Arming the world for profit (1995

From the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists never need to be reminded that there is an insane logic to capitalism, that capitalism continues to throw up obscene contradictions that appear to consign the human species to a downward spiral towards oblivion. The world arms trade for instance.

Britain is the world’s second biggest arms supplier. There are 145,000 workers in this country employed directly or indirectly in the arms trade. If we add to this figure the number of Britain’s armed forces, regulars and reserves, the figure jumps to 750,000 people gaining an income from the maiming and killing business. Which means for every two employed in hospitals and clinics, etc saving lives and helping people, there is one employed in doing the exact opposite, albeit unwittingly.

Most of us are familiar with the hackneyed justifications for Britain’s share (20 percent) of the world arms trade. It goes something like: “If ’we’ didn’t sell arms, someone else would.” The reality is that arms sales generate profit, and for capitalists where there is the potential for profits, then morals and principles go out of the window.

Arms dividend
We were led to believe that the end of the Cold War would initiate a "peace dividend". Money hitherto spent on arms would be rechannelled into social programmes such as health, welfare and education. Capitalism was finally going to put on the humanistic guise that the threat of "communism" had prevented it doing in the past. If anything, however, the post-Cold War set-up now means that the West can sell arms anywhere, even to countries that had previously been dependent on Russia.

While it is true that "Third World" countries now only purchase one-third of the arms they did in 1988. the vacuum is being filled with arms sales to newly-developing countries like Brazil. Pakistan. Indonesia and China. Hence, mid-November saw the US Defence Secretary, William Perry, "opening the door to a possible sale of advanced fighter jets to Latin America at the start of a six-day trip to improve military ties with Brazil and Argentina". (Guardian, 17 November).

Days previously, the Observer (13 November) ran a headline about a secret UK arms deal with Indonesia worth £2 billion, inclusive of military hardware and military training for the Indonesian army.

Between May and November this year, the UN Security Council and the EU lifted arms embargoes on three countries famous for aggression and repression — Israel. Syria and South Africa. That these countries already possess the wherewithal to defend themselves against potential enemies — both South Africa and Israel have a nuclear capability — matters little to Western governments. The profit motive comes first.

And such is the thirst for profit that Western governments are prepared to sell arms to both sides in a conflict. During the Iran/lraq war some 26 countries were arming both sides, fuelling a war that lasted 8 years, killed 1.000,000 people and cost $600 billion. During Pakistan's and India’s most recent stand-off and General Zhia’s intimidating sabre-rattling that threatened to pitch Hindu against Moslem, it was Britain that saw to it that both countries were armed to the teeth should insults come to blows. Furthermore, Britain is currently arming five countries with internal conflicts.

In November 1991, Douglas Hurd was telling Europe to stop aiding foreign countries with repressive regimes, declaring that "governments who persist with repressive policies should not expect us to support their folly with scarce resources". Two months later, the Guardian would prove Hurd a hypocrite when they reported that “Britain provides military training for 110 countries . . . Training in Cambodia includes sabotage and mine-laying courses" (15 January 1992).

When asked whether it is still government policy to export landmines in spite of a UN resolution banning their export, Roger Freeman, Minister for Defence Procurement replied: “We are not going to export them . . . except in certain circumstances when we’re dealing with a friendly nation". Douglas Hurd expressed similar sentiments, believing "there is nothing wrong with selling arms to friendly countries to allow them to defend themselves” (Observer, 13 November 1994).

These absurd statements pose the question: if there are so many "friendly" countries, how come there is so much war in the world? Again, why does Britain have a defence procurement programme for 1994-5 totalling £9,363 million? And on what basis can Britain justify its £12 billion contribution to the £32 billion Eurofighter 2000 project?

Sales drive

In recent months. President Clinton has launched an overseas arms drive in an attempt to bolster the sagging US arms industry, if it was ever sagging in the first place. The US government had previously insisted that arms exports are only sanctioned when they serve US interests or help US allies.

Any war or potential conflict now has huge spin-offs for the arms-dealing governments of the West. No sooner had the Gulf War ended when Middle East orders for arms worth $28 billion were secured by the US. Since the end of the Gulf War, world arms sales to the Middle East have totalled $55 billion, $14 billion of which has been supplied by Britain. British sales include 88 Blackhawk helicopters, 94 Hawk and 48 Tornado aircraft and 18 Challenger 2 tanks.

In the Middle East, the very fact that Saddam is still in power is being used by the US as a ploy. With an unpredictable "madman" in the Middle East, having fought two wars in ten years and having already lobbed missiles at Iran, Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the existence of Saddam serves US interests. So long as he remains in power he scares his neighbours, who are only too happy to turn to Western arms dealers for the arms with which to defend themselves. Recall also Clinton's recent attempt to portray North Korea as the new Asian bogey man, prompting neighbouring countries to put in huge orders for Western state-of-the-art defence systems.

“A war on poverty," wrote Tory MP Alan Howarth in the Guardian (17 November), “would be a more cost effective strategy than stacking up arms against imaginary enemies or selling them to regimes which have no commitment to peace." Maybe, but rechannelling money spent on arms into social programmes is not going to happen. Capitalism, by its very nature, breeds competition and conflict, and consequently, nationalism, jingoism and war. Arms sales are endemic to this process. That is the insane logic of capitalism. 

John Bissett

Material World: Ortega – The new Somoza? (2018)

The Material World Column from the September 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are those on the Left who view the protests in Nicaragua as instigated by US imperialism intent upon creating a compliant client state. Kevin Zeese, for instance, describes the disorder as an attempted coup: 

 'This unrest is a full-scale regime change operation carried out by media oligarchs, a network of NGOs funded by the U.S. government, armed elements of elite landholding families and the Catholic Church, and has opened the window for drug cartels and organized crime to gain a foothold in Nicaragua.'

A great number of the poor do support the Sandinista National Liberation Front, as it introduced free healthcare and education. Ortega reigns as a paternalistic 'caudillo' strongman with a grassroots loyalty to him as a party leader.

 There are others, however, who see recent events very differently. According to Dora María Téllez, founder of the Sandinista Renovation Movement:

 'The family of Ortega and Murillo have taken over the Sandinista National Liberation Front like a parasite, using their control to benefit their family. It is basically the same as what the Somozas did. He’s a representative of big capital. He and his family are now among the richest in Nicaragua. This is a profoundly corrupt system that completely betrays the principles of the Sandinista movement.'

Alejandro Bendana, Nicaraguan ambassador to the UN from 1979 to 1990, says about Ortega:

  'He embraced corporate capital in Nicaragua. He adopted the most retrograded positions of the church and entered into an alliance, and reached an understanding with the US, so that he was able to barely win the presidency in 2007. But by that time, he himself is no longer a Sandinista. Yes, the trappings, the colors are still there, but his entire government has been, in essence, neoliberal. Then it becomes authoritarian, repressive.'

Prof William Robinson, who worked with the Nicaragua News Agency and the Nicaragua Foreign Ministry in the 1980s, says:

 '... In Nicaragua, the Ortega government has presided over this new round of capitalist expansion, including a wave of transnational and local corporate investment in free-trade zones, agro-industry, mining, logging and tourism, spurred on by the government's tax breaks, land concessions and other policies that have been praised by neoliberal institutions such as the International Monetary Fund...the international left cannot seem to let go of the illusion that governments such as the FSLN in Nicaragua or the African National Congress in South Africa still represent a revolutionary process that advances the interests of the popular and working-class masses -- this, even as the new ruling castes turn to escalating repression to dispossess those masses, plunder the state and impose the interests of transnational capital...'

Ortega's own brother, Humberto, admitted that people shouldn't pay too much attention to the Sandinista government's anti-capitalist rhetoric, because 'one thing is discourse for the political clients, and another thing is what the reality shows you are doing.'

 The cause of the current unrest arose from an attempt to increase workers' contributions to their pensions while reducing the pension payments themselves. Ortega later cancelled his plans but the demonstrations had turned into a wider opposition against his government. Over 300 demonstrators have been murdered, thousands injured. 23,000 Nicaraguans have applied for political asylum in neigbouring Costa Rica since the unrest began.

 Robinson concluded:

'. . . The real tragedy of the April protests is not that they threaten a fictitious revolutionary process, but that the population is caught between the corrupt and repressive Ortega government and the traditional oligarchy, backed by the international right wing which has never been comfortable with the Sandinista monopoly of political power and wishes to hijack the revolt to recover that power for itself. . . '

 This was a view reflected by the anarchists of Crimethinc:

  'Doubtless, various capitalists and state actors have their own agendas for Nicaragua and they hope to take advantage of the uprising to implement them. But ordinary people have legitimate reasons to rise up. We should identify the participants in the uprising who are pursuing goals complementary to our vision of a world without capitalism and the state, in order to direct our solidarity towards them. Otherwise, as the Ortega government attempts to retain power by brute force, the revolt will likely be hijacked by right-wing and colonial interests.'

There exists a conflict between rival factions of Nicaragua's ruling class, a clique who possesses political power and an oligarchic elite who seek control of the state. Being few in number and too cowardly to fight themselves, both appeal to working people to act for them. Workers should understand that they are pawns in a power struggle and rather than become a tool for another class, they must democratically and independently organise with the object of placing their own interests at the forefront.

ALJO

Party News Briefs (1953)

Party News from the December 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

A series of meetings, marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of the formation of the Party are being organised by Paddington Branch. These meetings are to be held at Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, and full details are given elsewhere in this issue, and later meetings will be advertised in the January issue.

#    #    #    #

Paddington Branch has started a drive to increase Socialist Standard sales. In addition to being canvassed from door to door in Paddington, this journal is now available from the following newsagents:— G. Bischitz, 290, Harrow Road; C. Gates, 115, Harrow Road; R. Harris, 264a, Edgware Road; G. R. Hill, 476, Harrow Road; F. H. Payne, 746, Harrow Road; F. Stayne, 366, Harrow Road; A. G. Taylor, 8, Harrow Road.

Those in the area who may be reading the Socialist Standard for the first time are cordially invited to come along to the Branch Room, at the Portman Arms, 422, Edgware Road, any Wednesday. The room is large and comfortable, and the members are always pleased to discuss informally with visitors any matter connected with Party activity.

#    #    #    #

Several meetings and debates are advertised elsewhere in this issue, so please make a note of any that are convenient for you to attend and give them your support. Glasgow Branches are organising a Socialist Challenge meeting at St. Andrew's Hall on Sunday, 17th January, 1954. A notice will be in the January Socialist Standard, but the branches (Kelvingrove and City) are anxious that the meeting should be a success and are giving ample notice of it by the details shown in this issue.

#    #    #    #

Internal Party Journal. Members and sympathisers are reminded that the Party publishes an internal journal, Forum (monthly, 6d.). Those who are unable to obtain copies through their branch may order them by post from the Literature Secretary at Head Office (6 months 3s. 9d., 12 months 7s. 6d.). Bound copies of the first 15 issues (October 1952—December 1953, including index) are now available, price 7s. 6d., postage 3d. extra, but supplies are extremely limited; at the time of going to press, less than two dozen more orders could be fulfilled. Separate back numbers can still be obtained from Head Office, except the first (October 1952) issue.

Phyllis Howard

50 Years Ago: H. G. Wells as Historian (1971)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is Mr. Wells’ opinion that the ruling class of today can be persuaded by reasonable, humanitarian arguments or by far-sighted self interest to bring about a ‘re-adjustment’ of society which will gradually abolish exploitation and class distinctions. This opinion we cannot share. It is opposed by the whole teaching of history. No ruling class when faced by discontent and revolt ever acted in such a manner. To expect our present rulers to do so is to wallow in superstition rather than stand foursquare to science.

Why does Mr. Wells make no mention whatever in his review of the nineteenth century, of the Paris Commune? This was no mere political episode, but an object lesson in sociology, and, as such, one of the most significant occurrences of the centenary. Mr. Wells is no ‘drum and trumpet’ historian, but to him as to the common run of bourgeois historians, the Commune is taboo. With its 100,000 working-class victims the Paris Commune tears aside the veil of hypocrisy and humanitarian cant which envelopes the social relations of our day and reveals naked the power lust of the capitalist class. The more recent history of the class struggle in Russia, Finland, Germany and Hungary but confirms and strengthens our view. It is indeed difficult to conceive that Mr. Wells, with his knowledge, really believes in the tactic of moralising the capitalist class. In the present writer’s opinion, Mr. Wells knows better. But as an experienced and ‘successful’ writer and journalist, camouflage (to be polite) is one of the tools of his trade. 

(From a review of H. G. Wells’ Outline of History by R. W. Housley. Socialist Standard February 1921).

Straws: A Rotten Case. (1935)

The Straws Column from the June 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Rotten Case.

“The possibility of a new workers' party being formed, with the I.L.P. and the Communist Party as the central core, was one not of the distant future. It was, in fact, very near to them." Thus Maxton, at recent I.L.P. Conference. Harry Pollitt, "fraternal delegate” from C.P. following, announced that his party was “ready and willing to achieve the creation of a mass united Communist Party, affiliated to the Communist International.” !


Whither Maxton?

How this view of “mass” swallowing was regarded by Maxton is not stated. Future developments will be interesting to follow. The "picturesque personality," personally popular (according to parliamentary reporters in the Sunday Press) with Conservatives in the House, will hardly consent to play second fiddle to tenth-rate performers in the Anglo-Moscow band.


Dark Diplomacy.

Meanwhile, headquarters of the “Communist International” has been demonstrating how to “ lead ” the workers to Socialism. You beflag Moscow like Limehouse on Eden’s visit, you toast the King, you goose-step the Red Army—but only to throw dust in the eyes of the British master-class . . . until that humourless periodical, The Labour Monthly, incontinently gives the game away.

 “Soviet diplomacy undoubtedly made a most brilliant use of this opportunity—including plenty of bunting and drinking the King’s health—to win whatever sections in Britain could be won against the anti-Soviet war-plans.” (Palme Dutt, May, 1935.)

“Bloody Cesspools ” of Passchendaele.

A recent review in the Daily Herald called attention to Lloyd George’s exposure of Haig’s Passchendaele exploit, where the "plan was a folly” and “the crime was the obstinacy with which Haig continued to fling his heroic battalions into the bloody cesspool.” It records the fact that Lloyd George himself, however, sent a letter to Haig, congratulating him on the “skill, courage and pertinacity which have commanded the grateful admiration of the British Empire.”


The Labour Party in 1914.

The reviewer fails to point out that behind Lloyd George was the enthusiastic backing of the Labour Party, whose whole organisation had been placed at the disposal of the Government on the outbreak of war, whose own “Uncle Arthur” signed a joint appeal with Bonar Law and Lloyd George to householders to urge kith and kin to partake in any and every war activity for the glory of God and the preservation of the British capitalist class.


Morrison's “Socialism.”

“On the ability, quality and idealism of our party, including particularly its public representatives, will depend enormously the success of Socialism.” (Herbert Morrison, May 13th, 1935.) “Socialism” to the leader of the London Labour Party means "public ownership" of the London Passenger Transport Board type, ”efficient” working of ”public services.” The ”idealism” would seem to include a resolute endeavour to keep down the rates, for “We know that if we go too far in expenditure, we shall be turned out at the next election,” (Daily Herald, October 3rd, 1934. Italics our own.) Vote-catching has always been the main object of Labourism.


Consecrated Lick-Spittling.

The Archbishop of Canterbury relates that, shortly after the visit of the King and Queen recently, to the widow of a victim of a colliery explosion, she said to him, with tears in her eyes: “I could not help kissing the floor where she had stood.” It must be admitted that the capitalist class has played the Queen for all it is worth. The Red Pawn game of the Socialist Party will eventually cry ”Mate” on the political field. . . . The pawns will be alive, consciously working towards the End, inevitably marked out by Economic Circumstance. (See No. 6, Declaration of Principles.)


Shelley Speaking!

Percy Bysshe Shelley, not unknown in the highest realm of Poesy, claims space in The Socialist Standard. Written over a hundred years ago, the principle enunciated still stands: —

  "The power which has increased is the power of the rich. The name and office of King is merely the mask of this power, and is a kind of stalking-horse used to conceal these 'catchers of men' whilst they lay their nets. Monarchy is only the string which ties the robber’s bundle. ”

(A Philosophical View of Reform, 1820.)

Compensation.

And the question of ”Compensation” when the robber’s bundle is untied will be quite irrelevant, as irrelevant as ”compensation” for the sweat and agony of the long ages of Wage-Slavedom.

Augustus Snellgrove

Editorial: Why Capitalism must go (1993)

Editorial from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things are not produced today to meet people’s needs. They are produced to make a profit. And that’s the cause of the problems we face.

Under the profit system profits always come first, before providing basic services like health care and transport, before improving conditions at work, and before protecting the environment. At the same time it encourages a get-rich-quick climate where competition to make money takes over from cooperation and community values. Everything is reduced to its cash value and people are judged, not for what they are but by how much money they have.

Look at the results. The health service is crumbling. The transport system is in chaos. Schools have become swot shops. Pollution is rife and the environment under attack. The poor have got poorer. Begging and homelessness have spread. Crime is rising. Racism is reviving. Business culture reigns supreme, with "market forces", "competition" and "profit" as the buzzwords. Life is becoming more and more commercialized and empty. People are becoming isolated from each other, with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. The standard of living may be going up, but the standard of life is going down.

Under the profit system production is in the hands of profit-seeking business enterprises — some state- owned, but mostly private — all competing to maximize the rate of return on the money invested in them. Decisions as to what to produce and how much, and how and where to produce it, are made not in response to people’s needs but in response to market forces.

For a business its profits are the difference between its sales receipts and its production costs. Market forces act on both. Through competition between different firms, they force each firm to seek to maximize its sales and to minimize its costs.

Both these have serious consequences for the way we live.

Maximizing sales turns society into one huge marketplace. Advertising, the hard sell and swindles to trap the unwary have all grown over the years, and are getting worse. At one time television was free from commercial ads. Not any longer. Then came commercial radio. Now the pressure is on to allow Sunday selling, so that soon buying and selling will be able to go on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All this represents a commercialization and a degradation of our lives.

Minimizing costs so as to maximize profits has equally harmful consequences. When a firm has a choice between two materials or two methods of production, one cheaper and the other safer or less damaging to the environment, it has to chose the first. Otherwise its production costs would be higher and it would lose out in the battle of competition. Its profits would be less and it would eventually risk being driven out of business altogether.

The health and welfare of the workforce and the effects on the environment take second place. That’s what minimizing costs means. This is why at work we suffer speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, overwork and accidents. This is why we have to work long hours, shiftwork and nightwork. This is why the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe are all polluted. This is why the Earth’s non-renewable mineral and energy resources are plundered. This is why natural balances are upset and the environment destroyed.

This profit system can’t help doing this. It’s the only way it can work. Which is why it must go.

Our New Premises (1951)

Party News from the November 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The work of the S.P.G.B. performed by the membership is varied.

Propaganda meetings, for instance, necessitate organisation and clerical work. Arrangements must be made for a platform to be available at the meeting place at the right time as well as a chairman, a speaker and literature sellers.

The production of The Socialist Standard necessitates several meetings of the Editorial Committee. Then when the printed copies have been delivered, other comrades wrap and post to subscribers and branches.

In addition to the meetings of the Executive Committee and the various other sub-committees, there is the general office work that is so necessary for an organisation operating in this capitalist system of society.

This work makes premises necessary for our organisation.

In the past, the S.P.G.B. has been handicapped in its organisation by unsuitable premises. The offices which we occupied for several years until March of this year, although within reach of our purse, were unsuitable. Apart from being too small for the work of the Party, the landlord put further restrictions on their use and finally raised the rent to a figure beyond our means to pay.

We were fortunate to find more suitable premises at 52, Clapham High Street, our present address. Members and friends raised the £4,000 required for the purchase, and we moved in forthwith.

We have at our premises a Meeting Hall to seat 150 and eight rooms in which we are housing the following sections: General Office, Canteen, Social, Literature, Propaganda Research, Sub-committees, Library and General Storage.

In addition to the weekly meetings of the Executive Committee, public lectures will be given.

Socials and dances will also be held and we believe will improve the comradely feeling between members and give them an opportunity to discuss socialist policy over a cup of tea. The premises, we believe, will serve a long-felt want as a centre of social life for members and friends.

The showroom window displaying our publicity and an attractive display of literature will prove useful.

The converting of a former warehouse into premises suitable for our needs is being enthusiastically performed by comrades in their spare time.

We need donations to purchase the necessary building materials and furniture—can you help?

The first of a regular series of Sunday evening lectures started on October 7th. How about coming?

The Premises Committee.

An inflation cat out of the bag (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Crossman, Minister of Health in the last Labour Government, for years a member of the National Executive, has been elected as Labour MP at every General Election since 1945. At each of these elections he was committed by the party’s Election programme to fight inflation. At the last General Election, 1970, a section of the Labour programme was headed "Fighting Inflation", and his leader, Harold Wilson, puts at the forefront of his attacks on the Heath Government that it has failed to keep prices from rising and that only a Labour government will do this. In short, that inflation is a deadly sin and they are against it.

But Crossman writes a regular column in The Times, and his article on 12th September had this:

  If we are going to avoid devaluation and heavy unemployment we must be prepared to accept a rate of inflation which would have been considered intolerable a few years ago.

Strange to relate, before this declaration that the next Labour government must have inflation, Crossman had quoted Wilson’s charge that the Tory Government 

 is borrowing or printing money this year on a scale greater than at any time in our history whether in war or peace

and had expressed his approval of Wilson’s plan for "halting inflation".

In a House of Commons debate some years ago an MP referred to inflation as one of the things they all favoured but preferred not to tell the electors.

It seems that Crossman is living up to his reputation in his party as an incorrigible dropper of bricks.

Edgar Hardcastle

Anarchist economics (2012)

Book Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics. AK Press. 2012

Anarchists have a reputation for being weak in economics. This collection of articles is an attempt to refute this. It doesn’t succeed entirely and in fact tends to confirm that most modern-day anarchists get their economic ideas from Marx (as did Bakunin who was once going to translate Capital into Russian). Some of the writers don’t seem to be anarchists at all, in particular Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert, the inventors of a blueprint for an ideal future society they call “parecon”. Hahnel seems to be a Keynesian, advocating more state intervention (yes!) as a way out of the present crisis and of avoiding future ones. Albert is a supporter of President Chavez of Venezuela, and urges people to vote for him.

Even so, the book does give a view of the range of opinion amongst anarchists. Some – the modern-day followers of Proudhon – are “market anarchists” who hold that there is nothing wrong with production for the market, except that the competitors should be worker-cooperatives rather than capitalist corporations and there should be no state to interfere in it. This is a minority view these days (though well represented in the US), but there are other anarchists who are against full, free-access communism (known as “collectivists” rather than “communists”) who favour instead relating people’s consumption to the amount of work they do.

Marx himself sort of endorsed this for the very early days of post-capitalist society and some in the Marxist tradition still argue for labour-time vouchers. We don’t. Neither do some anarchists. In fact, two contributors to this book describing themselves as “libertarian communists” – Deric Shannon and Scott Nappalos – argue against this in the same terms that we do. Nappalos even quotes from our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative.

Nappalos says that, as a libertarian communist, he stands for “a society based on the abolition of remuneration in the form of wages and democratic control” and “an economy based on the destruction of the wage system, and a de-linking of the value of labor in production from the distribution of society’s wealth to its members.” He makes the valid point that it is not possible anyway to measure an individual’s contribution to production. He writes “in our time, production is largely social. The contribution of an individual is very difficult to isolate from the contributions of countless others that make work possible”. Any such attribution can only be arbitrary, as in the parecon blueprint, of which he says: “having co-workers judge each other’s work would turn gossip and infighting at work presently from an annoyance into a system of power over wages.”

Shannon’s criticism is directed more at “market anarchists”. He quotes another libertarian communist, Joseph Kay:

  “The assets of a co-op do not cease being capital when votes are taken on how they are used within a society of generalised commodity production and wage labour. That is to say there remains an imperative to accumulate with all the drive to minimise the labour time taken to do a task this requires, even in a co-op.”

Other articles describe anarchist economic practice such as factory occupations, setting up vegan cafés and campaigns directed at particular capitalist firms (called PEDCs or “political-economic disruptive campaigns”). However, these are not specifically anarchist activities, only activities in which some anarchists engage.

Adam Buick

Cripps on wages—or hope deferred (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “We should like shorter hours of work and better pay, but with the urgent need for production and the danger of inflation, neither of these things is now in the national interest. We must discipline ourselves to do without them until such time as they become national economic possibilities.”
(Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, addressing the Band of Hope Union. Reported in the Daily Herald, 12/5/47).

  “They deserve and need reasonable remuneration for their work, whether they are managers or workers, and that ought to be a first charge upon our production. But beyond that it is good working conditions and team work that will produce the results we want. The idea of an ever-rising spiral of inducement wages is one which makes me shudder at the economic consequences that might come.”
(Cripps, House of Commons, 21/11/46. Hansard, Column 1096).

  "It is notable that those who complain most vigorously about high wages are those who are very well off.”
(From the "Labour Party Speakers’ Handbook,” 1945, p.152).

 Edgar Hardcastle

Work and Want: An Old Farce with New Players (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Government is anxiously appealing to the working class to work harder. Hundreds of thousands of posters are being displayed bearing the inscription, "We're up against it! We work or want." Thousands of speeches are to be delivered in the workshops, and thirty films are to be shown up and down the country. It is an old farce revived.

It was put on in the autumn of 1919 under the Lloyd George government. The posters then bore the photographs of four prominent Labour leaders, Messrs. J. R. Clynes, J. H. Thomas, John Hodge and J. T. Brownlie, and the slogan was, "Produce more, earn more, get more." Mr. J. R. Clynes, who backed that campaign, is still preaching the same doctrine, but some of the men in the present Government have changed their tune. They used to denounce Clynes and Thomas for their part in the old campaign, but are themselves in the new one. Mr. Strachey, Minister of Food, is one of them. As recently as 1944, when a revised edition of his Why You Should be a Socialist was issued, he condemned the 1919 increased production propaganda and wrote that "however hard the workers work, they will remain workers, and poor workers at that. Hard work will not make the workers any richer, but it will make their employers much richer." Mr. Strachey also wrote, "You remember the old 'produce more' cry. I suppose we shall get it again." He prophesied correctly; but he did not foresee that he would be backing that old cry himself.

In 1919 the S.P.G.B. attacked Mr. Clynes and showed the dangerous fallacy underlying his argument. The S.P.G.B. has not changed its view; increased production will bring the same dire consequences for the workers as it did a quarter of a century ago.

Mr. Clynes was not unaware of the case made against him. In a speech in the House of Commons on 20th April, 1920, he admitted that workers were not readily accepting the advice offered to them to produce more. He said ". . .  the working man thinks in the terms of his former experience. He found the market overstocked because he worked overhard and long hours to produce, and he was thrown out of work because he produced in abundance." (Hansard, 20/4/1920, Col. 279.) Mr. Clynes said that the Government ought to give some sort of guarantee that overproduction should never again be allowed to cause unemployment. Even if the Government had made that promise it would not have been effective because capitalism needs constant unemployment to keep down wages, and it periodically produces crises of "overproduction." So Mr. Clynes gave his own assurance. Writing in Reynolds (30/11/1919) he said:

  "If ever there was risk of overproduction, causing unemployment, there is none now. For at least a dozen years there must be conditions of shortage which, with the best energy and effort, cannot be removed. We are in arrears. We need have no fear of the supply exceeding the demand."

In the columns of the Socialist Standard at the time Mr. Clynes' economic fallacies were exposed. He thought and still thinks that if there are people in need of food, clothes, houses and so on, then there cannot be "overproduction." He does not understand how capitalism operates. Capitalism has crises of "overproduction" not because too much is produced to satisfy the needs of the workers, but because too much is produced for the needs of the market. Capitalist production begins to be curtailed at the point where the articles cannot be sold at a profit, so "overproduction" for capitalism exists though millions are in desperate need. What matters is whether they have the money to buy what they need.

At the time Mr. Clynes wrote his article in the autumn of 1919 there were already 530,000 unemployed. At the beginning of 1947 the number was 400,000. About 18 months after Mr. Clynes' prophecy of no unemployment for 12 years, there were over 2,000,000 unemployed. That was not under a Labour Government, and the defenders of Labour Government said things would be different when the Labour Party came to office. In 1931 they were in office and unemployment again soared in the crisis to over 2.500,000. History will repeat itself. Labour Government or no Labour Government capitalism in its next crisis will produce the same results as before. In 1919 another of the Labour propagandists for increased production, Mr. John Hodge, declared that if the workers did not increase output they would be "workless and wageless." Members of the present Government talk in a similar strain. We said in 1919 that great numbers of workers would be workless and wageless under capitalism whatever they did. We were right then and we are right when we say now that it will all happen again.

In 1930, under Labour Government, another of the preachers of increased production, Mr. J. H. Thomas, admitted that "one of the great anomalies, at that moment was that the main cause of the world depression, as well as our own, was overproduction." (Times, 22/3/1930.) A month earlier Mr. Clynes, faced with the overproduction that he said would not happen, was backing another capitalist cure-all, "rationalisation." He confessed that it would, to begin with, actually increase unemployment, but he urged the workers to bear it with patience "because it was a kind of surgery that was being applied to industry, and after it industry would rise stronger and better able to compete with the world." (Manchester Guardian, 10/2/1930.) Mr. Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is telling us about the good times we are going to have someday provided we quietly put up with hard times now; in 1930 his predecessor in that office under the Labour Government was Snowden, who was telling the same story. In a broadcast he spoke about the "vital improvements" that would be "only possible out of revived and prosperous industry from which our national revenue is derived." (Daily Telegraph, 15/4/1930.)

Under capitalism there are no "good times" for the working class, but just so long as the working class does not see through the capitalist "work hard now and wait for reward" fairy story, there will always be Tories and Labourites, Churchills, Attlees, Clynes and Stracheys to tell it. Only the S.P.G.B. keeps to the sound working class position that the only remedy for the evils of Capitalism is Socialism, and that the time for it is now.

Edgar Hardcastle

Much Ado About Monogamy— The Kinsey Report (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who has not heard of Dr. Kinsey? The question brings to mind one of those Bateman cartoons in which the unfortunate ignoramus or faux-passant trembles before a collection of gazes incredulous, horrified, contemptuous and pitying. Of course, everyone has heard of Dr. Kinsey. He is the Indiana professor who has heard 5,940 true confessions; the man with a load of light, the saviour of the Sunday press in a wet summer.

"Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female" has not yet been published in Britain, but the papers have run riot over its American publication, taking attitudes of unctuous righteousness or playing the thing for all it is worth in order, as Dr. Comfort would say, to startle the Citizens. Either way, the Kinsey Report has had more publicity than any other book in a generation. Kinsey himself is said to be making nothing financially from it; the profits will go to the Research Committee with which he is concerned. Some commentators have given this as exclusive evidence to free Kinsey from the charge of "cashing-in on sex." It is not so certain. The first American printing has been a quarter of a million copies—a figure to make the bestselling novelists envious and to suggest that the sponsors are well aware of the market value of their work. Whoever the beneficiaries may be, the Report obviously is providing—and was meant to provide—an outsize jackpot prize.

Enough has been related, quoted and discussed (mostly under huge, spicy headlines) to make some evaluation of Kinsey's findings possible. The information in the Report relates principally to the incidence of departures from the orthodox monogamous pattern. Dr. Marie Stopes is, of course, quite right when she says: “All the different types of sex behaviour and abnormality were fully described, with numerous long detailed cases, by Dr. Havelock Ellis in his six-volumed work forty years ago." That is not Kinsey's point; the aim of his Report is to establish, on a statistical basis, what are the sexual behaviour-patterns of women in present-day society. The information was gathered from thousands of interviews with members of women's societies who volunteered, and the statistics take in 5,940 case-histories. The danger of drawing conclusions from sample investigations is obvious, but it must be said that their technique has been highly developed in America, where sample polls are taken about anything and everything. In this case, however, there are factors which cast additional doubts on the value of the sample.

The greater number of the women interviewed were of better-than-average education and income, Presumably, therefore, they could express themselves more fluently and were more likely to have come in contact with the possibilities of sexual variation than most working-class women. And they were volunteers—in other words, they were willing to recount their sexual experience. One does not have to agree with the Sunday Express that such volunteers must be “a collection of oddities and exhibitionists” to make reservations about them. It is clear enough that the women with respectable histories of chaste courtship and faithful marriage are the least likely to offer their reminiscences. They wouldn’t have much to tell, for one thing.

Kinsey’s 5,940 cannot be considered as a cross-section or anything like one, and certainly not as a basis for conclusions about the "human female.” But if that were not so, the major issues would be unaffected. What makes such a survey necessary and gives it so compelling an interest? The Kinsey Report is an attempt to establish the communality of habits and attitudes which in urban society are “private,” i.e., highly individualized. In healthier, less complex social groups the pattern of sexual behaviour is part of the general social pattern. The accounts by Malinowski and Margaret Mead of sexual life among the Melanesians and Polynesians are not based on card-indexed interviews with anonymous “guinea-pigs,” but describe the observed behaviour-patterns of communities. In Kinsey’s world (which is our world) sexual life is observed by peeping into bedrooms. That is why so many people are so avidly interested in the Kinsey Report; it offers a peephole and gives a basis for comparison, which is the foundation of approval (or otherwise). And it is probably true that the Report will help sexual unorthodoxy to spread, or “make immorality rife,” as they say. The assurance that “everybody's doing it” is usually enough encouragement for the others.

The monogamous family system has always needed the support of complex legal and moral codes. Kinsey’s most shocking “revelation” is that a great many people do not adhere to those. He says that America’s sex laws are “unrealistic, unenforceable and incapable of providing the protection needed.” He finds—if it needed finding—that for a lot of women the white wedding dress is only conventional and not representative of the true state of affairs. He hears that American wives do not always fall in with the requirements of the Hays Office. Plenty of other investigators have confirmed that chastity and fidelity are not prized as they used to be. (It is doubtful, though, if they were ever prized as much as that. One is reminded of the classic conversation between villagers: “Old George bain’t the man 'e used to be.”—“ No. and never was.”)

The truth is that morally and legally compulsive monogamy has never really worked. It would be rather surprising if it had, considering its demands; for example, that a woman can discipline herself to be restrained and chaste before marriage and automatically become yielding and responsive after it. Whether or not monogamy is natural is beside the point, which is that the property-based (and therefore compulsive) monogamy of our society imposes conditions which have never been fully accepted and are less and less accepted to-day. Nevertheless, the property basis is there, and almost the whole vocabulary and imagery of sex and marriage carries the property implication. Outside medical text-books, a man never enters a sex relationship with a woman: he “takes her” or “possesses her,” she “becomes his” or "gives herself” to him. (If anyone doubts, by the way, that society still regards women as inferior chattels, listen to “Housewives’ Choice” in the mornings, the announcers address their audience in the tone which most of us would use to speak to an imbecile child.)

Kinsey claims, in effect, to find that the principle of exclusive possessiveness does not always apply in modem sexual behaviour, and that is what has made his book “shocking.” He advances several propositions to account for what he finds, but—as reported, at any rate—they all are deduced from assumed physiological and psychological incompatibilities between men and women: for example, his claim that their highest sexual capacities occur at irreconcilably different stages in adult life. Women, he says, do not reach their sexual zenith until the thirties and then retain it until quite late in life; men attain it in adolescence and thereafter decline (though most sexologists have recorded noteworthy cases of good tunes on old fiddles). Kinsey appears not to take into account, however, the influences of industrial and urban environment. Britain's Royal Commission on Population suggested in 1949 that these have a considerable effect on sexual function

  It is indeed arguable that modern urban life— whether because of the greater worry and nervous strain it brings with it, or merely because of the greatly increased number of alternative outlets for free time and energy—tends to cause a reduction in sexual activity from the level associated with the predominantly rural life of earlier times. There have, in fact, been investigations which showed a lower frequency of intercourse among men engaged in urban than among those in rural occupations.

A satisfactory sexual life is not a case of merely making the most of maximum desire; more than anything, it is dependent on privacy, understanding, and freedom from tiredness and worry.

There remains the question of why departures from the orthodox monogamous pattern have become more and more frequent in the past thirty years or so; the family is breaking up, say the bishops—and so it is. The life of a family in this country seldom exceeds two generations, and its members tend to break away as soon as they reach maturity. The stability of the family was part of pre-industrial, pre-urban society, in which each group was bound by tenure or dependence to its land or its small community. To-day, in the teeming agglomeration of town life, there is no chain of secure subsistence, and the experience of one generation has little significance for the next. The economic ties which gave the family its durability and coherence have largely gone; in consequence, there has been a sharp change in the traditional attitude to sexual morality.

Probably the strongest, and the most relevant to Kinsey’s theme, of the broken moral traditions was that sex was something for men to enjoy and women to endure. The endurance was real enough and related to the consequences rather than to the sex act itself, and the developed techniques of birth control have been the decisive factor in doing away with this astonishingly unwholesome attitude: they have also made extramarital sex possible for women. Society has never really thought it half so bad—a joke for seaside postcards, in fact—for men to have sexual adventures, chiefly because men don’t have babies. Now women needn't have babies either, and that fact alone has provided a good deal of Dr. Kinsey’s material.

To sum up, then. The Kinsey Report may be an accurate analysis and it may be hokum; this writer is disposed to think that it was prepared with an eye on its market potentialities and that its statistics are misleading. It has nothing new to tell, except possibly— and this cannot be substantiated—that the incidence of sexual misbehaviour in the human female is higher than was suspected. The general propositions (many of which were made in Kinsey’s earlier work on the human male) about sex are based on assumptions of physical and mental make-up, and leave out of consideration the effects of environment on capacities and inclinations.

Nevertheless, the publication of—and the necessity for—a study which claims to find a high incidence of frailty in the female flesh points to the current instability of the property-based monogamous marriage system. The family as it is traditionally imagined is disintegrating in capitalism, and the morality which upheld it is relaxing consequently. Some people are shocked by Kinsey’s findings because they think women ought to be men’s property; others, because they fear that imperfect people will make an imperfect world. Never fear; the world got like it first.

Robert Barltrop

In our hands (1981)

Editorial from the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

As support for the Thatcher government crumbles away, the Labour Party’s excitement reaches towards delirium. How long before they lose all touch with reality?

There are, as we know, good reasons for the disillusionment with the Tories. Unemployment promised soon to reach 3 million; further cuts in social services and local authority spending; prices rising relentlessly; open declarations of war by government ministers on workers' standards of living; riots and looting in inner city areas. The future looks grim; yet the Tories, like all incoming governments, promised us prosperity.

In their wilder moments the Labour Party sees the discrediting of their opponents as a final, historic enlightenment which will finish the Tories for ever. Then Labour will be in power for generations and can at last get down to the task of building the new Jerusalem which they have sung and orated about for so long.

Little wonder, then, that there is such anger in the Labour ranks with Tony Benn for rocking the boat when they want it, now of all times, held steady and on course. Benn, who seems to exist in a perpetual state of high fever of delusion about himself, his party and about capitalism at large, tiresomely claims to deal in what he conceives as principles while his opponents in the Labour Party are more openly and immediately preoccupied with winning their way back into power.

But it is only recent history, that Labour rule was one continual crisis and in all essentials—cuts in public expenditure, attempts to hold down wages, attacks on trade unionism, maintenance of British capitalism's nuclear armoury—was hardly distinguishable from what we experience now under the Tories.

Towards the end of their time the Callaghan government were a throughly beaten and demoralised lot. Their death knell sounded during the infamous winter of discontent and the resultant working class disillusionment swept Thatcher into power, promising to solve the problems of British capitalism with theories exposed as futile as long ago as the Twenties.

This apparent repetition of history indicates that the Tories' crisis of confidence is by no means a finality. We have heard all this before and we shall hear it again. We have been here before and we shall be here again.

What then is to be done? If the working class realise that political action need not consist of a repetitive switching from one futility to another, what else is open to them? First, they must grasp that politicians have only a limited relevance. They are prevented by something outside their plans and claims and deceptions from organising society as they say they would have it.

That “something” is the capitalist social system, which from its basis outwards can only be run in the interests of the parasitic minority who own the means of wealth production and distribution. Just a couple of weeks ago we saw two representative members of this minority dress up and parade through the streets to get married. Everything about that event—the opulence, the cynicism, the ballyhoo in the media emphasised the class division of capitalism into those who own but do not need to labour and those who must labour but do not own. The workers, who made all that went into the wedding, owned none of it. Their part in the cruel farce was to stare and wonder and to cheer, to testify to their own degradation.

And in that fact there is the reason for the impotence of capitalism's politicians. Workers are ready to blame Thatcher or Foot or Benn for their problems, overlooking the fact that they themselves vote for these leaders and all that they stand for. It is the working class who choose their own repression, who respect and admire their exploiters and who are therefore responsible for their own plight.

We are arguing here, as always, for another approach. The Socialist Party of Great Britain insists that workers need to examine the basis of capitalism as the cause of the world’s problems and to act to change society from that basis.

We are arguing here, as always, for a social revolution to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism—a social system based on common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. Socialism will be a classless society, without privilege and poverty, a society in which all human beings will stand equal in their freedom.

In face of that, the posturing, impotent leaders of capitalism fade into their true proportions. It is not they who will change human society into one of abundance but the mass consciousness of the working class. Socialism is something for the workers of the world to get excited about and then act to achieve.

Mr Potty gets a nice surprise (1994)

From the original Socialist Standard.

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

It was a bright spring morning in Burblage and Mr Potty was feeling particularly pleased with himself. The birds were warbling, the flowers were growing, the brook at the end of his garden was bubbling. He glanced at it apprehensively as he crossed the little bridge. Yes, it was definitely bubbling. He shrugged and went on, putting it from his mind. Today was, after all, going to be a very special day.

In the village the shops were gaily decorated and people passed to and fro, happily chatting with the shopowners. PC Mungo, the village bobby, paced grandly along the street wearing the shiny new medal he’d got recently for catching Mickey Flynn, the notorious criminal who had let off fireworks while the council was in session. Mr Potty nodded and exchanged a friendly word or two as he passed. He noticed that PC Mungo's truncheon seemed to have red paint all over it. but he let it pass.

Today was going to be exciting, thought Mr Potty. Mr de Beergut. the inheritor of the entire firm of Beergut, Slugworm and Fester had asked to see him, him, personally, at nine o’clock sharp this morning. Mr Potty knew it would be good news. After all, hadn't he worked in that same chemical factory man and boy for thirty years, and had he ever had a day off sick? Only yesterday his manager had said to him: "Potty", he said, "this firm really needs men like you, you know. Can't think where Mr de Beergut would be without you", and Mr Potty had blushed, too tickled to reply.

At the end of the High Street Mr Potty saw smoke. As he came closer he saw the Mungo boys in the road. Jimmy was holding a petrol can, and Billy was throwing matches at the grocer, who was tied to a post. Mr Thoms the grocer was cross. He didn’t like being tied up and set fire to. Freddy, who had just finished looting the till, was busy torching the premises. Mr Potty decided this was very naughty, and looked around for their father PC Mungo, who was nowhere in sight.

"Billy", he said, "don’t you think you should stop this?" Billy, who was a very naughty young man, said: "Fuck off, or I’ll have you arrested", and waved a stick at Mr Potty. Mr Potty decided they would grow out of it, and so went on his way, worried slightly about the way the Mungo children seemed to like murder, rape and arson better than nice games like football and tennis, but determined not to let one dark cloud spoil a beautiful blue sky.

Mr Potty was passing through the fields, on his way to the factory, when the bomber squadron flew overhead, on their way to the war. He stopped and waved to the dark aeroplanes, but they were very high and probably couldn't see him, or they would certainly have waved back. They were just off to drop some bombs, and would be back in time for tea and buns at six o'clock. They were jolly chaps, always singing and laughing in the village teashop. Mr Potty was glad the weather was nice for them.

Suddenly he spied Old Gypo Williams coming towards him. and he sighed. Old Gypo was bound to ask him for tenpence, just like he did every morning at this time. Mr Potty put a brave face on, and dug his hand in his pocket.

"Hello there, Mr Williams, lovely morning. Have tenpence."

"Well thank 'ee Mr Potty, that I will, and right kind of you it is to pass 0.000000001 percent of your earnings to the poor and undernourished of the world. You ain't 'eard about poor Mickey Flynn the renegade Irish firework criminal then, Mr Potty?"

Mr Potty shook his head.

"Well, no Mr Williams, I must say I haven’t."

"Stone dead, 'e is, found in his cell last night. Got it from the cleaner. 'Parrently bashed hisself to death with the leg orf a chair when no-one were looking. Right terrible, don't yer think, Mr Potty?"

Mr Potty agreed that it was very sad, but Old Gypo continued in his monologue: "His old man reckons he weren't even in the country when them fireworks was let orf. Seems 'e were in Mozambique doin’ Volunteering Service or someink. Reckon they’ll like as not be taking PC Mungo’s new shiny medal orf of him afore too long. Fact is ’e might get the boot altogether if the papers gets old of it, an 'im wiv two rottweilers to feed an' all. Bleedin' shame."

Mr Potty' shook his head again.

"Well, must be off, Mr Williams, got lots to do you know. I'm to see the owner of our whole firm this morning, and I know it's going to be good news."

Old Gypo raised his hedgehog eyebrows, and then scratched his beard thoughtfully.

"Yer well, maybe it’s eleven pence I'll be stickin' you for tomorrow, in that case?"

And then he gave a great big guffaw and slapped Mr Potty on the back, enjoying his joke.

Mr Potty went on his way in fair spirits, despite the news of PC Mungo’s impending embarrassment. Old Gypo was a good sort, always concerned for other people's troubles more than his own, and never complaining about having to sleep in a pig trough and eat boxes.

Finally he arrived at Factory Lane. It was a good factory, and lots of people worked there from the town. As he walked up to the back entrance he saw a huge car parked at the front with a chauffeur standing by it. What a beautiful car it was! He knew he would never own one like it, because he wasn't really clever enough to own his own factory even if he was chief cashier. Mr de Beergut must have arrived already, he thought, better get a move on. As he passed the effluent disposal plant he noticed that the river was now bubbling and smoking, but he decided that this was only because of spring tides. He entered the office with great excitement. Mr de Beergut was waiting.

"Potty, it's a pleasure to meet you", began the other, and Mr Potty felt himself glow right down to his toes. "Sit down, sit down."

Mr Potty sat down. He knew today was going to be a good day. For a moment he thought he could still smell the fumes from the river, but he decided instead that is was probably Mr de Beergut’s famed gourmet diet that was responsible. The owner looked down at him, man to man.

"Potty, everyone here works hard, but especially you. Your persistent ten-hour days have not gone unnoticed, let me tell you. Your efforts have been brought to the attention of the Board, and there’s something they have asked me to give you."

Mr Potty waited, feeling his face go scarlet, hardly daring to breathe.

Mr de Beergut had paused to consider him, then he thrust out a large pink hand and. taking Mr Potty's limp white fingers, wrung them till they cracked.

"Our congratulations, Mr Potty, and thank you for everything. Keep up the good work. Have a cigar."

Mr de Beergut planted an enormous Havana in Mr Potty's breast pocket, and immediately swept from the room to go to a financial planning meeting.

Mr Potty stood up, looking speculatively at the cigar sticking out of his pocket. It seemed rather a shame that he didn’t smoke. Ah well, he thought, brightening, it's all in a day's work. And off he went to his desk, determined that today was going to be a jolly nice day come what may, and nothing was going to spoil it, nothing at all. Not even the smell of the river as it boiled and spat its way past his window.

Paddy Shannon

Letters: Is "god" a Socialist? (1996)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is "god" a Socialist?

Dear Editors,

Re your November editorial: “We only have one life: this one" and Adam Buick’s “we do know that it (the human mind and consciousness) can’t exist in the absence of a body that functions” in his Is-David-Icke-Serious? Same issue article.

First and foremost, if socialism is to be established, it's unreasonable and self-defeating to make unwelcome all those who believe in, or are open-minded about life after death, as these views alone are irrelevant.

Opinion polls have shown a majority think some sort of post- mortem survival likely, and there’s very strong evidence from Near Death Experiences (NDE) and mediumships.

Many cardiac-arrested patients have had NDEs, which, after resuscitation, have proved to be accurate accounts of events in hospitals etc. observed by detached “spirits” looking down upon their own physical bodies.

It can be argued that NDEs are "just" a psychic phenomenon associated with a dying brain, but they do show a perceptive consciousness can operate externally at the brink of death.

Furthermore, several sceptical and painstaking investigators of different mediums have been impressed and converted by considerable and precise spiritual information (some only knowable by those who “died").

Just because many people conclude souls may survive briefly, eternally, multi-incarnately etc. doesn’t mean they can’t see a better world for the living will come about through socialism. Such rationalists can readily see that capitalism must go if they’re not shut out.

Religions only grew because an afterlife has been a mystery for aeons, and their leaders are even now suing their claims on this enigma for their own personal. political and capitalistic advantages.

However, no system of faith has exclusive ownership of, or justifiable rule by reason of a hereafter whatsoever, since it would rightfully and equally belong to all (like the means of living while alive): so "god” can logically be seen as a universal coalescent synergy of spiritual entities. Or in other words, if it exists, god's a socialist!

Max Hess, 

Folkestone

Reply:
We have never said that those who believe in an afterlife can’t want socialism. They can, and we know of a number of examples. People can be inconsistent and hold contradictory views: basing one part of their views on what experience has confirmed but basing another part on unverified, and often unverifiable, beliefs, speculations and superstitions.

All we say is that such people are ineligible to join the Socialist Party (but they can be sympathisers), as we feel they would undermine our claim to have a case based on rational, logical argument from scientifically verified facts about history, capitalism, and human nature and behaviour.

It is on this last point in particular that such people fall. If it really was part of human nature to have a spirit that could exist in the absence of a body this would be a very important fact that would have enormous implications for explaining human behaviour. The fact that most people do believe this (or want to believe it) doesn't make any difference. There is no evidence for it. On the contrary, all the evidence goes the other way, confirming that human behaviour and thought, including thinking, can be explained in purely materialist terms.

So-called "Near-Death Experiences” and "Out-of-Body Experiences" don't prove that there is a spiritual life separate from the body since, in any event, they are linked to the existence of a functioning body. They are hallucinations, mental distortions, brought on by the brain being deprived for a short period of enough oxygen. It has been suggested that the particular form the hallucination takes—of floating out of the body, among other things—is due to the particular physiology of the human brain and to the way it organises and interprets the experience of the senses. (For one such explanation see the article by Susan Blackmore on "Near-Death Experiences: In or Out of the Body?" in the Fall 1991 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer.)

You can't be serious about mediums. We thought that it was common knowledge that they were either entertainers (whose tricks can be reproduced by other conjurers and illusionists who make no claims about really being in touch with the spirit of a dead person) or frauds (the list of those who have been exposed as such over the last hundred years is a long one). For the techniques employed to fish for and extract information from vulnerable persons and then re-presenting it to them as if it came from a spirit, see Chapter 4 of James Randi: Psychic Investigator (the book of the 1991 television series).

Finally, would "god” if it existed, be a socialist? Clearly not since, unless it is a useless abstraction incapable of influencing human affairs, it would have used that influence to have got humans to establish socialism long ago. But what do we find? That this "god" allows 14 million or so children under the age of 5 to die each year of starvation and starvation-related diseases. Some socialist!

Editors.

Pressure valve for the working class

Dear Editors,

I found Coleman's comments about the National Lottery (November Socialist Standard) particularly interesting, although I felt that he said far too little about the real objectives behind what is probably one of the most seductive capitalist ploys in history. Apart from the obvious fact that the National Lottery is designed to act as yet another pressure valve for the working class, I feel that its hidden agenda is of a far more sinister nature.

The simpering puppets of the Parliamentary Establishment are finding it increasingly difficult to hide the progressive degradation of British society. The ruling class has had to come to terms with the simple fact that laissez-faire capitalism cannot function without decimating whole sections of our community. The clutter of sleeping bags which fill the shop doorways of our major towns and cities are becoming an embarrassment to an exploitative system keen to conceal the inevitable consequences of its own soul-destroying policies.

In the last century, the capitalist class was able to postpone the full effects of social decay by throwing working class people into workhouses or by relying upon the well-meaning but futile efforts of Victorian philanthropists. The National Lottery is a similar ploy which has been implemented for precisely the same reason. By diverting the squandered revenue of the average gambler into specific charities the Tories can retain an essential facade of comparative normality, thus ensuring a continued acceptance (at least by a sympathetic minority) and managing to stave off the persistent threat of a Socialist alternative at the same time. Sadly, the National Lottery is not simply a "bit of fun”, it is a cynical and manipulative plot to deceive the increasingly credulous masses.

Christian McLean, 

Dover

The ability of capitalist authority

Dear Editors,

Your [November] Socialist Standard review of Charles Derrick’s book A Question of Judgement mentions the vital issue of the ability of capitalist authority, indeed of capitalism, to survive in the face of the withdrawal of the willing co-operation of a majority of class-conscious workers like, presumably, Derrick. My own experience in the army as another unwilling conscript of the 1945 Labour government, whilst not as varied as Derrick's, forced me to consider the effects on capitalism’s stability of even a small minority.

Having refused an order to accompany my unit to help break the London Dock strike of the winter of ’46, I was given military punishment. At this stage the barrack-room politicians of the Communist Party were solidly behind the Labour government in smashing the workers’ attempts to better their living standards, and as far as I know, mine was a one-man revolt. As such it received no publicity.

I had time to reflect on the effect that even a small number of such refusals could have had if made with the integrity and strength of socialist conviction and argument, and backed by a sound party statement. The publicity given by local and national newshounds anxious to embarrass the government, and possible questions in parliament could have pushed the issue of a socialist alternative, however distorted, and the resultant discussion in office, factory and pub would have been out of all proportion to the numbers of socialists involved.

Like everyone else, socialists behave in conformity with their convictions as far as possible. I believe that the effect on capitalism’s workability of a minority of even 5 percent of socialists behaving like Derrick in their various activities would be so profound, that the question of capitalism’s viability would confront the non-socialist majority as a critical issue demanding their political and ideological decision and commitment, at an earlier stage than the assumptions implied by majority action normally suppose.

Bill Robertson, 

Brighton