Editorial: Everybody out . . . (2002)

Editorial from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oh for the glory days of the 1970s! Men huddled around braziers at the factory gates, collars turned up on their duffle coats to protect them from the biting wind. Mass meetings, addressed by the great union leaders, with hundreds of hands lifting in unison to support the motion of the day. Left-wing paper sellers on every picket line, hawking Militant and Socialist Worker to "the workers in struggle". Those were the days indeed . . .

Before the last general election, Arthur Scargill, leader of the Socialist Labour Party and no stranger to picket lines himself, was asked about how his vision for the future seemed curiously stuck in the past - specifically the 1970s. Though meant as a criticism, Scargill took this comment from a hostile interviewer as a compliment, saying that this was exactly what he wanted to return to. Reading the newspapers at the moment, you would be forgiven for thinking that his wish has become a reality.

For the first time in some years, the UK seems beset by industrial disputes. Whereas as recently as 1998, the working days lost to industrial action in this county were the lowest on record, working class militancy has seemingly returned. At the time of writing there are ongoing disputes taking place concerning workers in the RMT rail union, the Post Office Workers Union, staff at Manweb/Scottish Power and many others besides. This has stirred the right-wing press into one of its periodic frenzies against the "wreckers" who care nothing for business and little for the paying customer.

But why this flurry of activity all of a sudden? Well, there's no surprise perhaps beyond the fact that it hasn't happened sooner. When the rail companies have been short of drivers and there are not enough trains for the passengers to cram into it is hardly surprising there is going to be industrial action of some sort – quite simply, train drivers have managed to increase their pay levels as the competing train operators desperately vie for their services. Others in the rail sector understandably want to follow suit, also mindful of the type of "salaries" paid in recent years to the so-called "fat cats" at the top of the companies. As even the Guardian recently put it, if the fat cats have been creaming off the milk for so long then why can't the thin cats get in on the act?

Added to this is the fact that the economy is just about entering its tenth year of fairly sustained growth (notwithstanding the recent slowdown) and this growth has led to levels of unemployment that are historically low for this last twenty or thirty years. In these circumstances, workers are likely to push all they can to safeguard the conditions of workers in any threatened industries as the inevitable downturn looms and yet push for wage claims which outstrip the level of price rises whenever they can in sectors where the profits seem to be healthy. Workers at Consignia (formerly the Post Office) are a good example of the former, being employed in a sector that has been under attack from management for several years prior to privatisation and which is now a comparative hotbed of militant trade unionism as the company tries to reduce its costs by £1.2 billion and the workers try to defend their position. In other sectors of the economy the workers continue to press more proactively for big wage increases - but at a time when management is just starting to become wary of an impending downturn in the economy. The result can often be an industrial dispute.

Socialists are, of course, on the side of the "thin cats" not the "fat cats" in these disputes. Wage and salary earners are the subject class in capitalism, selling our abilities to the owners and controllers of wealth for wages and salaries that are just enough to keep us in reasonable working order given the historical conditions in which we find ourselves.

Indeed, based on our understanding of this situation, our advice to workers is threefold:

• Try to push wages and salaries as high as they are allowed to go by the owners and management;
• Organise democratically to achieve your aims, without reliance on "leaders", who will sell you down the river;
• Recognise that any union struggle is necessarily a defensive one as there can be no real and lasting "victory" within the profit system.

Given the extent to which employment law in the UK has been skewed even further towards the bosses in the last twenty years, a repeat of the 1970s is unlikely and we suspect that Arthur Scargill should not get too excited for the moment (nor his like-minded friends in the Trot-dominated "Socialist Alliance").

Trade unions are essentially fighting over the crumbs. Socialists long ago raised our sights beyond the crumbs (necessary though that fight is within the system) to fight instead for control of the whole bakery. That way we will not be perpetually doomed to repeat the battles of the past, however they may be talked up as "subversive" acts by the mouthpieces of capital in the press, or how "glorious" they are portrayed as being by the self-styled leaders of the left.

‹ No. 1170 February 2002

Sting in the Tail: Perks of the Job (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perks of the Job

Whenever one of Europe’s African colonies achieved independence its new black ruling class quickly adopted the luxurious lifestyle of its white predecessors.

In South Africa the leaders of the African National Congress are introducing themselves to the good things In life. According to The Independent on Sunday (17 May) Nelson Mandela has bought a "spacious new home in gracious Houghton, Johannesburg's answer to Hampstead", for £100,000, but this is probably a hovel compared to ANC chairman Oliver Tambo's £500,000 house in Sandhurst, "the most expensive suburb In the country".

Their good taste also extends to cars: a national executive member "recently remarked that the underground garage at ANC headquarters looked like a Mercedes and BMW showroom".

In one way the ANC leaders are different from those black ruling classes elsewhere in Africa: they aren't waiting until they actually get their hands on political power before they get them on capitalism's little luxuries.

Baying for Blood

Aren't our policemen wonderful? At the annual conference of the Police Federation in Scarborough a call to abandon their policy of restoring hanging was heavily defeated.

Not even the examples of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the numerous other innocent people who would be dead if hanging was still law, made any difference to this bloodthirsty mob.

Pro-hanging delegates raged at liberals, wets, do-gooders, etc., and the conference was urged to "Remember our murdered colleagues" (The Guardian 22 May).

So, in the Federation's eyes killers should hang, but do they think this should apply to policemen who were later found to have had innocent people convicted and hanged on trumped-up murder charges?

Taming the Trots

During the mid 1970s the Socialist Party in Glasgow had competition for a while at its Saturday outdoor meetings from some young Trotskyists of the long-since vanished International Marxist Group.

Their speakers outdid one another In demanding violent insurrection, denouncing the Labour Party and ridiculing electoral activity. One in particular was fond of telling his audience "we don't want your votes, It's your ACTION we want!"

During this year's local elections, there on TV was a Labour Party official condemning the Trotskyists of Scottish Militant and especially Tommy Sheridan. He looked familiar. . . yes, it was that same firebrand from the 1970s!

This poacher-turned-gamekeeper is now one of "the leading lights in the movement to rid the city of Militant" (The Glaswegian 16 May), and his attitude to votes has changed too: he was an unsuccessful Labour candidate at the general election and in the May local elections he lost again to . . .  Tommy Sheridan!

The spectacle of Trotskyist zealots ending up as Labourites is a familiar one, and nobody should bet against the same thing happening, sooner or later, to the current crop in Scottish Militant.

In a Nutshell

The killing and atrocities in what was Yugoslavia are being blamed by the West (the US and Its allies) on Serbia and in particular its leader Slobodan Milosevic.

A letter writer in The Guardian (27 May) pointed out the double standards used by the West in condemning Serbia for the use of force while remaining silent when East Tlmoreans, Thai demonstrators, Latin American peasants and Indians, Palestinian refugees and the victims of Pol Pot are slaughtered.

He added that whatever crimes Milosevic may be guilty of

He has a long way to go before he can be classed with the likes of Pinochet, Duvalier, Suharto, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Samuel Doe and D'Aubuisson, all of who enjoyed the protection of the US while perpetrating unspeakable atrocities.

"Mean Jeane” Kirkpatrick, a prominent member of the Reagan administration, summed up very well the view taken by the US government of the above-mentioned murderers, when she said - "They may be bastards, but they are our bastards."

High Street Massacre

The news that Lloyd's bank has dropped its bid for Midland bank has been welcomed by the banking trade union BIFU.

If the takeover had succeeded then Lloyd's, besides getting rid of a major competitor, would have made huge savings by closing 1,000 High Street branches and cutting 20,000 jobs.

BIFU opposed the proposed takeover and accused Lloyd's of being more interested in bigger profits for its shareholders than it was in worker's jobs!

But this is only normal practice in capitalism. British banks cut 40,000 jobs in 1990-91 with possibly another 30,000 in 1992, and all this without any takeovers.

The fact is that there are too many banks in Britain competing for the available business. To make matters worse the building societies are now providing banking services so the pressure to cut jobs will continue.

BIFU should know that banks, like any other business, exist to make as much profit as possible and not to provide jobs for workers.

Scorpion.

Editorial: A Question of Policy. (1913)

Editorial from the February 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Several correspondents having recently asked questions with regard to the future revolutionary economic organisation, an attempt is made to deal generally with the matter in the following article.

In the first place the position of this party has always been, no matter whether it is the economic organisation or the Socialist Commonwealth that is in question, that all matters of detail most be left to those upon whom the necessity to consider and arrange them is imposed by social development. Social development does not impose this task upon the Socialist Party at the present day. In every walk of life the broad scheme comes first. No organiser ever proceeds from the particular to the general—from the detail to the whole.

That which has been placed before the working-class intelligence to-day is the need for the broad, undetailed social system based upon the common ownership of the means of life. We know that from that basis certain broad conditions must arise. Those conditions are of such vast importance as to dwarf all matters of detail into the elusive diminutive of “nothing,” just as the corresponding conditions which arise out of the present social basis (wage-slavery, for instance) are of such overwhelming moment, as to reduce all other matters to insignificance.

The Socialist, as the member of society upon whom the need for this change in the social base has been borne, accepts these broad conditions which he knows will arise as sufficient. He is aware that such changes may take place as will prevent the establishment of common ownership in the means of living (though he regards the contingency as so remote that it does not worry him), and in that case the whole and the detail would be equally vain. But he is convinced that, whatever changes may take place, or unforeseen circumstance arise, if such happenings are not of sufficient magnitude to prevent the social base being established, then all the effect of those changes must fall upon the details, and cannot affect the broad outline of the new social scheme.

In regard to the revolutionary eoonomic organisation the Socialist position is identical. That such an organisation will be called for as part of the organisation of the working class for the achievement of their emancipation must be admitted by every Socialist. That such organisation, since its aim is the organisation of the working class, must be upon class lines, is the simple logical implication of the facts. That such an organisation, since its object is revolutionary, must hare a revolutionary basis and be composed of revolutionaries admits of no dispute. But beyond certain general conclusions clearly arising from the given premises, and which no changes that do not first disestablish those premises can alter, the Socialist, and in an added degree the Socialist Party, is not called to pronounce.

The work the Socialist has before him is to make Socialists—to make adherents to the Socialist whole, not to any conglomeration of Socialist detail. The details can have no significance to the person who does not understand the whole, and to the person who does understand they do not matter. For the first thing that happens to the man who does understand—to the Socialist, that is—is that he perceives that his only hope lies in his class. If his class is not equal to taking every step necessary for their emancipation; if his class is not capable of considering and deciding every matter of detail when the necessity arises; if his class is not of sufficient mental calibre to lightly throw off the dead hand of any notions and determinations we might seek to impose upon them, then the working class is doomed.

Why, then, should we trouble ourselves with details that we are not called upon to face? We could only consider them in the light of our present environment, and that, we know, is changing every day. It is a very essential, a fundamental, part of our Socialist position that our environment is changing every day. Upon our conception of the broad tendency of that change we base our general policy, but it is the details of that environmental change that must affect and determine the details of the future policy, and as to the details of the change which will take place in the multitudinous conditions that surround us, we are supremely ignorant.

This, however, we do know: before we can have Socialism we must have, not merely Socialists, but a Socialist working class; and before we can have even the Socialist economic organisation we must have the Socialist material with which to form it. It is a significant fact that those who claim to be able to form a revolutionary economic organisation with non revolutionaries are the same who have succeeded in framing a Socialist (!) political organisation without Socialists.

In the knowledge, then, of what we do know; of what we are sure will be necessary in spite of all changes that are not of sufficient magnitude to touch the fundamentals of our position, we concern ourselves with the work that is at hand—the making of the material necessary to the establishment of Socialism. And we do this, whether that material is to be used in the economic field or the political—or both—without imposing on the future the dead hand of unripe judgments—unripe because they must necessarily be formed in an untimely environment.

But as for the specific questions put by one enquirer, we may hazard a reply. The questions are: “How could the economic organisation work in complete unison with the political party if it was kept separate and apart by non-affiliation?” and secondly : “If the economic organisation is to consist of the same units which compose the political organisation, what structure will it (the economic organisation) take so as to debar from membership the non-revolutionary?”

The question of affiliation, as was pointed out in a former answer, is largely a matter of definition. What is certain is that between the economic organisation of the working class and the political there must, since they each will exist for the same revolutionary purpose, and will each be necessary to that purpose, be such close co-operation as will secure the end in view. There is no mystery about this. Just as the capitalist on the economic field and on the political field, can take consistent action in his own interest without affiliating his economic self with his political person, so can the Socialist. Whatever form of words may be used to designate the organisations, since they will, after all, simply be the revolutionary working class organised on the industrial and the political fields for the same object, they will in effect be different sides of one organisation. Nothing can keep them apart, and if there is no definite act of affiliation it will be because none is needed. For example, the workers, in their economic organisation, will be anxiously waiting for the opportunity to go to work on the co-operative basis, but being Socialists, they will know that they cannot do so until, in their political organisation they have taken certain steps. It is hard to believe that, politically, they can take certain conscious steps and, economically, not know they have done it. 

Regarding the last point, it certainly seems that provision for sound membership might be made in the same way that the S.P. secures it: by a declaration of principles—and discipline.

Taking the poison again (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elections always nourish hopes. I had high hopes for the Labour Party in the 1964 election and was sure they would be fulfilled when Labour were returned to office for the first time in thirteen years. It would all begin. Things would start to go well because at last we had a government that cared about people, understood their problems and wanted to solve them. More than anything we had in Harold Wilson a leader with the flair and confidence to control events and shape the future in the general interest.

Wilson reigned for six years. During that time the cost of living went up by thirty per cent, unemployment doubled to 700,000, National Health charges were drastically increased, free milk for schoolchildren was abolished, racist legislation was passed and the government supported horrific wars in Vietnam and Nigeria. I wondered at the time why all this was happening because none of it had been in The New Britain, Labour's 1964 election manifesto. I was surprised at Harold Wilson too because all this meant that the reputation he had made for himself in opposition as some kind of political magician was now lost.

But this didn't stop me supporting Labour. Old ties are hard to break and, anyway, I didn’t see any alternative. I was puzzled however as to why, if Labour really cared, it hadn't tried harder to keep its promises. Perhaps it really hadn't, as it claimed, had enough time to clear up the mess the Tories had left behind and would do better next time.

But there wasn’t to be a next time, or not right away, because in 1970 the Tories were voted back in. Although I was disappointed, by this time I’d come into contact with some people calling themselves socialists who were actually telling you not to vote Labour in elections and who, I soon found out, had said the same thing at every election the Labour Party had ever contested. All the people I’d previously known as socialists, no matter how opposed to or sceptical of the Labour Party they were most of the time, considered it an article of faith to vote Labour in elections if only to “keep the Tories out”. But these “new”’ socialists said that there was no more point voting Labour than voting Tory and that a Labour government could only deceive and disappoint the workers who elected it. And when I started to look into the Labour Party’s record in office, 1 realised that this argument had history on its side. Labour governments in 1923-24, 1929-31 and 1945-51 had presided over rising levels of unemployment, falling living standards, strike breaking, militarism and scores of broken promises. What I'd just experienced was only the latest in a succession of similar failures that went back over forty years.

Does it always have to be like this? The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always said it does because the Labour Party in office has the same function as the Tory Party — to administer the capitalist system, and that system cannot be administered in the interests of the majority, those who have to work for a living. And if you look at this proposition, certain things become clear. “Capitalism" no longer appears just an empty word. It actually describes the world we live in, a world which depends on capital being invested by that small minority who own it with a view to making profit. If capital can’t be invested at a profit, it isn’t invested at all. This causes production to cease, regardless of the need people may have for the fruits of that production and it also causes workers to be unemployed. Governments of whatever colour and whatever their stated intentions, can be seen in their true light as guardians of the existing state of things and therefore working to preserve and protect the interests of that capital-owning minority.

Socialism too takes on a definite meaning. It has nothing to do with the particular method the Labour Party has of running capitalism but means a completely different kind of society from capitalism, the like of which we have not yet seen anywhere. It means a society where production doesn’t take place for profit but directly for use, where everything is owned in common, where all goods and services can be taken freely by everyone and where governments don’t rule but people participate democratically and meaningfully in their own affairs.

So is there no difference between the Labour and Tory parties? Only so far as each claims to govern according to its own distinctive values and philosophies. Labour says it is a party of humanitarianism, compassion for the underprivileged, intervention by the state to serve the interests of working people. The Tories also say that they are concerned about workers’ well-being but that what is ultimately of benefit to workers is the success of private enterprise and keeping state intervention to a minimum.

But “values” and “philosophies”, like manifesto promises, are discarded by both parties when they are faced with the reality of trying to keep capitalism on an even keel. British capitalism needs to keep its costs down in order to compete favourably with other national capitalisms in the world and this imposes on both Labour and Tory parties policies which have neither been part of their declared outlook nor corresponded to their pledges. And these policies have often been strikingly similar — wage restraint, cuts in education and social services, trade union curbs, inflation caused by printing an excess of inconvertible paper currency, and so on. Labour, despite its compassionate, peace-loving image and its sentimental links with the working class, has gone in for cuts in the health service, strike-breaking and war-making, while the Tories, despite their free market “principles" and tough, “stand on your own feet” reputation, have backed nationalisation (e.g. Rolls-Royce) and seemingly humane reforms (Supplementary Benefit legislation) when conditions dictated. And what unites the two parties — their commitment to operating capitalism and their adherence to its immediate dictates — is much more fundamental and important than the different values, rhetoric and promises supposedly dividing them.

So this election is not, as Tony Benn called it, “the most critical in this century” (South Wales Miners’ Conference, 10 May) nor is it, as the Guardian newspaper has said, “likely to decide the political direction of the UK for a generation”. It is an election like any other whose result will not touch the root cause of social problems, the system of production for profit, but will only alter minor details within the framework of that system. After the election the winning party will pull out the goodies from its manifesto cupboard only if they contain the ingredients the world market can digest. Michael Foot can bluster about reducing unemployment by “reflating the economy” and Margaret Thatcher can insist that the only way to get people back to work is to “stimulate investment". But “reflation” is a dead end, as Mitterand’s failure in France has shown, and investment will only be stimulated by the prospect of profit, which depends on the present slump in world trade easing off and markets beginning to expand. Only if this happens will the jobless figures go down and neither Foot nor Thatcher, nor any individual or political party, will have any influence in the matter.

On unemployment therefore, as on other issues, both will inevitably fail to keep their promises — perhaps through naivety, but certainly through their inability to control a system that is uncontrollable. But even if they miraculously managed to run capitalism according to their predetermined plans, they would still be failing — and in a more important way — the majority of those who elected them. They would be failing the wage and salary earners by fostering the illusion that there is no alternative way to organise things than through buying and selling and that any attempt to manage our affairs sanely — without markets, without wars, without wages and salaries, without governments, without the whole paraphernalia of buying and selling — is impossible, unrealistic and not an issue worth considering.

But then, in the final analysis, it is up to the majority not to be taken in by the illusions of the capitalist parties and their leaders and to take our own democratic political action to change things. As long as we leave our world in their hands, they will fail us and we will be failing ourselves.

Howard Moss

What goes around comes around (2001)

Editorial from the September 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The mantra repeated by Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown since they were first elected has been the importance of avoiding "Tory Boom and Bust". Everything else has hinged on the economic stability which they claim is the almost unique preserve of their type of "new" Labour government, with its supposed emphasis on "building for the long-term" over "short-term fixes".

During the recent election campaign Labour put up posters across Britain depicting William Hague and Michael Portillo as Mr Boom and Mr Bust in a pastiche of the film Towering Inferno, called instead 'Towering Interest Rates". Those with long memories will have found this slightly odd – not because the Tory record on unemployment and recessions was a good one – but because no Labour administration in history until the present government had ever left office with unemployment lower than when it had been elected.

Since 1997 the government under Blair and Brown has harvested some of the luck denied to these previous Labour governments, simply by virtue of being elected during an economic boom (even if it offends their sensibilities to describe it in such terms). And their reticence to recognise the recent economic prosperity for what it really amounts to is significant in itself. It stems from their awareness that most people think that all booms eventually end in busts, no matter whether it is the Tories in office or some other group of tricksters.

In the rather distorted worldview of Blair and Brown things underneath really are different this time, as a benevolent New Labour government guides the economy along a smooth upward path avoiding the recklessness and irresponsibility that led to two consumer booms and two deep recessions under Thatcher and Major. New Labour has allegedly tapped into a technological "paradigm shift" in the global economy, rendering the old problems and previous conceptions and analyses obsolete. But it is a worldview which is increasingly – and embarrassingly – child-like and which is now finally being tested to the limit by economic realities that are starting to emerge on an almost daily basis.

On the back of the big slowdown in the US economy (caused by an over-expansion in relation to market demand of the high-tech and "dot com" industries) there comes a British manufacturing sector which is now officially in recession, having suffered two consecutive quarters of economic contraction (or "negative growth" as the government euphemistically likes to call it). That this state of affairs has transpired should be no real shock to anyone, for the economy in Britain has been in the grip of a consumer boom in recent years to rival the best of them. Total consumer debt in the UK is now 10 percent higher than total disposable income with many people borrowing against rising house prices to sustain – or increase – their spending levels, just as they did in the last unsustainable boom. With mortgage brokers and building societies issuing warnings that rises in commercial and domestic property prices are now about to stall with the market reaching its peak, the signs are there for all who want to see them.

Not that the present government does want to see the signs of course, any more so than any of its predecessors did. The present Labour government has never taken the considered view of those who have based their analysis on the entire history of the operations of the market economy, and certainly not of anyone claiming to put a Marxist analysis, as we do.

But whether they realise it or not, the moment of truth for this official government outlook is now upon us it seems. Is modern capitalism under Blair and Brown really crisis-free or is it still essentially the same system it always has been?

While Karl Marx in the nineteenth century and we in the Socialist Party today claim that capitalism inevitably goes through a periodic cycle of expansion, over-investment, crisis and economic stagnation, new Labour contends that it is all old hat. But their problem is that so has, in effect, every government that has ever preceded them. Those governments didn't necessarily talk about paradigm shifts but they did talk a lot of other economic tomfoolery: from protectionism to free trade, from nationalisation and indicative planning to laissez-faire and privatisation, from Keynesian intervention to monetarism, and all in the hallowed name of "economic stability". And what was the one thing they all had in common? Sooner or later they were all beset by the very boom/slump cycle of capitalism (and its attendant economic problems) that the Marxian analysis contends is endemic to the system.

Will Blair and Brown's government be able to buck the trend? Well, not if history, tried and tested sound economic analysis and the government's own figures on the stagnating manufacturing sector are anything to go by.

So forget the rhetoric and forget the "paradigm shifts". Once again it looks like time for Mr Boom from 11 Downing Street to go and visit his friend next door, Mr Bust.

It's The Same In The Sprawl (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

To many a Cockney, London is known, in mixed derision and affection, as the Smoke. It might also be called, less affectionately, the Sprawl. From Hounslow in the West to Enfield in the North, Erith in the East and Epsom in the South, London spreads itself on the map of Southern England. It leap-frogs even beyond these points, into places which were not so long ago the countryside and a hiker's day out. In the Chiltern Hills, for example, the landscape is altering beyond recognition as the trees come down and the houses of the post-war Metro-landers go up in their place.

In this Sprawl live all manner of workers, from the lowest of down-and-outs to white collar men who manage ulcers along with their expense accounts. Here, therefore, are all manner of working class problems, including that of housing.

London has its families whose housing difficulties could not be starker. They are the homeless ones. Usually unskilled, low-paid workers, they often have to start their married lives in the most dubious of lodgings, from which they are easily evicted. Then the problem snowballs, until their family may be forced to split up, with the children going into a Home or being taken by the mother to a local authority hostel while the father rubs along outside. The London County Council runs some of these hostels and they are not inviting places. During the past year the number of families in them reached a record peak; in November, 1962, it stood at 1,008. Since then it has fallen; last month it was just over 800, representing about 3,800 persons. But these figures in fact disguise the real size of the problem, which would be more accurately reflected in the turnover of families in the hostels as opposed to the number in them at any one time. A recent Family Service Unit survey into the housing prospects of low-paid workers was summed up in this way by The Guardian on February 14th last: “In all London there is virtually no accommodation for a family of limited means."

One step—but often only a short one—up from the homeless, are those who live in London's rented homes. Some of these homes are the famous London slums, which characterise areas like Stepney and Brixton and North Kensington. Some others are in more pretentious areas—South Kensington for example—which do not like to think of themselves as part of slumdom. But no other word so aptly fits the piled up, dingy acres of bed-sitters and what are euphemistically termed flatlets. London is full of this sort of place. The 1961 Census showed that a quarter of all households in the County of London occupied one or two rooms and that a half of them occupied three or four rooms.

The Census also revealed something about the condition of the County of London's homes. Over 400,000 are without exclusive access to a hot water tap and over 300,000 are without a bath. It does not take a very powerful imagination to picture what these hundreds of thousands of homes in the centre of the “affluent" South are like.

But the Sprawl is also, of course, the great exponent of the cult of suburbia, where they usually have a bathroom (even if it is a small one) and a hot water tap (even if they have to watch the cost of running it too often). Suburbia, where many workers are proudly buying their houses, is not usually associated with the housing problem. Who can think of slums, standing in Acacia Crescent, with the blossom out on the trees and neat hedges and roses as far as the eye can see?

Yet behind the clematis covered walls the housing problem sits as immovably as it does in Poplar or Deptford. Many workers now buy their houses because that is literally the only way they can get one. And when they have signed the contract for the sale they have committed themselves to a lifetime of paying off a massive loan, sometimes at a crippling rate of interest. This commitment forces them to depend even more than usual upon keeping their job. The suburban mortgagee knows what worry is; the suburbs, in fact, are centres of stress and strain which can almost be sensed behind the pretty curtains. Mortgagees usually have to sign a deed which is full of all sorts of restrictions, designed to keep up the value of the house so that, if they cannot keep up the payments and the property has to be sold the mortgagor stands to lose as little as possible. Living in this sort of home means that the worker has a bathroom and a garden and perhaps one or two other amenities which are pleasant enough in their way. But he has not lost his housing problem.

The thing which is common to all those who struggle in the housing difficulties of London, and elsewhere, is that they get their living by going out to work. This means that everything they need to live— their clothes, their food, their recreation, their homes—is tailored to take account of the limitations of their wage packets. This is what we call poverty and it is what all workers in London, and the rest of the world, have in common. It afflicts the homeless worker and it sits on the shoulder of him who smugly clips his privet in the suburbs.

Ivan

Atheist (2013)

Book Review from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shelley at Oxford by Heathcote Williams. (Huxley Scientific Press, Oxford.)

Sadly, for this reviewer, Heathcote Williams disdains the discipline of what would have been called prosody in Shelley's day. Still, in these 30 pages of free verse, the language is Shelleyian, as is the anger and contempt for the latter-day version of capitalism.

Sub-titled ‘Blasphemy, Book-burning and Bedlam’ Williams's poetic narrative depicts the reaction among the bishops, aspiring bishops and potential managerial functionaries of the Christian church in 1811 when confronted by a pamphlet written by a 19-year-old Oxford student which challenged the sacred bona-fides of their founder.

A young upstart of impeccably aristocratic descent had written a pamphlet affirming The Necessity of Atheism here! In the sacred precincts of class-orientated, male-dominated Christian culture. Obviously there had to be a Christian response to this attack on the sinews of faith in God and the church system. Oxford bristled with divine erudition and an abundance of faith. But faith was simply belief without knowledge and the core beliefs of Christianity were logically unsustainable; so the holy men of Oxford and its wider hinterland turned to its traditional processes of defence: fear, intimidation and suppression

Heathcote Williams says now, with the forthrightness of Percy Shelley:

‘A theological mafia with every whim indulged
By their colleges' underpaid servants
Which is hired to cook up the date of Creation
Or to invent the location of Eden.’

Oxford and its professors of myth abandoned argument in favour of direct action. The single bookshop that had been persuaded to take The Necessity of Atheism was threatened and ostracised; the book was publicly burned and the author expelled for thinking out loud. Ten years later, when the news of his death by drowning was made public the holy ardour and charity of Christianity was expressed thus in the columns of the London Courier:

‘Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry has been drowned; now he knows whether there is a God or no.’

Richard Montague

Editorial: The 'Standard's' Anniversary. (1909)

Editorial from the September 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 'Standard's ' Anniversary.

With this issue we begin our sixth annual volume. The working class still requires an organ that shall faithfully carry on the work of proletarian enlightenment; an organ unsullied by compromise and capable of uncovering the enemy’s every move. Such the Socialist Standard has been, and in the future we expect to be able to perform this great work for our class with enhanced vigour and greater success. The paper is now eagerly awaited every month by many, who, while they are not yet members of our party, are realising that all is not well with their present affiliations. Its pronouncements on topical matters are read with interest, for while necessarily often somewhat late, yet our readers realise as a rule that they are dictated by the cool judgement of Socialist contributors who have taken the trouble to understand capitalism, and who do not sloppily misrepresent— for the sake of literary effect and flourish. While those who seek sound theoretical articles teaching some phase of Socialist thought, know that nothing beats the little "Standard.”

We still pursue our policy of refusing commercial advertisements, loss of income thereby notwithstanding. The paper is all the better for it; for the danger of the possible influence of advertisers upon the paper’s policy and utterance is obviated. So that, in spite of their small size, our eight pages (through the absence of advertisements and routine matter) are found to contain more actual, sound, reading matter than many of our bigger contemporaries.

We are glad to find readers taking advantage of our "Forum” feature, and are always pleased to answer correspondents who submit questions on Socialism or as to the attitude of the S.P.G.B. upon different subjects. And not infrequently we have the satisfaction of knowing that the questioner has joined our organisation.

The paper is still produced without payment of any kind for any of the contributary or editorial work. Workingmen are still to be found who, without payment, and with mighty little thanks as a rule, will “burn the candle at both ends,” in the service of their class. After a hard day’s toil, and between propaganda meetings, amid all the difficulties of a workman’s condition, this labour of love is done, yes, often enough the small hours arrive before the article or column of notes is thought out and written, and the weary writer seeks his bed, with at least the satisfaction of knowing that another blow has been dealt the enemy, some fellow slave helped to an understanding of his enslavement. However, more contributions are needed, and comrades are requested to help to the best of their ability. Many hands make light work. With more contributors and the support through our “Party Organ Fund ” (monetary contributions are requested as printers’ bills have to be met), it should be possible to effect the enlargement of the paper, thus enabling us to reach a larger public and to do better work generally for Socialism. And so there is “work for all” in writing and circulating the Socialist Standard to the end that the workers may the sooner see the light and march on to their emancipation.

Editorial: The Labour Party and the Law. (1909)

Editorial from the February 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent ruling of the Appeal Court that Trade Unions have no legal power to force their members into supporting any political party, even when a majority of that Trade Union agrees to supporting that political party, came as a veritable bolt from the blue. The Labour Party, “the new force in politics,” the political organisation which in 1906 claimed that it had frightened the House of Lords into passing the Trades Disputes Bill, awakens in 1909 to discover that it has no legal standing at all, and is only suffered to exist by the voluntary support of its members. Now while we agree that political work must be done voluntarily, as is the whole of the work of the S.P.G.B., because only then is it the expression of the real convictions of the person expressing it, it is doubtful indeed whether the Labour Party can depend upon sufficient voluntary pence to pay its members’ salaries and its working expenses. Hence the decision o( the Labour Party to appeal against the Appeal Court's finding, and to attempt to cling to the privilege of levying Trade Union members for the support of a political party over which they have little or no control.

The rabid anti-Socialist Press, like the Daily Express, accused the Socialists of capturing the Trade Unions by controlling the Labour Party; but the Labour Party is not a Socialist party any more than it is a Tory party, its political representatives being mainly concerned with maintaining the status quo, keeping their seats—and their jobs. So the job-hunters who run the show have to pose as advanced reformers to the rank and file of the I.L.P., who do the work, and as tolerant, “practical,” men to the Trade Unions, who find the money. The net result to the working class is, in addition to the loss of their money, the disappointment of seeing nothing as the result of their expenditure of money, energy, and enthusiasm in “independent” politics. Yet these people have the ear of the public, and the Socialist has but little chance of a hearing. To believe that so great a sham can last for long is to be with as little faith in the workers as those middle-class “leaders" who have so graciously come among us to lead us, and who contemn us meanwhile.

The Socialist Party is clear that in the first, place the trade organisation is not the starting point of the political organisation if for no other reason than the fact that the unit of the union is the trade, while the unit of the political organisation is the locality; and in the second place that the workers’ effort towards their emancipation must be made voluntarily as the result of conviction of “class-consciousness”; certainly not as the result of watering down the position to appeal to a majority, and then using that majority to enforce the financial support of the minority of a type of organisation which has been enabled to build up its membership partly owing to the fact that party feeling in political matters has been rigidly excluded.

Sark! (1909)

From the February 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since our last issue an event, so fraught with human importance that it is bound to become historic, has taken place. Not with a flourish of trumpets, not with a dazzling display on those beautious wayside erections which (it is alleged) many members of the working class, with truly revolutionary disregard for the rights others, claim as “ the working man’s picture gallery,” but quietly, quietly as nature working up to some catastrophic horror, this event baa been developed. In its making it has been evolutionary, doubtless enough, but in its birth, its being launched upon the sea of human environment, it is cataclysmal.

Kata, Greek prefix signifying down, back, thorough; Greek, kluzo, to wash. What should we working men who write for working men do without our Latin and our Greek? Cataclysmal is the very adjective. This event which I speak of has burst upon us as a deluge, a flood; it has given us a thorough sluicing; it has been kluso, to wash (and plenty of it), and kato, down (and up), back (and front) and tree-mendiously thorough. It has been a political washout, and the ground whereon we stood is holey ground, with a vengeance. Gone is that pyramid of economic sophistry and hare-brained political quackery on which we had elevated ourselves to conspicuity; gone also that underlying working-class ignorance and hankering after the moon without which as a foundation our pyramid had never been erected at all, and we and those who gave us faith (it is quite inconceivable that any thought for themselves) stand in gullies and hollows, but with our political feet upon the firm rock of truth of the tertiary formation—as we know by its fossils.

And this event is the publication of the first number of the Anti-Socialist. An auspicious birth, fellow members of the working class, since it spells doom to the Socialist movement. Alas! shall we be able to fulfil our obligations to those who have subscribed to the end of the volume? Shall see even another issue of The Socialist Standard? If there were shareholders —but this is not the Labour Leader.

The Anti-Socialist has the blessing of the Church in the person of our brother in Christ, the Canon of Westminster. Other notable sympathisers with what the Anti-Socialist lightly refers to as the ass-pirations of labour, who recommend the new publication to working men are Sir A. Acland Hood, Lord George Hamilton, Admiral Fremantle, C. Arthur Pearson, Andrew Carnegie, and the editor of the Daily Express. This galaxy of noble and disinterested champions of labour surely have a right to be heard with respect on the matter of what is the true interest of the workers. Andrew, at all events, we know to have very decided views upon the subject, as witness a little shooting affair at Pittsburg some score or so years ago, which is still held in sacred memory.

We are treated to a cartoon in this first number; it is entitled: The Workman's Dream. A workman is depicted, seated, and under the influence of the pantomimic gestures of an individual we are invited to imagine is a Socialist, while another individual labelled “Socialist” has extracted a resplendent watch and chain and quite a fabulous store of coin of the realm, from the subject’s pocket, while from the anticipatory smile on the face of the brigand (who, by the way, I am sure is meant for Mr. G. B. Shaw) there is plenty more to come. Inscribed thereunder we read “ The Socialists hypnotise the working man, and pick his pocket.” And what is the dream with which the Socialists have beguiled the working man while they are a doin’ of it? The artist has given it expression. The worker dreams that he has an easy chair to sit in, a fender to put his feet on, and a table —with some grub on it. That is all, if we except a gem like a decanter stopper which decorates his finger. O chimeric vision of paradise! O ironic mockery! O wickedly delusive irradiance! A divan chair, a fender, and a table with some grub on it. Well might the workman suspect the intentions of those who lure him with such impossible extravagance. I notice that the worker still wears his hob-nails and corduroys. It would fairly have given the Socialists' game away to have suggested escape from these. Born in 'em, live in 'em, marry in ’em, die in ’em.

A. E. Jacomb

Wales — The Leasehold Racket (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every time the Minister of Housing visits South Wales he is met with demonstrators demanding reform of the leasehold system. All the capitalist parties in Wales have this reform, in one form or another, in their programme. This article looks at the situation from the Socialist point of view.

When it is said that housing shortages are caused by the sudden flow of people into the big towns it is not always remembered that the other side of this coin is rural depopulation. Traditionally Wales has been one of the areas from which people have moved to the cities of England, particularly Liverpool, Birmingham and London. It has, therefore, suffered from falling, as opposed to rising, land values and all that this means. Today this is no longer really a problem in South Wales, though it persists in the North and other rural areas.

But the aspect of housing which is causing the most anxiety at the moment is the prevalence of leasehold. There has been talk of finance corporations holding South Wales in an “octopus grip.” Nine-tenths of the area is supposed to belong to the big estates which were once the property of Tory landowning families, many of whom have now been replaced by capitalists interested in landowning solely as a business.

When urban development began in earnest in South Wales in the second half of the nineteenth century the principle of the 99 year lease was widely applied and now the effects are being felt. In addition there is at present a shortage of freehold land which is the result of the flow of industry and workers into the area since the war. The increased demand for “property” which this has caused has aggravated the problem by raising land values. When a leaseholder sees that his lease has only twenty to thirty years to run he begins to think about renewing it. The landlord knowing that there is a shortage of freehold land is able to demand what seems to the leaseholder a fantastic price for the freehold or a new lease. Thus the approaching end of many 99 year leases and the present shortage of freehold land has brought the problem of leasehold in South Wales to a head.

Some people object to leasehold on what they call principle. For the landlord lets the land and the lessee undertakes to erect a building on it, but at the end of the lease the land and the building revert to the landlord. At the turn of the century some of the more “ radical ” Liberals saw this as a gross injustice and as another example of the rapacity of landlords. As a solution they suggested leasehold enfranchisement which basically means that the tenant is given the right to buy out compulsorily the landlord. Significantly enough, in that it bears out our contention that the Labour Party is the political heir of some elements in the old Liberal Party (this is particularly evident in non-conformist Wales), the Labour Party is pledged to this policy of leasehold enfranchisement. And, of course, wherever there’s a petty reform to support we find the Communist Party—in Wales it has made itself conspicuous in the campaign against leasehold.

We must, however, see this problem in perspective. The usual leasehold arrangement is for the landlord to let the land to a speculative builder who erects houses on it for a profit. Two-thirds of leasehold property in South Wales is not occupied by the ground lessee but by tenants paying an ordinary house-rent. The Labour Party recognises this when it says it only wants enfranchisement for owner-occupiers. Although for historical reasons there is probably a higher proportion of homeowners in Wales than in most parts of Britain this question of leasehold is of little importance: its abolition would be at best another minor reform of capitalism.

Quite understandably people are upset when they are faced with the choice of quitting the house they have come to regard as their own or of paying an impossible price for the freehold. But this is capitalism. It brings insecurity to all workers, including those who happen to think they own their own homes. The whole problem shows that the home-owner is no more secure than the tenant and for the same reason—the poverty which capitalism brings to all its workers.

Labour M.P. George Thomas has said of the finance corporations: “They are cashing in on the labour of our community and stealing the reward of our labour.” They are, he said, “social parasites.” True enough, landowners are parasites. It is plain to all that they receive an income solely because they happen to own a certain part of the globe. They are among those who "possess but do not produce." But why stop here? These capitalists whose business is landowning are only a small section of the capitalist class. The rest, too, are social parasites.

Adam Buick

Midlands and the North, Slumdom (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you want a fair idea of the blight inflicted on men's lives by early industrial capitalism, travel through England to the Midlands and the North, and take a good look at the housing there. In this region are the towns which were the classic homes of slumdom, with their mean and narrow streets, row upon huddled row of wretched little back-to-back hovels, where dampness, rat infestation and tuberculosis were rife. Here it was that men, women, and children, lived out their pitifully short and broken lives, slept from sheer exhaustion in the few hours respite from the hell of the mills, mines and factories. The capitalists, the mine and mill owners, the iron masters and others, also had homes near to their property, but not among the slums, of course.

Take a good look we said. No need to hurry about it. Any time in the next twenty, thirty or forty years will do, or even longer. These slums have been there for many many years and if we read the signs aright, will still be there when our grandchildren are growing old. The government, local authorities, and various experts who have written on the subject at least agree on one thing, that the slums in this region are just about the worst in England. It is said that this part of the country plus South Wales, contains more than half the 850,000 houses declared unfit in England and Wales in 1955. Housing Minister Sir Keith Joseph has admitted that the North of England has a far greater concentration of slums than anywhere in London. Dr. Hill, his predecessor, was a bit more specific. A few months earlier, he had pinpointed Liverpool as about the worst case in the country.

Certainly, if we go by the last official figures declared by local authorities and published as a White Paper in 1955, Liverpool does qualify for Dr. Hill’s dishonourable distinction. Over 88,000 (about 43 per cent.) of its 204,000 dwellings were then unfit for habitation. Manchester came a very close second with some 68,000 unfit out of 208,000—about 32 per cent. But one thing to remember about these figures, indeed the whole of the 1955 estimates is that they are probably conservative. They were in fact based on what local councils thought they could clear in the next few years, not what they thought should be cleared. In any case, there was not (and still is not) any nationally agreed standards by which obsolescence is judged. It is said that Liverpool went the whole hog and reported all of her known slums whereas some towns did not even bother to make a return to the Minister.

So these estimates have come under fire many times since 1955 and it is generally agreed that they are unrealistic. The true position is probably much worse— perhaps we shall never really know just how bad. Even those incurable optimists and promise breakers, the government of the day, have had to admit that “ . . . in about fifty areas, chiefly in the North and Midlands, the task of slum clearance will be a long job ” (White Paper Housing in England and Wales, February, 1962). A long job indeed! By the end of 1960, Manchester had managed to clear 7,737 and Liverpool 5,331. Birmingham had cleared 6,950 out of 50,250. At this rate, it will take between 50 and 100 years just to remove the existing slums.

But there is another factor—a constantly recurring one—which is like a thorn in the flesh of the town councils of this and every other region. Dilapidation. If it were just a question of pulling down the hovels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it might be a long job, but with perseverance the end would at least be in sight eventually, though probably not in our lifetime. But, of course, capitalism simply does not work that way. It makes a mockery of the planners’ efforts. As Gavin Lyall pointed out in the Sunday Times of 23/4/61:

   Slums are not a static thing. Every year, an average of 150,000 houses in the country become 100 years old. Against this, about 60,000 are demolished every year. At the present rate of progress . . . there are children not yet born who will be bringing up their own children in some of the houses of the northern cities, which even today are recognised as slums. 

Of course, the thing to remember is that it is workers and their families who occupy these grim holes now, and who will do so in the far off future visualised by Mr. Lyall and others. Let Dr. E. Sigsworth, Economic History Lecturer at Leeds University, tell you the reason. Addressing a conference on slum clearance at Bradford this year he said that “most people living in slums could not afford to pay an economic rent, let alone buy a house through a building society ” (Guardian, 11/3/63). So there it is in a nutshell, and we are back to the problem behind the problem—the sheer inability of some workers to afford anywhere better to live than broken-down hovels.

This unpleasant fact will no doubt have been noted by the various planners and reformers groping for an answer to the muddle, but we can take a bet that its deeper implications will have escaped them. For them it is not just a question of pulling down slums, but their replacement with low cost houses for workers to rent. They miss the point that therein lies the foundation of future slumdom, for cutting costs means cutting standards. For example, the average floor area of new three bedroomed council houses in England and Wales declined from 1,050 sq. ft. in 1951 to 901 sq. ft. in 1958. Dr. Sigsworth advocates subsidised local authority housing but clearly this is no answer. Local authority housing has been subsidised to some extent or another for the best part of a century. According to the 1961 interim report of the Rowntree Trust Housing Study, about three million council houses have been built since the first world war, “with the aid of subsidies and sixty-year loans.” But the housing problem weighs as oppressively as ever.

An indication of the obsession with costs which affects building just like any other industry under capitalism, can be gained from the recent report that Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are negotiating to form a consortium to make possible the mass production of building materials, the standardisation of fittings and equipment, and cheaper bulk buying (our italics).

One of the reasons that “overspill” development is preferred to high density town building is because the cost to the government is very much less. J. B. Cuillingworth estimated in 1960 that the subsidy cost of 500,000 high flats on a central site would be about £34 millions a year compared with £12 millions for the same number of dwellings in a new or expanded town (Housing Needs and Planning Policy, p. 173).

So the more we look at the problem of the Midlands and the North, the more we see that it is really the same problem as elsewhere, only more acute. The older industrial areas of this region are the worst off and even the most optimistic forecaster dares not hope for an improvement in his lifetime. There are the added complication of industrial decline, the slow but stubborn growth of unemployment, and the subsequent drift of population southwards in search of work.

It is in fact a familiar story of capitalism. There will be a familiar ring too, about the news that houses were much more difficult to sell in 1962 than for some years past, despite a freer supply of mortgages and average prices in the North being only about half those in London. This was certainly not because people’s housing needs were met—we know that is not true. But then capitalism does not exist for such purpose anyway. Its prime aim is the satisfaction of a market, whether in housing or anything else.

Eddie Critchfield

Essential Reading (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and Historical Materialism — A Socialist Analysis of the Materialist Conception of History. Published by the SPGB. 20p. 

At last we have this eagerly awaited pamphlet. It is a definitive statement which explodes all the confusion surrounding Marx’s teachings on history. Sprinkled with examples from Roman, feudal and modern times, it is concise but authoritative — a textbook on history in itself.

But it is more than that. Once and for all the “mystery” created by terminology has been ended: Dialectics, Idealism, Materialism, Mind and Matter, Thought and Deed, Theory and Practice. Dialectics is clearly explained as simply the ancient Greek word for evolution — the expression for looking at things developing.

How much ink and paper has been spent on purporting to explain the Marxian dialectic but, in fact, “justifying” the unprincipled opportunism of this or that reformist party. None more so than the Leninist Bolsheviks, who claimed the sole copyright of dialectics, appointing themselves the high priests of this mystic cult:

Only the Communists apply the dialectic-materialist teachings of Marx and Engels in the spirit of their founders.

L. Rudas, Dialectical Materialism and the Social Democracy (translated from the German edition).

How many unfortunate workers—members of the CP (and its Trotskyite splinters) have had their poor skulls cracked by trying to understand the jargon-ridden interpretations of “only the Communists”! Stalin, “Lenin’s best pupil”, physically exterminated the Bolshevik Old Guard in the holy name of “dialectics”. Socialism became state-capitalism; capitalist profit became socialist profit; freedom, tyranny; democracy, dictatorship.

Voting for the capitalist Labour Party? Pacts with Nazi Germany? Strike-breaking in support of imperialist wars? Calling left right? Making wrong right? “It’s all in the dialectics, comrade! It’s dialectical contradiction, see?”

With this pamphlet, the game is up. Workers who read it can no longer have wool pulled over their eyes by Palme Dutt and other professional twisters with pseudo-Marxist rigmarole. Even the Bolsheviks were constrained to pour scorn on the naive Chinese who published theses on “the dialectics of hairdressing”, and the Hungarians who dropped the centre- forward of the state football team “for not applying the correct Marxist-Leninist dialectic on the football field” (i.e. not scoring enough goals).

Let all those who have been bemused by the highfalutin phrase-mongering take heart. The clear and definite answers are in this little book. The materialist conception of history is expounded with clarity and simplicity, without detracting from the immense sweep and profundity of Marx’s theory.

Human history is neatly marshalled and lucidly explained. In addition, the pamphlet carries two invaluable appendices. First, a comprehensive set of references to works before Marx, expounding previous rational theories of history. Second, a reprint of the essential statements by Marx and Engels on historical materialism.

A new and deadly weapon has been forced for the Socialist armoury.

Horatio.

Material World: One Thing the Romans Did For Us (2017)

The Material World column from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

What did the Romans ever do for us – other than pass down their concepts of property? For instance, land in Rome could either be ‘private property’, res privata or managed by the city authorities such as a park in which case it would be part of the res publica. Res nullis referred to land belonging to no-one, ownerless, therefore, it was available for occupation, the justification on which the British settlement in Australia was based despite it already being the home of indigenous peoples. However, res communis property was territory not subject to the legal title of anyone. It could not be claimed by a state because it belonged to all, or ‘the common heritage of mankind.’ In the sixth century CE, the Institutes of Justinian codified the relevant Roman law as: ‘By the law of nature these things are common to mankind – the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea.’ Two modern-day examples of res communis would be the continent of Antarctica and outer space.

In 1908, Britain made claims on parts of Antarctica and after that, several other countries did likewise. To avoid conflicts, the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959. This was the start of the polar region being protected and preserved for the heritage of all. The treaty does not recognise territorial sovereignty claims ‘to ensure in the interests of all humankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.’

This year in October, the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (better known as the ‘Outer Space Treaty’) will turn 50. The Treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet. Article Two of the Treaty states that ‘outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’.

The 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other  Celestial Bodies (the ‘Moon Treaty’) was apparently intended as a new treaty to supersede or supplement the Outer Space Treaty, most notably by elaborating upon the outer space treaty’s provisions regarding resource appropriation and prohibition of territorial sovereignty.

It banned all exploration and uses of celestial bodies without the approval or benefit of other states under the ‘common heritage of humankind’ principle (article eleven). Dr. Christopher J. Newman, a reader in space law at the University of Sunderland explains ‘You couldn’t have the superpowers landing on the moon and carving up bits of territory on the moon. It’s not possible to own it, it’s not possible to appropriate it by means of sovereignty or any other such device. So it was designed to deal with a binary power bloc, and a superpower budget. The people who drafted the treaty didn’t have commercial space activity on their minds.’

They could not be expected to foresee the Space Act of 2015 (sometimes called the ‘Extraterrestrial Finders Keepers’ law), which grants US citizens or corporations the right to legally claim natural resources – including water and minerals. Commercial operations could reap trillions of dollars from mining precious metals like platinum, common metallic elements such as iron, and water. Handing out the right to exploit chunks of space to your citizens sounds very much like a claim of sovereignty. Congress is saying to these companies, ‘Go get these rights and we’ll defend you,’ and at the same time saying, ‘We’re making no sovereign claim of ownership’. The bottom line is, before you can give somebody the right to harvest a resource you have to have ownership.

Socialism has legal precedent back to Roman times for the aim of common ownership which can be defined as a situation where every individual has the potential ability to benefit from the wealth of society and to engage in the decision-making process of what and how we consume, to allocate resources in short-term and long-term collective goals. Even so, to use the word ‘ownership’ can be misleading in that this does not fully bring out the fact that the transfer to all members of the society of the power to control the production of wealth makes the very concept of property redundant. In that sense, socialism will be a ‘no-ownership’ society.

ALJO

Cooking the Books: What is like gravity? (2005)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where you have generalised production for the market, the production and distribution of wealth escapes from human control and comes to be dominated by economic laws - such as "no profit, no production", "minimise costs", "maximise profits", "accumulate more and more capital" - which impose themselves on those taking day-to-day economic decisions as if they were natural laws.

 

In fact, early students of how the capitalist economy worked such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo thought that they really were studying natural laws, but Marx pointed out that this was only the appearance: the economic laws of capitalism only arose out of the particular social and economic basis of capitalism under which the means of production belonged to a minority class and where everything was produced for sale on a market with a view to profit. If capitalism were to be abolished, these economic laws would cease to operate; on the other hand, they would continue to operate as long as capitalism existed.

 

In this sense Colin Hines, an economic adviser to the Green Party, was right when he wrote in the Guardian (25 April) that "Globalisation is not like gravity", meaning by globalisation the effects of the pressures exerted on the home economy by competition on the world market: "The fact that countries with higher costs haven't a hope of competing with those where labour is cheap seems crushingly obvious".

Yes, it is, and this is one of the economic laws of capitalism, but he then "Yet in Britain, only one party has grasped it: the Greens. They have realised that to help workers worldwide we must stop gearing economies to ruthlessly out-compete each other. We need new goals: maximising self-reliance and ensuring that trade rules are governed by a pro-poor approach . . . Trade rules must be rewritten to discriminate in favour of domestic production".

But the existing trade rules, as for instance embodied in and enforced by the World Trade Organisation, are not just a voluntary policy option, but essentially a reflection of the economic laws of capitalism. Globalisation may not be like gravity, but it's not like putty either. In fact, as long as capitalism lasts, it is like gravity.

If the Green Party thinks that the trade rules/economic laws of capitalism can be changed so as to stop ruthless competition on the world market, and to be governed by a "pro-poor approach" or to permanently discriminate in favour of higher-cost domestic production, then they must be living on a different globe to the rest of us.