Editorial: Atrocious Argument. (1917)

Editorial from the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those German atrocities ! The last raid on London gave opportunity for an almost unprecedented flood of feeling, mostly cant. It is not the agony of the parents who have lost little ones, the wives who have lost husbands, the husbands whose mates have been cruelly butchered, the mutilated remnants moaning in the hospitals, that finds expression in the horrified Press. No. They are horrified to order, and with a set purpose, and that purpose is not to deter the Ge­rmans from making such raids, but simply to inflame popular feeling against the “enemy.”

Those who want the war, and shout for it, and shove other people into it, and exhibit so much aptitude for bloodshed in the smashing up of pacifist meetings as one would hardly expect to find outside the trenches or the House of Commons, try to blind themselves to the true facts of the case. War is a serious business—a much more serious business than one would imagine from a perusal of the report of the Mesopotamia muddle. People wilfully entering upon war, in order to take that calm view of it that is essential to its prosecution to the “last man and the last shilling,” should themselves be above military age, or at least sure of a staff job, well behind the firing line, and not too adjacent to the miseries of the trenches—and they mostly are. But having embarked on war; having consented to this most serious business in life, having adventured thousands, and perhaps millions, of human lives in the trial by brute strength, it is folly to talk of putting any limit on the appeal to brute strength. Such talk is usually mere cant and humbug, and where it is not it arises from a boss-eyed sort of view of things.

Much has been made of the fact that women and children have been numbered among the victims of the German air raids. But it is no worse to kill a woman or a child than it is to kill a man, notwithstanding all the sloppy nonsense that has been written on the subject. As a matter of fact the mental torture of a man dying in consciousness is probably far greater than that of a child similarly placed, while as for women, the fact that they find themselves brought within the range of actual hostilities may help them to realise their responsibility for the war—and it is not a little.

A harsh judgment this may seem to be, but then every phase of war must be judged by harsh standards, and the only ones who have any grounds for complaint are those who are opposed to the conflict, or at all events are no consenting parties to it.

It is stated that the Germans can have no military object in these raids, but this is sheer rubbish. They may have several perfectly legitimate military objects. In the first place there is the popular clamour for protection. This, of course, cannot be ignored, but it admittedly can only be satisfied by weakening the striking forces on the British front. Those living a few miles out on the Eastern side of the metropolis may from their own observation gather some idea of the effectiveness of the raids in this particular.

It is also common knowledge that there are in and about London numerous munition works even the temporary disturbance of which, to say nothing of a lucky hit with a bomb or two, is a distinct advantage to the Germans, while it was openly stated in the Press a few days back that the wrecking of the War Office might be a bigger disaster to the Allied cause than the loss of an army corps. And finally, if only the Hun airmen could find the House of Commons with a fat bomb, dropped plump through one of the ventilators onto the table while Lloyd George stood there with his mouth open ! Ah, if only they could !

Society and Morals. Part I. Morality. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we examine the mental condition of any people or section of mankind it is invariably found that, among each and all of them, human actions are judged as good or evil according to the degree they approximate to an ideal standard of conduct, held up and “somehow or other” acquired by the people in question. This standard by which conduct is judged is usually termed their moral or ethical code. The voluntary actions and opinions of men, be they savage or civilised, are guided by the moral code which either they have partly inherited, unconsciously grown up to accept, or their ripened experience has suggested.

The utmost variety is to be found in the moral notions of mankind. Cannibalism, incest, nudity in public, chattel-slavery, piracy, and a host of other practices to-day considered immoral have, in their age and place, all been perfectly moral and thoroughly justifiable.

The Problem of Ethics.

The problem of the origin and nature of the “moral law” has been one which thinkers in all ages have taxed their brains to solve. We all remember being told in our childhood how the god of the Jews gave to his “chosen people” the ten commandments. Most barbaric peoples believe their moral standard to be thus decreed by their god or gods.

Among all people who hold this view, be they uncivilised, or civilised people who accept the barbarian beliefs of Christianity, we naturally enough find a violent intolerance of those codes which differ from their own and sanction actions which theirs condemn. Those people who hold and act up to these other codes, are “working against the will of God” ; they are condemned as wicked, perverse, immoral, or as devoid of a “moral sense.” The books of missionaries are full of such allusions regarding the “heathen.”

It was only after morality in general was made the subject of research in the critical scientific spirit that any serious opposition to the “god theory” was forthcoming. Even the ancient Greeks did striking work in this field considering their very limited means. Notably the so-called “Sophists” of the Protagorean school denied the absolute and emphasised the relative character of morals. With the revival and growth of science in Europe since the fifteenth noiitury, ethical science advanced step by step ; Adam Smith, Kant, Locke, Hume and others building up a scientific theory which was finally rounded off by the work of Darwin, Spencer, Marx, and Morgan.

Social Regulations.

The labours of travellers, explorers, and historians gradually piled up data and widened the field for investigation. As in all other branches of science, the accumulated array of material first had to be sorted out and classified by finding the common characters in which the seemingly unlike agreed. It was then discovered that there is one common factor running right through all varieties of morality—they all have a social basis.

We have stated that the moral law is a guide to action. But all the activities of men do not come within the scope of the moral code. In the wearing of clothes there are fashions and customs the violation of which is not, usually, to-day, regarded as immoral. In the performing of the normal operations of living, e.g., eating, drinking, and sleeping, there are certain manners and customs, but they are not considered moral obligations where they affect only the personal welfare. But consider certain variations of the above cases. Let a man over-eat so as to knowingly deprive others of food ; or by being drunk cause obstruction in the public highway ; or being a working man remain in bed when he “should be working for his employer,” then contempt and perhaps punishment are meted out to him for he has outraged the morality of the community.

This is the crux of the matter. It is those activities which, when performed by an individual, affect and interfere with his fellows which are embraced within the moral law. Morality is a regulator of the relations existing between beings living in association. It is essentially a social phenomenon. A few illustrations will make this clear.

To-day a farmer may plough his land, sow and reap his crop on any day which suits him without regard to his neighbours ; but in the Mediaeval village where the villagers held several strips of land each, these strips being strewn and intermingled over a large area, such independence would have led to endless confusion, and accordingly certain days were allotted for the various kinds of field work and the whole agriculture of the community was carried on according to customary rules. Strict adherence to these rules was of the highest moral importance. In the first case, the labour was an individual concern ; in the second, one affecting the entire village community.

Again, the killing of a person, for private reasons, which brings discord into a society, is highly immoral ; when the killing, however, is multiplied a millionfold, but is in the “national interest,” showers of praise fall upon the heads of the slaughterers.

Barbarian societies are usually small, self-sufficing, and independent of other communities. While, in them, theft, fraud and murder are considered awful crimes when a fellow-tribesman (a kinsman) is the victim, such actions are permitted against men of other groups, are indeed, considered glorious and praiseworthy, for the neighbouring tribes are usually dangerous enemies and thus any injury to them is beneficial to the community.

That which is believed, by the bulk of its members, to be in the interests of the social group, is regarded as moral, that which is injurious to it—immoral. Apart from, society morality has no significance—solitary beings would have no use for it.

The Light of Evolution.

Before the science of society itself developed, the moral code could never be really understood and this was the great handicap upon the early ethicists. One school carrying their belief in the “supremacy of reason” to the extreme believed society to have originated in a consciously made agreement or contract entered into by primitive man. All moral principles were the product of reasoning from experience. Recognised social utility was, they argued, the basis of morals, hence this school is often entitled, the “utilitarian.”

Another school pointed out, however, that the basic impulses towards social unity and harmony appear to be grafted into the very personality of man—to be part of his physico-mental nature.

Conflict waged between the two schools until the evolution theory revealed for the first time man’s real place in the scheme of nature. Man was then clearly proven to be the outcome of a long line of changing animal ancestors, developing in succession from a jelly speck in the warm primeval ocean, through the worm, fish, reptile, lowly mammal and finally ape stages. Darwin showed in his “Descent of Man” that altruism and social solidarity is widespread among the higher types of gregarious animals and that a sort of instinctive “morality” is very prevalent.

It required the historical materialism of Karl Marx, Engels, and Morgan, to reveal how, granting the animal origin of sociability, its many-sided applications as reflected in morality are worked out, as we see them, in human society—savage, barbarian and civilised.

The Social Instinct.

Animal societies are bewildering in their number and variety. There are temporary unions like the wolf packs for hunting in winter ; the wonderful organisations of the ants and bees ; the fine examples of mutual support, among the hoofed animals, the rodents and the monkeys. The closer and more permanent the unions, the more developed are the social impulses of sympathy, self-sacrifice, the sense of duty and responsibility which are vital to a society’s existence, for they function as a protective discipline against the too full assertion of the primary instinct for purely personal welfare.

The impulses bound up with sociability therefore, develop in the same proportion as the greater efficiency of co-operation over individual competition asserts itself in the struggle for existence which pervades the animal kingdom.

The social instinct was, it must be remembered, not evolved to safeguard the community for its own sake, but only because the organisation was a factor in securing the welfare and survival of the bulk of its members, as individuals capable of perpetuating the species. The more thoroughly social a species becomes the more dependent upon the association is the individual creature, and, correspondingly, the greater is its danger and helplessness when isolated from its kind.

Early man, conspicuous and yet without any efficient organic means of defence, was forced to use collective might and action to struggle successfully against opposing nature. Speech evolved through and for social intercourse, and reacting, greatly aided his intellectual development. Even the artificial tools and weapons which man uses were dependent upon social habits for their progress. Perfected by an infinite series of modifications, such did not pass away with the death of the inventors but were taken up, adopted and passed on to succeeding generations by their fellows. Primitive man was therefore as dependent upon his social organisation as is a lion upon its teeth and claws.

At their dawn the social impulses are as unreasoned and instinctive as those of sex or maternity and so can hardly yet be classed as moral forces, which presuppose a certain consciousness of choice in actions. But once reason begins to supersede blind instinct in the ordinary work of living it also urges in man an enquiry into the why and the wherefore of his conduct in relation to his fellow man, and a conscious conception of morality gradually takes the place of unreasoned, half or non-conscious social impulsiveness.

R. W, Housley

(To be Continued.)

An I.L.P. “belief”. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Independent Labour Party believes that the war was caused by the breakdown of class government in Europe. The peoples had no voice in policy before the war, and when they suddenly found themselves faced with “enemies” they had to fight.”

This statement contained in No. 1 Leaflet “The I.L.P. and the War” is not supported by facts or evidence of any kind ; it is merely a belief. Though whether the word “believes” applies to the first sentence only, or to the whole paragraph, it is impossible to say, nor does it matter much. The first sentence, expressing the belief that the war was caused by the breakdown of class government in Europe, if it is truly the belief of the I.L.P., is by far the most important statement, not only in this paragraph, but in the whole leaflet.

The writers fail to justify their belief. The master-class would ridicule it, and the Socialist would laugh at their self-inflicted credulity. What would be the attitude of the capitalist politicians ? First they would deny the existence of class government. Secondly they would claim that government was vested in the representatives of the people, was therefore democratic ; that government had not broken down, nor was it in the slightest danger of doing so. If the I.L.P. never anticipated this attitude it is politically sightless. If the capitalist position—so often expressed by its agents and spokesmen—was present in the collective mind of the I.L.P., they should not have been satisfied with the mere expression of a belief ; they should have shown in definite and unmistakable language that, in spite of capitalist boasting of the democratic nature of their system, class government exists. Moreover, they should have justified their statement that it had broken down.

They have done none of these things, it is, therefore, left to the Socialist to show the absurdity of their beliefs. In no country of Europe was there any government, at the outbreak of war, that showed signs of collapse. In every country of Europe—and the world—there was poverty and suffering, always on the increase, among the working class. There was discontent everywhere, but the suffering and discontent of the workers does not in itself mean the breakdown of capitalist government, on the contrary, it is proof of its power—and confidence in itself—to exploit and subjugate. At the outbreak of war, we are constantly being told, the Central Powers were organized and equipped for the struggle. That is to say, the working class of those countries were fully controlled and disciplined by the governing class. Obviously, class government had not broken down in those countries, but, on the contrary, had reached a high degree of perfection. In those allied countries where conscription was in vogue the military authorities, at the instigation of those who controlled the political machinery, gave orders for mobilisation and were obeyed almost to the last man. In this country the process was slower but just as sure. Everyone knows how the masters co-operated with their representatives in Parliament by “releasing” men fit for active service. But it is not everyone who knows how dexterously Mr. Asquith and his government, on behalf of the capitalist class of this country, engineered towards conscription. Had he been satisfied with having achieved his object and not boasted of his political dexterity, the workers would have been left to think that the Government had simply blundered from one pledge to another until conscription was accomplished, as much to their own surprise as other people’s. But the competition for ministerial portfolios often compels Ministers—however modest they may wish to be thought—to construe their actions in such a way as to gain them credit for acumen and foresight. Thus Mr. Asquith claimed that his government, by devious methods, had gained “compulsion by consent,” in the following utterance:

“Next, in the earlier stages of the war more men came in than we could effectively train and equip, and it was not until the beginning of last Autumn that the shortage of men, actual or prospective, became a serious problem. Compulsion, whatever may be said of its abstract merits or demerits, is alien to British traditions—(cheers)—and its introduction would have been viewed with the greatest suspicion in the absence of a proved case of absolute necessity by the vast bulk of Liberals, by a large body of Conservatives, and by practically the whole of organised labour. (Cheers.) I have consistently maintained ever since the recruiting problem became urgent that compulsion could only be practicable and made effective when at each stage of the road it was accompanied by general consent. That is exactly what has happened. Everyone who knows anything of our political life must be aware that such measures as have been passed by enormous majorities in Parliament this spring would even a year ago have encountered the most strenuous opposition, with most dubious prospects of survival.”

Whether this boast is true, or whether such a complexion had been given to a series of blunders, or whether the Government was dragged or forced along the road to conscription by the governing class, the result was the same and was never in doubt. The ruling class with their agents preserved their authority and achieved the same degree of power over the working class here, as the Allied and Central Governments exercised at the commencement. Clearly class government had not broken down in this country.

But possibly the I.L.P. intellect will object that these facts only apply to the period of the war, and that the outbreak of war placed the Government once more on their feet, or braced them for the struggle. But they cannot take this attitude in view of the concluding sentence in the paragraph quoted. “The peoples had no voice in policy before the war.” Quite so. The Government conducted the business of the ruling class in utter disregard and contempt for the working class, until they called upon them to defend “their” country—their country, who’s?-and the credulous—or should it be shuffling and treacherous ?—I.L.P. babble about the people who “suddenly found themselves faced with enemies they had to fight.” Had the people—that is the working class—understood their class position they never would have waited for the master class to choose enemies for them. But thanks to the I.L.P. and the rest of the parties and organisations that serve the master class, the workers have had but little chance of learning who are their real enemies. Had the workers of every country understood the nature of capitalist society and their own slave position, the governing class in each country would never have succeeded in persuading them that the workers of other lands could be their enemies. There is no possible ground of antagonism between the wage-slaves of one capitalist State and another. The antagonism that exists is entirely between the different groups of the governing class. When these groups fell out they knew that the workers under their control and domination could be relied upon to do the fighting in their interest. Had they entertained any doubts as to the docility of their wage slaves they would have hesitated before plunging into war. A working class really antagonistic to its rulers would use such an occasion to further its own object : they would face the enemy their experience pointed to ; not the enemies of their enemy.

Once again the real Socialist position must be emphasised. The I.L.P. complain that “the peoples had no voice in policy before the war.” Would there be any difference if they had? Without knowledge the workers can be led to support any policy that happens to be in the capitalist interest. We have seen the workers in the past—plastic as clay in the potter’s hands—led to conflict against those who are “their allies” to-day ; or fighting on the side of those who are designated as their enemies, and through all the sanguinary wars engendered by capitalist production and distribution they have remained a slave class under the domination of those, for whom they fought. Before wars can cease the workers must gain the knowledge that will enable them to prosecute the class war to a successful conclusion ; until that time arrives their lot must be to work the factory machine, or the machine gun, at the instigation and in the interest of the governing class.

F. Foan

Sheer cussedness. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may be remembered that the commander of the American forces in France assured us, in a speech upon the occasion of the welcoming of some part of the American fighting forces on this side of the sprat puddle, that the men in America are “simply crazy” to be over here and in the game. And now comes full confirmation in the following, presented to us by “Lloyd’s Newspaper” August 5th :

ARMED RESISTANCE BY U.S. CONSCRIPTS EXPECTED

“It is estimated that more than 75 per cent. of the drafted are claiming exemption.

It is reported to the Department of Justice that armed resistance to the draft is in the highest degree likely.”

You see Americans have such a high example of veracity in George Washington that the truth bubbles from them spontaneously, like wisdom from Lloyd George.

——-0——-

This gentleman has the wisdom faculty of Solomon after he (Sol.) had subjected himself to a long dieting of serpents. Only this week he has been at it again, and the acumen of one particular statement of his reaches about the limit of human profundity. He is reported as having told the gaping world that “No one in in Britain, France, Italy, or Russia, or even in Germany or Austria has any idea how near to the summit of our hopes we may be.”

Not only in what was said is the speaker’s quality revealed, but even more so in what was left unsaid. One has but to add three little words, clearly enough suggested, to the statement in order to complete its immortal value, and launch one on a train of thought of peculiar depth and richness. Those words are : “or may not.”

That, of course, is the whole message which the Welsh Christ gave us in a moment of five-thousand a year inspiration—a sermon on the mount, since he was using a mountaineering analogy. “We do not know, nor does anybody else, how near or how far away from victory we may be.” True. The Prussian does not know how near or how far from a terrible licking he is. True again. Translated into the language of the people for the people, “Nobody don’t know nuthink.” Loud Jaws has told us so.

——-0——-

Talking of analogies, Mr. Lloyd George supplies us with a notable one. Some years ago he raised the water line of ships, and converted dry ships into wet ships. Now he has raised the water line of beer, incidentally converting dry sailors into wet ones. And, if he wants to complete the analogy, he has but to claim that just as he “with a stroke of the pen,” as was said at the time, added millions of tons to the carrying capacity of the mercantile marine, so, with a stroke of the pump-handle, he has considerably increased the carrying capacity of the mercantile mariner—or any other.

And this cuss is wondering whether Lloyd has got his money in breweries or water companies—or both.

The Cuss.

Jottings. (1917)

The Jottings Column from the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

I am going to quote two items of historical interest:

“Suraj-ud-Daulah, possibly at the instigation of the French, chose to take offence because the British at Fort William were strengthening their fortifications in case they should find themselves involved in hostilities with their French neighbours at Chandernagur. The Nawab ordered them to demolish the fortifications, the Governor replied with a remonstrance; and the Nawab responded by despatching an army against him. The Governor and some others fled on some British ships which were in the Hugli ; those who remained behind had no choice but to surrender. The unhappy prisoners, one hundred and forty-six in number, were packed into a chamber twenty feet square, three human beings to the square yard, with one small grating to let in air, on a sultry night in July. Suraj-ad-Daulah forgot them till next morning, when twenty-three of the hundred and forty-six were found to be still alive.”

“I was standing on the bridge in the evening when the Medjidieh arrived. As this ship with two barges came up to us, I saw that she was absolutely packed, and the barges, too, with men. When she was about 300 or 400 yards off it looked as if she was festooned with ropes. The stench, when she was close, was quite definite, and I found that what I mistook for ropes were dried stalactites of human faces. The patients were so huddled and crowded together on the ship that they could not perform the offices of nature clear of the edge of the ship, and the whole of the ship’s side was covered with stalactites of human fæces. A certain number of men were standing, some with blankets, some without. They were in a pool of dysentery about 30 feet square. They were covered with dysentery and dejecta generally from head to foot.”

I can hear the reader crying “Enough! Whose devilish imagination has conjured up such revolting details ? Wherever could such things as these happen ?”There is no imagination about it, dear reader. The first item is a brief description of the Black Hole of Calcutta ; the second item is merely an incident in the great war of liberty, 1916, as described in the Report of the Mesopotamia Commission.

—–0—–

After the foregoing it will be gratifying to all lovers of their country to learn that “the glorious Minster windows, the pride, not only of the city of York, but the unique possession of the English Church, are to be taken down because the enemy sought destruction with engines of war unknown in days of old, and with a ruthlessness unequalled in the most savage times.” That ought to remove the nasty taste left in the month after reading the preceding paragraph.

—–0—–

M. Phillips Price, Petrograd correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian,” describes (“Manchester Guardian” 17.7.17) a visit he made to the Kronstadt prison in June. One portion that he visited contained a number of admirals, generals, and naval and military officers of all ranks who had been arrested at the outbreak of the revolution. “They all complained,” he says, “that they had been kept there three months without any trial or examination of their cases. But the young sailor who accompanied me chimed in: ‘I sat in this very prison for three years for having been found with a Socialist pamphlet in my possession. All that time I never had a trial of any kind whatever.’ I pointed out to the sailor that the prison accommodation was unfit for a human being. He answered,’ Well, I sat here all that time because of these gentlemen, and I think that if they bad known they were going to sit here they would have made better prisons !” A case of what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

—–0—–

Opponents of Socialism used to be fond of saying that under such a system there would be no progress, no advance in science, art, etc., in fact, all incentive would be destroyed. No inventions would appear, no researches would be made, for the simple reason that it wouldn’t pay—there would be no adequate return for services rendered. Of course, the inference always drawn from this kind of argument is that under the present beautifully adjusted system every effort made ensures due appreciation and reward to the full. Does it ? A perusal of the Civil List Pensions from time to time will indicate the extent to which incentive is “rewarded” under the present system.

Among the items on the latest list I notice the following:

Mrs. Charlton Basti»n, in consideration of the services to science of her late husband, Dr. Charlton Bastian and her straightened circumstances, £100.

Mrs. Minchin, in consideration of the scientific work of her late husband, Prof. E. A. Minchin, and her straightened circumstances, £75.

Mrs. Roland Trimen, in consideration of the eminent services of her late husband to biological science, and of her straightened circumstances, £75.

Mrs. Albert Gunther, in consideration of the scientific work of her late husband, Dr. Albert Gunther, and of his distinguished services to the British Museum as Keeper of Zoology, £70.

The Misses Aimee, Clotilde, and Nora Evelyn Legros, in consideration of the artistic eminence of their late father, Professor Legros, and of their inadequate means of support, £75.

—–0—–

The thousands of homes that have been broken up in order that our masters’ property might remain secure will, by now, have disposed of the favourite argument of the “anti” that Socialism meant the break-up of family life. The newspapers week by week are full of heart-rending cases where homes are utterly broken, with perhaps, the loss of the loved one by legal murder to complete the ruin. In the Manchester district there are eight homes for waifs and strays ; now it has been found necessary to establish a receiving home, such is the traffic.

The Bishop of Manchester, who “dedicated,” found the explanation of the increase in child destitution in the fact that the war has taken so many of the husbands and fathers away from their homes—never to return, he might have added.

The bishop said that the removal from home of one of the parents was the primary cause of many children becoming destitute. No, reverend sir, not the primary cause ; but it was a near shot, and we shall always take care to remind you and your friends of it.

On the same day (18.7.17) a jug was sold at Christie’s for 3,600 guineas.

Lucilius.

Baby Week. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

The re-shaping of old morals to suit new circumstances. 

The city of London has been en fete for a whole week. Members of the idle master class gathered in large numbers at classic Westminster in order to do honour to the resurrection era of King Baby. Never since the days following the Great Plague has “Mother’s boy” been so sincerely greeted, and fondled, and feted, as during this right royal national reception. Ladies of the highest title and social standing took upon themselves the honourable task of tickling the tootsiess of mere working-class kiddies what time they showered congratulations upon their beaming mothers.

Let it be most distinctly understood that the object of all this chivalrous attention was to do honour to WORKING-CLASS babies. Should you be so indiscreet as to inquire why the “sunbeams” of our particular class should be singled out for this shower of sentiment I should merely suggest that it arises from the fact of these ladies of title having no children of their own, comparatively speaking.

Why have they no children of their own, you ask. Well, sir, my lady has her form to consider, as well as her position in society, in addition to which, childbirth is a rather painful and disagreeable process.

And how comes, you again ask, that, during the progress of the world’s greatest war so many ladies—and gentlemen—are able to find so much time to spare when so many humbler folk are in the trenches or the munition works ? Ah ! to be coloured like a canary or disfigured in an explosion is not fashionable in high society, nor, come to that, is—WORK !

But what is the reason for this celebration of “Baby Week” ? It appears to our masters that the male population of the British Isles is falling to alarmingly proportions, and that the death rate among children of working-class parentage has increased to dangerous limits. The reasons advanced for the high mortality are many and varied. One newspaper ascribes it to “Slums, dirt, disease, drink, ignorance, and virmin.”

The inclusion of drink as a contributary cause is only to be expected, for the bosses’ agents always declare that “drink is the basic cause of poverty.” It is, of course, a deliberate lie. The working man is poverty-stricken before ever he starts to purchase drink. Apart from this, the price of drink has placed it almost beyond the reach of poor people at the very time that infant mortality is reaching its highest point.

In the present period it matters not so much whether your child is born in the legitimate manner or not, so strangely has capitalist society transformed its moral code in order to fall in with supply and demand. This come-down in social morality is all the more notable because it strikes such a staggering blow at the foundation of the Christian Church. A slight idea of what is taking place may be gathered from a perusal of the following extract:

“The time has gone when people turned up their noses at illegitimate children, and now these, as well as legitimate children, are welcome, so long as they are healthy,” said Coroner Graham at an inquest held at Gateshead.”-“News of the World,” 8.7.1917.

This spectacle of the unfortunate girl who dared to give birth to a child out of wedlock now being fawned upon as a desirable member of society by those who never hesitated to ‘down” her would afford an interesting study for a cynical philosopher. Still, in these days when those who should have been the fathers of the future are dying like flies, the upkeep of the children of whatever parentage is of vital consequence to the British capitalists.

At London celebrations of “Baby Week” numerous speakers referred to the imperative duty of every working-class wife bearing children for the benefit of the State. No serious proposal, however, was made as to the State aiding her in feeding the children she bore.

The patrons of “Baby Week” would admit, doubtless, that they regard it as a matter for general regret that Mr. McNiell’s “war baby” prophecy was not more true than it proved to be. Had it been the necessity for a “Baby week” might never have arisen.

Just at the time when people are wailing about the paucity of good, healthy children it behoves us to look back in order to see how carefully babies were looked after in pre-war days. Referring to our London milk supply Lionel W. Lyde, M.A., F.R.G.S., Professor of Economic Geography in University College, London, wrote some few years back the following significant statement :

“For our huge city population the milk supply is miserably deficient. Holland, which is only about about one-tenth the size of the United Kingdom, has about 4,000,000 more cows ; more than a quarter of our milk supply is used for making butter and cheese ; hundreds of gallons go bad every day, because the poor cannot afford the price demanded for it ; and a large proportion of the milk which is sold in poor districts is watered, especially in London and on Sundays.”

When we recall that countless children of working-class parentage have died because pure milk has been beyond their mother’s slender purses, the damnable character of the practice of destroying foodstuffs in order to keep up prices becomes increasingly apparent.

As a concluding comment. I would commend to the reader the appended statement made by A. A. Phillips, M.B.C.M., late Medical Officer of Public Health, Northern Divisions of Scotland, in his book, “What a Young Husband Should Know” :

“The change in social conditions, the modern struggle for life, has brought women everywhere into competition with men. Look at as we may, like it or dislike it as it pleases us, it becomes daily more clear that women are being FORCED into sexlessness by causes which are beyond our or their control.”

When you are tired, therefore, of listening to the usual humbug of the master-class agents regarding the size of your family as distinct from their own, you might reasonably examine the Socialist case. Wake up now, for the age of enlightenment is upon you. Think out your position and study the only means whereby you may free yourself from the tyranny and oppression of capitalism. Only when you have done this can you satisfactorily solve the question of the number of children who should be brought into the world. Arm yourself against the menace of modern society, and march in the already singing army whose voice rings out the glad words : “The International unites the human.”

B. B. B.

In Peace as in War. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the capitalist class plunged the workers into the vortex of war the toilers took up the capitalist cry of “down with German Militarism.” It was easy for our masters to see what willing tools their wealth producers would be, and they organised and engineered, with the aid of the labour leaders, various schemes to entrap the workers for cannon fodder. For a short period thousands flocked to the recruiting offices, but with an alarming falling oft of willing targets, other means had to be adopted to “induce” them to join. Article after article in newspapers began to tell gruesome tales of the horrible brutality of the German soldiers and what it would mean to the workers here if they only landed on these shores. But finding this failed to appeal to their patriotism, the employers were urged to dispense with the young men in their employ and so force them into the army. Many other snares they tried signally failed, and having in view their determination to introduce the Military Service Acts and so make them law they, without disclosing their real intentions, compelled every man and woman to register and so clear the way of all obstacles for the administration of the aforementioned Acts. Wedged in between the employers’ action and conscription was the “Derby Volunteer” attestation, but in spite of all their hypocritical promises, lying and deceit, thousands of men still refused to be coerced into the army. In order to successfully bind the military chains around the married men the single men were called slackers and shirkers. The insults and innuendoes were swallowed, the single men were roped in, shortly to be followed by their married brethren.

Side by side with the stupendous slaughter of the workers on the battle-fields of Europe the cry of the workers of both sexes at home grows louder and louder. The intensified pace of exploitation hurls its victims in greater numbers on the heaps of human wreckage, some to linger with cruel tenacity to life in spite of their mangled bodies, others becoming an easy prey to the ravages of consumption and other fatal diseases. Here and there workers in different industries have feebly struggled against the encroachments of the masters when they have seen their hard fought-for trade-union rules and regulations gradually being smashed ; but taking them on the whole they have acquiesced in the worsening of their economic conditions. The rise in prices of the necessaries of life have become a common-place feature, the while wages have miserably failed to keep in touch with it. Hence the workers’ position gradually becomes worse in spite of all statements to the contrary.

The working class as yet do not comprehend their real relation to the capitalist class in modern society ; do not understand that by virtue of the fact that the capitalist class own and control the means and instruments of wealth production they take the wealth produced and hand back in the form of wages just sufficient to keep their slaves efficient. On the one hand there is always the struggle between the producers and non-producers concerning the price of workers’ labour-power ; on the other a struggle between the various sections of the international capitalist class for the disposing on the world’s markets of the wealth filched from the workers.

All economic wealth is the result of human energy applied to natural objects, and as it is only the working class who spend their energy by applying it to the natural objects, it follows that they are responsible for all wealth in existence. When the capitalist hires the worker he purchases the one commodity (labour-power) which has the unique quality of returning to the capitalist all the value he pays in wages and a surplus value in addition—hence his profits. The machinery and instruments of production and the raw materials being owned and controlled by the master class, involves the ownership and control of the wealth when produced. It is this private ownership that is responsible for the class struggle, responsible for the clashing of interests among the international capitalist cfess for the available markets of the world for the disposal of their commodities, that is the source of ALL modern wars. With the ever-growing productivity of the means of wealth production the world’s markets are choked with commodities. There is not room for all the struggling capitalists. Someone must be got out of the way. The forces behind each powerful combination are put into play until one or the other are economically and militarily crushed.

A favourite theme of articles in the Press to-day is that the end of this war will bring permanent peace. We are out to disillusion our fellow-workers on this lie ; to point out to them that while the private properly basis of society obtains, wars must inevitably occur. The workers must always haggle over the price of their labour-power ; the capitalists of the world must fight against each other for the world’s markets for the sale of the wealth stolen from the workers. Hence, whether the ghastly slaughter continues or not, the workers will—unless they organise to change the basis of society—be continually faced with the brutal struggle for existence, and gradually see their standard of subsistence get lower and lower.

As yet but few understand the cause of the awful manifestations of modern society. Thousands are groping in the dark for a way out of the morass, and it is to them the Socialist explains the remedy. We claim that if the workers are intelligent enough to manipulate the machinery of wealth production and distribution on behalf of their masters, they are intelligent enough to manipulate that machinery for themselves and to own and control the wealth when produced.

We urge our fellow-workers to study their position, endeavour to realise their relations with the masters, to understand that the capitalist class control the destinies of the workers of the world by their control of political power ; that every time they vote for the masters’ nominees they give the political power to those masters.

While we recognise the need of the workers to always fight the capitalist over the price of their labour-power, we would nevertheless fail in our duty if we did not point out that this struggle is powerless to alter the antagonism between the producers and non-producers. The workers must understand that their organisations—political and economic—must be grounded on class lines, having for their object the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of a system of society based upon the social ownership and control of the means of wealth production, in short—Socialism.

Only by recognising and embracing those principles can the workers eradicate from their midst such frightful carnage as is now raging in Europe, and abolish the painful destruction of the world’s toilers in “peace” and in war. Not only does the Socialist vehemently protest against the wholesale slaughter of his fellow-workers in this capitalist war, he with equal vehemence proclaims his hostility to the systematic murder of his fellows in the production of wealth to maintain the human race in the “piping times of peace,” where thousands are done to death yearly in the mines, on the railways and in factories, heaping up huge profits for our masters. It needs no comment of ours now to narrate the horrors of explosions in the coal-mines where gas has been known to be present to make it dangerous to work many months before, nor is it necessary for us to draw your attention to the Board of Trade figures in reference to the maimed and murdered recorded on the railroads each year, the men who have lost their lives in ships overloaded since the raising of the load-line by Lloyd-George.

To-day in the munition factories men and women are done to death, battered bruised, to say nothing of those who have contracted diseases of the most awful character in the production of explosives. The same toll of useful lives is taken in the greed for profits as in pre-war days ; the numbers in the mines, mills and railroads reaching an appalling figure. Whether in this capitalist war or in the class war always with us while the present system obtains, the same cruel murderous manifestations can be seen. Those who produce the sustenance and comforts of life are butchered, or exist in poverty and misery, while those who do not produce live in affluence and luxury. The only war that should interest you is the—CLASS WAR.

Farmer’s Boy

Running Commentary: Clerics’ confusion (1986)

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

Clerics’ confusion

Are we all god 's children, or are some of us — women — rather more distant relations of his — nieces perhaps? Are we all made in his immaculate image or are those of us in the female sex less capable than those of the male gender?

The Church of England, which purports to instruct us in morality and keeping our place as docile wage slaves in the capitalist order of things, is having difficulty in deciding whether to allow women the same opportunity to be ordained as men. The recent vote of the Synod, to refer the issue to a panel of 53 bishops, was not so much a decision as a deferment, in the hope that the slickest religious brains in the church can use the next six months or so to cook up a face-saving compromise.

This is all rather curious. The church has been operating for centuries as a bunch of intellectual storm-troopers (although latterly rather more like a company in Dad's Army) for class society. Do they think they might perform better, on behalf of the ruling class, if women were allowed to dress up in those silly clothes, perform the same meaningless rituals and preach to us about the rewards waiting in heaven for all who do their duty for capitalism?

On the other hand, why should any of them oppose women priests? (Graham Leonard, the Bishop of London, hinted broadly that he would leave the church if women are to be ordained. Not exactly a grievous loss to us if he did). Other churches have female priests, as does the Anglican church in some other countries. They don't seem to have any problems in doing the church's work of putting across the baseless, reactionary nonsense of religion.

This brings us to the most important question, of why women should want an equal right to become priests, especially if this means first being insulted by people like Graham Leonard. Of course, it's all part of the drive for sexual equality, for proving that women can do any job as efficiently as men. So far the jobs where this has been proved have included the armed forces (in some states there are female combat troops); the police (watch Hill Street Blues of a Saturday night to see how a girl can handle a truncheon); the prison service (there are now female governors of male prisons in Britain, making sure the prisoners are firmly locked away and punished appropriately); and of course there's the Prime Ministership . . .

Perhaps there are some women libbers who think it is a worthwhile result for their long campaign, that they can now do the same dirty work for capitalism as men. In fact, there are worthier aims to campaign for. Like a society free, not just of sexual inequality and repression but also of the religious hypocrisy which has helped to keep us all — and especially women — enslaved for too long.

Health service priorities

Another recent demonstration of the perverse priorities in capitalism is the statement by Norman Fowler, the Social Services secretary, that he has authorised health authorities to pay managers bonuses of up to £3.960 for making cuts in health service expenditure — cuts that are likely to entail the closure of hospitals.

Health service managers who don't mind acting as the government’s hatchet people can expect an extra £ 1.660 a year if they are general managers (five per cent on top of their annual salary of £33.200); for district managers £3,160 (ten per cent of their maximum of £31.600); and for unit managers. who run individual hospitals, an extra £3.960. or up to 15 per cent of the maximum salary of £26.400.

One of the ways in which the government seeks to justify its programme of hospital closures is through the cosy euphemism of "community care". This is the name given to the plan to remove many long-term sick, disabled and mentally ill from hospitals to be "cared for" in the community. Most people would accept that being looked after by loving friends, family or neighbours backed up by appropriate medical, nursing and social work support is preferable to incarceration in impersonal hospital wards. Unfortunately the reality of "community care" is often very different. Many long-stay hospital patients have remained in hospital precisely because they don't have family or friends willing or able to care for them; social services and community medical provision are already over-stretched and are unable to provide the support that would make "community care" a reality; there are insufficient resources being put into sheltered housing, group homes and day centres. The result is that the reality of "community care" for many people is a lonely, near-destitute existence in a depressing hostel; or homelessness or. for some, relapse into illness and a return to hospital.

Health service managers are being offered bribes to close hospitals, not because they are no longer needed but because meeting the needs of those who make up waiting list statistics is too expensive. Neither are hospitals being closed because "community care" is a more humane alternative. They are being closed because it is a cheaper alternative.

Policing pupils

Over the last few months the government has done its best to try to divert attention away from uncomfortable, but real, issues such as the continuing suffering caused by apartheid in South Africa, the failure of economic policies to stem the rise in unemployment, questions being asked about the nuclear power industry after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and so on. Instead we have had our attention focused on a series of pseudo-issues which can be "solved" easily. Litter in the streets: solution — call in capitalist entrepreneur Richard Branson to start a "Clean-Up Britain" campaign. Hippy peace convoys in the New Forest: mobilise an army of police at five in the morning to break up and disperse the camp. Sexual promiscuity among the young: introduce an amendment to the Education Bill to require teachers to stress moral values and family life in sex education classes.

This amendment to the Education Bill attracted considerable media attention and yet at the same time another two amendments were being tacked on to the Bill which, although they attracted less comment, are perhaps more insidious. They will require school governors to pay attention to the view of Chief Officers of the police when making decisions about school curricula and head teachers to take account of Chief Officers' views when organising lessons.

Are the police going to use their newly-acquired influence to ensure that children are taught about road safety, or the necessity of having lights on their bicycles, or what to do if they witness an accident7 So far the evidence suggests that this is not what the police have in mind. The 1983 report from the schools inspectors suggested that the value (to the police) of closer liaison between the police and schools would be that of "intelligence-gathering":

Police forces generally attach considerable importance to the advantages to be gained through unofficial contact with schools. Home-beat officers “drop in" at school during break for a chat with pupils or teachers . . . Most schools welcome and encourage this informal contact and may ask home-beat officers or juvenile bureau officers to have an unofficial "word" with pupils, or their parents, about whom they feel anxious in relation to criminal activity.

Of course there's an official term for this informal, unofficial contact between police and schools — "multi-agency policing". In practice this means that as many different people as possible are co-opted to do the dirty work of the police and inform on their neighbours and fellow workers through neighbourhood watch schemes and the involvement of social workers. Now it seems that the police, having got their foot in the door of school, are going to be allowed some input into the curriculum too.

Most teachers who attempt to talk about the morality of family life in sex education lessons will simply be laughed down by sophisticated teenagers who have their own moral code. But it's much harder to laugh down a police officer who enters the classroom to glean information through chats with pupils or teachers, or a Chief Constable who insists on his right to vet the curriculum.

Blogger's Note:

Though this Running Commentary column is unsigned, there's a strong chance it was written by Janie Percy-Smith. During this period, she was on the Standard editorial committee and was one of the journal's most prolific writers, and the 'Clerics' confusion' piece indicates that the author is female.

It's a rich man's world . . .

 From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

This cartoon was originally part of the Malcolm Prangell article but I believe it merits its own post.

Social reality and social revolution (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whenever workers endeavour to gain a few extra crumbs from the cake they themselves bake the capitalist class and its apologists remind them of the need to be realistic. By which they do not mean that workers should acquaint themselves with Marxian economics and the workings of the class struggle but rather that the employee class should accept less today in exchange for a promise of a share in Utopia tomorrow. In the meantime the working class have to endure the deprivation of their inferior social position, while the capitalist class can continue to enjoy their parasitic privileges derived from profit, interest and rent.

The only problem with the capitalist Utopia of tomorrow is that the closer it gets, the more it resembles the capitalist nightmare of the present. Just like the Christian fairy stories of life after death for those who accept hell on earth, so the economic gurus and assorted media hacks try to convince us that their masters’ fantasies have some basis in reality; prosperity is round the corner. Just be patient. King Capital has only reigned for three centuries. All we have to do is wait a little longer and as if by magic, all social evils will vanish. Magic is the appropriate word; it is probably the greatest con-trick in history.

Capitalism is not the only social system through which human evolution has passed. Before private property relationships evolved the hunter-gatherer groups practised a form of primitive communism. Society was organised on this basis for about 40.000 years. As people discovered new ways of living such as farming in settled communities so the communistic social relationships became a fetter to further development. Economic necessity produced the change to private ownership initially taking the form of chattel slavery, then feudalism and finally capitalism. Capitalism has not always been with us and there is no reason to assume it will be. Human society is constantly changing — at times slowly but at others open revolution occurs, as in the capitalist revolutions of 1789 in France and of 1917 in Russia.

But why do societies undergo changes? The realists might explain change by reference to the supernatural (God's will) or the superhuman (the Great Man theory). Socialists look at history in terms of cause and effect. In order to survive men and women must produce and distribute the necessities of life; food, clothing, shelter and so on. Consequently the most important aspect of social organisation is concerned with the ways in which the production and distribution of wealth is arranged.

As Marx wrote in The German Ideology:

We set out from real, active men. and on the basis of their real-life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily. sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality. religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence They have no history, no development; but men. developing their material production and material intercourse, alter, along with their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness. but consciousness by life.

In other words history is concerned with the development of material production and its effects on other aspects of human society. As the methods of production change they come into conflict with the existing social relationships — a contradiction that can only be resolved by revolution.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. 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. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of 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. 

(Karl Marx: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Lawrence & Wishart. pp.20-21.)

The key to understanding any social system is that the economic foundation of society is the basis on which the intellectual superstructure is built; changes in the former lead inevitably to changes in the latter. This does not deny the influence of ideas on history. but analyses the source of these ideas.

Capitalism is a social system based on the private or state ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. The riches of society are monopolised by a parasitical minority; the capitalist class. In contrast the majority working class who produce all the wealth of society have no stake in capitalism. As the means of life are owned by the capitalists, the working class must sell theirmental and physical energies to the capitalists in exchange for a wage or salary. In return the capitalists employ the labour of the wealth producing class in the process of producing and distributing goods and services in the form of commodities. They do this not out of any philanthropic concern for the workers, but with the intention of selling the products on the market at a profit.

Surplus-value does not originate from any special or superior qualities on the part of the capitalists; since labour is the only source of wealth (other than nature) then it follows that it must be the source of the proportion of that wealth which is appropriated by the capitalist class as surplus-value. This is only possible because workers are capable of producing new values in the production process in excess of what is required for the reproduction of their ability to work. Like all other commodities the price that this ability to work (labour-power) can command in the market is determined by what is needed to produce and reproduce it. which means workers are paid as much as they need to go on living.

A class struggle is an inevitable result of the division between those who produce but do not own and those who own and do not produce. Each class tries to increase its share of the socially produced wealth at the expense of the other. The class conflict is institutionalised with the use of trade unions on one side and employers' federations such as the CBI on the other. Generally workers are more successful in periods of boom when the employers seek to avoid interruptions in production. Conversely, during trade depressions workers have to accept less or face the dole, as competition for employment tends to reduce wages and salaries. Necessary though this struggle is. it can never change the inherent nature of capitalism. The ruling class remains and through the state it controls the police, the armed forces and the judiciary; all of which can be deployed in the class struggle.

Production under capitalism is anarchic, as the profit requirement must be placed before the needs of the majority. Capitalism does not exist to serve human need; if the state of the market dictates that goods cannot be sold at a profit production is curtailed, workers sacked and stocks destroyed. That is why tens of millions of human beings starve to death every year, while farmers are subsidised not to produce food and food is accumulated in storage mountains. Alongside over-production for the market there is under-production for human need.

This basic contradiction has remained despite reformist attempts to eradicate working class social problems. They have failed as they address effects rather than the cause: commodity production. Capitalist parties of left, right and centre all claim they can control capitalism; history proves otherwise. Numerous governments have introduced legislation to solve problems such as inadequate housing, unemployment, pollution and racism. Yet all these problems stubbornly remain. Over the last one hundred years politicians, whether sincere or opportunist, have promised us the world; they have delivered today's horror story.

Socialists are not cynics, sneering at the efforts of reformists and offering no solutions of our own. Unlike the reformists, the SPGB and its companion parties abroad do not make promises of Utopia. Indeed we make no promises at all. The social relationships of capitalism must be replaced with those of socialism. Private and state ownership will give way to common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources. Access to wealth will be on the basis of self-determined need and individuals will contribute to society according to their ability. Commodity production with its absurd mechanisms of buying and selling will be confined to the history books.

Socialism will not create itself, nor can it be established by a vanguard. The inhabitants of a society of democratic participation will necessarily have reached a level of consciousness capable of administering it. Socialism presupposes socialist consciousness on the part of the majority, before the revolution. The socialist majority will be able to use bourgeois parliaments and congresses to capture political power and convert the private property relationships into those of common ownership and thereby abolish the state. The great task which confronts the working class is to organise consciously, politically, and democratically throughout the globe so that a speedy end may be wrought to the system which denies us access to the full benefits of modern technology and of the world s resources.

Malcolm Prangell

What price energy? (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The main problem facing humanity when it comes to satisfying its needs is not so much resources — either mineral resources or food resources — as energy. Resources are virtually infinite, the problem is to find the energy to get at them. For most of human existence on the planet Earth the main source of energy for production was the energy of human beings and domestic animals, supplemented by various mechanical devices and by limited amounts of wind and water power. Then, beginning in the 18th century, came the widespread use of steam power (based on burning wood and later coal to heat the water) and. at the beginning of the 20th century. the internal combustion engine (based on burning another fossil fuel. oil).

What will probably turn out to have been the greatest technological advance made by humans since the introduction of agriculture was the discovery of how to generate and use electricity in the second half of the 19th century. Electricity is a form of energy that can be generated by mechanical means (by turbines) and then later transformed back again into mechanical energy to be applied to production when and where required. It can be generated on a large scale (in power stations) or on a small scale (as by windmills and waterfalls) and so can be adapted to various different ways and combinations of ways of living.

Most of the electricity used in the world today is generated by huge steam-powered turbines in which the steam is still, overwhelmingly. raised by burning fossil fuels but also, increasingly, by the heat given off when atoms of uranium and now plutonium are split (nuclear fission). Electricity generated by using turbines turned by water, wind or tidal power is still relatively marginal. From an ideal point of view, burning fossil fuels is an irrational way of using these natural resources since this wastes a large part of their potential as useless and harmful gases.

Nuclear fission, too. is not the long-term solution to humanity’s energy problem since it has been well described as "the dirtiest and most unpleasant method of releasing energy that man has ever discovered". It merits this description because, besides heat, the process of splitting the atom releases lethal radioactivity which can escape into the atmosphere (as at Chernobyl) and which, in any case, remains in the waste products. Nuclear fission reactors should be quickly phased out.if not stopped completely, in any rationally-organised human society, rather than being extended to meet the problem in the supply of fossil fuels. Certainly there can be no humane justification for embarking on the mad idea of building more and more "breeder" reactors (so called because they produce radioactive plutonium which can be re-used as a nuclear fuel).

So what, in a rational world of common ownership and production solely for use, could be the solution to the energy problem? In the light of present-day scientific knowledge. there are two main candidates for the not-too-distant future: solar power and nuclear fusion. Solar energy, in its natural form of heat and light, is the product of nuclear fusion, the sun being a sort of fusion reactor in which atoms of hydrogen are continually being fused into becoming helium, a process which generates huge amounts of heat and light energy. The sun is in fact the source of the energy that sustains all life on Earth (its rays being converted, in the first instance, by plants into chemical energy which serves as food for animals including humans); solar energy is thus nature’s source of energy. It is also the indirect source of some of the other forms of natural energy that humans have been able to harness such as wind and water power. If humans could find a way of harnessing solar energy, then our energy problem would be solved.

Solar batteries, which directly convert the sun’s light rays into electrical energy, already exist and are used in satellites and space vehicles. But an efficient method of doing this at Earth ground-level — where the sun’s rays are much less powerful — has yet to be devised, as the experimental batteries being developed use up more energy than they create. Further research into this is still necessary but a world socialist society would be able to direct resources, such as those that will be released by abandoning all military research, towards it. Another possibility would be to launch a satellite that would function as a power station, converting the sun’s light rays into energy and beaming this down to Earth. But once again until more research has been done, more energy would be needed to get such a power station into orbit than it would initially produce.

At the moment the only practical way of using solar energy, apart from small scale uses in particularly sunny parts of the world, is to use the heat from the sun to raise steam to drive electricity-generating turbines. Such power stations using mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays could be situated in sunny, desert areas and linked to a grid that would allow the electricity to be transported to whatever part of the world it was needed. Since, however, considerable amounts of electricity are lost in transport, such a change-over from fossil fuel and nuclear fission power stations to solar power stations. to be most effective, would demand a corresponding re-allocation of industry to the sunnier parts of the world.

In view of the geo-political considerations involved under capitalism in such a re-allocation of industry — and so also of economic and political power — a change to solar power on a massive scale is unlikely to occur while capitalism lasts. If capitalism is allowed to continue, it is much more likely that the states where industry is currently concentrated will choose to develop nuclear fission power stations, including breeder reactors, in these areas as a way of maintaining their economic and political power. This is one example of how capitalism prevents a rational solution to humanity’s energy problem and a reason why anti-nuclear protestors. justified as their protests are. are unlikely to succeed as long as capitalism lasts.

Nuclear fusion has nothing in common with nuclear fission beyond the fact that both are examples of nuclear engineering. Nuclear fusion is. as its name suggests, a process whereby atoms of the lightest chemical elements are fused together (as in the sun) as opposed to fission when atoms of the heaviest elements are split. Both processes release energy in the form of heat but fission also leaves a radioactive waste material, some of it extremely dangerous, fusion does not. and so to this extent is a clean source of energy.

It is true that, as the equipment used to contain the fusion process will become radioactive, fusion power will not be entirely clean, though the levels of radioactivity involved would be nowhere near those caused by the process of nuclear fission. It is also true that the technically-easiest process, now in the experimental stage, does involve the production of a radioactive gas. but other possible fusion processes could avoid this. If the technical problems involved in these latter can be solved, humanity will have at its disposal a relatively clean and virtually unlimited source of energy since the raw material — an isotope of hydrogen, deuterium — exists in abundance in the sea. to the extent of 1 gramme in every 30 litres.

Since neither solar batteries nor fusion power yet exist in a form that can be applied to production, it is clear that if socialism is established in the near future it is going to have to rely on existing ways of generating electricity, essentially burning oil and coal even if. ideally, this is not the best way of using these resources. Since socialist society will need all the energy it can muster to clean up the initial problem of world poverty and hunger it will inherit from capitalism, on present day knowledge it may well not be able to afford not to use any nuclear fission reactors in existence at the time, dirty and dangerous though they are — though, freed from the profit and cost considerations of capitalism they could be and would be made less dangerous than they are now. It will be a question of deciding to use them temporarily to help eliminate the more pressing evil of deaths from world hunger, disease and poverty. But the aim will have to be to take such reactors out of service as soon as these immediate problems have been cleared up. Nuclear fission reactors have no long-term or even a medium-term future in socialism.

As to whether the substitute that will sooner or later be necessary for power stations based on burning coal or oil will be solar power or nuclear fusion, only future socialist society can decide but since certain forms of power can be applied straight away this would seem to be the obvious choice at the moment.

Adam Buick

Nuclear power — making it clear (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been drawn to our attention that the statement in the June Socialist Standard that "nuclear power could be safe” needs qualifying.

Nuclear fission (splitting the atom) which is the process used in all existing nuclear power stations can never be made safe, not even in socialism, since this is a question of physics not economics It can only be made less dangerous.

What we had in mind was the possibility of being able, within a generation, to construct power stations based on the principle of nuclear fusion. This is a quite different nuclear process in which there would be no danger of a melt-down, nor of any accidental release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. nor any radioactive waste products, the only problem in this respect would be that the equipment used to contain the process would acquire a relatively short-lived radioactivity

Editors.

The teaching business (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

You may have seen adverts for those very exclusive sounding little "tutorial colleges", private cramming colleges, places which seek to guarantee urgently needed A-level or O-level results in a hurry, in return for a suitable fee. All very discreet and polite, very popular perhaps with young students whose parents have got a few quid to spare and who forgot, during their two years of working for A-levels, that that was what they were doing. No Arthur Daleys here, you might think. This is the world of education, and the people who run these colleges must be fine pillars of the educational establishment, devoted to enhancing the cultural tone of life in the 'eighties and getting those diligent pupils through such very noble examinations.

Well, don't you believe it. Having just been employed by a private tutorial college for the past year. 1 can assure you that such colleges measure their so-called educational achievements in pounds and pence from start to finish. Let us start by looking at the glossy prospectus which publicises the college. We are dealing here with a business, a company, an enterprise. The fact that it is supposed to be a question of learning means nothing. Education, like every other human activity, has to be debased by capitalism into a crude transaction, an exchange fraught with fraudulence. The prospectus is distributed mainly in Hong Kong, parts of Africa and the Middle East, as British universities are popular with students from those areas, and to be eligible to take A-levels in local authority colleges you need to have lived in Britain for some time. The prospectus displays an attractive photograph of the London University Senate Building (which, incidentally, was taken over by the government during the second world war for use by the BBC misinformation service. George Orwell worked there and used it as the model for the Ministry of Truth building which he describes in 1984). In very small print it is stated that the college which the prospectus is advertising is round the corner from this imposing building.

Union organisation among the teachers in these colleges is (so far) virtually unheard of. although facilities and conditions for the teaching staff are in many ways particularly poor. The teachers' unions negotiate nationally with the association uniting local authority employers, whose agreements are not binding on this private sector. Pay is strictly by the hour. There is no pay at all during any holidays, bank holidays, absence (even through illness) and so on. Students pay approximately £600 for every O-level they are taking, and £800 for every A-level. Courses in English as a Foreign Language often cost well over £1.000. The college I have been working for has over 300 students registered. I had the opportunity on one occasion to see a note in which the owner has been totting up the accumulated income from these students, which ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Towards the end of the year, some students were complaining that they had not been warned against being over-ambitious in taking on too many subjects at A-level at the start. Standards of teaching are not properly monitored, with teachers being pressurised into teaching subjects which they may not be properly qualified for, rather than turn away potential fee-payers for a possible course. Some teachers, anxious to save some money for the holiday periods when their pay will abruptly cease, take on so many hours of teaching that they cannot possibly hope to prepare all their lessons properly. All of this, combined with the fact that a majority of students have been thrust too rapidly into writing exam papers in English even though it is not their first language, leads to a very poor level of results in many cases. The owner confided to me in an oddly candid moment that an appalling set of results has become the annual expectation. This situation is tolerated as long as it does not form into such a widespread bad reputation that there are no further queues of candidates.

Finally, the payment of teachers is carried out with a penny-pinching obsession which defies comprehension. I have personally kept (and framed) pay-slips which include deductions for "lateness" measured minute by minute, penny by penny. "Teaching" is regarded as a mechanical process, and if a moment passes when that process is not "happening" then the teacher must not be paid for that moment. The terms of the contract of employment are quite draconian: "a teacher who fails to attend any class . . . is liable to instant dismissal. Breach of College Regulations renders the teacher liable to instant dismissal" and so on.

No doubt Kenneth Baker would find all this very inspiring. After all. even the state education system is dominated by commercial considerations, ranging from the poor provision of facilities, understaffing and the present conflict over pay, to the underlying aim of turning out model wage-slaves (who should be expertly adaptable to the art of dealing with the DHSS for long periods). In either case, it is safe to assume that real education. the free process of social learning, has hardly begun.

Clifford Slapper