of those workers and officials who have not been members of the Communist Party and who, therefore, have not been affected by the rule referred to above.

The S.P.G.B.'s view on the transition period after the workers have obtained control of the machinery of Government is in line with that of Marx and Engels, and is opposed to the miscalled “dictatorship of the proletariat" in Russia.

Ed. Comm.

Alcoholics numerous (1966)

From the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attention has been focussed recently on the “problem drinkers”. Somebody has been counting their cost. In the December issue of Business, the Management Journal, it is claimed that the annual cost of alcoholism to British industry is £61 millions in absenteeism alone. It is claimed that of the total working population, two to three per cent are “problem drinkers”. The same percentage is given also for America.

It is a typical piece of commercial cynicism to measure and describe a problem in money terms. Officially, the most disturbing aspect of widespread alcoholism is not the tragedy of people who require opiates to fortify their existence, but the loss of £61 million. Indeed, it is this loss that qualifies alcoholism as a problem.

Of course, employers will never rest in their attempts to find the ideal labour force. Workers are besieged by exhortations to be conscientious, sober, hard working, honest and thrifty. In short, workers are asked to practice all the so- called virtues of moral and political conformity which assure their maximum exploitation as wage slaves. The curse of capitalism—for the capitalists—has always been that the units of labour power comprising the working class are also human beings. Regrettably they are not merely machines with brains; they are emotionally volatile, physically vulnerable; they give under pressure.

Addiction to alcohol is found at all levels of industry and commerce. The executive, the manager, the clerk, the shop floor operative. The kind of drink varies with the income bracket, from wines and spirits, beer, cheap wines, down to the cheapest of all, methylated spirits. The meths drinker has reached the stage of total degeneracy, a derelict hulk, rather than a vital human being.

The meths drinkers are the most pathetic of all, lost in a twilight world of doped unreality. With personalities destroyed and contact with fellow human beings broken down, they are interrogated in decrepit cellars by naive social workers. Why were they sleeping rough? Had they no accommodation at all? Had they any money? Had they jobs? In their cases, the National Assistance Board is interested, again counting the cost of subsidising the unemployable.

It is typical that blame for alcoholism should be put on the individual. The very phrase “problem drinker” emphasises not the plight of the sufferer but his nuisance value. For the heavy drinker, alcohol becomes the buffer between his sober self and an intolerable reality. Alcohol in fact becomes a substitute for living. For the man who needs alcohol to see the day through, his drinks are the terms on which he is prepared to adjust himself to an existence that he despises. Though he may not be aware of it, alcohol is the repudiation of a life to which he sees no alternative. Unfortunately the disease easily generates its own momentum, sometimes ending in a complete personal capitulation to the meths bottle.

Nevertheless to the conventional moralist, the individual is completely in the wrong. In those who are worried about the money cost of alcoholism, there is no criticism of society. It is the individual who must conform; if he does not or cannot, then at best he is lazy or weak, lacking in the necessary will to make the adjustment.

Alcohol is only one of the substitutes that men grasp in their flight from reality. There are others. Suicide and mental illness are equally results of the emotional stress that capitalist society imposes on humanity. The existence of all these problems is part of man’s unconscious protest against a society that not only denies his needs but actively destroys him.

The term “social workers” is an exquisite euphemism for individuals who are attempting to minimise the cost of capitalism’s worst effects. Even so, their work is useful in documenting the incidence of such problems as alcoholism. To put these facts in perspective it is necessary to clear away such concepts as "problem drinkers”, “social misfits”, etc. This phraseology by itself places the onus of responsibility on the individual. It fails to relate the incidence of alcoholism to the social pressures bearing on the individual. It implicitly encourages the view of the individual as a failure rather than a possible victim. In fact, by endorsing the status quo, this view of the problem guarantees its continuance. The use of phrases like “social failures” partly contributes to the problem. Surely it is this background of successes and failures, the empty competitive values of propertied society from which people seek a refuge in drink.

In the short term, the incidence of alcoholism will probably increase. Capitalism cannot avoid a continuing ferment of discontent, albeit generally expressed in negative ways, through hate, violence, cynicism and even despair. Paradoxically, this may form a background for building up useful knowledge about where man’s true interests lie.

Pieter Lawrence