Does class still count? (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the years following the second world war it was widely said that “the old class barriers'’ were being broken down. England, characterised as the most class-ridden country in the world, had at last given up its forelock-touching, its obsession with accents, its one-law-for-the-rich-and-one-for-the-poor, thank you kindly ma’am, and the rest. Marghanita Laski’s novel The Village, published in 1951, showed the breakdown of tradition-based assumptions of social superiority in a small community: gentility and “background” gagging on the discovery of their small weight in the modern world. The class assumptions were those of pre-war Punch and West-End stage jokes, in which low incomes meant male illiteracy and female idiocy, and a servile manner was de rigueur from both.

In those terms, it was commonplace also that relatively few people admitted to being working-class. The usual term was “lower middle class”. What strata lay above this mass has always been indistinct—whether there existed a central middle class to which this was the aspiring lower fringe and another the cake-icing, as it were, or whether the middle class was a two-layer affair of uppers and lowers only. But whatever the boundaries, the array of qualifications was formidable: the school one went to, one’s dress and speech, family connections, tastes and, of course, income. And these things, we were told, were fast losing their significance in the nineteen-fifties. Social progress and humane legislation had equalised us all, making Jack as good as his master and privilege an archaism.

Superior & Inferior

Talking of “class” like that does not mean class at all. What is meant is social groupings imbued with the idea of places in a hierarchy. Viewed from the top, they are simply a question of degrees of extravagance. Veblin in his Theory of the Leisure Class dwelt on fox-hunting as the acme of “conspicuous wasteful consumption”, an incredibly expensive and incompetent—but ostentatious—way of doing what a chicken-farmer achieves better with a shotgun: and the ability to afford it makes its own social demarcation. The same applies to the public schooling and the domestic splendour, down to the details of personal appearance and manner. Nobody who has read Daphne Du Maurier’s snob-romance Rebecca is likely to forget the description of the cad: the kind of man who did not wear a hat and who would appeal only to “girls who gave one programmes in a cinema”.

From below, the groupings are stages in presumed rising-above the familiar deprivations and humiliations of working-class life. The person who has escaped from run-down housing to a suburb with trees, become a car-owner and seen his children “doing well”, is strongly persuaded to think of it as superiority. Those left behind in seedy surroundings and dismal jobs, condemned to having their noses rubbed in the worst of capitalism’s dirt, are all in a boat he has got out of: and what he now has, he’ll hold. On the other side there are people with more advantages — better houses, bigger cars, ampler displays of status — who look down on him. Called “class distinction”, these are the views from different rungs of the ladder.

Welfare Culture

What was implied, then, in the claim to break down class barriers was the ending of inequalities between social groups. The biggest factor ironing-out the differences was held to be the Welfare State. Not only need no-one be thrown into destitution by sickness or unemployment; medical attention was available to all according to need, and such stigmas as the pauper funeral were abolished. The extension of the school-leaving age and the accessibility of grants for further education were parts of the same process. “Equality of opportunity” was the watchword.

But besides these legislative steamrollers, equality was claimed to be spreading through society from the sheer diffusion of commodities. In money terms the television set in working-class homes was less of a luxury than what it replaced, the family piano; but in cultural terms, the same programmes went into the houses of rich and poor alike. Newspapers, car travel, labour-saving domestic appliances were all seen as having the same equalising tendency. Even holidays abroad, once the exclusive prerogative of the very well-to-do, were now available to working people. “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate” had vanished as social symbols. Instead, both were believed to be seated in front of television sets, reading the same continental holiday brochures through National Health spectacles.

New Labels

If any of this had been true, a silent social revolution should have taken place in the past twenty years. What has happened? In fact, the crude semi-feudal tokens of privilege whose disappearance was being celebrated have been replaced by a complex of social groupings and distinctions. “Class” is as pervasive as ever.

The redevelopment of towns has, if anything, intensified their stratification. Any large city is, socially, a series of islands on which people live among their acknowledged kinds — white-collars, labouring population, art-and-craft, high prosperity, etc.: the next island may be only up the road, but it is a foreign land whose children may not play with one’s own. The growth of council-house estates and owner-occupation, to say nothing of immigrant districts, has multiplied the islands. Likewise in rural areas the two layers of village life, gentry and farmworkers, have given way to the varied social self-valuations of commuters, directors and retired shopkeepers. It is commonly complained in the country that these new populations from town ‘‘don’t mix”; that is, they bring with them their own social-group palisades.

The idea of amenities as an equalitarian force is part of the old Fabian nonsense. In the early nineteen- twenties H. G. Wells informed Lenin and Trotsky that electric power would achieve more than the class struggle (“What a little bourgeois”, Lenin is supposed to have said afterwards). However, the divisive effects of piped and purchased amenities have grown as fast as they have spread. Every car carries its social label, the make and age connoting the owner’s income and status. The Fabians’ picture of ‘‘gas-and-water socialism” did not include House and Garden showing impossibly opulent kitchens and the Florentine statuary in Sir Wiliam’s loo. As for holidays abroad, "package” has become almost a contemptuous term implying bone-pared schedules of cheap hotels and sweaty droves pressed between famous buildings and souvenir shops. If a modern Robin Hood took that from the rich to give to the poor, he died laughing.

Dole, School, Colour

The Welfare State has, notoriously, gone sour on those who idealised it —not least in its promise to dissolve have-and-have-not differences. In general, what is provided by the State is the barest and most minimal; better has to be paid for, by those who can. The inevitable outcome has been the growth of private insurance schemes catering for the sizeable section who can’t quite afford to be cash patients but may, on an actuarial basis, keep their feet out of the water in which the poorest swim. In the everyday administration of “welfare”, the rise of the Claimants’ Unions owes directly to social-group attitudes to the Social Security system. So far from seeing themselves as part of the will of the community, officials have taken their task as a defensive action against undeserving layabouts and would-be tricksters. Indeed, the Welfare State has produced a saloon-bar mythology nearly as profuse as that of race. Its favourite character, heard-of everywhere, is the man who chooses unemployment because it pays him better: no-one seems to ask what appalling wage he gets in work, then.

The hope of educational equality has gone the same way. The replacement of selective separate schools by comprehensive ones was hailed as a great levelling movement: few people can have noticed that comprehensive education was called “true selection” in the 1958 Labour Party document on the subject. Apart from the grading principle on which comprehensive education is based, the schools themselves have quickly acquired their own status to be sought-after or not: the case of Holland Park as the “superior” comp is now being reproduced again and again. Nor does the admission of working-class boys and girls to universities go far to diminish the differences. Last month E. R. Braithwaite, the black West Indian writer, described on television his days at an English university where all students were equal before the subject at study — and his discovery later that this did not make them equal before the world.

Race has been one other field round which social groups have formed themselves. It is curious how the issue is always made that of colour when it is patently class. Anyone who doubts that should try fitting everything now said about coloured immigrants over what used to be said about the so-called lumpenproletariat — the poorest, most deprived sections of the working class — any time up to 1939. The fit is exact. Of inferior intelligence; lazy (of course); dirty; and disposed to violent crime. Moreover, they have huge families (living like animals), have rowdy parties every night, eat smelly food, and would ruin a decent neighbourhood if they were allowed in it. Enoch Powell might be interested to know that his story of excrement pushed through the letter-box was first heard by the writer from an industrial housing estate, all white, over twenty years ago.

Class and Capitalism

What is class, then, that will not be eradicated? The numerous groupings and divisions which persist and re-form continually in our society are, as has been said, not classes though they call themselves so. Classes are categories deriving from the basic organisation of society. If one looks at capitalism for its organic structure, there are two classes only: those who live by owning the means of production and distribution, and those who don’t. The position of the former is obvious enough. For the latter, the position would be also easy to see if it were not obscured — for many — by semantics and humbug. It is one of dependence on being employed and paid a wage. Regardless of accent, colour, education and high or low income, nine-tenths of the population everywhere are in this situation.

The supposed other classes are not sub-sections within that division. They are reflections of it, demonstrations of the way capitalism sets man against man. The fact that people are always hoping to get rid of these “class barriers”, and short-lived successes in doing so are claimed, shows their fluidity while the single great division remains. They are fluid because no-one is secure who depends on a wage. Last year publicity was given to the troubles of out-of-work executives. One, in a television programme, spoke angrily of the treatment at the Social Security office: if the clerk had not been a woman, he said, he would have smashed her face in. On the scrap-heap, the pretences of class are exchanged for the realities.

What is Classless Society?

One thing which is clear about “class” is that nobody likes it. Many people take it to be inevitable, but live in hopes of some lucky break which will take them to another rung of the ladder where, it is thought, things would be different. Everyone talks of “getting out of the rat race”.

When the phrase “classless society” is used, it usually means the absence of unfairness and inequality among social groups. What must be seen is that these problems derive from and exist because of capitalism’s division into owners and non-owners. The classless society is one in which the means of living have become common property. Given that, the basis for any assumption of social superiority from race, sex or possessions disappears. The first step to making such a society, however, is for all those dependent on wages to recognise this as the only true factor of their class position now. "Class-consciousness” is commonly a term for snobbery. Correctly, it means understanding of the fact that everyone who has to work is — working-class.

Robert Barltrop

Some Definitions (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

CAPITALISM is the sort of society you live in now. It is a system of wage-slavery in which a small minority owns most of the world, and (sometimes) employ the rest of us. In capitalism, most things are sold for a price—production is for profit rather than for use. The world is divided up by frontiers into warring factions known as “nations.” Symptoms of capitalism include war, hunger, boom-slump cycles, strikes, widespread loneliness and despair. 

Countries like Russia or China, whose governments claim to be “Socialist”, are of course capitalist like their western rivals.

COMMUNES (kibbutzim etc.) are attempts by a few to get some shelter from the capitalist rat race. Whilst they may benefit their members, from the standpoint of abolishing capitalism they are a waste of time. Socialism in one country is not possible, let alone Socialism in one farm. Socialism could, however, be described as a world-wide commune.

HUMAN NATURE is a most frequent objection to the idea of a Socialist society. It is supposed that human beings have some fixed patterns of social behaviour which are especially conducive to capitalism. In fact, what is normally termed “human nature” is the result of social conditioning. Private property, leadership, aggressiveness, monogamy, etc. are no more congenial to human beings than alternative forms. A knowledge of different societies, historically and geographically, is sufficient to knock the human nature myth on the head.

LABOUR PARTY is often called “Socialist” but in fact never has been. The Labour Party was formed to improve the conditions of workers by reforms within capitalism. It sought gradually to change capitalism; instead capitalism has gradually changed it. The Labour Party is now no more than an alternative team for the management of British capitalism.

PATRIOTISM is unscientific and runs counter to the interests of working-people. It is therefore opposed by Socialists, who do not offer “policies for Britain” etc, but demand a world community without frontiers.

POPULATION EXPLOSION is certainly a reality, but it is a myth that it is responsible for hunger, pollution or overcrowded living. The world can easily support many times its present population in comfort and plenty of room. Hysterical Malthusianism diverts attention from the real problem: production is geared to the market, rather than to the satisfaction of human needs.

REFORMS are basically attempts to solve problems within capitalism rather than by doing away with it. Capitalism never runs out of reforms. Socialists are not opposed to all reforms, but we don’t think it is our job to propose them or campaign for them. Reforms are usually of negligible value to the working-class, and often create new problems which require further reforms. Fundamental social problems are always untouched because these are rooted in capitalism.

RELIGION is opposed by all rational people, but especially by Socialists who see it as compensation for social misery, and a diversion from the urgent problems of the real world. Happily, religion is steadily ebbing away in the most advanced areas of capitalism.

REVOLUTION is the process of changing from one social system to another. It is not necessarily a matter of barricades and bloodbaths, but in the case of the Socialist revolution, requires mainly mass understanding and democratic organisation. It is part of the job of Socialists to hasten this revolution by spreading Socialist understanding.

SOCIALISM is the next stage in human social evolution—unless capitalism destroys us first by means of nuclear/chemical-biological war. or ecological collapse. Socialism will mean the abolition of private property, money and the wages system; the introduction of voluntary work and free access to necessary goods and services. Socialism is a world-wide society of voluntary co-operation. It will put an end to wars, poverty and unemployment, enabling our species to concentrate on less serious problems.

The Cynicism of Capitalism: 1. Come and exploit our Africans (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always made clear that nationalism, whether in Africa, Israel, Ireland or wherever, is a snare and a delusion for the working class of the country concerned. National independence may well be a good thing for the native capitalist class who are naturally concerned at seeing the fruits of the exploitation of the local working class going into the pockets of the British Imperialists or whoever the alien ruling class might be. But for workers to risk imprisonment or even death in a struggle for independence which will ensure for them nothing more than the joy of being exploited by their very own capitalists instead of foreign ones is clearly the height of folly.

A rather lurid light on this subject has recently been displayed in an advertisement in The Guardian by the Nigerian Government:

People are earning

HUGE PROFITS

in Nigeria


Huge domestic market of 55 millions


Abundant manpower is available at a rate
as low as 7 U.S. cents an hour.

You can get your investment back in
less than 3 years.

It should be pointed out that the words Huge Profits are printed in gigantic capitals in the advert, and are repeated at the end — People are earning huge profits in Nigeria: why don’t YOU ! The word “people” is itself a misleading term beloved of capitalist propagandists. It made nice capital, for example, when Nigeria was part of the British Empire, for the national capitalists to appeal to the Nigerian workers: People of Nigeria, fight to throw out the British Imperialist Exploiters. But nobody can be deceived by the present rallying-cry in the advert. The “people” who are “earning” these huge profits are not the African workers. They are earning something less. 7 cents an hour, in fact.

So the Nigerian government is setting out to get British capitalists to come and exploit African workers. Which means, of course, that a lot of these workers are going to find themselves in the ironical position of once again being exploited by the same white capitalists from whom they had fought and won their alleged independence. It is not sure, what with devaluations of the pound and revaluations of the dollar, exactly what 7 cents is worth these days but a tanner (two-and-a-half new pence to younger readers) would be somewhere near it. “In less than three years” gives an effective rate of exploitation to show a net return on capital of between 30 and 40 per cent, per annum. That’s really mouth-watering exploitation — far better than you would find in England or America. Or far worse, of course. Depending on whether you are a worker or a capitalist. That makes all the difference. Black or white clearly makes none.

Naked and unashamed, the Nigerian capitalists are boasting to Guardian readers (those poor devils who are fed each day on a diet of anti-racialism as though that were the only cause that mattered and anti-South-Africanism as though the natives of that unhappy land were living on even less than a tanner an hour) about what shockingly low wages they are getting away with. These are the people that the other people, the Nigerian workers, have put in power. “Come and exploit our blacks. They are the cheapest wage-slaves you can get.” We are not saying that the wage-slaves were better off under British rule. It is clear that they could hardly have been worse off. Even the worst capitalists must pay wages sufficient to live on. And they could hardly live on less than 7 miserable U.S. cents. And it is doubtful if such brutally cynical advertising would have happened. British capitalists are a bit too sophisticated to advertise “Our workers are paid less than other wage-slaves”. It certainly adds insult to injury to know that your exploiters are actually boasting about your slavery in the columns of the world’s leading do-gooder paper, god help us.

One wonders what that old do-gooder, the Labour peer Lord Fenner Brockway, thinks of the result of his efforts on behalf of African nationalism. No-one was more scathing in days gone by about the Socialist Party’s contention that nationalism was nothing to do with Socialism and was a trap for the working class. Brockway and the other leading Labourites of those days were all great friends of people like Nkrumah, Banda and Kenyatta. All of whom, when in power, have treated the African workers to an adaptation of the Biblical phrase: the British rules you with whips, we will rule you with scorpions. Which of course did not stop Brockway and other lefties from supporting people like Nkrumah who could fairly be described as Black Hitlers in the making (and the last little phrase would be omitted by the victims of the Nkrumah dictatorship which Brockway upheld).

Only a couple of years ago, the Nigerian government which had achieved independence had a spot of bother. It seems that some of their fellow black capitalists who lived in a part of the country they called Biafra wanted independence from their own black capitalist brothers. There was a lot of oil in the Port Harcourt area where they came from and they didn’t see why they should share the swag with the other black capitalists in Lagos. So there was another little fracas which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Africans, Nigerians and Biafran workers and their wives and children, being caught in a most murderous bloodbath or starved to death. But it seems that this was independence that the Labourites didn’t approve of. You see, these were the days of the Wilson government, and the fake socialists who were then managing British capitalism preferred to pay ball with the Nigerian government because this was in the interests of British Business (as a searing article in, of all places, The Guardian made clear when it was all over). And now that Nigerian independence has been finally won and defended against black and white alike, the net result of all the suffering and carnage is that African workers get a tanner an hour.

L. E. Weidberg

The Cynicism of Capitalism: 2: Partners Wanted (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The company’s prospectus is a colourful document of orange, red, yellow and gold paper. Pages are perforated by cut-outs of hearts. If all this seems a bit unusual, the prospectus offering is more so, as The Guardian (17th January) revealed. It is an invitation to the West German public by Kohle Liengeschaften to purchase limited partnership in an operation currently consisting of brothels in Konstanz, a town on Germany’s Swiss border, and Kaiserslautern which is near Mannheim and a NATO base.

“The oldest profession in the world is also the solidest,” the Company says on the cover of the prospectus. And an accompanying letter to potential investors suggests that purchasing a partnership in the enterprise “is an investment worth while because Irma La Douce never has a recession.”

The profession may have been around for a long time but it is believed that the Kohle venture is the first time capital has been publicly — and legally — raised in West Germany for an enterprise of this kind. And the financial enticements are substantial since the company is guaranteeing a minimum annual return of 9 per cent. “This is a better investment than stock,” asserts Herr Kohle, founder and managing director.

In Germany prostitution is considered a social necessity. The administration generally approves the existence of bordellos on the ground that they keep prostitutes off the streets (brothel bedrooms are officially referred to as places of work). So accepted is the profession in fact that there is even a slickly-written travel guide to West German brothels and red-light districts that lists each house and its location on a city-by-city basis and rates the house according to parking facilities, prices, service and amenities.

Prostitution is not a new venture for Kohle Liengeschaften. The real estate operation currently derives its income from renting small apartments to prostitutes and from concessionaires such as the night-club operators at the Kaiserslautern facility. The company, Herr Kohle emphasises, receives no direct part of any prostitutes earnings. Herr Kohle says that there are currently forty-seven “lady tenants” at Kaiserslautern and thirty-five at Konstanz. Generally, he says, a girl stays for three or four years. How long she stays usually depends upon whether she is making money and whether she feels secure.

The brothels are advantageously situated. The Kaiserslautern operation is the only one of its kind near the NATO base, while the Konstanz operation is near a casino and just across the border from Switzerland, where prostitution is illegal. The brothels’ “lady tenants” are checked by the management for police records, among other things. "We don’t take all the girls who apply,” Herr Kohle says. “For example, we don’t want wild women.” The girls, he adds, come from all over Europe. In return, the girls sign rental contracts for an indefinite period. In addition to protection, Herr Kohle says the company also provides apartments at Kaiserslautern where the girls’ relatives can stay when they visit. He adds that the company is also considering construction of a separate facility next year at Kaiserslautern for children of the prostitutes. These features, Herr Kohle says, offer the girls some security and "take some of the harshness out of the profession”.

Herr Kohle’s “new style” operations have borne financial fruit. So far nearly £600,000 in limited partnerships has been purchased by 120 to 130 investors. The limited partnerships are sold in £5,500 units. However, to attract the small investor and to provide anonymity, several investors may each put up £550 and pool their investments to make the minimum for a partnership unit. According to its prospectus, Kohle Liengeschaften is currently offering equity capital equivalent to £1 million or about £150,000 less than the estimated market value of the two properties. By the end of 1973 the company hopes to have eight brothels in Germany and Austria. To reach this goal he says about £4.5 million will have to be raised.

The company is advertising in newspapers and is selling partnerships through investment consultants and through its own sales office, which includes some former IOS Mutual Fund salesmen. Herr Kohle is a 43-year- old entrepreneur who is also in the construction and investment business and says that he put together Kohle Liengeschaften because "there was still room for adventure” in his life. He says he is optimistic about the future of the venture. “Prostitution has weathered all the storms over the past 2,000 years without a crisis and I don’t see one now unless the human race changes,” he says.

Here we have an example of the mentality that views all things as commodities, including the female sexual capacity. The brothel in this case is the market place, the buyers desirous males. Herr Kohle need fear no change in the human race, but he has left out of his calculation the fact that a section of the human race — the working-class section — will change conditions and, as a consequence, will change the behaviour of the human race. This is a change that will remove the commodity status from society and thus eliminate all forms of prostitution — and prevent the likes of him from exploiting women.

R. Ambridge

50 Years Ago: The Way of Peace (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may be useful to remember that during the great war of 1914-1918, the workers who were drawn into that bloody orgie wanted nothing more than to be allowed to remain in their native land, and to be provided with a constant means of obtaining a living by the sale of their labour power to the master-class. That is the high watermark of their intelligence, which socialists so much deplore; but to say nations are torn with suspicions of each other, or secretly preparing war-like plans of self-aggrandisement, etc., is a travesty of facts, or the result of lamentable ignorance. It is not the nations, but the greedy capitalist class whose sectional interests compel them to regard each other suspiciously and who are secretly preparing to commit another terrible crime against humanity. The great mass of the world’s workers know nothing of these plans, and instead of suspicion there is an ever-growing sympathy springing up between them : a sympathy born of the knowledge that there is only one enemy they have to face the wide world over :—the capitalist class who alone are responsible for the present economic chaos, and the sum of human misery and suffering entailed thereby.

(From an article "The Way of Peace" by W. W. F. in the Socialist Standard October 1922).

SPGB Meetings (1972)

Party News from the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris - socialist, artist, poet (1990)

The Front Page quote from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Well, I say all this is war, and the result of war, the war this time, not of competing nations, but of competing firms or capitalist units: and it is this war of the firms which hinders the peace between nations which you surely have agreed with me in thinking is so necessary; for you must know that war is the very breath of the nostrils of these fighting firms, and they have now, in our times, got into their hands nearly all the political power, and they band together in each country in order to make their respective governments fulfil just two functions: the first is at home to act as a strong police force, to keep the ring in which the strong are beating down the weak; the second is to act as a piratical body-guard abroad, a petard to explode the doors which lead to the markets of the world."

- From How We Live and How We Might Live by William Morris

Sting in the Tail: A Sordid Tale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Sordid Tale

The history of British Labour governments is littered with sordid episodes. One of these was told on ITV's "A Marriage of Inconvenience" on 15 August.

In 1949 Ruth Williams, a white Briton, married Seretse Khama, a tribal chief In the British "Protectorate" of Bechuanaland. The neighbouring South African government, which had just imposed Apartheid, was outraged and demanded that the Labour government refuse to recognise Khama as legitimate chief.

Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, was determined that Britain must have its own atom bomb but the American government wouldn't provide the necessary know-how.

But America was short of uranium which South Africa had in plenty, so the Labour government made a deal with South Africa to betray Khama in return for uranium which it would then swop for American atom secrets.

Khama was summoned to London to be subjected to threats, attempted bribery and finally banishment from Bechuanaland.

So the government that claimed to oppose Apartheid actually assisted it, while the cynicism and treachery they displayed would have shamed the hardest-hearted Tory.

The re-telling of this episode is a reminder that Labour governments will stop at nothing in their efforts on behalf of British capitalism.

Trotsky's "Marxism"

The 50th anniversary of Trotsky’s murder had his followers lavishing the usual praise on their hero.

In a letter to The Guardian (23 August), David Widgery of the Socialist Workers Party claimed, among other things, that Trotsky had applied Marxist analysis to 20th century events.

We deny this: What Trotsky applied was the bombastic crystal-gazing which had him writing in 1935, for example, that ". . . England is heading for a revolutionary explosion" only months before the Tories won their biggest ever majority.

According to Trotsky the sit-down strikes by French workers in 1936 "revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system", that capitalism in 1938 was in its "death agony", etc., etc.

History has proved Trotsky's analyses to be nonsense and his legacy to the working class has been to confuse thousands of them down the years.

Ryzhkov's "Marxism"

In the struggle for power inside the Communist Party of the USSR there appears to be a conflict between those who would immediately go over to a Western-style market economy and those who would have that change enacted more gradually.

Amongst the gradualists is the present Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. But to illustrate the hypocrisy and deceit of the ruling élite  in the USSR his more gradual approach does not apply to his own personal ownership.

In the youth daily Komsomolskaya Pravada, it has been reported that Ryzhkov has bought his state dacha with one-and-a-half hectares of forest for the ludicrous sum of 47,000 roubles (officially £47,000 but in reality about one tenth that amount judging by the foreign tourist rate.)

With the thought of yet another coal strike in the offing perhaps Mr. Ryzhkov plans to have a good supply of firewood on hand this winter. Another example of "socialist" planning?

Off the Rails

During the enquiry into the Clapham rail disaster, which led to 35 deaths, the Westminster coroner Paul Knapman made a telling point about the cause of the disaster, when questioning the technician who carried out the faulty signalling work.

During questioning of Mr. Hemingway, Mr. Knapman said that he believed that there were four "core reasons" for the disaster — a lack of instruction; a lack of supervision; a lack of testing along the guidelines set out in circular SL-53; and "the general reckless haste, pressure, pressure, pressure" of the re-signalling work

The Independent 11 September

That the pressure was indeed intense is backed up by the information that Hemingway had had only one day off in 13 weeks, that he had no formal training and that the acting testing officer who had to check Hemingway's work had no formal training either.

The "core reason" for the Clapham disaster is of course capitalism. In a sane society based on production for use there would be no need to scrimp on safety measures.

Reformist "Progress"

The Gulf crisis has meant a big set-back for environmentalists in the USA.

Until now their pressure (aided by the low cost of imported oil) has enabled them to block further oil exploration, notably in Alaska and off the Californian coast.

Now the strategists who consider the long-term interests of US capitalism insist that America has become too dependent on imported oil and that more domestic oil production is in "the national interest".

The oil companies are using this situation to turn the tables on their enemy. One of their chief spokesmen stated:

The national security aspects in oil have been completely subordinated in recent years to the environmental concerns. Now the emphasis is coming back to the national security aspect. If there is a conflict between the two, it may no longer be resolved in favour of the environmentalists.

The Guardian 25 August

And the environmentalists' other bogey, the nuclear industry, has seized the opportunity to strenghten its case by pointing out that nuclear plants greatly reduce US dependence on oil imports.

On top of this come allegations that environmentalists are a threat to national security! Congressman Dannemeyer of California says:

The environmentalists party . . . is a greater security threat than Saddam Hussein could ever be.

Now that the "communist" menace has gone, maybe the environmentalists will be the next victims to be labelled "un-American". Stranger things have happened.

Down on the Farm

Riot police lobbing tear gas grenades at angry crowds — lorries hi-jacked — roads blocked by burning debris — a scene from Lebanon, South Africa or Palestine?

No. This is rural France as farmers protest at the import of meat and lamb.

Many of them face ruin as the price of lamb has fallen by 17 per cent, calves by 10 per cent and cows by 7 per cent.

Some "experts" blame the French government for cutting subsidies, some the import of cheap produce from Britain, others blame cheap imports from Eastern Europe. None of them apparently blame the real cause — capitalism with its production for profit. 

The spectacle of children starving — while farmers riot about the ruin that faces them as the meat mountain grows — is just another example of how essential it is that we scrap the out-dated system of society that produces everything for sale despite the desperate needs of the world's hungry.

Workers leave the running of society in the hands of "experts" at their peril.

Editorial: Why we need socialism (1990)

Editorial from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The case for socialism — a society of common ownership, democratic control, production for use and distribution according to need — rests on the fact that capitalism does not work, and cannot be made to work, in the interests of the majority in society who have to go out to work for a wage or salary.

Capitalism is a class-divided society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by a minority of extremely rich individuals. Goods and services, useful things, are produced not with the intention of satisfying our needs, but with the intention of making a profit for this minority. Production is subject to the profit motive. The economic law of "no profit, no production" rules.

Basically, capitalism can only work as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off profits. It is because priority must be given to making profits that the needs of the wage and salary working majority are neglected. Profits come first. People's needs come second.

This is why the majority face problems even when it comes to meeting our basic needs. This is why there are problems over the quality of the food we eat. Why there are millions of people living in substandard housing, and why some are completely homeless. Why the health service is run on the cheap. Why there are problems over schools, transport, the environment — in fact why there are all the problems which the politicians promise to solve but never do.

Capitalism is not just a national phenomenon. It exists in all countries including, obviously now, in Russia. It is in fact a world system, and the problems of world poverty, ignorance and disease are to be laid at its door too. The productive forces exist to provide every man, woman and child on this planet with adequate food, clothing and shelter. Yet millions die each year of starvation or starvation-related diseases, while farmers in Europe and North America are paid not to grow food. These people die because they have no money and so don't constitute a market. Which means they don't count for the operation of the capitalist system.

Because capitalism involves a built-in competitive struggle for profits there is also a struggle that from time to time breaks out into actual warfare for sources of raw materials, for markets, for investment outlets and for strategic points and routes to protect these. To be prepared for this, and as a "deterrent" to other states to keep their distance, all of the states into which the world is divided have to maintain the most destructive weapons of war they can afford. So the world spends more on armaments than on dealing with problems like starvation and disease. So, also, the major powers have stockpiled enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity many times over.

As if the threat of nuclear annihilation was not enough, there is also the threat of ecological disaster — either from global warming or from the hole in the ozone layer, take your pick — caused by industrial processes firms are forced to adopt to remain competitive and stay in the race for profits. So this is capitalism. And this is why we must get rid of it.

We must replace capitalism with socialism. A complete change in the basis of society, from class ownership and production for profit to common ownership and production just for use, must be brought about by conscious democratic political action before anything lasting or constructive can be done to solve existing problems. With common ownership and democratic control we will be freed from the tyranny of the economic laws of capitalism which restrict and distort what is produced to what is profitable. The barrier to us using the means of production to meet our needs will have gone.

Letter: Democratic rights (1990)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democratic rights

Dear Editors.

In the Socialist Standard (September 1989) you wrote that the Socialist Party of Great Britain “wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression”.

I fail to see how democratic rights can be achieved within the framework of world capitalism. The capitalist system, state or private, East or West, is not democratic. It is a form of class dictatorship, with a minority capitalist class in power and control over the exploitable working class majority.

The capitalist class cannot be in the business of handing out democratic rights and risk losing control, but they do when necessary and under pressure make concessions and legislate reforms. Governments which are the executive committees of the capitalist class call these overtures and reforms "democratic rights". Which is a lie, because they are civil rights dressed up to make capitalism look better and they can easily be rescinded.

Socialists should not ignore civil rights. Some can be appreciated and be useful and all are part of social understanding. They do not however lead to democratic rights. Only a socialist society can produce democratic rights.

A sane system of society or real democracy. real communism or real socialism, all have the same meaning and intent which could materialise about the same time.

The only democratic right achievable under capitalism could take place when the working class through a workable majority captures the political apparatus of the capitalist class to gain political control, so that the working class is able to replace capitalism with socialism.

From this premise a democratic right can only be established by a majority, in the interests of a majority.

John F. Ahrens 

Vancouver, Canada

Reply:

Our correspondent is confusing political democracy and a democratic society.

Capitalism is not and can never be a democratic society because, as he says, it is based on class power and privilege, social inequality, and exploitation. A real democracy, where everybody would have an equal say in decision-making about all aspects of social life, including and in fact particularly the production and distribution of wealth, is only possible in a classless society of common ownership.

Capitalism can, however, accommodate a limited degree of political democracy in the sense of allowing every adult equal voting rights to decide who shall occupy various political posts at national and local level. Political democracy is by definition confined to a very limited sphere of decision-making and even here can never be complete as it is distorted by the social inequality that is at the basis of capitalism: those with money can and do pay to get more publicity for their views and views that favour them. As in Animal Farm, under capitalist political democracy "all are equal but some are more equal than others".

Despite these limitations and distortions the existence of political democracy under capitalism—and the various “democratic rights” that accompany it such as freedom of speech, publication, organisation, and assembly—is an advantage for the working class as it provides the best framework under capitalism for the socialist movement to organise and grow. This is why the Socialist Party supports the struggles of workers living under political dictatorships to obtain "democratic rights" as before the war in fascist countries and recently in East Europe.

Editors.

Caught In The Act: Oil and carrots (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oil and carrots

Some time ago Ken Livingstone said that anyone who enjoyed being in Parliament was in need of psychiatric care. But he was in a minority; almost every other MP is convinced that parliament is an essential contributor to our safety and welfare and that without its debates the nation would be like a ship without a rudder. So it was that as the crisis in the Gulf developed there were many people who thought that in so grave a situation nothing less would do than the immediate recall of parliament.

The government agreed (Margaret Thatcher takes only brief holidays in any case, and then grudgingly) and the Members selflessly left the grouse moors and the sun-soaked beaches to hurry to London. After a couple of days of well-publicised talking they resumed their holidays, leaving us with the question what was it all about? Was it worth it?

Tyrant

At the end of the debate the Commons voted, more or less, in favour of Britain going to war with Iraq — to go to war, in other words, over a border dispute between two other states — something which, when it suits them, government will decline to do. Of course tho Members were excited by the sudden discovery that Saddam is a brutal tyrant, after all those years when he had been our friend for whom we could overlook one or two minor aberrations such as his ordering the use of chemical weapons to slaughter thousands of helpless Kurdish villagers.

In fact so dose a friend was Saddam that his tyranny was sustained by armaments sold to him by Western powers (in the debate Denis Healey referred to "stuffing arms down tho throats" of powers like Iraq, although he was a member of a government which did not demur at doing just that) Any British, American or French soldiers who have to do the fighting will not be consoled by the fact that their governments supplied many of the weapons being used against them. Margaret Thatcher, who is contemptuous of history, summed up the debate when she told the house that "History has many examples of perfidy and deceit" — an unconscious warning that the Honourable Members were providing another example.

But parliament is nothing if not adaptable about these things How else could it have coped in the past with the changes in its assessment of Stalin, Ceausescu, the unity of Germany, the resurrection of Japanese power?

In tune with the times Thatcher was belligerent, Kinnock statesmanlike, Ashdown cautious in tho soldierly way befitting someone trained to kill with their bare hands. Except for a handful of MPs who put their confidence in the shaky delusions of the United Nations the House was united — Tory, Labour, SLD, SDP all jostled into tho lobby to vote for a war in which they have every reason to believe they would not be killed nor even fight.

At times the perfidy and deceit in the Commons became so intense that reality was lost sight of. Thatcher spoke as if Britain was a major factor in the crisis. She harped on the ‘legality’ of the action against Iraq as if the British and American ruling classes (or any other, for that matter) only indulge in "legal" military enterprises which meant that she had forgotten what had happened in Grenada and Panama and what the Israeli forces have been up to recently. She warned that the Iraqi take-over of Kuwait affected " . . . world security, world oil supplies and world stability" — which is either untrue or extravagant with the truth.

War fever

The real purpose of the debate, the reason which brought those MPs back from their holidays, was to gird up tho British workers for war. We have been subjected to a stream of vicious propaganda about Saddam, who is the latest bogeyman after the likes of Hitler, Nasser and Gadaffi, to provide lurid headlines in the gutter press. All these leaders, we are told, were mad along with their other personality problems — which ignores the fact that someone like Saddam needs a kind of sanity to survive in the volatile politics of Iraq

One Tory MP blustered that he wanted Saddam "politically humiliated and militarily castrated" which hints kinkily that Westminster has its personality problems as well. Once more the world is divided into goodies and baddies. Foreign Office Minister William Waldegrave drooled that "Democracies are slow to anger, but once angered they will go right to the end of the road". Again there is a general unity among tho capitalist parties that "our" interests demand that "we" go to war to remove some evil force from the world so that we can live in peace, at least until the next war

What cements that unity is the interests which are actually at stake in the Gulf. These do not include tho welfare of the people in Kuwait or Britain who, as members of the working class, are readily expendable and so not fit subjects for emergency debates in parliament. A former American Assistant Defence Secretary pointed out, as the crisis began, that if Kuwait grew carrots nobody — by which he meant no member of the ruling class — would give a damn if the place was invaded.

The crisis revolves around the fact that Kuwait is oil-rich and that Iraqi ambitions threatened to upset tho pricing structure of the world oil industry The former Labour Cabinet Minister was not talking about the world supply of carrots when he said ". . . it is a world necessity that we have access . . . at a reasonable price".

Short-term

In these kinds of situation — like Suez in 1956 — there is very little scope for capitalist powers to take other than a short term view. In 1956 a long-term assessment saw how wasteful and unproductive for the capitalist class was the assault on Egypt by the French and British forces The same view now sees that, again from the standpoint of the capitalists, there is an enormous amount to lose by going to war with Iraq, among it lasting damage to the oilfields and the replacement of Saddam by a government more hostile to Western interests. That is the logic of the situation; but even by its own standards capitalism does not always work logically

So what the emergency debate demonstrated was that at present parliament does not operate to deal with the interests of the majority who elect it. Its role is to pass the laws which are needed to ensure the most effective exploitation of the working class and the most powerful defence of the profits of the exploiting class. Occasional showpiece debates encourage us to believe that parliament is concerned for our welfare and this perfidy and deceit is called democracy

A saner way of running human affairs would not be profit-motivated and productive of social schisms. It would have neither wars nor smug politicians to urge us to die in them. It may even, if it made sense from the point of view of human welfare, shut down the oilfields in the Middle East and grow carrots there instead — which would be a neat and conclusive way of proclaiming that somebody at least gives a damn.

Ivan

Capitalism pollutes the planet (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is generally accepted that a greenhouse effect has been and is being created and that the ozone layer above the Earth is being dangerous depleted, both representing enormous potential disasters looming up for the not-so-future generations. Socialists argue that the fault lies with the capitalist system and its blinkered, all-consuming quest for the maximisation of profit from its industrial and commercial output.

The threat of global warming is the result of perhaps a century of the pouring of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by capitalist industry while the ozone situation is attributable to the massive use of CFCs since the 1950s as a cheap and easy-to-produce chemical serving many industrial and domestic purposes.

We do not ask you to take the Socialist's word for it that it is capitalism's motivation with profit and therefore with cost that is the fundamental cause of present environmental problems. W. Fay, administrator of the influential US industrial lobby grouping, says “congressional environmental bills must pass the affordability test’’ (Time, 16 April). In plain language this means if it costs a lot, pare it down, compromise, cut corners, think about it again, fight a rearguard action, anything in fact except putting human concern first. For in capitalism the bottom-line of profit is the all-important factor. If you have any doubts on this turn to the financial pages of the “quality’’ press and just glance at the long list of companies all parading the latest gains and losses in their stocks. Then turn to the accompanying pages and peruse the analysts' comments and considerations of the various companies to invest in. These will have nothing whatsoever to do with the usefulness of the products being produced or even whether these are vital to human life. Profit and profit alone is the god, and this hysteria pervades the whole of the global financial world and is now a 24- hour frenetic international affair.

Business as usual

President Bush heads the biggest capitalist state in the world and in his election campaign liked to term himself the “environmental president". Once in office he has found governing more difficult. Now he is pursuing “a balance" between sharply competing interests on environmental issues. Urged on by John Sununu, White House Chief of Staff, and Richard Darman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, “who have viewed environmental protection with scepticism if it impugned on economic growth", Bush told an international conference in Washington on global warming "that more study was needed to help resolve ‘uncertainties’ about the effect of global warming and the costs of pollution control" (International Herald-Tribune, 21 March). Translated, this means ‘take it easy, not too fast, don’t lets go round spending a lot of money’.

The same paper had earlier reported (6 March) that each year US manufacturers belch thousands of tons of ozone-depleting chemicals into the stratosphere. Until last year IBM's circuit-board plant, one of the largest users of these chemicals in the US. released more than two million pounds annually. Even though these emissions have been reduced as a result of regulations:

According to the National Resources Defense Council two chemicals that are as yet unregulated—methyl chloroform and tetrochloride—together account for 33 percent of man-made ozone-destroying chlorine in the stratosphere . . . As long as these are used the ozone will be unable to recover even if CFCs are phased out entirely', said a spokeswoman for the group and she continued that although 200 companies reported less methyl chloroform emissions in 1988 almost as many others increased emissions’.

Methyl chloroform, the report went on, is still used by IBM because no substitute has yet been found. Just imagine finding out you were being fed on a slow poison but then being told this would have to continue till a substitute was found!

D. A. Hayes, an organiser of Earth Day that took place on 25 April, spoke of the last ten years as “a decade of greed, sleaze and mendacity". Yes, indeed they were, but you would need to be motivated by unbounded optimism to think that the problems of the environment can be terminated whilst leaving the capitalist profit motive firmly in place:

Although environmental issues are now firmly on the political agenda in many countries action to clean up the earth is rare . . . because it is costly. A pledge by the seven wealthiest industrial nations last summer to undertake concerted and determined action to help the environment has so far achieved nothing. This week the EPA released figures indicating that US plants spewed 4.57 billion pounds of poisonous chemicals into the air, land and water in 1988. (International Herald-Tribune, 21 March).

This is not the complete picture because the Environmental Protection Agency requires reports only from industries discharging more than 50,000 pounds of the chemicals that are considered most harmful to humans or the environment. Los Angeles, for example, is being overwhelmed by foul air, trash, and water shortages. The EPA has also reported 112 million people—nearly half the US population-living in areas still exceeding the smog standards (Time, 16 April).

Same the whole world over

The problem of “balancing”, as Bush called weighting up cost versus environment, affects the whole world, in Australia only one of Sydney's 35 beaches is free of pollution. Many of the others, including Bondi and Manly, are frequently fouled by household sewage and industrial waste. The sewage contains significant amounts of toxic chemicals and heavy metals such as mercury and lead but "the government authorities in Sydney have been reluctant to risk unpopularity by putting up taxes and being tough on industrial waste discharges" (International Herald-Tribune, 1 April). This is pretty much the tale round the globe.

There is an obverse side: 'where there's muck there's brass'. Capital will seek investment high or low and recruit every laudable human sentiment to justify its activity. That's why we re all green now:

Spinning gold from garbage is the alchemy of the 1990s. That's the message to entice investors into targeting environment-control companies. Cleaning up our polluted planet will be the growth industry of the 90s says D. McKercher of the Oppenheimer Global Environment Fund. Government spending on environmental programs could soar providing a bonanza for well-positioned companies. (International Herald-Tribune, 9 April).

It is just as though the capitalist monster had spawned a parasite to feed on its maggoty and putrefying flesh.

So one suggestion we could put to capitalist investors is to split their money between the polluting industries and the cleaning-up ones. That way would provide a never-ending round-about of profit-taking. Facetious? Perhaps, but that's certainly the face that capitalism presents. Socialists have a much more logical suggestion. Why not dispose of the society which is self-evidently responsible for the appalling pollution of the world environment? Stop the terrible mess being made in the first place and then there'll be no clearing up to do. That saves resources twice over.

To the millions expressing their support for Earth Days and joining in parades, planting trees, recycling waste, and taking part in nature walks and demonstrations. we say consider whether a profit motivation of production can be reconciled with a clean planet. Taking the evidence put forward in this article as being just a tiny corner of the general picture of the rapacity of the capitalist system, ask yourself whether the answer can truly be an affirmative one.

Max Judd

50 Years Ago: What They Say About Socialism (1990)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might have been expected that the war would have helped to disabuse peoples minds of some of the grossest forms of ignorance concerning the nature of Socialism and its utter incompatibility with forms of dictatorship-capitalism such as those in Germany and Italy. Yet we still see writers who claim to be well-informed perpetrating the old falsehoods.

Miss Margaret Cole, writing in the Tribune (August 30th. 1940), about the modernising of Turkey under the late Kemal Ataturk. credits him with seeing the need "to establish the amount of totalitarianism" or "Socialism"—call it what you will—which is imperative to the twentieth century.

"This necessity," she says, "has been demonstrated in Italy, Germany and Russia; under stress of war it is being demonstrated in this country and in France . . ."

Miss Cole claims to be a Socialist and the Tribune claims to be a Socialist Journal, yet they can tell their readers that “totalitarianism" and "Socialism" are much alike, merely a matter of names!

Then in the Sunday Express (August 18th, 1940), an article on the Nazi Leader. Dr. Ley, says that if Germany won the war "Ley would go down in history as the greatest Socialist of the new and greater Germany."

But let us say once more that Socialism does not mean that wages are paid by the State instead of by the employer. It means a system of society in which there is no wages system at all.

It is people like the Labour Party who have fostered these erroneous notions of Socialism. What they really mean is "State Capitalism”.

(From the Socialist Standard, October 1940.)

Does religion matter? (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Saturday morning. The English Summer manifests itself one day of the year. Today is the day. Location: an inner city Victorian church. Style: Gothic ugly. Opposite the soot engrained building is a shopping complex. God versus Mammon. Mammon is winning hands down. Inside the church is a pervasive stygian atmosphere despite the soaring seventies outside. Everyone talks in whispers. There is a preponderance of dark wood, which only adds to the sombre mood. The back of the pew directly in front of me has several initials carved into it. One set of initials is the same as mine. My mind wanders in lazy thoughts of the penknife owner. At last! Thank god. at least its not Mendelssohn's Wedding March or Bach's Toccata and Fugue. As the organ plays Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, the bride walks down the aisle.

Surely I’m not going to castigate and harangue these people for taking part in a harmless, traditional ritual? After all, don't most people only go to church three times in their life? Christenings, weddings and funerals? Of course, when filling in official forms that request their religion they'll generally put C of E. But it's only to save the bother of being different. It's not worth arguing about is it?

Capitalist society

We live in a capitalist society where most wealth is owned by a minority. This has the legal ownership of the factories, the land, the shops, the offices, the banks, transport facilities; in other words the means of production and distribution. You and I belong to the propertyless majority. Not having sufficient money in the bank to live off the interest: not owning sufficient stocks and shares to live off the dividends; not owning sufficient houses to live off the rent; not being able to exploit sufficient numbers of the working class to live off the wealth they create, we are forced to sell our labour power — our physical and mental ability to work — to the minority property owning class, who in return pay us a wage or salary.

Capitalism prides itself on the choice which it says free market competition offers to the consumer. Actually the choice for most of us as to where we live, what we eat, what we wear, what car we drive is restricted by the amount of money we have. Our means of living are dependent upon being able to sell our labour power to the capitalist class. The wage or salary we get in return is only sufficient for us to maintain ourselves in a condition to be able to fulfil capitalism's demands for wealth creating workers. But capitalism gives us the choice of whether we, the majority, want to continue to support a system of society that benefits the few whose concern is with production for profit, not need. However, capitalism is not about to hand over the economic and political power which its ruling class enjoys until a majority of the working class understand and want the only alternative to capitalism — socialism. Obviously, the political consciousness of the majority is insufficiently developed at the present time, and they do not comprehend the differences that living in a socialist society would make to their lives. Marx wrote that the prevailing ideas in society are those of the ruling class. Capitalism is prepared to use any method it can to persuade workers that under capitalism all things are for the best in the best possible world.

Inventing God

Voltaire wrote,"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”. Religion existed before capitalism became the dominant world-wide system it is today, thus saving capitalism the trouble of having to invent yet another means of confusing and controlling the propertyless class. Believing as most do, that capitalism is now, always was and always will be, most have no difficulty in swallowing the lie that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven.

The compulsory religious "education” that children are subjected to as soon as they enter infants school has them singing hymns in morning assembly. One of the most popular hymns for infants is All things bright and beautiful. The lyrics of this piece of propaganda would have them believe that, all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the lord god made them all. This nonsense is followed by a verse designed to make them aware of their subservient class position. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, god made them high or lowly and ordered their estate. No doubt in Israel, or Iran, or India, or Tibet, children are being brainwashed with a similar message.

The religion forced upon workers is to a large extent dictated by the part of the world in which they are born. But, it has to be said, capitalism offers a wide choice of omnipotent deities, gods, goddesses, devils, angels, archangels, cherubs, seraphs, nymphs, dryads, hamadryads, naiads, oreads, sylphs and gurus. For the emotionally disturbed, those seeking an emotional crutch, the inadequate, and those unable to cope with the harsh economic realities of capitalism,the opiate of the people runs the gamut from A to Z, from adventists to zen buddhism.

In Anti-Duhring Engels wrote:

All religion is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history it was the forces of nature which were so reflected, and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among the various people.

Humans themselves, within their own ‘thinking processes, have been the creators and inventors of their own gods, and ascribed to them supernatural endowments and capabilities, which have included the creation of the earth, human kind, and the all-encompassing universe itself. The genesis of god and religion was not supernatural.

The differences between socialism and religion go deeper than saying that there are a hundred different religions, none of which a socialist believes in. Irrespective of race, sex or position in society, the path to socialism requires knowledge and understanding of how capitalism operates as a world-wide social system. Under capitalism society is divided into two classes: the propertyless working class, and the minority ruling class who legally own the means of production and distribution. Commodities are produced by the working class, who are paid less than the values they produce, and when the commodities are exchanged in the commercial market, the capitalist appropriates the surplus value produced by the workers. Capitalism, like religion, not only makes men and women servile, it has the supreme art of teaching them to love their chains.

Mrs Thatcher, a doughty class warrior for capitalism, well understands the important part that religion plays in diverting the working class away from any thoughts of a wageless, moneyless, stateless, classless. leaderless society. In a speech in Edinburgh on 21 May 1988, quoting the bible, she said:

We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. If a man will not work he shall not eat', wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. How could we respond to the many calls for help or invest for the future unless we had first worked hard and used our talents to create the necessary wealth? But intervention by the state must never become so great that it effectively removes personal responsibility. The same applies to taxation. for while you and I would work extremely hard whatever the circumstances, there are undoubtedly some who would not unless the incentive was there. The Christian religion is a fundamental part of our national heritage. For centuries it has been our very lifeblood.

Her argument is, of course, not a new one. God and right have been used as justification for massacre, murder and oppression throughout history. However, careful analysis of holy wars and crusades generally reveal economic reasons as their raison d’etre rather than spiritual indignation. In the 1960s Bob Dylan wrote a song called ‘With God on Our Side’ which mocked the historical claim of imperialism to have a supernatural force legitimising its actions.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote:

The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. It is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of a natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological—forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

If, with the transition from an insane society, capitalism, to a sane one. socialism, some people still wish to maintain a belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden, then they will be free to do so. But religion will no longer exist as a tool with which capitalism brainwashes, and frightens, those who it exploits.

Dave Coggan

Between the Lines: Land of Dopes and Tories (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Land of Dopes and Tories

Three cheers for Mark Elder, the conductor who refused to include Rule Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory in The Last Night of the Proms (shown on BBC1 and BBC2 on 15 September) Elder was of the view that:

"the words of those songs come from an age that was able and happy to celebrate Britain's irresistible march across the world. Now if we are actually engaged in combat I would not be happy to proceed. It would seem callous in the extreme. "

The Guardian 8 September

The BBC's response to Elder's sensitivity was in the best tradition of imperial callousness. They sacked him.

Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory, the words of which express English imperial arrogance in all of its declining folly, was first promoted by the British ruling class as workers were being slaughtered during tho First World War. At the time Elgar had issued a Manifesto of National Service which called for an:

"organised effort to carry on the war. Every fit man must be made available . . . for the fighting line or . . . for National Service at home."

Elgar himself spent tho war living in his mansion in Hampstoad, while at the same time German and Austrian musicians were being persecuted by the British state.

The Last Night at the Proms is a ridiculous, anachronistic celebration of a Great Britain, which was a land of no hope and little glory for the vast majority in its finest hour, and is now an appendage of American imperial foreign policy.

'The horror . . . the horror.'

Speaking of Dopes . . .

What is the most popular TV programme in Britain today? The twice daily Neighbours (BBC1. 1.35 pm and 5.35pm) which is brought to us by one Reg Watson, the man who 'created' Crossroads. It is staggeringly bad: awful acting, incredible plots, cliched scripts, a disgusting view of what human beings are all about. Millions of workers love to watch it. The BBC celebrated its one thousandth episode last month (BBC1 13 September).

It has been argued that Neighbours represents a poor man's wish for what it would be like to live in a real community, rather than the alienated heaps in which most of us find ourselves; a sort of late capitalist News From Nowhere. Others argue that the programme's success is the fresh good looks of its actors. Or maybe its success is thanks to its popularity with the under-twelves who regard it as truly great drama. Who knows?

But has anyone thought that a period of cultural history which will be remembered for the acting of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan is not one in which songs celebrating hope and glory are appropriate?

Speaking of Tories . . . 

By far the funniest TV moment of the last month was watching Enoch Powell (Talking to Myself, BBC2, 10.20pm. 7.9.90). This new series allows famous people to both ask and answer the questions in a ten-minute interview. Powell sounded like a dishwasher on the blink having a pompous talk with an air-raid siren Of course, he is not to be blamed for his strangely whining voice, even if it is hideously full of affectations.

One Powell is a slightly barmy fanatic in the cause of capitalism. Two Powells are totally round the bend. Powell told Powell that the greatest moment in his life had been when he had been asked to join the British army and give unqualified and unquestioning loyalty to the British Empire. We know what Powell will have been doing on The Last Night of the Proms — singing Rule Britannia! as a duet.

Speaking of Dopey Tories . . .

There are times when video machines come in very handy. A politician says something and you can't quite believe that anyone can be that stupid. And then you play it back and the wonder of technology allows you to see that you were wrong to doubt.

Such a moment came in The Walden Interview (ITV. 1pm. 9 September) when Walden asked William Waldergrave. the British Foreign Office Minister, when the government would consider that Iraq had been defeated.

The first requirement, said Waldergrave. is that "liberty must be restored in Kuwait". It was the "restored" that led my finger to the play-back button. Since when has there been "liberty" in Kuwait?

It is a country ruled by unelected, semi-feudal dictators, put in power by the British. It is a country where only 60,000 people out of a population of 2 million have the vote. It is a country where women have no political rights, including voting. Is that the "liberty" which Waldergrave seeks to restore? Is that why British and American workers in uniform will die? Land of hope and glory? Hang your heads in shame, those who have been foolish enough to fall for the absurdities of nationalism.

Steve Coleman