International politics (2011)

Book Review from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and World Politics. Contesting Global Capitalism, edited by Alexander Anievas. Routledge, 2011

One of the roles of academics is to clarify the concepts used in everyday talk. The trouble is that today they are obliged to come up with something new, so now we have “MIRT” – Marxist International Relations Theory – , though most of those involved seem to be Trotskyist or Trotskyoid.

The basic subject is interesting. Why, when there is only one global economic system, is the world divided into separate states? Is this something capitalism created or did it simply inherit it? Is it intrinsically necessary to capitalism? Could capitalism exist with a single world state? If not, why not?

These are discussed by the different authors in this collection of articles. The clearest and most informative, in terms of setting out the issues simply, is that by Neil Davidson. Most of the others employ an obscure terminology which no-one outside academia, indeed outside the small circle of those discussing MIRT, uses. As one of them revealingly, but apparently unself-consciously, noted:

 “A fellow traveller amongst Marxist circles – though not a Marxist himself – once asked us what was all the fuss about U&CD and ‘the international’. In exasperation with the whole debate, he threw up his hands declaring: ‘This uneven and combined shit is the dog’s whistle that only Marxists can hear’!”

True, very true, as long as you substitute “Trotskyist” for “Marxist”.

Adam Buick

Why a socialist world won’t be paradise (2011)

The Halo Halo! column from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Does Osama Bin Ladin get his 70 virgins now that he’s in paradise?” asked a questioner at the Moslem platform in Speakers’ Corner.

“In heaven you can have whatever you want,” replied the old mullah. “You just imagine it and it’s there. You can have wine and beer and no matter how much you have you never get drunk.”

This will no doubt come as a shock to would-be Islamic martyrs who are hoping for real virgins rather than imaginary ones (although it will be a great relief to the virgins). The quality of the alcohol doesn’t sound too good either. But at least it was some kind of answer to the question of what heaven is all about. Believers, although adamant that they want to go, tend to be rather vague about what you actually do when you get there.

So for any readers of the Socialist Standard, concerned about the next life, here are a few details (courtesy of google) of what to expect.

First a few observations from a Christian website. www.godandscience.org (Well we want scientific details don’t we?)

• “The new earth will have no sea. There will be no sun or moon. Gravity will be absent or greatly reduced. No more death, suffering, pain. Believers will receive a new body”.
• “The laws of thermodynamics seem to be absent from the new creation.”
• “Contrary to the Mormon view of heaven, it doesn’t seem that people in heaven will be either male or female”.

    Don’t get too excited about going yet though, you may not qualify. There’s a long list of sins to be avoided. And it’s unlikely that many of our readers will not have succumbed to one or two of the following:

“Sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, homosexual offences, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander, swindling, impurity, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, orgies, abomination, lying, cowardice, unbelief, murder, sorcery.”

In case you need more information, Islam, anxious to make clear that Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly of knowledge, also has several websites dealing with the subject. For the following we are indebted to www.answering-christianity.com.

• “Allah Almighty created heaven with 500 levels. The highest level will have the prophets, the martyrs, and the most righteous…”
• “So, let’s say we have a mother and a son. The mother was admitted to level 256, and the son was admitted to level 310. Both the mother and the son can still see each other, but she won’t be able to enjoy the things her son is enjoying, nor will he be able to share them with her.”
• “No dung, piss, bad body odour, bad breath, or bad sweat smell will exist in heaven. The food and the drinks that we consume into our bodies will turn into great smelling musk. The higher the person’s level in Paradise the better his smell will be.”

So there we have it in excruciating detail. The righteous ones certainly do their homework.

NW

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The United States plans to export $46.1 billion in weapons this year, nearly doubling its 2010 figures, officials said:

[Link.]

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months – a higher percentage than during the Great Depression:

[Link.]

Libyan women and girls who become pregnant through rape risk being murdered by their own families in so-called “honour killings”, according to aid workers. Rape is a sensitive topic worldwide, but in this country it is even more of a taboo. “In Libya when rape occurs, it seems to be a whole village or town which is seen to be dishonoured,” says Arafat Jamal of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. Libyan charities say they are getting reports that in the west of the country, which is particularly conservative, Col Muammar Gaddafi’s forces have tended to rape women and girls in front of their fathers and brothers. “To be seen naked and violated is worse than death for them,” says Hana Elgadi. “This is a region where women will not go out of the house without covering their face with a veil.”

[Link.]

Non-battle Scars: US Military Rape Victim’ Shares Her Pain 1 in 3 Female Soldiers are Raped or Sexually Assaulted by Fellow US Servicemen:

[Dead Link.]

Last time Beisner was on Fischer’s program, Beisner said that the deadly tornadoes in the American South were “little tastes” of God’s judgment. Yesterday, the two discussed how they believe environmentalists are earth-worshippers who are deliberately destroying the economy and that climate change is a myth. Fischer asked Beisner if the environmental movement wanted a return “into dark paganism” and Beisner agreed, saying that the end-game of environmentalism “would require the disappearance of about 95% of the human race.”

[Link.]

Older adults who say they’ve had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds:

[Dead Link.]

China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei claim parts or all of the South China Sea, a territory believed to be sitting on rich deposits of oil, gas and minerals, as well as being a major shipping lane:

[Link.]

Vietnam said on Saturday live-fire naval drills scheduled for Monday were “routine” and said it would welcome efforts by the international community, including the United States, to help resolve disputes in the South China Sea:

[Link.]

Greasy Pole: Calm down and listen (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Cameron … serving at a barbecue alongside the Most Powerful Man In The World … striding through a hospital with Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley telling everyone in earshot how much he loves the NHS … walking hand in hand with his wife on a Balearic island with not a Russian oligarch’s yacht in sight. David Cameron taking time in Prime Minister’s Questions to admonish Labour MP Angela Eagle to “… calm down dear and listen to the doctor”. All in a day’s work for a Prime Minister lording it over his contemporaries but nevertheless not secure enough to dispense with the need to assert his standing with regular, frequent publicity stunts – even when, strictly speaking, they are surplus to his requirements. Like slapping Eagle down when she was only protesting that he was mistaken in saying that the former Labour MP Howard Stoate had been defeated by a Tory when in fact he had stood down at the election. Surplus because in 2005 Cameron pledged to do away with that kind of misuse of Parliament’s time: “… the shouting, finger-pointing back biting and point-scoring in the House of Commons. That’s all got to go”. Surplus because in the event he had nothing to lose by a soothing apology for his insignificant error before resuming shouting and point-scoring. Perhaps he was too arrogant to realise that this was just the kind of triviality to get both sides in the Commons blowing up a storm, as part of their unrelenting efforts to conceal the fact that there is no considerable difference between them.

Winner

Spinning somewhere towards the edges of the storm of bogus protest was the figure of Michael Winner, who is not a favourite of feminists but is famous as the director of what should rightly be known as some of the most tawdry of films and for flaunting his riches with excruciating conceit. Although the phrase “calm down dear” has been in common usage for a very long time Winner claimed to have originated it for use in a TV insurance advertisement and said for good measure that “… the Prime Minister has used it before which shows he’s in touch with the British public…” It is not known whether the ex-Etonian Cameron was happy to be exposed to so warm an embrace by so nauseating a personification of capitalism’s ugliness. In any case Angela Eagle (“… frighteningly feminist…” – Daily Telegraph) is not known for modestly declining an opportunity to attract attention to herself. She won Wallasey from the Tories in the 1992 election and has held it since – the first time that constituency has had a Labour MP. She has recently been engaged in a Canute-like struggle to prevent to closure of a local biscuit factory – the largest private sector employer in an area where, she says, there are 16 people known to be chasing every vacant job. In 1997 she declared herself to be lesbian, the first MP to do so; this was soon after her twin sister Maria had become an MP, making them to the first set of twins in the Commons. To those who associate with them they are known as a formidable pair.

Treasury

Until Labour were wangled out of power in May 2010 Angela Eagle held a number of governmental jobs and had a spell as a backbencher after being sacked by Tony Blair – perhaps as punishment for her being mutedly rebellious over the Iraq war and describing him as “fatally damaged” by it. In 2007 she was brought back by Gordon Brown and is now Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, squaring up to the Coalition’s Danny Alexander over which party offers the most effective disguise of their hopeless floundering amid the maladjustment of world capitalism 2011. Eagle’s claim in this contest is likely to be based on her being of the common salt – her father was a printworker – who clawed her way to university, fearlessly declared her sexuality in the cause of freedom and equality and then progressed to the base of the Greasy Pole. The facts, however, are not so promising for her. When she was a minor minister at the Treasury under Chancellor Alistair Darling there was no evidence of economic policy being influenced by any searchingly innovative contribution from her. In Labour’s final spell of power, when Eagle was in charge at the then Ministry of Pensions, it was made clear that if Labour were returned at the election they would implement policies as harsh as anything planned by George Osborne. In March 2010 Darling conceded under questioning that in fact Labour’s expenditure cuts would be “deeper and tougher” than those imposed under the Thatcher government in the 1980s, when Eagle was at Oxford studying for a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics which, she may well have hoped, would turn her out as a new style of political leader. She gives no reason to believe that she is disappointed to be as unoriginal and futile as all the others.

Excitement

So what now of David Cameron and his slick wise-cracking appropriation of a sneer trade-marked by the execrable Michael Winner who had himself appropriated it? Ruling class demands on us are unrelenting, if variable. We experience episodes when we are disciplined to stay calm, for example when the country to which we are said to owe loyalty inflicts on us the fears and desolation of a war. And there are others when we are regimented to be excited – for example in April when we were swamped under a pervasive hysteria companion to the marriage of a couple of notably useless young parasites. We do not have to endure this catastrophic waste of human abilities; the argument for replacing this social order with another rooted in human interests sprouts from a solid base of facts historical, material, social…This is to be calmly assessed and excitedly brought into being.

Ivan

What environmentalists are up against (2011)

From the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the face of it the environmentalist movement has a lot of things in its favour. It would be difficult to find fault in their concerns about how the planet is being abused. Global warming, deforestation and pollution are real areas of concern for anyone who examines how modern society is developing. Where socialists would differ from environmental activists is in two major areas. Firstly, in their analysis of what causes the problems and, secondly, what is the solution to the problems.

Quite often environmental activists make the assumption that the problems are caused by social ignorance and that the solution can come about by a series of legal enactments that would save the planet from its present dangers. Socialists would repudiate such a simplistic analysis. Let us look at one of the major concerns of environmentalists and socialists alike – the deforestation of the Amazon area.

“Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased almost six-fold since last year despite government promises to reduce the destruction according to data released yesterday. Satellite images obtained by the National Institute for Special Research reveal 595 sq km (230 sq miles) of deforestation in March and April of this year. Figures from the Brazilian government show a 27 per cent increase in deforestation of the world’s largest rain forest from August to April” (Times, 20 May).

This deforestation is not caused by social ignorance. All major governments are aware of the problem, but they are also aware that in order to keep capitalist profits on the rise they must have timber from the Amazon and the clearing of the forest for the growth of crops and the rearing of cattle. “In 30 or so years, we have gone from zero to 400,000 heads of cattle,” boasted Onofre, president of the local ranchers association. Nowadays everybody says we have to preserve the forest. But when we arrived nobody knew we had to protect anything we had to deforest. We chopped the trees down so we could feed our animals, our cattle.”… Back on his ranch, Onofre reflected on his hopes that Brazil’s Congress would approve a controversial bill altering the forest code and reducing the amount of rainforest Amazon landowners had to protect” (Observer, 22 May). 

The local farmers and cattle raisers can heave a sigh of relief at the latest piece of news from their government. “Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies has voted to ease restrictions on the amount of land farmers must preserve as forest. The amendment also grants amnesties for previous deforestation” (BBC News, 25 May).       

The drive for more and more profits make it essential that the Amazon landowners continue their policy of forest clearance. The importers of timber, cattle and agriculture products also cry out for more deforestation. While the profit motive remains, all attempts by the environmental movement to restrict the development of capitalism in the Amazon area is futile. Only the establishment of world socialism can stop this insidious destruction of our planet.

Richard Donnelly

50 Years Ago: Britain and the Common Market (2011)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Common Market has become a burning issue for British capitalism. After being convinced for years that it would fail, the Government has now belatedly realised that it may after all be here to stay. But so late have they left it, and so long have they dithered, that if they are to do something about joining they must do it quickly. Otherwise, it will be impossible for them to jump on the bandwagon at all.

Hence Mr. Macmillan’s somewhat panicky efforts to get matters straight with the Commonwealth and his undignified haste to prepare the ground at home.

For it is clear that the issue of whether Britain should go into the Common Market is causing a lot of heart-searching in many quarters. Not only is the Government worried, but industry, the Commonwealth, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, even the trade unions. And not only worried, but very much divided. Even allowing for the fact that the Labour Party has long abandoned all pretence of being anything but an appendage of capitalism, it is indeed strange, for example, to see Mr. Michael Foot and Viscount Hinchinbrooke lined up against Britain’s entry, at the same time as Mr. Shinwell vies with the Daily Express in concern for the Commonwealth. And on the other side, Mr. Woodrow Wyatt, Rev. Donald Soper, and Lord Home certainly make an odd collection!

As far as industry is concerned, to the giants like I.C.I., the whole question is academic. They are going into the Common Market regardless of what decision the British Government may take. Confident of being able to compete on equal terms with the Europeans, the only thing they are afraid of is being left outside. On the other hand, there are many industries and firms that are very much afraid of meeting European competition and who are consequently violently opposed to going in.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, July 1961)

Running Commentary: Pass Laws out (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pass Laws out

Abolition of the hated South African Pass Laws was the main purpose behind the protest organised by the Pan-African Congress which culminated in the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960 in which 69 people were killed by the police.

Twenty six years later the Pass Laws, which control the movements of black workers, are to be abolished and all blacks imprisoned for offences against them are to be released. In 1960 such a reform might have been welcomed by blacks as a significant change. In 1986 it has been greeted with scepticism. For, as Pass books are abolished, so the South African government is introducing a new identity document to be carried by all South Africans (it's not yet clear whether it will indicate the race of the holder); the Group Areas Act which restricts the areas in which blacks can live will continue in force, and it is generally feared that influx control, the basis of segregation according to race, will continue under the new euphemism of "orderly urbanisation".

At the same time that the government offers these token gestures of reform in an attempt to defuse the violence and protests of black workers in the townships without conceding them political rights, they are also fearful of alarming their white supporters who are increasingly critical of what they see as the chipping away of the citadel of apartheid. It remains to be seen how long Botha and his cronies can continue to pretend to the blacks that they are dismantling apartheid, and to the whites that they are not.


Screws’ turn

Britain currently locks up more people (both absolutely and in proportion to its population) than any other West European country except Turkey — not noted for its liberal regime. At present 47,000 people are being held in prisons designed to accommodate no more than 41,000. In order to meet the expected rise in the prison population, the government has embarked on a £360 million prison-building programme — 16 new prisons by 1991. While most areas of government spending — health, housing and education — have been cut since the mid 1970s, prisons have continued to be a growth area, in terms of expenditure, numbers of prisons and numbers of prisoners.

Next year's prison budget will be £700 million of which two thirds will be to pay prison staff. So, if the government is to apply its philosophy of spending cuts to the prison service, while at the same time continuing to lock up significant numbers of people, then it is in the area of expenditure on prison staff that cuts will have to be made. But despite an 18 per cent rise in the number of prison officers over the past five years, and only a 12 per cent rise in the prison population, there has also been a rise in the number of remand prisoners from 10 per cent to 18 per cent of the total prison population. So, unable to reduce the actual number of prison officers without either risking a breach in security, or reducing still further prisoners' access to certain "privileges" like education, PE. and visits, the government has turned to the highly contentious issue of overtime, manning levels and the restrictive practices used by the Prison Officers Association (POA) to get the maximum in overtime payments. Budgets recently announced by the Home Office are thought to require a reduction of about 400 hours each week in most prisons which would mean an average loss of overtime of about 2.5 hours a week for prison officers. The POA argue that this is unacceptable since overcrowding and the resulting increased levels of stress and violence in prisons, have made their jobs more difficult, more dangerous and their working conditions more insanitary.

The recent overtime ban in prisons resulted in widespread riots, arson and damage. The POA. clearly shocked at the effect of their industrial action, agreed to return to normal working and enter into talks with the Home Office about manning levels. The desire to avoid a repetition of the prison riots that took place may well lead to a settlement being reached. What the dispute will not have achieved is an end to the barbaric practice of locking up human beings in inhumane and brutalising conditions; what is at issue in this dispute is not the system itself, but how to run that system most cheaply.


Slums for sale

The aims of selling off council housing, once you delve behind the rhetoric of the "property-owning democracy", was to rid the local authorities of the burden of maintaining increasingly dilapidated and troublesome council estates. It didn't work. Most council tenants don't want to buy the run-down houses and flats they are forced to live in, not even for the knock-down prices they were being offered at. The result was that only the better quality council housing was sold off, leaving a residuum of the worst council estates. And because local authority building has almost ceased, more and more workers are now chasing an ever-decreasing number of sub-standard council properties.

That number now looks set to be reduced still further as a result of the Housing and Planning Bill which will make it easier for local authorities to sell off, not just individual houses, but whole estates. At present about 40 local authorities have begun to sell approximately 80 council estates. The Bill will make it easier to increase this number since it gives councils the power to evict tenants so that estates can be sold off empty to private developers. Labour, Tory and Alliance controlled councils have all jumped at the chance of getting rid of their problem estates in this way.

In London, the Labour Tower Hamlets Council has sold over two-thirds of the 400-flat Waterlow Estate to the building company Barratts. Most of the tenants who objected and refused to move out were eventually "persuaded" to move as a result of council pressure and the refusal by the housing authority to carry out even basic repairs The Labour Party, especially Jeff Rooker, their housing spokesperson, has supported the selling of estates using the now fashionable rhetoric of "decentralisation" and condemnation of "public landlordism". What this conceals is that the sale of council estates, while it may result in better-maintained housing, also results in housing that the present tenants can no longer afford to rent. If estate agents are buying up decrepit council estates you can be quite sure that it is not because they intend to run them as a social service for the poor, the homeless or those living in slums, but because there's profit to be made out of them.


Side by side

On the food and drink page of the Guardian on 2 May, a headline states The Book That Made A Feast Out Of Famine. There follows a very critical review by Colin Spencer of the just-published Delia Smith Food Aid Cookery Book (BBC Publications). This, in case the hullabaloo has failed to reach you. is a collection of favourite recipes of "famous" people. The review queries the ethics of a plush launch at the Savoy among contributors who looked "rather pink, plump and well fed" of a book intended to raise funds for the starving. Further, it queries the "good taste" of such a book featuring (rather unimaginative) recipes such as Mrs Terry Wogan's caviar pie, to be eaten with smoked salmon. There follows a lecture on world nutrition, how wealthy EEC countries, instead of exploiting Third World agriculture and then overproducing beef and wheat themselves, should hold back, mend their ways and encourage the hungry countries to produce food to feed themselves rather than crops for export. Colin Spencer obviously has no understanding of the workings of capitalism.

Alongside this well-meaning lecture is the Good Food Guide by Drew Smith. It is headed Oysters. Langoustine. Raw Mussels, Winkles And Whelks, and is a review of the best fish restaurants in London. Recommended among other things, is the "lobster, plain grilled in butter" available at one of them. No doubt, had the chef at the restaurant been famous, the recipe would have appeared in the Food Aid Cookery Book. . .


Bhutto’s return

Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). recently returned to Pakistan from exile in Britain in order to mobilise Pakistani workers and demand early elections, in the hope of winning power from the present ruling clique.

Benazir Bhutto is the daughter of former Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, overthrown in the military coup of 1977 and executed by the now President. Zia ul Haq. in 1979. Since that time Pakistan has endured nine years of martial law until the end of last year when President Zia restored at least a measure of democracy by allowing elections (hardly free, however, since most of the opposition were imprisoned).

Bhutto is a populist leader who is currently riding high on the desire for change among many Pakistani workers as a result of the brutality of the Zia regime. To the extent that the PPP has a policy, other than to secure power, it is mildly reformist in domestic terms (slum clearance, improved health care, land reform and a minimum wage) and, in foreign policy, attempts to offer something to both Russia and America in the hope of getting back a lot more. Bhutto promises an independent foreign policy based on "bilateral relations a political settlement that would permit the Russians to withdraw their forces from the area so that the 3.5 million Afghan refugees, which Bhutto sees as a destabilising force in Pakistan, can go home.

Like all opportunistic political leaders Bhutto changes her political colours to suit her audience. The recent rise in Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, as in any other Moslem countries, has persuaded Bhutto to exchange her western clothing for traditional, more "modest" garb acceptable to Moslem conservatives. But while this change of image might win her some popular support, the Islamic fundamentalist party, Jamat Islami, remains politically opposed to her and represents a serious challenge since it is both the richest and best-armed political group in Pakistan. Its help and co-operation in the coup of 1977 secured the presidency for Zia and. since then, they have retained a hold on power and influence which they are unlikely to relinquish willingly. So the usually winning combination of political opportunism, populist appeal and promises of reform may not be enough to secure power for Bhutto in the face of a coalition of the military, religious fanaticism and vested interests. A not unfamiliar story.

Race or Class? (2020)

From the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The killing of George Floyd has contributed hugely to the worldwide consciousness of police brutality, but also to some important points about class.

There has been a spontaneous response to Floyd’s murder, more or less united, organised around principles of solidarity, that has taken the world by storm.

In less than a month, protests tens-of-thousands strong have popped up, making the call for increased consciousness of race issues. Revealingly, it is this aspect of it that is focused on by most left-liberal analysis. Race is undoubtedly an important aspect of the present issues in society. However, it is not the only aspect.

Class plays a fundamental role in capitalist society. With ever increasing talk of ‘identity politics’, we see the class issue being diminished in favour of other problems. The other problems are very real and very important, without question, but they are underpinned by class.

What is espoused by identity politics is that there is no fundamental problem but multiple, overlapping issues: everyone has a unique perspective to offer; a white working-class person cannot understand the issues faced by a bourgeois person of colour, or a female CEO will not know the problems of male workers. There is something to be said for this, but where the issue arises is their view that these are fundamentally distinct issues that simply happen to overlap.

What is not appreciated is that some issues are more basic than others in capitalist society and may be resolved without resolution of the others.

Socialism cannot exist while racism exists, but capitalism can exist even when racial tensions are at an end (the plausibility of this is another matter, it is simply a possibility). This isn’t to denigrate the problems of racism, but simply to understand that they are underpinned by a more deeply rooted issue: class.

The issues are related, of course. The working class cannot achieve its full consciousness unless it recognises that the international working class is its ally and not its competitor. Much of capitalist propaganda revolves around turning the working class against its migrant allies by use of language like ‘the immigrants stealing the jobs’. We can dismiss this as a straightforward case of racism.

A more rigorous inspection leads us to believe that the act of the working class co-operating would be devastating to capitalism, and, consequently, all that can be done to fragment the workers and to pit them against one another must be done. We can see, even in current demonstrations, something of this streak.

To take a concrete example, people in Seattle have declared an autonomous zone, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, with mutual aid systems and community organised demonstrations. Police are not allowed to enter. It has been praised by prominent left-wing institutions (such as the Industrial Workers of the World) and met with great optimism by many leftists.

Donald Trump tweeted that ‘these ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY [sic]’. Some of the optimism is merited, insofar as it gives us a glimpse of what socialism may look like. Of course, nothing can be planned in any great detail, but the spontaneous actions of workers in times of crisis shows what the natural human instincts for social organisation are. Therein lies the real benefit of crises.

The brilliance of such organisations is that they give a small insight into what a society without class divides might be like, and demonstrate concretely the feasibility of such a society.

They spring up from all sorts of crises: Occupy Wall Street following the crash of 2008 had similar institutions. In this case, it is a crisis prompted by racial tensions that has led to increased consciousness of class tensions. We must appreciate the connection between the two and the fundamental nature of capitalist society if we are to make serious progress.

M. P. Shah

Obituary: Fred Hallows (2020)

Obituary from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

West London branch regret to report the death in his 90s in March of longstanding member Fred Hallows. He joined the old Ealing branch after the war (during which, before he became a socialist, he had been in the RAF as a glider pilot) and was one of the branch’s stalwarts until his retirement and move to Towcester in Northamptonshire. He worked as a draughtsman and was a founder member in 1950 and president of the Grasshoppers Rugby Club in Isleworth which is still going. During his long retirement he continued to take an interest in Party affairs and vote in Party ballots. Our condolences go to his family and friends.

Party News – Discord in the Ranks (2020)

Party News from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s not like socialists to curl up our tootsies and give up at the first sign of trouble, so we’re not likely to let a once-in-a-century global pandemic cramp our style.

Instead, like many others during the current lockdown, we are responding to

physical restrictions on meeting by going online. We’re using the audio-only Discord system to save bandwidth, and because most of us are not sufficiently photogenic to want to look at each other every day.

The system works pretty well and we’ve already held a couple of online talks, as well as several branch and Executive Committee meetings. It’s not been entirely plain sailing of course, with some members having to drag headphones or microphones out of attics or cellars only to discover that they last worked efficiently when Sony Walkmans were still a new fad.

Others have had computer problems as Discord doesn’t work with very old operating systems, or with the super-restrictive Windows S. Actually Discord was originally designed for gamers, who tend to a) be digital natives and b) have state-of-the-art gear.

Many socialists, it is fair to say, do not belong to this social demographic, so online conferencing software can be something of an uphill struggle. That’s why, for the next few weeks, there will always be someone on the server, ready to talk or answer user questions, at 12 noon and again at 7.30pm, UK BST, unless there’s an evening talk on.

Still, we’re making progress, with around 50 members online at the time of writing. Companion parties have got involved too, with members from the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan and India.

And of course visitors are very welcome too, and are free to join any online Discord meeting just as they would be free to attend any physical meeting by the Socialist Party or its companion parties. This is a great opportunity to chat to socialists from around the world without leaving your house!

And if anyone is thinking of joining, having a live chat about it with members is much more fun and informative than simply filling in a form on the website.

If you’d like to drop in and chat to us online, or come to one of our talks or other events, just drop us a line to spgb@worldsocialism.org and ask for an invite.

You can hear some of our recent discussions on our Audio files.

Note: ’Online audio talks can occasionally be patchy due to heavy internet traffic during the virus lockdown, but please don’t give up listening as the interference is only temporary’.

Letters: Why was slavery abolished? (2020)

Letters to the Editors from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why was slavery abolished?

Dear Friends

Comments on ‘No slaves! No gods! No masters!’ (Rear View, May 2020)

The organisation now called Anti-Slavery International (ASI) was not, as you state, founded by William Wilberforce in 1839; he had died in 1833; the founder was Thomas Clarkson. The role played by William Wilberforce had been to lead the parliamentary campaign of the ending of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade and the freeing of slaves in the ‘British Empire’, which was achieved by legislation in the year he died. You don’t give evidence for your assertion that the reason for the owning class agreeing to the abolition of slavery was that ‘it was considered an outmoded and inefficient method of labour exploitation’; well – it persisted in capitalist America for several more decades! Surely the long campaigning by Wilberforce, Clarkson and others in stirring public opinion against the treatment of slaves had some impact on the eventual result in Parliament?

Yes, it was and is incredible and appalling that Wilberforce, while campaigning to free slaves in America, could also at home employ child labour and preach to the working class to ‘know their place’. Nevertheless, there must have been many thousands of freed slaves whose lives were, to some extent at least, improved by their no longer being, literally, the property of their owners, to be bought and sold and ill-treated, without impunity, at a whim. This is surely not the case with those of you now call ‘wage slaves’. Anti-Slavery International works still to campaign on behalf of people, here and internationally, who remain, literally, the property of owners. (Would it not be better for you to use some word other than ‘slaves’ to describe those of us who are employed – not owned?)

So, ASI campaigners are your despised ‘reformists’ – but, may they not also be socialists? Why do you insist that it is and either/or situation? Why not both/and? Do you suppose that reformists are in every case going to rest content at the achievement of their particular reform? Or may it not be that such an achievement, if it gives some improvement in the lives of some human beings, is a step – even if only a small one – towards socialism? ‘From each according to their abilities’, we say, – and if Tory William Wilberforce’s persistent and persuasive oratory (as appallingly blinkered as he was in other respects) led to better lives for wretched slaves, then so be it!

Must socialists be ‘absolutists’, refusing involvement in well-meaning reform campaigns, in order to maintain clean-handed ideological purity? Or, even worse, are we allowed to enjoy the relative material comforts brought to many of us by capitalism in our part of the globe, while engaging in merely cerebral ‘holier-than-thou’ argument, as we await a ‘big-bang’ revolution? Ought we not to be living now as if we really believed in socialism as a way of life, contributing willingly, as we can, to our fellow human beings, and taking in return just what we actually need? Would not our actions, however compromised and seemingly pathetic, speak louder than words alone?

Andrew Durrant, 

Norwich

Reply: 

You rightly takes us to task for stating that Anti-Slavery International was founded in 1839 by William Wilberforce, who died in 1833 (see May’s Rear View). To be sure, the group has undergone several name changes since its origin as the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823. Campaigning by Thomas Clarkson, Wilberforce and other abolitionists likely did lead to the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act a decade later, but it should be remembered that William Pitt the Younger, the prime minister as far back as 1783, was not alone in thinking that the trade should be abolished as it was more expensive than using workers. However, you are on shakier ground when you write ‘there must have been many thousands of freed slaves whose lives were, to some extent at least, improved by their no longer being, literally, the property of their owners, to be bought and sold and ill-treated, without [sic] impunity, at a whim.’ In his autobiography Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892), the former slave writes: ‘The old master class was not deprived of the power of life and death, which was the soul of the relation of master and slave. They could not, of course, sell their former slaves, but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held there is the power of slavery. He who can say to his fellow- man, You shall serve me or starve, is a master and his subject is a slave….Though no longer a slave, he is in a thralldom grievous and intolerable, compelled to work for whatever his employer is pleased to pay him..’ .

You go on to ask if socialists must ‘be absolutists, refusing involvement in well-meaning reform campaigns, in order to maintain clean-handed ideological purity?’ To be clear, socialists oppose reformism, not necessarily individual reforms. Indeed, it would be incorrect to deny that certain reforms won by modern wage slaves have helped to improve general living and working conditions. There are examples of this in such fields as education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security. Yet as William Morris remarked in a lecture: ‘the palliatives over which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless because they are but unorganized partial revolts against a vast, wide-spreading, grasping organization which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the conditions of the people with an attack on a fresh side’ (Art & Socialism, 1884). Reforms, if passed, have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families functioning and while providing some temporary relief only rarely managed to remove the problem completely — as the 170,000 UK registered charities , of which Anti-Slavery International is one, attest. 

Editors.

Marx or Proudhon?

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your very generous and thoughtful review of my book, Sitopia, How Food Can Save the World. I am delighted that your reviewer liked the book so much and feel that there is much in it with which socialists could agree. I do consider myself a socialist at heart and clearly the metaphor of society being a place in which everyone eats well – and by implication has the means of leading a good and meaningful life – is, I believe, at the heart of socialism. We are clearly agreed that capitalism has proved itself unable to deliver such an outcome – and I accept your point that one cannot lay the blame for totalitarian regimes such as those of modern China and Russia at the feet of Marx – although I found myself very taken with Proudhon’s argument that his optimism in vesting all power in the state had its own inbuilt pitfalls! In any case, I welcome your comments.

With all best wishes,

Carolyn Steel

Reply: 

Thanks, but we have to point out that neither Marx nor us want to vest “all power in the state”. Marx envisaged, as we do, socialism/communism as a classless, stateless, moneyless community based on the common ownership of productive resources. Proudhon did envisage the end of the state as a centralised coercive power centre, but wanted to retain production for sale even if by co-operatives, which we don’t agree with .

Editors.

50 Years Ago: Debate with “International Socialism Group” (2020)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edinburgh branch have sent us the following report of a debate on “Which Way Socialism — International Socialism or the Socialist Party of Great Britain?” held in the Freegardeners Hall, Edinburgh, on before an audience of 70. (The local IS branch have seen this report and raised no objections to it) (…)

S. Jeffries opened for the IS by saying that he agreed with the SPGB’s Marxist theory but that there was a failure to link up theory with practice. He went on to quote Engels on the need to build the revolutionary movement within the trade unions. It was stupid to rely on the vote. He preferred the overthrow of the system by non-parliamentary means, and said that Marxists should always be prepared for the revolutionary situation when this overthrow would be possible.

Comrade Vanni replied that revolutionary phrase-mongering did not make a socialist and invited the floor to look at the dismal history of the IS. Using back numbers of the Labour Worker (now Socialist Worker) he drew attention to their lack of socialist understanding giving instances such as IS having urged workers to vote for the Labour Party in the 1964 and 1966 elections instead of fighting the real enemy — capitalism. It was not a Leninist elite that would bring about the revolution but capitalism itself by the contradictions inherent in it. IS far from being a vanguard, were in reality politically backward. They considered the workers too dull to learn from history but instead that they had to be taken through the struggles and learn from strikes. He went into some detail on the bankruptcy of their political theory, such as the permanent arms economy and their belief in the collapse of capitalism. IS did not even understand what Socailism was, as they saw a need for money, banks and the like, saying that instead of being sacked by a boss you would be made redundent by a ‘Workers Council’. In reality it all boiled down to a sophisticated state capitalism.

(Socialist Standard, July 1970)

Editorial: Working class lives matter (2020)

Editorial from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 25 May, George Floyd, an African American working-class man, was brutally slain by a police officer on the streets of Minneapolis. This killing unleashed a massive wave of furious protests and demonstrations across the US that had not been seen since the 1960s. It brought into sharp relief the police brutality and systemic racism that many black working class people face in their everyday lives. Compared to the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s, the demonstrations have brought together more people from different ethnic backgrounds.

The protests spread rapidly across the globe. Demonstrators in London, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere did not just come out in solidarity with the US protesters, but they found that the issues raised by the protesters resonated with their own experiences. The UK, for example, has its own roll-call of black and ethnic minority people who have died in state custody. Black and ethnic minority workers face discrimination in the employment market and in housing. There is the hostile environment instituted by the UK government which gave rise to the Windrush scandal.

These protests have to be seen against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crisis in which black and ethnic minority workers make up a disproportionate number of the victims.

By appearing to be sympathetic with the demands of the protesters, capitalist political parties such as the Democrats in the US are trying to channel their anger into safe reformist ends. Donald Trump is trying to rally his base by playing the Law and Order card, and is threatening to bring in the military to quell the protests. A grim reminder of the lengths that the state is prepared to go to defend capitalist private property.

There is no doubt that black and ethnic minority workers overall have it tougher when it comes to police brutality and lack of opportunities in employment, education and housing. However, it does not follow from this that racism should be treated as an issue that is separate from capitalism and its class divisions.

Indeed we can see that racism is rooted in the history of capitalism. The use of African slaves in the American plantations to produce cotton to be shipped to the mills of Lancashire. The colonisation of whole swathes of Africa, Asia and the Americas, where the western capitalists ruthlessly exploited the local populations and looted their resources. To justify these heinous and inhumane acts, the ruling class had to characterise the victims as subhuman and belonging to an inferior race, and hence the emergence of ideas of white superiority. So it is little surprise that many white workers absorb these ideas, including those who are employed as police officers, from the wider capitalist society. Racist ideas are used to divide workers from each other.

As the primary function of the police force is to preserve capitalist order, police officers are tasked to keep workers in their place, including workers like George Floyd. Many US police forces have their origin in slave patrols, which had the job of ensuring that black slaves did not escape. The only sure way to do away with racism and police killings is to do away with the social system that creates them, and to bring about socialism.

Nuclear near-miss (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is difficult to decide whether ignorance, complacency or callous cynicism best characterises the nuclear power industry. Since the accident at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine, most countries with a nuclear power programme have proclaimed that there is nothing to worry about, that their power stations are absolutely safe. In America the authorities claim that nothing similar could happen in the United States since western safety standards and reactor design are superior to those used in Russia. In West Germany official government statements have said that such an accident could not occur there because its nuclear reactors as "absolutely safe". Japan, because it has almost no fossil fuel deposits of its own, is committed to increasing nuclear power generation. Energy authorities there have rejected calls even to review their nuclear programme, let alone halt operations at its 32 nuclear plants as is demanded by trade unionists and environmentalists. A Japanese official said there would be no change in plans to increase nuclear power output from 26 per cent of total energy supply to 35 per cent by 1995. Ignorance, complacency or cynicism?

And what about these comments made before the accident by various "experts" in the field?

• In June 1983, B. A. Semenov. Russian Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy and Safety at the International Atomic Energy Authority said of Chernobyl: "A serious loss-of-coolant accident is practically impossible".
• In 1975 a study by the American Atomic Energy Commission concluded that an accident serious enough to kill 70 people would only happen once in a million years of a reactor's operation.
• The US edition of Soviet Life earlier this year published a feature on Chernobyl under the headline "Total Safety" which described the idea of a core melt-down as "incredible".

Such statements cannot be the product of ignorance of the risks involved in nuclear reactors. In Russia, apart from the Chernobyl accident, there has also been a core accident at an experimental fast reactor; in America there has been the accident at Three Mile Island and a fast reactor core melt-down at the Fermi reactor; and in the UK the Windscale plant suffered a serious accident in 1957. One international study has calculated that nuclear power plants in 14 countries have experienced 151 "significant nuclear-safety incidents" since 1971.

So if nuclear accidents can and do happen, why do governments world-wide seem intent on ignoring, or down playing, the risks? The example of Russia is instructive. Russia has considerable oil and gas resources and is, in fact, an oil-exporting nation. But both oil and gas fields are in Siberia in the east of the country, whereas the main industrial centres are in the west and the area of most rapidly expanding population in the south. European Russia consumes 60 per cent of the country's total electricity and yet produces less than 20 per cent. Much of that power must therefore be brought thousands of miles and it has been estimated that the cost of power doubles for every 1.000 miles that it has to be transported. Thus, nuclear power stations which can be built where they are needed represent a solution to the problem of providing cheap energy. So the Ukraine, far from the oil and gas fields of Siberia, gets 40 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power stations, the biggest of these being at Chernobyl.

At present nuclear power provides 10 per cent of electricity used in Russia and there are plans to increase output by 400-600 per cent over the next 15 years. If, as a result of the Chernobyl accident, the nuclear programme is slowed down Russia will have to continue to pay the much higher price for bringing power from Siberia and suffer the consequent loss in exports as oil and gas are diverted for domestic consumption. Nuclear power is, therefore, important to maintaining profits in Russia: cheap energy means lower unit costs and higher profit. And this is the motivation behind nuclear power in other countries too — a motivation that is sufficiently powerful to make it worthwhile to conceal or play down the considerable, often unknown, risks involved.

The ruling class in the western capitalist countries have been swift to try to make political capital out of the Chernobyl accident, alleging the inferior quality of Russian reactors and lamenting the lack of openness on the part of the Russian government. But on both issues their hypocrisy is breath-taking. The British reaction was typical. It was argued that a similar accident could not happen in Britain because the Chernobyl reactor was of a unique Russian design which is not found in this country and had no form of secondary containment (a strong, enclosing structure around the entire reactor and heat exchanger that would contain the radioactivity should there be any leak) and so would not meet British safety standards. It was further claimed that Russian reactors were built dangerously close to densely populated areas and. to reinforce the message. Peter Walker, the Energy Secretary, said that there had never been in the UK any "emergencies involving significant radiological hazards to the public at any civil nuclear installation".

These statements are a mixture of misinformation. half-truths and lies. Although it is true that the Chernobyl reactor was one of a unique Russian design (a graphite moderated boiling water system) it is also true that it is a "hybrid" comprising features commonly found in reactors throughout the world, including Britain. In fact the most serious nuclear accident so far in this country that at Windscale in 1957 — involved a graphite-uranium core which caught fire releasing large amounts of radioactive iodine over a wide area. Graphite moderators were also used in the early British and French Magnox reactors. Many of Britain's older nuclear power stations, including the Magnox reactors and the advanced gas-cooled reactors, do not have secondary containment. In the early years of the nuclear power programme it was boldly argued that reactors would not be built unless they were totally safe and so secondary containment was both unnecessary and would undermine public confidence since they implied the possibility of a leak. (Of course, secondary containment also increased the cost of the power station).

Britain is far more densely populated than Russia. A nuclear accident here is likely therefore to have far worse effects than a similar accident in Russia. At the time of the Windscale accident the Atomic Energy Authority said that the release of radioactivity presented no "hazard to the public". Nevertheless the sale of milk was banned within a radius of 200 square miles of the reactor. In fact the full extent of the Windscale accident was not made known until 1983. In that year the National Radiation Protection Board said that the accident may have caused up to 260 cases of thyroid cancer, 13 of which had proved fatal. So much for British freedom of information.

But why is it that the Russian authorities did not provide information which might help the Russian people avoid the effects of radiation? Like the West, the Russians have constantly told people that nuclear power stations are completely safe. Despite this there has been considerable opposition to the building of new reactors, especially in the Balkan republics — opposition which the Russians. given their commitment to nuclear power for economic reasons, would be unhappy to encourage by giving out information about a serious nuclear accident. The accident is, anyway, likely to have adverse economic effects on trade with East European countries, which the Russians will be anxious to minimise. As the Guardian (30 April 1986) reported:

  The whole thrust of the latest Comecon joint nuclear plans is that there should be more and bigger plants to save fuel and to facilitate the building of bigger and better manufacturing centres If these plans are now delayed, as seems highly likely, a whole series of capital investment projects will also have been thrown into disarray.

Many East European reactors are built along similar lines to the one at Chernobyl using Russian-built components. That market for Russian goods will be under threat unless the Russians can minimise the seriousness of the accident.

Most people don’t understand very much about nuclear power so when they read about the release into the atmosphere of radioactive substances like iodine and caesium (already detected in countries far away from the site of the Chernobyl accident), or about the possible release of strontium. ruthenium and plutonium-241, it really doesn’t mean very much to them. They have to rely on experts, who claim to have information and knowledge, to translate this into things that they do understand. And they do understand when Friends of the Earth in Sweden say that the total number of cancers from the radioactive cloud, if it travels over highly-populated areas, may exceed 10,000 over the next 20 years; that it is estimated that in order to de contaminate the affected area around the site of the Chernobyl reactor it will be necessary to remove at least four inches of top soil. They do under stand that in addition to the two people killed (according to the Russian figures) and the many more who were undoubtedly hurt as a direct result of the accident, numerous others face long-term health risks, and Russian workers — scientists and engineers — had to risk their lives by entering the highly radioactive Chernobyl site in order to make the three other reactors safe. (There are four reactors on the same site because this reduces costs although it compounds the risk). And they also understand that those people who are responsible for making decisions about whether to build nuclear reactors, and about safety standards, are not coming clean about the risks that are posed to ordinary workers throughout the world. People like Lord Marshall, Chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board, with a vested interest in expanding the nuclear power programme, who said, in the week of the Chernobyl accident, that the radiation inside the exclusion zone was "no worse than smoking a couple of cigarettes a year" (Observer, 4 May 1986). Do you trust a man with such a complacent attitude to human health and safety to be making decisions about nuclear power on your behalf? Do you trust the social system which needs people like that to spread verbal smokescreens over situations of such peril to the human race?

Janie Percy-Smith

The good, the bad, the ugly (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does the election of Clint Eastwood as Mayor of Carmel, California, mean that the Ronald Reagan syndrome — an irritating rash of ageing movie stars spreading into positions of power — is about to flourish ever more malignantly? Even by the standards of capitalist politics. Eastwood's election seems more puzzling than most. Carmel is a small (pop 5,000) seaside town which began as an artistic hermitage and has developed into a refuge for a few of America's elderly rich. The place is protective of its environment — it mounts a stern resistance to things like obtrusive advertising, flashing neon signs, fast food disgorgers and the like (these monstrosities are considered more suitable for the places where American workers, who contributed so signally to the affluence of Carmel's inhabitants, eke out their lives) Eastwood has lived in the place for some 14 years, he owns a restaurant there and his bid to become Mayor was said to be motivated by a desire to make his business more prominent with just the kind of eyesores which Carmel has always resisted. It might have been expected, then, that the electors would have given Eastwood, as a threat to their cherished environment, the voting equivalent of a sheriff s bum's rush out of town and then gone quietly back to enjoying their wealth. Perhaps his election was the result of those 2,166 people who voted for him being dazzled by his halo of showbiz glamour. All of this was written up in the British press in terms which encouraged the voters here to wallow in a smug assurance that of course they would never fall for such an appeal.

Well, as Eastwood himself might say. in a rare outburst of loquacity. "Oh. yeah?" British politicians are no exception to the general rule, in that they wrap their intentions up in some attractive tinsel but any worker with a flicker of consciousness, or a glimmer of memory, should have no difficulty in tearing this aside to get at the reality underneath. The Tories, for example, persist in telling us that life in Thatcher Britain is really very enjoyable and secure. There are still a few problems but these are well on the way to being sorted out. Meanwhile, we should rejoice over a fall in something called interest rates which determine how much one section of the ruling class pay another for borrowing their money — or about a fall in the price of oil (but then again at some times we should rejoice when the price of oil goes up) or we should get interested in whether workers at Westland's or British Leyland are to be exploited by the British capitalist class or by a group of capitalists from America or Europe.

Underneath this packaging the poverty of the workers deepens — more and more are forced into the desperate struggle to survive on the dole, they die of the cold or because medical services have been cut back, the pressures of making ends meet become more intense for those who are in work. Yet millions of workers support the Tories at election time, millions are impressed by Thatcher's supposed firmness of purpose.

Are these people dazzled by Thatcher's appearance — her hairdo, her teeth, her schoolmarm's voice? Do they tremble ecstatically at the sight of Lawson's well-nourished frame? It can't be that they are impressed by any overwhelming logic in the case for the Tories, for there has never been a successful Conservative government — in the sense that they have kept their promises, solved the problems of capitalism, been midwife at the birth of a prosperous and secure country.

As we all know, the voters sometimes get restless with Tory government, with the same old faces posing at the door of Number Ten. the gutter press revelations about the intimate lives of the same old leaders, the same old rhetorical tricks before the TV cameras. It becomes time for a change and luckily for capitalism (the system's spokespersons say it is luckily for democracy) there is an alternative party who will make some trifling adjustments in running capitalism and who have a clutch of promises and delusions to use in misleading the working class in allowing them a period of power.

In spite of all the combined efforts of Neil Kinnock, Tony Benn and the Militant Tendency, Labour has not been counted out of workers' reckoning as a future government for British capitalism. Their latest offering, outlined by Roy Hattersley in the House of Commons on February 12. is "Directed reflation with public sector capital spending on housing, schools and roads" which will be financed through £3 billion more taxes on the higher income groups. This type of programme is probably seen by most workers as not entirely out of touch with reality, dealing with matters which concern them like unemployment, bad housing, deficient services. This bland, predictable response to capitalism's malaises may dazzle enough workers to win the seats needed to get Labour back into power. They will then set about "creating jobs", "controlling inflation", hoping that their relations with the trade union movement will enable them to impose wage restraint without the kind of turmoil which this has caused in the past.

This might be more convincing were it not for the fact that these policies have already been tried and have failed. Hattersley is telling us that it is possible to control capitalism's economy as easily as if it were a motor car — a touch on the brake here, a dab on the accelerator there — but there is no evidence, either in theory or in practical experience, to support him. Unemployment is a result of capitalism's anarchic cycle of economic boom and slump and essentially it is quite out of the control of any politician or "expert". The Labour government of 1929-31 could not control it and when unemployment again began to emerge as a serious problem in the 1970s. the Labour government then could only watch in impotence as the dole queues doubled.

Whatever their relationship with the unions Labour cannot deny the class conflict of capitalism. They can't eliminate, through juggling with the tax regulations, the fact that this is a class divided society, in which the interests of the socially useful, productive class — the workers — are opposed to those of the socially useless parasites — the capitalists. On that fact the policies of past Labour governments. with those of much of the trade union leadership, have come to grief. Every Labour government has gone down in miserable defeat; there is no reason to think that things will be different in the future, no cause to believe that there is some mysterious lesson, closed to them in the past, which they can have learned now and which will enable them to succeed where once they failed. Perhaps the millions of workers who vote Labour, in spite of the evidence of that party's impotence and futility, are soothed by Kinnock's endless drone of verbiage, or by Hattersley's avuncular lisp; it can't be because of any glowing record of successful Labour governments.

Voting Tory or Labour — or for any of the others like the Alliance or the Communist Party — is like choosing between the Bad and the Ugly, with either label applying to either party. What of the Good? Capitalism puts the human race into such peril that the issue must be faced: there is nothing to hope for in the workers putting their trust in the parties which do not challenge the basis of modern society. Are the working class to continue to deny their political power to change society, by surrendering it to leaders who can only skim over the system's surface? Or will they assert that power to bring about revolutionary. fundamental social change to a world where poverty, famine, war. needless disease. class conflict are unknown?

Voters — which means workers — all over the world need to face these questions. Running the political cowboys out of town would be a start. Socialists have been around urging this for too long; when the working class begin to act for themselves we shall be able to ride off into the sunset.

Ivan