The Enemy on the Left! - Liberation Movements (1973)

The Enemy on the Left! column from the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

A regular column dealing with the antics of those who call themselves socialist but in practice do nothing but harm to the cause.

If we are talking of liberation movements, I suppose that the most remarkable success story has been achieved in Africa where in the course of a comparatively few years, something like four-fifths of the coloured population of the continent has been liberated from the rule of the white imperialists. Pretty well without exception, all the countries now ruled by native governments claim to be socialist (which is about as monstrous a misuse of the term as can be imagined). In this the coloured governments differ from the white rulers who still hold sway in the southern part of the continent. But one thing is common to all the dozens of countries in the whole of the vastness that is Africa — from Cairo to the Cape there is not a solitary foot of ground where a single vestige of freedom exists. In every single state, the only place for those who differ from the government is in prison, or the grave.

Black workers and peasants in countries like Kenya and the rest suffered great hardships in the struggle to oust the white rulers. And having achieved what they were conned into thinking was liberation, all they have actually got is an iron dictatorship almost invariably far harsher than the British or French who were supplanted. As as for material conditions, it is worth noting that in the course of a campaign initiated recently by the Guardian to expose the starvation wages being paid by white employers in South Africa about which all good liberal types are so righteously indignant, there appeared one letter in the paper from some courageous type in Kenya (who may or may not have been writing under a pseudonym) which said that the wages in that country were far lower than those which were being so violently (and of course correctly) condemned in South Africa. And this despite the fact that the cost of living was higher in Kenya. Such are the fruits of liberation. And lest any reader of the Guardian should imagine that this letter might be phoney or in some way exceptional, one needs only to recall the atrocious advert by the Nigerian government which appeared in that paper (and which was quoted at length in the Socialist Standard in October 1972) which canvassed potential employers with the promise of rather cheap black labour — sixpence an hour. Needless to say, the hypocrites on the Guardian who accepted the payment for that advert, conducted no crusade against the black government of Nigeria although these wages were but a small fraction of those being paid in South Africa. The reason is simple. Black is beautiful and the trendy lefties cannot get hot under the collar at the vicious regimes which have the advantage of being fashionable — and good for circulation.

When will workers, black or white, learn that the only liberation that counts is from the thrall of capitalism?

L. E. Weidberg

The Decline of Patriotism. (1911)

From the January 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our capitalist masters are apparently anxious about a matter of first importance to their country. For ages they have been able to rely upon the working class to take up arms in defence of their exploiters’ property; now, however, according to Lord Esher, an eminent authority, things are changing. “Under our present system,” he says in a recent article in the National Review, “we purchase annually for the Regular Army, in peace, the bones and muscles and youth of about 30,000 of our countrymen. We keep them a few years, then we throw them away and take in a fresh supply.”

“ We,” of course, means the capitalist class. The working class is represented by the bone and muscle which is purchased. It is evidently as bad a case for the workers on the military field as on the industrial. When they are no longer of any value they are cast aside like a sucked orange.

The writer complains with regard to the Regular Army, that it has been difficult of late years to obtain the necessary number of recruits. If with our ever-increasing army of unemployed, from the ranks of which 95% of the recruits are drawn, they cannot obtain a sufficient number, there must indeed be a serious lack of "patriotism." Our masters have blasted in the past that every true Englishman was prepared to die for his country. Evidently the number of Englishmen with any country to defend is rapidly diminishing. Little as there is in life for the average worker, rather than lay it down for his country he would hand the flower-pot over.

Esher’s chief grievance, however, is against the “ Territorial force.” He says that it cannot be denied that the numerical test is the only real test. So no longer is an Englishman accounted the equal of any dozen foreigners. That, at all events, marks no less a breakdown of our insular ignorance than of our insular pride and arrogance. In addition, the perfection of weapons is much the same the world over, and it is more than ever a question of weapons, while on the physical side, the advance of capitalism in this country is accompanied by such bodily deterioration as leaves us precious little “bone and muscle” worth the capitalists’ money on the battle-held.

Our ruling class can see that their Continental rivals are determined to obtain as large a share of the markets of the world as possible, and that sooner or later this must culminate in worldwide disruption. Hence their anxiety on the score of "patriotism.” Lord Esher gives expression to his anxious thought in the suggestion that "patriotism” is an attribute of the empty-headed. “ How can you expect,” he writes "recruits for your Territorial force, when you dress them unbecomingly?” One paper, commenting upon his noble lordship’s article, suggests “a scarlet coat and a towering headdress” as the most effective appeal to the " patriotism ” of the working class, though whether on the old, tried and trusty ground that those who have least in their heads must make the greatest show on them, or on the later calculation that now the workers are discovering how little country they have to fight for they may be induced to fight for their togs if only they are sufficiently removed from the hum-drum drab of the corduroy to enable them to forget that they are countryless workers, does not transpire.

But signs are not wanting that the master class are misjudging the workers there. What the army and navy stand for is being too clearly demonstrated by such events as Featherstone, Hull and Grimsby, Belfast and Tonypandy at home, and the French postal and railway strikes abroad. However empty-pated the ingrained cynicism of our exploiters may deem us, such lessons could not be lost upon us. Even the head of an ostrich, hidden in a gorgeous and “towering headdress,” would begin to experience some mental quickening upon finding itself rudely unbonneted by a policeman’s baton, and invited to take a glimpse at the armed and serried ranks of Patriotism in the adjacent vicinity. Nor is it altogether wisdom to flaunt "the famous deeds done by His Majesty’s regiments” (to use Lord Esher’s words) when the last reeking inscriptions on the tyrants’ banners were writ in the blood of unarmed British workers on British soil.

Lord Esher does well indeed to suspect that "there may be deeper causes at work” than he speaks of. There may be deeper causes even than he knows of—which is not the same thing by any means. To the “sirocco of democracy withering in our people the spirit of public sacrifice” which he darkly hints at he might add that the development of capitalism is showing "our people” who is really meant by the "public" which demands such continual and considerable sacrifice.

Lord Esher sees "conscription” looming in the background. Of course it is not hailed with delight, for it seems to be recognised that if anything is necessary to complete the workers' education on the matter of “patriotism” it is conscription. The compulsory bearing of arms to defend that which they themselves (as at Tonypandy) are batoned and murdered for looking darkly at would be too incongruous, too significant, for even the most gullible of our class. Once the blinkers are stripped from the workers eyes, the issue is one of sheer undisguised force—hence the capitalist class lament and tremble at the decay of “patriotism” among the workers, for they read doom in the force of a class-conscious proletariat.

J. R. R.

Planning - a cautionary tale (1994)

A Short Story from the January 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

His mind mulled the words tangibly, "Frank is wrong! He is wrong and I can prove it from my own experience!" He said: "I’m not wrong, Nigel: I said capitalism is a system of economic anarchy and that it could not be planned. Obviously, I did not mean that all the plans made within capitalism were doomed to failure".

He felt silly carrying on a conversation with himself and, yet, as his mind flicked over the arguments that had passed between himself and his brother he was surprised at how fluent he had become in Frank’s arguments. As he tossed the papers into his briefcase he said audibly to an absent judge: "He's shifting the goal posts, now that I have proven him wrong!"

"Goodnight, Mr Wynn", said Grogan, rattling his keys pointedly. It was nearly eight; he wasn’t particularly late tonight but he knew Grogan secretly cursed him for always being the last out. Sometimes, if Nigel arrived before eight in the morning, he had to wait in his car for the man to arrive, despite the fact that he had four hours off in the middle of each day. Only last week, Nigel had mentioned to Personnel that he thought Grogan wasn’t worth the seventy pounds a week he was paid.

The BMW purred its way gently through the traffic. He drove more slowly than usual, enjoying his thoughts - his supreme triumph! The letter of confirmation had arrived from Sir James that morning. His mind had rioted and it was all he could do to suppress his excitement in front of his secretary. Later, Mr Deasy had phoned him to see if there was any news and, as he thought now about it, he marvelled at the adroit, matter of fact tone he had managed to maintain as he told his managing director that Harrington’s had accepted their tender for building the plant.

Deasy could not restrain his excitement: "Which tender? Did we get more than one?" He seemed close on the phone. Nigel could hear his breathing. "Oh, all three tenders, the entire plant and the auxiliary service area!" He was enjoying this; it was his prize. “Jesus! Bloody great! You did a cracking job, Nigel. Look . . .  I have to say this . . ."  "Sorry, Mr Deasy, what was that?" Let the bastard repeat it; he had resisted Nigel’s plans every step of the way!

"Nigel", there was real contrition in the voice and Nigel waited expectantly, ”I know I gave you a hard time. You worked so hard on this bloody thing. It was your baby, your scheme; it was all your planning. And you've won through! I can tell you, Nigel, I was terrified . . .  all the new plant, the premises - Jesus, the work on the drawings, even, cost a fortune! We were in away over our head - you know, of course that, had it gone the other way. we were down the tube. I can tell you that I have not been sleeping too well lately! But congratulations. You’ve pulled it off. Fantastic!”

He smiled quietly to himself in the comfort of the BMW. He knew they were all terrified but he was supremely confident because he had planned cautiously and carefully. He had compiled information on every aspect of the scheme and, though he was excited with the outcome, it had not really come as a surprise. He thought absently about Sir James. It was pretty obvious that he had made a personal hit with the chairman of Harrington’s. Maybe ...?

As he turned into Oulton Road he turned on the radio. He might get Alice to go with him over to Frank’s tonight. He thought of all the lost arguments with his brother -  sometimes he thought bloody schoolmasters had nothing to do all day but read books that contributed nothing to real knowledge. It was easy for Frank, he had a retentive memory and could rime off facts and figures that supported his arguments in favour of Socialism. But this time I have him, thought Nigel. What the hell did Frank know about real capitalist planning?

"City new's . . .", his hand reached out in the dark to increase the volume of the radio. "In the City this afternoon, dealings in Harrington’s shares were suspended when, following the collapse of its European subsidiary, twenty two million pounds were knocked off the value of the company. Our financial correspondent says that the European subsidiary, Girard and Brock, had run into cash flow problems arising from the failure of the Mexican government to meet payments on the giant Arana project. A spokesperson for the Company said . . . "

Richard Montague

The Overthrow of Non-Democracy (1973)

Book Review from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front, by Andreas Papandreou. Deutsch.

Andreas Papandreou, the son of the veteran Greek republican politician George Papandreou and now a leader of the opposition in exile to the Greek colonels, here gives his personal account of the events leading to the Greek military coup on 21 April 1967.

The book starts off alright, but towards the end degenerates into a series of quotes. What makes it interesting for Socialists is that Papandreou clearly shows that even before April 1967 Greece was not a proper political democracy, i.e. a country where the State machine, including the armed forces, was under the control of a popularly-elected government. There was indeed a popularly-elected government, but this never controlled the Army. Not that most postwar Greek governments, being composed of conservative politicians favourable to the King and the Army, wanted to.

Papandreou describes the political structure that emerged in Greece after the war in these terms:

. . .  a secret para-governmental machinery composed of army cliques had developed a solid hold on the reins of State power.
. . .  a constitutional dualism gradually emerged, with the institutions of a democratic régime existing within the overall structure of an authoritarian State.

So in pre-1967 Greek political democracy was a façade. And when the threat of a parliamentary government that would try to establish a genuine political democracy in Greece appeared, the façade was dropped and naked Army rule established by military coup.

The 1964 elections gave the opposition Centre Union, led by George Papandreou, a parliamentary majority. Andreas, who was himself for a short while a Minister in his father’s Centre Union government, describes this party’s programme thus:

The Centre Union represented the party that was committed to making Greece a modern European state. Politically, we were committed to changing Greece from a garrison state to a modem democratic State.

Clearly a threat to the Army/Palace Establishment (and CIA, since America equipped the Greek Army and relied on it to play a key role in NATO). By various political intrigues, including the bribing of some Centre Union deputies, the Establishment was able to bring about George Papandreou’s resignation as Prime Minister and to replace him by a series of their puppets. But, in the end, fresh elections had to be agreed to. The date was fixed for 27 May 1967. The Centre Union, this time made even more determined by its experiences to break the power of the Establishment and to set up a political democracy in Greece, was expected to win again.

On 21 April some Colonels staged a military coup. Actually two coups were being planned; one by the King and one by these Colonels. The Colonels were first off the mark. An unsuccessful royal counter-coup in December led to King Constantine going into exile. But both groups of plotters had the same basic aim: to prevent the Greek armed forces coming under the control of a popularly- elected parliament and government.

This Greek coup has become part of the Leftist argument against our policy of trying to establish Socialism peaceably through the use of existing democratic political institutions. But, as we have just seen, the political situation in pre-1967 Greece was not at all like it is in, say, Britain or France or America or other places where there is a workable, though limited, political democracy. Parliament in Greece did not control the coercive side of the State machine. It was a façade. A coup in such a situation to stop the State machine coming under parliamentary control has no relevance whatsoever to the chances of a majority Socialist working class using a State machine already under parliamentary control as an instrument to establish Socialism.

Adam Buick

What can a capitalist do? (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Well, who is a capitalist?” A question we Socialists are often asked. Recently the Sunday Times (11 February) has provided us with an outspoken analysis of his social and economic role by "that big bastard Bentley, a millionaire at 32” (his words).

How did he do it? Simple, really. With Jim Slater’s financial backing, he bought up “soft” companies, i.e. those with more potential than the City realised, and then sold off the bits he didn’t want, thereby covering his outlay, "which means that he ends up with what he does want, all for nothing”.

Rather on the defensive, Bentley emphasised the useful role of the capitalist in ensuring the efficient use of capital: "I make the very best use of a firm’s reserves when I take over.  . . .  When I arrive, the ray of sinecures, of directors promoting their nephews, is over. It’s good news when I arrive. Shareholders are thrilled . . . What I’m trying to do is to get a return for every piece of plant, every pound spent, every person employed”.

He was rather aggrieved at his unpopularity in the City, where "asset-stripper” is one of the criticisms levelled at him: the hyper-efficient capitalist represents dangerous competition. He went on to say significantly: "I’m a realist and I realise that the mood of the country is against people like me . . . It’s not just that being a capitalist is a dirty word today. Profit is a dirty word. Even money is a dirty word!”

So now the fun has gone out of the game, a game which he compares to the competition of archery or spear-throwing: "It’s just another form of animal behaviour. You’ve got to be fighting fit to survive.” And having reached his goal, he looks around for something “socially useful” to do. (I’ll bet he gets not a few begging letters from charitable concerns!) For Bourgeois Bentley, as for the rest of us, the recognition that "profit is a dirty word” must be followed by action designed to remove the dirty reality of the profit motive from man’s social relationships. This is socially useful activity, useful not just to one section of the community, but to all the human race, the whole family of man.

He has also realised that money brings power: power which can be used to preserve the capitalist class and its profits, or to aid its unfortunate victims — the homeless, the destitute, the disabled who can’t keep up with the aggressive competition of capitalism’s rat-race, or politically to try to soften its harsh and bitter realities by reforms. But none of these is going to make much difference in the end, since they do not deal with the root cause of man’s pressing social and economic problems, namely the organisation of society for production for profit.

A Socialist society — call it communist if you like: names are not that important — producing to satisfy human needs, i.e. for socially useful purposes instead of for profit, will not have to waste and dissipate its resources on war and waste, nor will it have to worry over poverty problems. So if Honest John Bentley is seriously interested in an efficient society, he should examine whether capitalism, where the worker owns and controls neither the tools of production nor the raw materials nor any part of the end-product, is not more than ready for the scrap-heap. It could hardly be called efficient!

He says he "stands back and sees the whole picture, working out the overall strategy”. He’s "all for Communism in theory” (like many others today he uses the term Socialism for state capitalism) — well, let’s see him relate theory to practice. Let’s see him work to bring about a society where work will not be a four-letter word, due to the exploiting relationships of capitalism. Let’s see him help the exploited workers by joining their movement for one world, a classless society where the dirty reality of profiteering from others’ sweat will have vanished and where humans will no longer be divided by man-made barriers of class, religion or racism. No longer wolves dismembering a rabbit, no longer the competitive rat-race, but social cooperation of civilised homo sapiens: surely a worthy goal for any poor devil of a millionaire looking for "socially useful” activity?

Charmian Skelton

Debate on the Labour Party (1949)

From the April 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The debate between Frederic Mullally, supporter of the Labour Party, and our Comrade Turner at the Fulham Town Hall on February 28th attracted a large audience. The large hall was completely filled.

F. Mullally, in opening the debate, said that the Working Class had already made up its mind which party it would support and it supported the mass organisation—the Labour Party. He admitted that there were some individuals in the Labour Party who were as reactionary as some of the Tories. But the Labour Party believes that it can use the Capitalist Class to achieve Socialism. The Working Class did not expect the Labour Party to be able to introduce Socialism for years, maybe, decades. Socialism would not be established overnight, but by well directed, well planned endeavour. Economic chaos would follow the sudden expropriation of Capitalist property, which includes many small shops and factories. What was needed was a planned programme, which avoided any Capitalism. It would be necessary to make compromises. That would be a first instalment and would result in an advance in the material condition of the Working Class and in its standard of living, with the result that support would be gained for a second instalment. The S.P.G.B. propounds pure Socialism day in and day out, hut the Working Class is tired of the worn out catch phrases of this sectarian party. The S.P.G.B. should not waste its great wisdom outside the great mass organisation. One talk, one pamphlet, one speech, one debate inside the Labour Party would do more for Socialism than all the thousands of street comer meetings, pamphlets issued and other activities of the S.P.G.B.

A. Turner commenced by stating that the Working Class should support the party that aimed at abolishing the problems that beset society as a whole and the Working Class in particular. Socialism would do this, so Socialism must be defined. It must be a world wide system in which there will be a community of interests. The privileges of ownership will disappear. There will be no production for profit, all goods will be produced for need. There will be no banks or insurance companies, no money, no profits, no rent, no interest. Poverty and other problems will continue as long as there are Capitalist owners and most of the people are wage and salary earners. The competition between Capitalists grows more intense and leads to greater wars. Whilst wages continue, so will Capitalism. Socialism is not merely the taking away of industry from the Capitalist owners, it is the handing over of industry to the whole of mankind. Taking from one set of owners to give to another does not benefit the workers. When the Labour Party came into existence it was to get Socialism in a quicker way than the way advocated by the S.P.G.B. It was going to do things in a hurry. Now it has slowed down the pace and accuses the S.P.G.B. of being in a hurry. In parts of the world where Labour Governments have held power they have left the Capitalists in greater power than they ever were and have prepared the ground for people like Hitler. Turner concluded his first address by asking his opponent three questions : (1) Is the Labour Party a Socialist Party? (2) Is Nationalisation Socialism? and (3) Can Nationalisation strip the Capitalist class of its ownership?

Mr. Mullally came up for the second round with the statement that the Labour Party is not practicing Socialism and that he had never said that it was. In reply to question one he said that there were good Socialists in the Labour Party and their hopes rested in an ultimate Socialism. To question number two the answer was “NO". But it was a step to that end. Nationalisation was the only practical policy as an alternative to Capitalism. Answer to number three. Rather than confiscate, the Labour Party bad decided to compensate. They had considered the hardship that would be caused to many Capitalists, especially the small ones. They were not concerned with dogma but with humanitarianism. They were going to anaesthetise the rentier class. By a process of taxation on incomes and death duties, the Capitalist Class, will, during our lifetime (voice from audience) "commit suicide." The S.P.G.B. was not in contact with the real issue. The British Working Class was concerned with the day to day issues such as unemployment, health service and that their children were well shod. The S.P.G.B. had a record in the struggle against Fascism that was not so good as that of some Tories. If the Working Class had followed the S.P.G.B. Hitler would now be over all Western Europe.

Turner replied. In answer to the Labour Party claim to be humanitarian he quoted the cases of dismissals from employment in Nationalised industries and the threats of dismissal to strikers. If Nationalisation was a step towards Socialism, why did the Labour Party oppose Fascism? Fascists like Franco, Pilsudski, men like Bismarck and our own Tory Party had introduced Nationalisation. When the workers made some move to get more wages or do a little less work, it was the Government that put the machinery in operation to oppose them. The Labour Government was no exception. The S.P.G.B. was small and its funds were but a tiny fraction compared to those of the mass Labour Party. If all those millions of pounds of funds and all that effort had been directed to the achievement of Socialism we should have been much nearer the day of its establishment. But the money had been spent on supporting two world wars and in getting power to use the Emergency Powers Act Mr. Belcher, during the recent tribunal, had said that it was a part of his job to talk to business men about their problems. The Labour Government never thought of talking to the workers about their problems.

In his final speech Mr. Mullally said that the S.P.G.B. way to Socialism would make for a major economic crisis in the country. The Labour Party would remove private ownership tidily, orderly, and with its eyes on the objective. The S.P.G.B. should be renamed “The Party of Permanent Opposition.”

Turner concluded by claiming that the S.P.G.B. was proud of its war record, it took its stand on the basis of internationalism. But the Labour Party has found new menaces, new fascisms, new concentration camps and forced labour camps in another part of the world and is preparing for another war. He, Turner, was pleased that at least one member of the Labour Party, his opponent, had repudiated the claim that the Labour Party was Socialist.

At this point the chairman, referring to Turner’s statement that the Labour Party claimed to be a Socialist Party, said that Turner should not make such statements without documentary evidence. The necessary evidence was immediately supplied from the Labour Party Election Address, “Let us Face the Future,” Dealing with the taxing out of existence of the Capitalist class Turner mentioned that when Sir John Ellerman died, £21,000,000 was taken in Death Duties from his £40,000,000 estate, but in a few years the Ellerman fortune was up again to £50,000,000. The S.P.G.B. was sometimes referred to as a monument to Socialism. That was preferable to being a movement to destruction like the Labour Party.

W. Waters

Editorial: Another “ Lost Leader.” (1911)

Editorial from the January 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. D. J. Shackleton, late “Labour” M.P., upholder of the black legging labour exchanges, apologist in general for the Liberal party, has at length received due reward for services rendered. The devil looks after his own. The capitalist Liberal Government, in elevating Mr. Shackleton to the position of Labour adviser to the Home Office, has again emphasised the fact, so often retailed by us, of its willingness to buy any material (however soiled) that it has found in the past, and expects to find in the future, useful in its struggle against the rising force of Socialism.

Mr. Shackleton, while ostensibly representing the interests of the workers in the House of Commons, has, in fact, with almost unprecedented effrontery and cynicism, taken every opportunity of leading support toward maintaining and furthering the interests of the employing class. The Liberal capitalists, with their usual astuteness, have seized an opportune moment for the appointment of Mr. Shackleton to his new post. Seeing all around signs of a more or less articulate Labour protest, they have executed an excellent stroke of business by taking under their direct control a man with a first-hand knowledge of the trade union movement, and Shackleton will no doubt earn his salary.

While members of the working class remain in their present condition of political ignorance, leaving their affairs in the hands of “leaders,” there will continue to be desertion and betrayal. On the other hand, if they were conscious of their position as a class, if they had no leaders and refused to be followers, little or nothing would be gained by capitalism or lost to Labour by the “ratting” of one of their number. Such a man, having no followers, would go alone. The probability is, however, that many more of their “leaders” will be lost before the absurdity of following any man or men dawns upon the workers. Burns, Mitchell, Bell and Shackleton, have all been offered and accepted their price. It is hardly conceivable that the inestimable services to capitalism and Liberalism of such men as Ramsay MacDonald (supporter of child-labour) and Philip Snowden (apologist for the Featherstone and Belfast murders) should be overlooked.

Lenin: a socialist analysis (2004)

From the January 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was sixteen his brother was hanged for complicity in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. Later, he himself got involved in anti-Tsarist revolutionary activity, was arrested and spent three years in prison in Siberia. In 1900 he was exiled, eventually settling in Switzerland and adopting the pseudonym “Lenin”. He founded and was the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. After the revolution of February 1917 Lenin returned to Russia and in October he led the Bolsheviks to power in a coup. When he died in January 1924, most of the main feudal obstacles to capitalist development had been removed, together with all effective political opposition.

The socialist analysis of Lenin and his legacy is different from the Cold War propaganda which can still be found in books such as Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, published in 1996, which depicts Lenin and the Bolsheviks as forerunners of Hitler and the Nazis. The socialist argument against Lenin is based on the evidence that he distorted what Marx claimed and thereby damaged socialist theory, pursued political action that was against the interests of the working class and dragged the name of socialism through the mud.

Starting with What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: “the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness.” Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the working class by professional revolutionaries rather than a parliamentary party, drawn mainly from the petty-bourgeoisie, and organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular in which they declared the opposite:

“When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois” (Link).

It must be noted however that Lenin's elitism was consistent with the outlook of the Second International. As Hal Draper has written: “The fact is that Lenin had just read this theory in the most prestigious theoretical organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist movement, the Neue Zeit. It had been put forward in an important article by the leading Marxist authority of the International, Karl Kautsky.” (The Myth of Lenin's Concept of The Party, Link). The difference between Kautsky and Lenin here was over who was to lead the workers beyond “trade-union consciousness”, though historically Lenin's interpretation that this should be a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries has been more influential. By contrast, when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it repudiated leadership as a political principle and insisted that the emancipation of the working class really had to be the work of the working class itself.

False distinction

Lenin was not the first to describe socialism as a transitional society, but through his followers, he turned out to be the most influential. In Lenin's Political Thought (1981), Neil Harding claims that in 1917 Lenin made “no clear delineation” between socialism and communism. But in fact Lenin did write in State and Revolution (1917) of a “scientific distinction” between socialism and communism:

“What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the 'first', or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word 'communism' is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism”(Link).

The first sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin must have known this. Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common ownership of the means of production. It is true that in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of a transition between a lower phase of communism and a higher phase of communism. Marx held that, because of the low level of economic development (in 1875), individual consumption would have to be rationed, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers (similar to those advocated by Robert Owen). But in the higher phase of communism, when the forces of production had developed sufficiently, consumption would be according to need. It is important to realise, however, that in both phases of socialism/communism there would be no state or money economy. Lenin, on the other hand, said that socialism (or the first phase of communism) is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in which there is both a state and money economy. According to Lenin:

“It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!… For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.”

But Lenin failed to see what this would involve. In effect, the theory of “socialism” as a transitional society was to become an apology for state capitalism.

In terms of its impact on world politics, Lenin's State and Revolution was probably his most important work. This was derived from the theoretical analysis contained in his earlier work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin's theory of imperialism demonstrated to his satisfaction that the whole administrative structure of “socialism” had been developed during the epoch of finance or monopoly capitalism. Under the impact of the First World War, so the argument ran, capitalism had been transformed into state-monopoly capitalism. On that basis, Lenin claimed, the democratisation of state-monopoly capitalism was socialism. As Lenin pointed out in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (1917):

“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly” (original emphasis, Link).

In State and Revolution Lenin claimed that according to Marx work and wages would be guided by the “socialist principle” (though in fact it comes from the christian saint, Paul): “He who does not work shall not eat.” This was eventually adopted in the USSR Constitution of 1936 and amended to read: “to each according to his work.” as a “principle of socialism.” Marx and Engels used no such “principle” and they made no such distinction concerning socialism. Lenin in fact did not “re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state”, as he claimed, but substantially distorted it to suit the situation in which the Bolsheviks found themselves. When Stalin announced the doctrine of “socialism in one country” in 1936 (i.e. the establishment of state capitalism in Russia) he was drawing on an idea implicit in Lenin's writings.

Dictatorship

In State and Revolution, Lenin gave special emphasis to the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This phrase was sometimes used by Marx and Engels and meant working class conquest of power, which (unlike Lenin) they did not confuse with a socialist society. Engels had cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Commune impressed Marx and Engels for its ultra-democratic features, which involved a non-hierarchical structure and the use of revocable delegates. Lenin, on the other hand, tended to identify the term with a state ruled by a vanguard party. When the Bolsheviks actually gained power they centralised political power more and more in the hands of the Communist Party. Modern-day Leninists claim that the rise of Stalin was due to the ravages of civil war and Russian isolation, but the fact remains that “democratic centralism” can allow dictators to rise to power and all openly pro-capitalist political parties have a similar structure which can allow the leadership to act undemocratically.

Lenin's short article The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913) is a concise explanation of the basics of Marxism (Link). But by 1918 the dictatorship of the proletariat had become for Lenin “the very essence of Marx's teaching” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918, Link). It is noticeable however that Lenin's Three Sources article contained no mention of the phrase or Lenin's particular conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Harding alleges that Lenin was the most “doctrinaire” of all Marxists at this time, but here again we see that Lenin was only too willing to distort Marx's arguments in order to fit into the reality of Russia's capitalist revolution. That is, the further development of wage labour, capital, commodity production and the state, which resulted in the exploitation of the working class by the party bureaucracy as the exploiting class.

Lenin's greatest positive achievement was getting Russia out of the bloody futility of World War One, something that the Socialist Party acknowledged at the time. The Socialist Party was the only British organisation to publish the Bolsheviks' anti-war declaration during the war. The trouble really started when claims about the “socialist” nature of Russia began to be aired, first within Russia then in the Communist parties being formed around the world. (See Link) The false claims about Russian “socialism” are largely derived from Lenin's opportunism as he distorted Marxism – working class socialist theory. In this country, the Socialist Party always denied that socialism existed in Russia (or anywhere else) or that Russia was on a transition towards socialism.

For its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant transitional society misnamed “socialism”, in theory and in practice, Leninism today deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. Lenin seriously distorted Marxism and thereby severely damaged the development of the socialist movement. Indeed, Leninism still continues to pose a real obstacle to the achievement of socialism.

Lew Higgins

Proper Gander: Legal Highs And Lows (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC3 is easy to overlook in its new online-only home, even though this is probably how we’ll watch more channels in the future, as the boundaries between television and the internet blur. Online, the channel can group together similar broadcasts, and their stash of shows and articles about drugs looks at the issue from some interesting and imaginative angles. Their titles follow the BBC3 tradition of a tabloidish, eyeball-grabbing headline which suggests the programme is going to be tackier than it turns out to be: Meth And Madness In Mexico, Why Are Women Putting Cannabis In Their Vaginas? and Whoopi Goldberg Wants To Cure Your Period Pain With Weed. More blandly titled is their Drugs Map Of Britain series, which in its first episode visits the people in Wolverhampton aiming at Getting Off Mamba.

Mamba is a ‘legal high’, now more formally called ‘new psychoactive substances’ (NPSs). These are synthetic versions of other drugs, produced by the kind of entrepreneurial spirit we’re supposed to admire. The manufacturers of these substances found the gap in the mainstream market left by the trade in drugs like heroin, cannabis and cocaine being illegal and therefore underground. As new psychoactive substances differ chemically from other drugs, they weren’t covered by existing legislation, until the introduction of the 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act. Before the change in the law, NPSs were openly sold online and in ‘head shops’, meaning they could reach a wider audience than other drugs, and therefore rake in the profits. Mamba, an artificial approximation of cannabis, is probably the most well known type; a few years ago it was mephedrone, aka ‘m-cat’ or ‘meow meow’. Others have names such as ‘happy joker’ and ‘holy smoke’, their packets marked ‘not for human consumption’, which used to be enough to protect the manufacturers from legal comebacks about the drugs’ downsides. One downside not shown in the documentary is a ‘mamba attack’, an extreme reaction to the drug which tends to involve being disorientated and losing bodily control, which in practice can mean collapsing and being unresponsive or acting aggressively or erratically.

Perhaps because of BBC3’s reduced budget, Getting Off Mamba isn’t complicated by a narrator or commentary from professionals. The camera follows Liam, who smokes mamba every few hours, and says it ‘makes you feel nice. It makes me forget about things that I don’t want to think about, like being homeless, having no family, no friends, no help, no nothing’. He and many others use it as a coping strategy for the pressures of effectively being on capitalism’s scrapheap. The rough sleepers and vulnerably housed people featured in the show all recognise that using mamba doesn’t really help them deal with their situations, and instead makes matters worse. Another mamba smoker, Bruce, says it has sapped his motivation and self-esteem as well as draining his money. In other circumstances, drug use can be more enriching, but not when it’s wrapped up in an otherwise unfulfilling, restricted lifestyle.

Liam decides to get support to come off mamba, and visits ‘SUIT’, one of Wolverhampton’s substance misuse services. He meets with Sunny, who has recovered from addiction and now helps others do the same. He and Liam talk about how staying off drugs means making changes to different aspects of his life, such as how he spends his time and who he associates with. An update at the end of the show tells how he’s avoided using mamba and is on a work placement. Getting Off Mamba is less exploitative of its subjects than many of the similar documentaries which followed in the wake of Benefits Street. But it still approaches them in a distant, slightly patronising way, which veteran drama producer Tony Garnett has likened to anthropologists studying ‘natives’.

New psychoactive substances (NPSs) aren’t really all that new, but have become more widespread over the last decade, encroaching on the popularity of heroin, cannabis and cocaine. Some people have switched to NPSs from using traditional drugs because of their increased availability, and the decline in purity of traditional drugs is probably another factor. Producers dilute drugs with cheaper (and often harmful) substances in order to bulk out the deal and make more money. For them, this becomes a false economy when users turn to something else they hope will be more effective, such as mamba. The drugs market will change again with the introduction of the Psychoactive Substances Act, which makes it illegal to produce or supply NPSs. This won’t magically make demand for them disappear, so their manufacture and use will be driven underground, like other drugs. Nor will the change in law remove the pressures of poverty and homelessness which lead some people into problematic drug use. For Liam and the others in Getting Off Mamba, drugs have been a coping mechanism which hasn’t solved their underlying difficulties. Similarly, reforms like the Psychoactive Substances Act are just coping mechanisms which also don’t address the deeper causes of the drugs problem.

Mike Foster

The Myth of Swedish Socialism (1994)

From the December 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of all that has happened in Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Russian-style state capitalism, there is still a tendency for leftwing parties to refer to themselves as “socialist" and to claim the mantle of representatives of the working class.

The Swedish Social Democrats are no exception. In fact, their leader, Ingvar Carlsson, having just taken power from the conservatives in September with 45 percent of the votes cast - the biggest swing to the left in sixty years - declared his party to be "classically socialist".

The foundation of this assertion appears to be the fact that the Social Democrats have for years pursued Keynesian policies and that they have a welfare system the envy of Europe.

Sweden has indeed an enviable welfare system compared with those of other European countries, with unemployment benefits, for instance, still standing even after a recent reduction at 80 percent of average take-home pay, but at the same time Sweden has 14 percent of its workforce unemployed.

The unemployment statistics were what Carlsson largely capitalised on in the run-up to the recent election, promising that future Keynesian policies would ensure that no one under the age of 25 would be out of work for more than 100 days. At the same time the Social Democrats were intent on cutting child care grants, reducing pensions and raising taxes. In short, everyone was being told they must shoulder the burden of Sweden’s current economic crisis - a crisis evident in most European countries at the moment

Sweden's welfare system, as Peter Cohen recently pointed out in an article “The Model That Never Was" in the July-August issue of Monthly Review, "can be traced to the same factors that generated the Beveridge report . . .  a higher standard of welfare for workers means less ‘absenteeism’, a lower employee turnover and higher productivity, which means greater profits”.

That the granting of benefits to the working class of Sweden had an ulterior motive - the maximisation of profits - was only to be expected from the Social Democrats. themselves never representatives of the working class. In fact, as Peter Cohen also pointed out, the history of the Swedish Social Democratic Party since the first world war shows that it "not only accepts capitalism, but defends it against any attempt at change".

On Hitler's 50th birthday it was the Social Democrats who sent their blessings along with troops to take part in the celebrations. And it was the Social Democrats to whom Hitler turned to provide the Nazi war machine with iron, raw materials and weapon technology, while the voice of Swedish protest, the "communists", were interned.

Since 1945 Social Democrat governments have seen to it that Sweden participated wholeheartedly in an assortment of imperialist ventures, including GATT, IMF, OECD and the World Bank. They permitted Sweden to be used as a US communications centre for projected nuclear strikes, backed Pinochet in the wake of his coup in Chile, refused to impose sanctions on racist South Africa at the request of Swedish workers' organisations and openly connived with the CIA, Mossad and the West German Bundesdienst.

Neither can LO, the Swedish equivalent of the TUC, be considered an ally of the working class. In 1983 it urged wage restraint on behalf of the Social Democrat government who feared Sweden losing overseas markets to foreign capitalists. The same year the West German steelworkers came out on strike, a move meant to hit the car companies at a crucial time. To avoid any havoc this would have caused, the Social Democrats and the LO ignored requests for sympathy action with the West German working class and were only too happy to send supplies of steel to the German capitalists.

In the past five years 100,000 jobs have been cut in the welfare sector and it is unlikely that these workers will be reinstated by Carlsson. Moves are already underway to dismantle the public education system and to introduce more private schools. Nor do Sweden’s unemployment statistics look like improving, with recent reports showing that the country's biggest companies see no recruitment drive in coming years, although all expect the near future to bring huge profits.

In reality the Social Democrats in Sweden, like every other party in power in Europe, have to defend the interests of Big Business and can remain in power only by kow-towing to the rules of capitalism. That they call themselves "socialists” is an insult to the millions of workers who put their misguided trust in them. That they are so guilty of class-collaboration is the reason why they are so "classically unsocialist”.

John Bissett

The Panama Papers: All in it Together (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is an expensive business. In any society where the population is divided between those few who own but do no productive work, on the one hand, and the many who have to work but own little, on the other, it is obviously necessary to build up a powerful and far-reaching state apparatus to protect the owning few. Each country’s owning class has to safeguard itself both internally and externally. Internally, it must construct and maintain police forces (overt and undercover), courts, prosecuting machinery, prisons and so forth, in case the propertyless many should rise against them, and attempt to construct a different society – or even just to try and replace the present leaders. Externally, it must construct and maintain armies, navies, air-forces and so on in order to prevent any other country’s capitalist class trying to seize part of its property, and also to support any attempt it may make to seize territory at present held by another country’s owning class.

All this costs money, a great deal of money. Britain is building a new super-prison in Wrexham, with places for 2000 inmates, at a cost of £250 million. And that’s just building it. Apparently it costs about £40,000 a year to keep each prisoner in jail - or £65,000 a year if you include the costs of the police, courts etc. But these expenses, enormous as they are, are dwarfed by the amount a capitalist class will pay out to defend its property from possible attack by foreigners (or possibly to acquire more property from foreigners). The United States is planning to procure a new generation of bombing planes (to destroy the buildings of hostile countries and kill their citizens); there are 175 of them, the total cost being estimated at between $40 and $50 billion. (That’s somewhere between twenty-eight thousand million pounds, and thirty-five thousand million pounds – which comes to about £100 for every man woman and child in the United States.)

So where will the money come from? The answer becomes more obvious the more you think about it. If you want food, you have to go and get it (and pay for it) at a place where they have food, e.g. a supermarket. If you want clothes, you go to a place where they sell clothes. And if you want money, you have to get it from the people who have money. There’s no point in demanding significant contributions from all those people who have to work for a living. When the economists examine the finances of people with low and middle incomes, they always say it’s a matter of swings and roundabouts. Taxation is demanded from many such people, and many others get various kinds of benefits. At the end of the day, it’s merely redistributing the income within that (very large) group of people. Apart from all that, of course, if the working class as a whole did have to pay serious taxes, it would mean much greater pressure for higher pay to make up for it, and in the end the capitalists as a whole would be taking with one hand and having to give back with the other.

All this being so, the money to run the state and preserve it from dangers both internal and external has to come from the capitalists themselves. But while all ruling authorities acknowledge this, and have strict laws in place in order to collect sufficient money from the rich to operate the state machine, the individual capitalists will often be tempted to reduce as much as they can their own personal tax burden. And this is where ‘offshore’ companies and similar dodges come in. Recently many documents – emails, correspondence etc – have been leaked from an influential law firm, Mossack Fonseca, in Panama. The firm has apparently acted for many wealthy people round the world who wished to conceal money or property from the authorities in their own countries. The leaked data from this single firm make it clear that the further up the power scale a wealthy person is in their particular country, the more they will be tempted to fiddle their tax affairs in such a way that they end up paying very little or sometimes nothing: like a member of a tug-of-war team who cheers on the others but personally does very little tugging.

One way to make your affairs ‘tax-efficient’ as the lawyers say (i.e. putting your money where it is safely out of sight of the local tax-collectors) is to establish a company or trust in one of several countries round the world that advertise themselves as ‘tax-havens’. Money gained illegally can also be stashed away quietly, since criminals often find it difficult to explain how without any very obvious sources of income, they are suddenly in possession of a lot of cash (a Rolls-Royce parked outside a terraced downmarket house would cause inconvenient curiosity). Through these secretive companies it’s possible to ‘launder’ money, for example when offshore companies (with anonymous owners) buy houses in London’s booming property market. ‘World leaders, criminals and billionaire sheikhs have secretly poured hundreds of millions of pounds into London properties, leaked offshore data reveals. The cache of documents from a Panamanian law firm confirms the capital as the go-to place for wealthy foreigners and criminals anxious to protect their anonymity and assets’ (Times, 6 April).

Capitalism is fundamentally the same throughout the world, but local history and local conditions often mean that the local version looks different on the surface. Different politicians have different names for their own version of capitalism – some try to get votes by calling it socialism, some even have the nerve to call it communism – but in fact it is recognisably the same the world over. And being the same, the local politicians share the same desires: how to hide their own wealth, while at the same time getting the rest of the country’s rich people to hand over enough of the readies to enable the country’s capitalist system to survive and prosper. Here are a few of those listed by theTimes or the BBC as being connected with these offshore subterfuges, who appeared in the Panama papers – either their own names came up, or the names of family members or close friends:

·        Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s prime minister (in fact there are links in the data to twelve present or former heads of state or prime ministers); poor old Sigmundur had to resign.

·        David Cameron, Britain’s premier, who is going to host an anti-corruption summit in London  shortly; there were also calls for his resignation.

·        Gianni Infantino, the new head of FIFA (just installed to ‘clean up the mess’, because of the  peculiar financial transactions of the last lot).

·        Gonzalo Delaveau, head of the Chilean branch of the anti-corruption watchdog, ‘Transparency  International’.

·        James Ibori, ‘the corrupt Nigerian governor who is known to have bought property across London’.

·        Leyla and Arzua Aliyeva, who ‘are said to have amassed vast business empires’ since daddy –  President Aliyev of Azerbaijan – came to power in 2003.

·        President Macri of Argentina.

·        Two close associates of Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Front.

·        A close associate of President Pena Nieto of Mexico.

·        Alaa Mubarak, son of the former Egyptian dictator.

·        Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates.

·        Mariam Safdar, the daughter of Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan (and two sisters of hers).

·        Kojo Annan, son of the former head of the U.N.

·        Kalpana Rawal, Deputy Chief Justice of Kenya’s Supreme Court.

·        Ayad Allawi, former Prime Minister of Iraq.

·        Dr Saraki, President of the Nigerian Senate.

·        Rami Makhlouf, cousin and close associate of President Assad of Syria.

·        Li Xiaolin, daughter of the former Prime Minister of China.

·        Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine.

·        Kim Chol Sam, a senior official of the North Korean regime.

·        Close associates of Vladimir Putin.

·        Brother-in-law of Xi Jinping, president of China.

Plus lots of others: e.g. Hans-Joachim Kohlsdorf, former senior executive of Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company, Michael Geoghegan the former HSBC boss, David Hunt, ‘one of Britain’s most feared gangsters’ according to the Times, Dominic Chappell, now principal owner of British Home Stores, Tarek Obaid, the founder of Anglo-Saudi oil company Petro-Saudi (and a ‘leading investor’ in a company running a dozen academy-type schools). And, of course, Mossack Fonseca, with 300,000 clients, is only one firm among dozens in the business of helping people to hide away their assets. It will be seen that there are people here from all sides of the various hostile groupings and power blocs into which capitalist countries naturally cluster themselves. They may denounce each other ferociously, but they are all alike when it comes to seeing if they can avoid paying their fair share of the enormous costs of running capitalist countries. The laws operating in each country are very often different, but even so it is quite possible that none of those named broke any laws: it was merely a question of being able to enjoy wealth but not pay taxes on it.

David Cameron appeared on the list because his father, Ian, had operated two offshore trusts, one in the British Virgin Islands, one in Jersey. In 2012 he criticised Jimmy Carr, comedian, who had joined an offshore tax-avoidance scheme: he said it was ‘morally wrong’. When asked about Gary Barlow, a pop star, who had campaigned alongside Cameron for the Conservatives in the 2010 election, and who had joined a similar scheme, he said he hadn’t had time to look into yet; though he had found sufficient time to give Barlow an OBE in 2012. So it’s a little embarrassing that Cameron and his wife bought shares in his father’s off-shore fund in 1997 for £13,500, and sold them thirteen years later for £31,500, two-and-a-half times as much – a very acceptable profit made through offshore trading. Not to mention that Cameron’s education (Eton, fees now £32,000 a year, and Oxford, where Cameron joined the Bullingdon Club – dress-suit to wear at club dinners: £3,500) was presumably paid for by his father’s offshore activities.

So it seems that’s how ‘morally wrong’ can be financially right.

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: Workers Elect - What? (1911)

Editorial from the January 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The excitement is over and the “most momentous question of modem times” is decided—for the second time. The fatuousness of the whole proceeding save from the point of view of those concerned to throw dust and gain time is indicated by the fact that the returns are almost identical with those of eleven months previously.

Of course, those fiends of darkness, the Lords, have been again soundly thrashed, and this time the road to the Liberal "Earthly Paradise” is to be unbarred. True, the noble creature whom Providence has granted the privilege of empire, the monopoly of work, and a big dinner once a year, has not betrayed that intense interest the occasion would seem to call for. But the wily ones know how to move him, and have judiciously prodded him to the polls — and for what ?

To place Britain at the mercy of the foreigner say some. To end or mend the Lords say others.

To bind his fetters tighter; to give his exploiters another lease of life; to check Socialism (Mr. Lloyd George—vide speech)—thus only can the Socialist answer.

The first have succeeded in roping in a large proportion of working cattle, but the wicked foreigner and his Radical allies are still at large.

The Liberals, on the other hand, are jubilant They have, in a measure, succeeded. True, they are still dependent upon factions to keep them in office, but they have what they asked for: a large majority to do things to the House of Lords. With this cry and a few minor promises they are returned fairly secure in office.

All these good people, Liberal, Conservative or what not, are quite honourable gentlemen, of course, imbued with a love of “British fair-play.” Consider, for instance, the way in which the spokesmen of both parties handle that old "Clarion” wheeze, the Referendum. The Tories with a great show of democracy, proposed to put the more momentous measures to a vote of the electors. Trust the people! was their election cry. The Liberals, however, the "People’s Party,” denounced it as unsound, impracticable, and revolutionary. The vaunted democracy of the latter is exposed in their attitude on this matter, while the sincerity of the Tories may be gauged from the fact that no sooner was it evident that they could not win than Mr. A. Chamberlain repudiated this extravagant “trust” in the people.

However, we are faced with a situation where the “People” are to come into their own. There are to be all kinds of democratic reforms, destined, it seems, to keep the Liberal party in power indefinitely. Some of these, they say, will have to be deferred ’til 1913—or, we suggest, 2013, so rapid is the age. But if the deluded proletarians will but examine the whole list,— "limitation of the Lords' veto," unemployment assurance, payment of members, and the rest — they will see that when all are enacted (if ever they are) their poverty-stricken, driven-beast existence will remain intact. "Down with the House of Lords” is even better as a vote-catcher than the more precise and much milder Asquithian phrase, and, as a trick to obscure the fact that a clean sweep of the House of Commons is required to make any real betterment in the condition of the workers possible, it speaks volumes for their devilish cunning, if not for their ingenuity.

No, friends, it is not because there is a Lords’ veto that we are in poverty and misery; it is because the means of livelihood are private property. Hence it is the whole social system, with its property basis, that we have to attack. And our line of attack is not through the Lords, but by working-class organisation —and through the Commons.

Is Parliament a Sham? (1973)

From the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the Socialist Worker for 11 November, Duncan Hallas contends that Parliament is (1) “a sham”, (2) “a show to deceive the public”, (3) “a charade”. Otherwise it is not too bad, presumably. He says: “Parliament still matters, but its importance is largely ideological,” and: “It serves as a front behind which the ruling class conduct the struggle to preserve their wealth.”

Hallas’s evidence for the impotence of Parliament is that the government of the day does not consult Parliament but goes in for “direct negotiations with the TUC and big business as in the case of the Industrial Relations Act”; and a quotation from Professor J. Mackintosh who wrote in his book The Government and Politics of Britain that:

the old nineteenth-century role of Parliament as a body which chose the Government, maintained it, and could reject it, has gone 

and

the life of a back-bench M.P. becomes unsatisfactory, and offers little scope for achievement.

Effective Representatives

Hallas also tells us “There was a time, roughly from the seventeenth to the beginning of this century, when Parliament was in fact, as well as in law, the supreme policy-making body.” Says our scribe, quoting from Professor Plumb: “No member of the ruling class was kept out of Parliament if he wanted to get in.” But today, says Hallas, “Parliament does not contain most of the big-business bosses, bankers and financiers . . . and therefore all the important decisions are taken outside Parliament”. 

How, may we politely ask Duncan Hallas, does he prove the ineffectiveness of parliament by stating that the government negotiates directly with the TUC and CBI? Was the Industrial Relations Act read three times to the whole House of Commons and did a majority of MPs vote for it? Obviously, they did: it became law. What is this nonsense that MPs “were not consulted”? They approved the policy on which the Cabinet conducted the detailed negotiations, apart from the fact that the Cabinet (the government) is supported by a majority of the majority party in the House of Commons.

As for the statement that Parliament is no longer Parliament because it “does not contain most of the big business bosses, bankers and financiers, or the important Trade Union leaders” — there are only about 600 seats anyway, so Parliament could never "contain” all these people. But whether it does or whether it doesn’t: so what? The important point is that it contains representatives of the big-business bosses who get elected to Parliament because the electors vote for them. Incidentally, we would question the statement that Parliament no longer contains bosses or bankers.

Old-hat Appeals

But what is the inference behind all this mullarky about Parliament being “a sham”, “a show” and “a charade” (they used to call it the Gas Works too)? It is the old, old, antiquated, exploded, bankrupt notion that the workers can achieve their aims outside of, and therefore in opposition to, Parliament and the government. It is a popular idea with impatient frustrated workers who are not clear on the nature of Socialism and think (if it can be called thinking: "feeling” is more like it) that fighting "the day-to-day struggle” and "partial struggles for limited ends” in some way promote Socialism. They do not. No amount of marching, demonstration, strikes, rent-strikes, boycotts, etc., etc., makes the slightest contribution to the Socialist objective.

The workers can march the shoes off their feet, and in some cases literally have, for any reform they fancy from "ban the Bomb” to “lower rents” and "abolish the non-cohabitation clause”. It all does precisely nothing for Socialism. The very fact that they are doing this shows that they want the reform of capitalism.

If the International Socialists regard Parliament as a sham, what is their "revolutionary party” going to do? Are they going to refuse to nominate candidates and contest elections? If not, will their candidates fight on a straight Socialist programme? And will they then stop supporting the Labour Party at elections? If they fight the elections on the reform slogans in their present programme they may get more votes than the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Though "Nationalization of the Land, Banks and major industries” is a bit moth-eaten and many of the major industries — steel, gas, electricity — are nationalized already.

In a further article in the same paper for 18 November, Hallas expresses the view that the State machine will not obey the orders of a Socialist Parliament. The judges and police will not enforce laws repressing private ownership, the generals will not suppress pro-slavery rebellions. This is backed by the usual Marxist quotation employed by Lenin:

One thing especially was proved by the Commune, namely that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes.

From this Lenin concluded that the working class must smash the State machine. What Marx and Engels had in mind, obviously, were the bureaucratic excrescences of the French Empire. In other words, a parliamentary Socialist majority will dispense with those parts of the State machine that Socialism does not require.

When you think it all out, the end determines the means. If you think that the only way to get Socialism is to persuade a majority that capitalism cannot be reformed in their interest you must be in favour of electoral methods. What the workers will do with their political power when they take it, nobody can know in detail. Whether it will need the help of force remains to be seen. If on the other hand you stand for:

"A Minimum Wage of £25 a week."
"Five days’ pay for five days’ work.”
“Equality for Women.”
“Against secret diplomacy."
“Against Nuclear Weapons.”
“National Liberation.”
“Nationalization of the Banks."

—and many other things, you are not International Socialists but National Reformists. (Anyway, probably the best way to alter those things is Parliament.)

Final Arbiter

The people who count in the end are the voters. If they won’t vote for Socialism, they won’t fight for it outside Parliament. Anti-Parliamentarianism, at bottom, is the old Anarchist-Syndicalist Direct Action nonsense, which leads directly to the prison cell and the firing squad. And the policemen and soldiers who will quell the riots, like the judges and warders who commit rioters to prison, are recruited, paid and instructed by a government department — headed by a Cabinet Minister, instructed and appointed by Parliament.

Horatio.