About socialism (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

It is a political party, separate from all others, Left, Right or Centre. It stands for the sole aim of establishing a world social system based upon human need instead of private or state profit. The Object and Declaration of Principles printed in this introductory leaflet were adopted by the Socialist Party in 1904 and have been maintained without compromise since then. In other countries there are companion parties sharing the same object and principles, and they too remain independent from all other political parties.

2. What is capitalism?

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, etc.) are monopolised by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, but, as a class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

No: as long as capitalism exists, profits will come before needs. Some reforms are welcomed by some workers, but no reform can abolish the fundamental contradiction between profit and need which is built into the present system. No matter whether promises to make capitalism run in the interests of the workers are made sincerely or by opportunist politicians they are bound to fail, for such a promise is like offering to run the slaughter house in the interests of the cattle.

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

No: nationalised industries simply mean that workers are exploited by the state, acting on behalf of the capitalists of one country, rather than by an individual capitalist or company. The workers in nationalised British Leyland are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned Ford. The mines no more belong to "the public" or the miners now than they did before 1947 when they were nationalised. Nationalisation is state capitalism.

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

No: the so-called socialist countries are systems of state capitalism. In Russia and its empire, in China, Cuba, Albania, Yugoslavia and the other countries which call themselves socialist, social power is monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. The features of capitalism, as outlined above, are all present. An examination of international commerce shows that the bogus socialist states are part of the world capitalist market and cannot detach themselves from the requirements of profit.

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism. In a socialist society there will be common ownership and democratic control of the earth by its inhabitants. No minority class will be in a position to dictate to the majority that production must be geared to profit. There will be no owners: everything will belong to everyone. Production will be solely for use, not for sale. The only questions society will need to ask about wealth production will be: what do people require, and can the needs be met? These questions will be answered on the basis of the resources available to meet such needs. Then, unlike now, modern technology and communications will be able to be used to their fullest extent. The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their self-defined needs. Work will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation: the coercion of wage and salary work will be abolished. There will be no buying or selling and money will not be necessary, in a society of common ownership and free access. For the first time ever the people of the world will have common possession of the planet earth.

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

Capitalism, with its constant drive to serve profit before need, throws up an endless stream of problems. Most workers in Britain feel insecure about their future; almost one in four families with children living below the official government poverty line; many old people live in dangerously cold conditions each winter and thousands die; millions of our fellow men and women are dying of starvation — tens of thousands of them each day. A society based on production for use will end those problems because the priority of socialist society will be the fullest possible satisfaction of needs. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are subsidised not to produce more: yet many millions are malnourished. At the moment hospital queues are growing longer and people are dying of curable illnesses; yet it is not "economically viable" to provide decent health treatment for all. In a socialist society nothing short of the best will be good enough for any human being.

8. What about human nature?

Human behaviour is not fixed, but determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate. Even under capitalism people often obtain pleasure from doing a good turn for others; few people enjoy participating in the "civilised" warfare of the daily rat-race. Think how much better it would be if society was based on co-operation.

9. Are socialists democrats?

Yes: the Socialist Party has no leaders. It is a democratic organisation controlled by its members. It understands that Socialism can only be established by a conscious majority of workers — that workers must liberate themselves and will not be liberated by leaders or parties. Socialism will not be brought about by a dedicated minority "smashing the state", as some left-wingers would have it. Nor do the activities of paid, professional politicians have anything to do with Socialism — the experience of seven Labour governments has shown this. Once a majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, they will take the necessary step to organise consciously for the democratic conquest of political power. There will be no Socialism without a socialist majority.

10. What is the next step?

Many workers know that there is something wrong and want to change society. Some join reform groups in the hope that capitalism can be patched up, but such efforts are futile because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. People who fear a nuclear war may join CND, but as long as nation states exist, economic rivalry means that the world will never be safe from the threat of war. There are countless dedicated campaigns and good causes which many sincere people are caught up in, but there is only one solution to the problems of capitalism and that is to get rid of it, and establish Socialism. Before we can do that we need socialists; winning workers to that cause requires knowledge, principles and an enthusiasm for change. These qualities can be developed by anyone — and are essential for anyone who is serious about changing society. Capitalism in the 1980s is still a system of waste, deprivation and frightening insecurity. You owe it to yourself to find out about the one movement which stands for the alternative.


If you agree with some or all of the above, please contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism.

Running Commentary: Bad news (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bad news

After all the efforts of Oxfam, Bob Geldof and the rest, nobody now needs to be told about the terrible effects of drought on human communities. Without rain crops do not grow; cultivated land becomes a barren desert and people starve to death by the thousand. To enterprises like Band Aid and Comic Relief, these are natural tragedies — acts of God, as evasive insurance companies like to say. The inference of this is clear: drought happens outside of human control and we are powerless to do much more about it than put money into collecting boxes.

But questions need to be asked: about why a world which is capable of feeding its population should periodically watch millions of them die because they don't have enough to eat; about why, as famine rages in one part of the world, in other parts food is left to rot and farmers are paid not to produce the life-giving stuff

The answers to these questions — and to some others have been revealed by recent events in America, where there has been a severe drought. Many agricultural areas have been desperate for rain as soaring temperatures turned the soil into blackened powder, crops withered and animals could not breed. But while the American farmers were getting desperate, the people who make money out of selling their produce were in rather better shape. Shortage means rising prices, which in June reached record levels. So a nice profit could he made from buying farm produce and, as the drought continued to affect production, watching the selling price rise with the temperature.

This comfortable situation was exposed in all its fragility in July, when the weather forecasters suddenly began to talk about the approaching end of the drought. The reaction of the commodity dealers was decidedly not relief; they panicked at the thought of better crops and what this would do to their profits In their frantic efforts to unload what they had bought they pushed prices down further, by record amounts.

Anyone whose heart aches at the plight of these brokers in human needs may take comfort from the fact that the government has a price policy, which came quickly to the rescue like the US cavalry. Prices were stopped from falling too far and. in any case, it did not rain as much as the farmers had hoped and the dealers had feared.

This sordid episode illustrates that food is produced, not to feed people but to be sold with the object of profit. That is why farmers suffer in a natural disaster while the people who market their produce benefit. It is also why masses of people starve when there is absolutely no reason for them to do so. The activities of Oxfam, Geldof and the rest obscure this fact, but until we have a society based on satisfying human needs it will continue to bedevil their well-meant efforts It will not, like the drought-stricken soil, blow away.

Blue Blood

If, as the Democrats say, George Bush is a wimp he can at least claim to be a royal wimp — of which, as we know, there is already no shortage. No less an expert in irrelevance than the senior genealogist for Burke's Peerage has traced a Bush connection to every European monarch (not that there are many of them left now) As far as the British royals go. Bush is a 13th cousin twice removed to the Queen, a 13th cousin once removed to the Queen Mother and he is linked to, among others, the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York

It might be thought that the most surprising thing about this is that there are so many people prepared to spend so much time in research into such meaningless trivia. Does it matter if the ruling class can be shown to be one vast, international hot-bed of incestuousness? But the story did provide a little publicity for Burke's, which does not enjoy a readership to compare with Mills and Boon. It also contributed to the mystique of ruling class origins, which asserts that they hold their superior position through some process other than the exploitation of the majority of people.

The assumption is that "royal blood" is also noble blood — that being in the aristocracy proper presupposes an especially gallant personality. This romantic nonsense is not supported by history, which reveals the roots of the British nobility in mediaeval episodes of banditry and bloodshed. True to this type, another of the Bush relations is Lord Lucan, long absent from this country since the police announced that they would like him to help in their enquiries into the murder of his children's nanny.

It will not be known for a while whether all this will win or lose votes for Bush; his opponent. Michael Dukakis, makes much of his humble, plebeian origins. American workers. much like those in other countries, tend to vote on issues other than the candidates ancestors, which does not mean that they concern themselves with anything more relevant or pressing. They will give their support to the man who in their opinion will be less inept in grappling with the problems of American capitalism

Wimpish Bush or Workaholic Dukakis is no real choice. Come November, it will be equally futile to vote for or against royal connections.

Blow out

As the smoke cleared from the wreck of Piper Alpha a number of sordid but instructive facts began to emerge. There has been no lack of experts to tell us that the design of the rig was defective. It is fair to ask what the experts were doing when the rig was being designed and built. At that time the North Sea oil boom was just getting under way; it was no time to delay things with footling doubts and questions about safety. It was all excitement then; there was going to be a British oil field, to rival the Middle East. In the rush to get the rigs built and into position, a little detail like placing the workers' living quarters over a potential bomb was either hardly noticed or noticed and ignored.

In those heady days we were sold that North Sea oil and gas was a massive break through the long awaited entry into a trade which would bring boundless prosperity to us all (there was little mention of what it would do for people like Armand Hammer). Workers on the rigs were glamorised into an elite, agents of a modem technology which could triumph over the elements, earning big money in the storms far out in the cruel sea so that we could benefit.

It was a similar story at BP's terminal at Sullom Voe, which was designed to handle half the British output from the North Sen but which, after only six years of full operation, has serious problems of corrosion. At least one technician at the plant says that these are due to the pressures of time and profit which were being applied as the terminal was built.

Piper Alpha has been described as an accident but it is hardly correct to use this word in a case where the risks should have been so clearly foreseeable but were so deliberately built into the design to increase the rig's chances of profitability. That this is accepted now — if tacitly — is shown by the sordid process of arguing for compensation, which has attracted a whole clutch of lawyers including some from America, where they are accustomed to what is called ambulance-chasing after a disaster. When a worker is killed their family often suffers the added burden of financial stress, and it is right that they should try to ease it by claiming compensation from the employers. What should sicken every worker is to see how this exposes their standing in capitalist society. The compensation which each family receives will be adjusted — perhaps by a court — according to what is judged to have been the dead worker's earning capacity. The higher paid their job, the longer their expected working life, the higher the compensation.

Whatever our job — however tedious or glamorous tt may be — our status as wage slaves, living through the sale of our working ability, reduces us to factors in the investment process. We represent a type of capital, to be expended to produce profit and to contribute to the accumulation of yet more capital by our employers We are living beings but before that we are items on a balance sheet.

Blogger's Note:

The August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a standalone article on the Piper Alpha disaster.

Where is Russia Going? (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia has — and at no time since the 1917 revolution ceased to have — a capitalist economy characterised by the existence of commodity-production, wage-labour and capital accumulation. What has changed, and is changing again under Gorbachev, is the way in which economic decision-making within this system is organised.

Capitalism is a class society in which those who do the actual work of production, whether manual or intellectual, are separated from the means of production and have to live by selling their mental and physical energies to those who monopolise the farms, factories, mines, warehouses, offices and other places where wealth is created.

What distinguishes capitalism from other class societies is the fact that the great bulk of wealth is produced by wage-labour, for sale on a market. It is a society where all wealth is produced with a view to being bought and sold, which is what Marx meant when he spoke of capitalism as involving generalised “commodity production”. A commodity is an item of wealth that has been produced for sale and, as Marx put it in the opening line of Capital: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities”.

Commodity-production in Russia

Wage-labour has never been abolished in Russia; on the contrary it expanded massively as more and more peasants were transformed into wage-workers for developing industry. The existence of wage-labour as the predominant form of productive work has been in itself sufficient proof of the capitalist nature of the Russian economy. But what about commodity-production? Can this too be said to have always existed in Russia since 1917?

There has never been any argument about consumer goods in Russia being commodities; they are quite obviously produced with a view to being sold and are just as obviously bought for money. In Stalin’s time, however, the official Russian position was that producer goods such as raw materials, machinery and other elements of production were not commodities.

The case for denying that producer goods, called “means of production” in the debate, were commodities rested on the nature of the system of central planning instituted in Russia in the 1930s. Under this system, the factories and other places where wealth was produced received strict instructions from the central state, not only about what to produce but also to whom they should deliver their products and from whom they should get their supplies. Factories were in effect supplied by the central state with the materials and equipment they needed for production.

Stalin argued that, as this amounted to a system of direct supply in kind, the products involved were not commodities but simply useful things being physically transferred from one unit in the productive system to another. As he argued in 1951 against a certain Notkin who, apparently, had dared to argue that producer goods in Russia were commodities:

“A commodity is a product which may be sold to any purchaser, and when its owner sells it, he loses ownership of it and the purchaser becomes the owner of the commodity, which he may resell, pledge or allow to rot. Do means of production come into this category? They obviously do not. In the first place, means of production are not “sold” to any purchaser, they are not “sold” even to collective farms; they are only allocated by the state to its enterprises. In the second place, when transferring means of production to any enterprise, their owners – the state – does not lose the ownership of them; on the contrary, it retains it fully. In the third place, directors of enterprises who receive means of production from the Soviet state, far from becoming their owners, are deemed to be the agents of the state in the utilisation of the means of production in accordance with the plans established by the state.” (Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR)

In other words, according to Stalin the central state was simply engaged in transferring wealth it owned from one of its factories to another; just as, for instance, the Ford motor company did when parts produced in one of its factories were transferred to another for incorporation into the final product.

Faced with this argument those in the Marxist tradition responded with a number of possible, and not always compatible answers. One was to accept that Russian producer goods were not commodities and that therefore Russia was not capitalist but some new form of exploiting class society.

Another was to accept the analogy with Fords and argue that Russia was a single, giant capitalist firm operating within the context of the world capitalist system.

A third argument was that the products Russian enterprises transferred to each other were commodities because they had to be paid for, the receiving enterprise having to transfer a sum of money from its account to that of the supplying enterprise. So what the central planners in Russia were planning was not the simple physical transfer of productive resources between productive units but the exchange of commodities among commodity-producing enterprises.

This last was undoubtedly a correct analysis as the central planners not only had to plan the physical transfer of producer goods from enterprise to enterprise but also to fix prices’ generally. Since the death of Stalin the Russian authorities have come to accept that producer goods in Russia are commodities (which leaves a few die-hard orthodox Trotskyists as the only defenders of Stalin’s position).

The following, then, is a more accurate description of the system of imperative (that is, compulsory, binding) central state planning in Russia, an understanding of which is essential to a comprehension of the changes proposed by Gorbachev under the name of perestroika:

“In the Soviet Union some three-quarters of total production is made up of means of production. In a Western type commodity-capitalist economy production and exchange takes place through market relations established directly between enterprises, i.e. in a decentralised way. In the Soviet system, on the other hand, production and exchange relations between enterprises are not directly established horizontally but take place via a vertical centralisation. It is the system of material supply that controls and plans the circulation of commodities. Herein lies the fundamental element of the originality of the Soviet economy. The enterprise receives orders not only on what it must produce and in what amounts. It also has precise instructions on the destination of the commodities it produces: their buyers and users are laid down by the planning authorities. And, above all, the origin, amounts and specifications, and delivery date of their own supply of raw materials, semi-finished products and equipment – the input of their production – are similarly planned. Thus the major part of inter-enterprise exchanges are controlled and organised by administrative apparatuses situated outside and above the units concerned.”  (B. Chavance, Le système économique soviétique).

To which must be added that, as indicated, the prices which enterprises must pay their suppliers and must charge their customers are also fixed centrally.

In other words, what the central state in Russia has been planning from Stalin’s time to today has not been the simple physical transfer of wealth between the various productive units it owned but the exchange of commodities between them. Productive units in Russia produce wealth to be sold (commodities), even if they have not been free to decide to whom to sell and at what price. But despite this state control there is still commodity-production by wage labour, and so therefore capitalism.

Failure of central planning

The aim of production in Russia, as in any capitalist country, is to maximise the amount of surplus value extracted from the class of wage and salary earners. To do so requires some measure of the rate of exploitation of wage-labour, of the surplus produced by workers over and above the value of their wages and salaries. This can only be provided by a price structure in which the prices of resources used in production accurately reflect their cost of production plus the average rate of profit (what Marx called their “price of production”).

In Western-type capitalism such a price structure is brought about more or less spontaneously through the operations of market forces. In Russia the central planners had to try to work it out themselves. For various reasons they failed, as has been admitted by Academician Abel Aganbegyan, one of Gorbachev’s top economic advisers and a leading theorist of perestroika, when he writes in his recent book The Challenge: Economics of Perestroika (Hutchinson, £8.95):

“The existing system of prices does not give a true valuation because prices do not reflect social costs and the efficiency of production. Up to now this common denomination has been lacking in the Soviet Union.”

This has meant that the Russian ruling class has been deprived of an accurate measure of the rate of extraction of surplus value at enterprise and industrial branch level as well as at the level of the economy as a whole, and so hasn’t been able to calculate properly where to invest new capital so as to make the most profit and achieve the highest possible average rate of profit over the whole economy.

Although central planning has been successful in developing one or two specially selected industrial sectors; in ‘particular the military (for such a comparatively backward country economically, Russia’s advances in weaponry and space research, whatever else may be said about them, represent a considerable technological achievement), it has proved a failure for the rest of industry .

This is not just the consequence of an inability to develop a coherent price system, but also because it could not provide a substitute for competition as a spur to enterprises increasing labour productivity through technological innovation and advance.

This failure has been evident to the Russian rulers since the late 1950s and various reforms have been introduced to rectify things, but all to no avail. In Khrushchev’s time, the economist Liberman proposed that enterprises should be allowed more freedom to seek and retain profits. Experiments in this direction were made but were never extended to the whole economy, as this would have demanded the complete dismantling of central state planning. As reform after reform failed, and the Russian economy continued to stagnate in terms of productivity and technological advance (it is not for nothing that the Russian rulers refer to the 20 years of Brezhnev rule as “the period of stagnation”), this question had finally to be faced. Which is what Gorbachev has done and what perestroika, or restructuring, is all about.

Perestroika and market forces

The restructuring that perestroika involves is precisely the abandoning of central state planning of commodity production and exchange in favour of allowing enterprises to buy and sell directly from each other at prices fixed by the market.

As explained by Aganbegyan, the first step towards this has already been taken in the “Law on Socialist Enterprises” passed in June 1987 and operative on 1 January this year. Under this law individual enterprises have been granted their independence from the state:

“Enterprises and associations are to become independent, self-accounting, self-financing and self-managing. These four characteristics all involve the responsibility of the enterprise, and imply a completely new economic situation for the basic production units in the Soviet economic system. Only in these conditions can the working collective of an enterprise really be master, owner and director of the resources of production available to it.”

Since such independence is being guaranteed by a law enforceable in the Courts this amounts to a virtual “privatisation” of these enterprises. This time it is not just a question, as it was in a previous law passed at the time of the Liberman experiments in 1965, of allowing enterprises to retain some of their profits as an incentive to get them to carry out the central state’s orders and instructions efficiently. Enterprises are to become autonomous legal and economic units dependent for their income on the sale of the commodities they produce.

“Enterprises are changing over to full self-accounting, in which all expenditure must be covered by income. What does full economic accounting mean? It may be contrasted with partial economic accounting. Currently enterprise income covers only running costs, while at the same time a significant part of capital investment of the enterprise comes from centralised resources. Full economic accounting, above all, implies that there are no subsidies so that the income of an enterprise from production covers both its running costs and its capital expenditure.”

In a later chapter Aganbegyan expands on what this will mean:

“Enterprises will receive their earnings from the sale of their output. The gross revenue of enterprises will be formed by these earnings after material input expenses have been met (on raw materials, finishing, and even amortisation). From this gross revenue an enterprise makes payments for resources used (natural resources and labour, and the use of capital stock), makes contribution to the budget, local authority rates and to ministry funds, pays off bank credit and any fines 10 contractors and makes any other payments due. The remainder is self-managed income at the full disposal of the enterprise’s working collective, determining its well-being and further development. To receive a large self-accountable net income more goods must be sold, through increasing both the quantity and quality of production, and by trying to get higher prices. For this a competitive edge will need to be maintained against other similar enterprises and higher quality and a better technological level of output will need 10 be attained. All this is a precondition for a larger self accountable income. The self-accountable income also depends on production costs. The lower the fuel, energy and raw material consumption, the larger the enterprise’s income.”

In other words, the enterprises are going to be expected to behave in the same way as private and state enterprises do in the openly capitalist West: to seek to maximise their retained profits (“self accountable income”) both by minimising costs and increasing sales.

Their relationship to the banks is to be similar too. “It will be advantageous for an enterprise”, writes Aganbegyan, “to draw on credit and this will increase its self-accountable income if the credit is well used so that the profit is increased at a greater rate than the interest paid on the credit”.

The next step in perestroika after this granting of legal and economic independence to enterprises will be to allow them to choose their own suppliers and customers and to agree among themselves the prices of the goods they trade with each other. Aganbegyan does not disguise the fact that this will have to involve the dismantling of the old system of central state planning described above, under which enterprises’ suppliers, customers and prices were fixed centrally:

“Up to now the market in the Soviet Union has been both restricted and deformed. Most means of production have been centrally allocated by the state through a material and technical supply system. They are not freely bought and sold . . . During perestroika market relations in the USSR will be deepened and broadened. Above all the market is set to more than double in size thanks to the transition from centralised material and technical supply to wholesale trading in means of production, including direct commercial links between enterprises. In this way a well-developed market in means of production will be created, and the proportion of centrally set prices will be retained only for the most essential products, to control their rate of growth and to stave off inflation. At the same time the scope of contracted and free prices will grow significantly.”

The abolition of “centralised material and technical supply” (as described above by Chavance) and “centralised pricing” which have been features of the Russian economy since the 1930s would represent a really radical change in the organisation of the Russian economy, but the timetable for this has already been laid down. By 1990 60 per cent of all production is to take place through wholesale trading, rising to 80-90 per cent in 1992. Similarly, the number of prices set centrally is to be reduced so as to cover only the more essential products (such as fuel, electricity and certain raw materials and steel products). The rest are to be determined by market forces and even then the prices of those commodities which remain centrally fixed are to be linked to their world market price. Planning will still remain but be indicative — providing global estimates of market demand — rather than imperative.

Return of the bondholder?

If it is implemented — and it remains to be seen whether or not this reform will suffer the fate of previous ones — perestroika will represent a fundamental change in the form of capitalism that has existed in Russia until now. It will represent a transition from centrally planned commodity production and exchange to a more competitive system in which the competing units would be, as in the West, legally and economically autonomous enterprises. The economic laws of capitalism will come to operate in Russia through competition rather than through the State which, Aganbegyan admits, has proved to be an inadequate substitute.

Other changes can be expected to follow. In his book Aganbegyan dismisses the idea that a stock exchange could develop in Russia. Other advisers to the Russian rulers are not so sure, according to a recent newspaper report:

“A senior Communist Party official yesterday predicted that the Soviet Union could eventually have its own stock exchange under reforms promoted by Gorbachev. Mr Evard Figuranov, of the Party’s Central Committee’s economic department, said creation of an exchange was the logical extension of new forms of stimulating use of savings introduced over the past year. “It is not under consideration yet, but I think it will be in the future”, he said at one of a series of news briefings, organised to coincide with the current Party conference in Moscow . . . Over the past year, small, state-owned enterprises around the country have begun offering shares to employees and bonds for specific development projects as control by ministries in Moscow has been relaxed. Mr Figuranov said a bond market could arise alongside a share market for the construction of social projects like kindergartens and sports complexes.” (Daily Telegraph, 2 July 1988)

This would indeed be a logical extension of perestroika, and not just kindergartens and sport complexes. For, if enterprises are to be allowed autonomy to seek to maximise their so-called “self accountable income”, why should they be obliged to go to the banks when they want money to pay for some development project? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to offer bonds and shares for sale to the general public? It should not be imagined that there are no rich people in Russia. There are – the children of scientific and artistic prize-winners who have inherited wealth from their parents, for instance, as well as the top members of the nomenklatura and their families, and black marketeers past and present – and many of these would be only too keen to invest their wealth for profit.

Adam Buick

Next month we look at the consequences for Russia’s paper commitment to be working towards a moneyless society of Gorbachev’s acceptance of so-called “market socialism”.

History and the battle of ideas (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

What makes an idea serious or crazy? The "realist" will tell you that the distinction is easy to make Serious ideas are about making reality work. Crazy ideas are incompatible with reality, they are dreams, utopian fantasies, unrealisable ideas.

Few people doubt that ending mass starvation under capitalism is a serious idea. The Right argues that free markets and the elimination of state-dominated economies in the countries where millions are starving would put an end to malnutrition The buying and selling system, left to its own devices, would put food where there are consumers for it. That is the magic of the market, so the economic magicians of the Ministries and universities tell us with faces straight. The Left rejects this method of ending world hunger. The left-wing of capitalism argues that what is needed is more overseas monetary aid from the "rich" nations to the "poor" ones and more state-regulated planning of food production, so that the market is forced to work for the people. Right and left compete openly to prove that they have the most serious idea to end the obscenity of widespread human starvation, with 15 million under the age of five dying yearly for lack of food in a world of plenty.

The socialist argues that both the Right and Left are wrong. Their policies will never succeed. Capitalism cannot meet the needs of those who are hungry but moneyless. The solution is to do away with the profit system which dictates that only those needs which it is profitable to satisfy will be provided for. Do away with money, which stands as a barrier between humankind and the abundant resources of our planet. Take the world, and everything in it, into common possession. This is a revolutionary proposition.

It is also, according to the ideologists of the Left and Right of capitalism, a crazy proposition. It is unrealistic to conceive of a worldwide society where production is solely for need, not profit. To abolish money is a monstrously crazy idea. Free access would never work. Evidence to back these claims is rarely offered. When it is it is usually based on distortion. "Ah, these socialists want to abolish money and replace it with barter." No we do not; we want to abolish money and replace it with free access. "Human nature is such that people could not operate in a society where everything is freely available " Not a scrap of biological evidence is provided to back up this claim that there is something inherent in the human genes which makes us incapable of sharing the world as a united species, each with our different talents and needs. The fact is that when the apologists for capitalism are pushed to deal with the socialist idea, they reject it simply because it is not in line with what exists now. However unworkable their own ideas and policies are, they are defined as "serious" if they fit in with the continuation of capitalism

Getting religion

It was the same in the past. In classical antiquity the ownership of one human being by another was the economic norm. Slave production prevailed. Until the last century in North America slave plantations flourished. The slave who objected to being owned would be labelled “a utopian". Even his or her fellow slaves would find crazy the notion of not being owned by a master or mistress. Under feudalism vast numbers of men were recruited to fight the Crusades against those who rejected the Christian faith. According to this faith still existing in society, but thankfully ignored by most people — all humans are born as sinners and must pray to a Lord in the sky who sent his only son down to earth to be murdered and born again. All very serious. Few people call Archbishop Runcie a crazy man. When Pope Urban II wanted to recruit men to fight and die in these vicious Crusades of mass human slaughter, this is what he said:

The invaders befoul the altars with the filth of their bodies They circumcise Christians and pour the blood of the circumcision upon the altars or into baptismal fonts They stable their horses in these churches, which are now withdrawn from the service of God .Yea, the churches are served, but not by holy men — for the Turks are torturing Christians, binding them, and filling then with arrows, or making them kneel bending their heads, to try if their swordsmen can cut through their necks with a single blow of the naked sword. What shall I say of the ravishing of the women? 

(H Lamb, The Crusades,  Iron Men and Saints, 1931, p 39.)

What are we to think of the ideas presented in Urban II's racist, fantastic, war mongering scare story? Do we accept that it must have been serious because most Europeans at the time believed it? Do we say that it is crazy, even though it reflected the economic needs of the feudal ruling class, who needed to protect the Church’s ownership and control of land and ideology against other rulers with other religious myths to confuse the minds of the oppressed? A few weeks ago the present writer bought a copy of The Watchtower, a magazine sold from door to door by devoted men and women who have ideas to pass on. They are Christians of the Jehovah's Witness sect and. among other things, they believe that the world is soon to end and God will "come down'’ to judge us all. It seems a worthwhile insurance policy to keep a copy of The Watchtower under the bed. Their 15 July issue has a headline JESUS CHRIST GOD. MAN OR MYTH? Had the woman been selling the magazine in the days of feudal totalitarianism, when belief in religious nonsense was compulsory, she would probably have burned at the stake for posing such a blasphemous question. Times change. Inside we are told that in the first century, thousands of people accepted Jesus for what he was the promised Messiah, or Christ, sent to earth to vindicate Jehovah’s sovereignty and to offer his life as a ransom for mankind . . . Today, millions of Christian disciples know that Jesus is no myth. They accept him as the heavenly enthroned King of God's established kingdom, who is now progressively taking control of the earth and its affairs" (p 8). In "the first century" it is not that surprising that human beings, lacking much scientific knowledge of their environment were taken in by the myth of a miracle performing magician descending to earth from heaven. The same belief had been held by countless god-worshippers in countless centuries before the first one AD. Today, we might find it harder to understand how serious people can believe that a messiah, alive only in the "spirit world beyond", can be taking control of the world's affairs. If one went to a psychiatrist with such a story, he would probably diagnose insanity, unless he knew the social conventions which make such faith respectable.

Mental phenomena

Dogmatic faith in ideas of no scientific substance is not confined to orthodox religion. On the Left there has long been a belief among some people that the tyrannical, anti-working class police states of the Russian Empire, China or Albania are socialist societies Although they exhibit all the characteristics of capitalism — wage labour, capital, buying and selling, rich and poor, leaders and oppressed — some workers will not give up the idea that these are examples of socialism in practice. Interestingly, S. M. Lipset has pointed out that

In Holland and Sweden. recent studies show that the Communists are strongest in regions which were once centres of fundamentalist religious revivalism. In Finland, Communism and revivalist Christianity often are strong in the same areas (Political Man, p. 106.)

What seems to have happened in these cases is that workers have given up one set of unscientific, crazy ideas and adopted a new set of pseudo-scientific, equally crazy ideas.

People are not born with ideas. Thinking is a social process. To think we need to think about something, and that something is our environment Our minds, which are not tangible parts of the anatomy but social phenomena, are located in the environment This is why we think most of the time about ideas which relate to our environment. When we are living in cities, surrounded by supermarkets and fast-food joints, we don't think about going out into the jungle and hunting for meat. Hunter gatherers, living in a primitive society, do not think about whether to have pickles on their Big Mac. Primitive hunters did not think about money because they lived in a society where goods were shared by the whole community, without money intervening to restrict the satisfaction of their needs. Big Mac Man thinks a lot about money. He will do more or less anything, including selling himself to a capitalist who will exploit him, in order to get more of it. In many primitive tribes, such as the Panare of South America, it is considered a supreme indignity to work for wages. Who is crazy, the moneyless, sharing primitive, or the highly civilised, highly exploited wage slave? 

In a property-dominated society most of our ideas are property related. The pronouns 'mine", "yours" and "theirs” become very important. People become neurotic about them. The smallest children are taught, "That's not yours. Don't touch Mustn’t touch. Not yours." Grown men and women work forty-hour weeks in factories. When they leave on a Friday they are checked by security guards in uniforms with buttons almost shiny enough to make them cops They are checking that these untrustworthy wage slaves have not stolen a bit of what they produced They produced the goods, the capitalist, who was probably not seen in the factory all week, possesses the wealth. If workers want what they produce they can spend some of their wages buying it. You build mansions but live in a slum.

We are taught to accept that possession is power. The child who says to her mother. “Well, that might not be mine, but I want to use it" will have a problem in understanding the ways of the world. If this carries on she will need to be taken to a child psychologist. In the past she would be belted, probably not quite as humiliating as being sent to the child psychologist. If a socialist factory worker says, "Look, we produce all the wealth and then we're robbed of the fruits of our labour. Why don't we make the means of production — not just this factory, but all of them, and the offices, farms and mines as well — into our common possession!" he will soon be branded a troublemaker. Crazy ideas. If he is lucky he will be derided as a utopian, or he might be blacklisted and persecuted as a Red wrecker.

A culture of deceit

There are some ideas which we arrive at our selves. We do not need to read books to discover that fire burns us or soap tastes horrible. Other ideas we discover by listening to other people. Prolonged exposure of the skin to the sun can damage it; carrots add a bit of flavour to a casserole; if you sleep with a hooker in Bangkok you stand a good chance of catching a dose of something you won't like. These are serious ideas, learned either from direct experience of the environment or from the experiences of those who have no reason to deceive us.

Some people do have an interest in deceiving us. Capitalism is based on a culture of deceit. It pretends that class inequality either does not exist or, if it does, is natural and ineradicable; it pretends that employment is a fair contract rather than a process of legalised robbery; and that profit is the just reward of the hard working entrepreneur, rather than the surplus value obtained by the capitalists, who pay their workers less than the value of what they have produced. Capitalism claims that all workers can become rich if they try hard enough, that hard work will always be rewarded with social success. These are lies. Professional liars — journalists, priests, professors, teachers, politicians are in the business of knocking these false beliefs into the minds of the workers. They are being entrusted with a very responsible job. If they fail, workers might stop accepting the capitalist myths. No wonder the Minister of Education is so eager to ensure that the right lessons are being taught in the curriculum, and Thatcher is so busy trying to censor the BBC. Ideas which we. pick up from the depositories of wisdom which capitalism provides for us are what socialists call Ideology. Or, to put it simply, distorted experience

A few months ago the case of the moving picture became a big news story Thousands of copies of prints had been sold for the £7.50 tastes of proletarian art collectors. Well, they cover the stains on the wallpaper and if you know nothing about painting they look just like the original. One of these paintings depicted a dancing girl, and on walls all over Britain reports came that she was starting to dance. Well, to be honest, what happened first was that one report came in. An old lady in Solihull had spotted this dancing girl on her wall. In stepped that journal of sustained. scientific investigation. The Sun. And would you believe it. within only a few days of reading about the sighting by this Solihull Sun reader, there were girls dancing on the walls of pretty well every city in Britain. They were dancing two to a street in Ireland, where early Catholic indoctrination has made the workers a soft touch for this sort of craziness. (In Ireland the Virgin Mary is known to appear in fields quicker than you can say "Let's build an airport" ) The myth of the dancing girl does nobody much harm. One can imagine the dull and uncreative lives of the poor workers who imagined that they saw their painting dance. Other myths, however. are more harmful. For example, most workers in Britain have never met a Russian. If they did they would probably think he was a German. But most British workers will tell you that "we" (the British) cannot trust the Russians. If necessary, "we" must be prepared to protect ourselves by annihilating several million of them. Indeed, the whole British defence policy supported by Tory. Labour and Liberal alike is based on the assumption that we must maintain a permanent threat to kill millions of Russians if British capitalist interests are endangered. British workers have been given an enemy to fear and, when the time is right, to hate and kill. In Iran and Iraq this creation of artificial human hatred has resulted in hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them only teenagers, marching with enthusiasm to their deaths. Such is the sick nature of capitalist ideology

Socialist ideas

This journal is called the Socialist Standard. You may have bought it for one of many reasons. What Is likely is that before you bought it ideas about what socialism means were fed to you. They were probably not fed by socialists. All kinds of people with a direct interest in discrediting the idea of socialism — from the Sun with its "loony lefties' and the Guardian with its Marxist states", to our class enemies in the pulpits and on party platforms — will have contributed their bit to arouse suspicion about the establishment of a socialist world society. Socialists are willing and able to counter these ideas, preferably face to lace in open debate. In debate the case for socialism is invincible. But more often than not, ideology is perpetrated by means of dishonesty and innuendo, appeals to fear and prejudice rather than self-interest and social awareness Why are socialist ideas attacked? Clearly, it is not because the case for socialism is completely crazy. After all, the capitalists do not invest millions of pounds in opposing the ideas of the Flat Earth Society or the man who advertises regularly in the Guardian to inform us that Jesus Christ is alive and living in Brick Lane, London. Ideas are attacked when they endanger an interest. The Church of England devotes much time and money to discredit crazy religious sects, like the Moonies and Scientologists, who are challenging its monopoly of religious craziness. Why do the Cigarette manufacturers spend money on convincing us that tobacco addiction is not really half as bad for you as these wicked, unscientific anti-smoking activists claim? They do so because in recent years the health dangers of smoking have become more obvious, smoking in public has become stigmatised and some very fat profits indeed are in danger of being lost. Where there is an interest to defend the battle of ideas hots up.

Socialism is the most dangerous idea conceivable for defenders of capitalism. Those who support a system of minority affluence and privilege are not going to sit back complacently while we undermine support for their social order. They will fight with all the lies, distortions, bribes and more sinister weaponry at their command. That is why there is a class war between them and us. It is not a war of bullets and bombs, which capitalists and would be capitalists feel most comfortable with, but a war of ideas. Our objective is to unshackle the minds of our fellow workers: to educate the victims of political confusion.

Socialists are serious about ideas because knowledge is the most potent weapon our class can possess. That is why we are not bothered about whether our ideas are regarded as serious or crazy in some philosophical, academic sense. Socialists could not care less if the pontificating lookers on in the struggle of history deem us to be cranks. It is better to be a class-conscious crank than a serious and respectable accomplice to human oppression. Neither are we bothered about the hangers-on to socialist ideas, often to be found flogging their worn out fallacies in the various sects of left wing capitalism. They have been around a long time, and Engels described them as 

. . . all those who have nothing to look forward to from the official world or have come to the end of their tether with it—opponents of inoculation, supporters of abstemiousness, vegetarians. anti-vivisectionists, nature healers, free-community preachers whose communities have fallen to pieces, authors of new theories on the origin of the universe, unsuccessful or unfortunate inventors, victims of real or imaginary injustice who are termed "good for nothing petty-foggers" by the bureaucracy, honest fools and dishonest swindlers —all throng to the working class parties in all countries (On the History of Early Christianity, in Marx and Engels on Religion, p. 31)

For socialist knowledge to win the day. and capitalism to be destroyed by a well organised working class, two factors are required. The first is a socialist movement which sticks to its principles and never betrays the true interests of the class which is to be emancipated by socialism, Secondly, it is only possible for ideas to change as fast as material conditions themselves change out of the contradictions of everyday life under capitalism arise new ideas. Today some workers might think they are doing well because they own a few shares in British Gas, a few tremors on the Stock Exchange should be sufficient to shatter their illusions. In 1988 you might vote for nuclear bombs in order to keep the peace, it will only take one mushroom cloud to shake that dangerous myth out of your head. As you read this you may be thinking that socialism sounds like a great idea, but you simply haven't the time or energy to do anything about it. Capitalism might create plenty of time for you; it might push you so hard, assault your dignity so much and insult your humanity to the point where you have no alternative but to devote your energy to overthrowing it. As Marx explained:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come info conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters Then begins an epoch of social revolution

(Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)

Steve Coleman

Wrist watch (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

However established it may be, the Tories' reputation as the Party of Law and Order need not be taken seriously. When politicians — or police officers or judges — claim to have a remedy for crime, what they usually have in mind is a more rigorous and punitive response to it. The two are not necessarily connected

The Conservative manifesto at the 1979 election asserted that ". . . respect for the rule of law is the basis of a free and civilised life" and, as If that was an uncontentious statement of fact, plunged into a promise to ". . . spend more on fighting crime even while we economise elsewhere". The proposals in that declaration (rather hesitant by today’s standards) have by and large been implemented, for example there are now some 16,000 more police officers than in 1979 and it is usual for them to get more generous treatment in their pay rises than other government employees. Tougher ("brisker", in Willie Whitelaw's words) regimes have been introduced into Detention Centres and the laws which interfered with the courts’ powers to imprison young offenders have been abolished. But the Tories can hardly be satisfied with the results because since they came to power the incidence of reported crime has not ceased its steady upward path, increasing about six per cent a year. In 1979. just over 2½ million serious offences were recorded by the police: in 1986 there were nearly 4 million.

It seems almost inevitable that more people should be sent to prison, but there are many other choices open to the courts and a succession of Home Secretaries have appealed to them to view a prison sentence as a very last resort But the prison population is still climbing, with over 50.000 people in custody in England and Wales about one in every thousand of the total population. The government expect the figure to reach 56,000 by this time next year and possibly 70,000 by the year 2000. In the European states, Britain is fourth in the league table of the proportion of people sent to prison, with only Austria. Turkey and Luxembourg having a worse record. Such is the overcrowding in prisons that hundreds of unconvicted people pass their time on remand in police cells, often being shunted from one station to another. All of this is a very expensive business; it costs an average of £250 a week to keep a man in prison and a stay in police cells comes even dearer.

A fact which aggravates the anger of Tory hangers and floggers but which also provides them with some unacknowledged comfort is that about half of all known crime is committed by people under the age of 21. The age group above 30 is actually responsible for less crime than it was in 1979; the increase since then is almost entirely contributed by the under 30s. The highest incidence rate for crime is among the 15-year-olds and by the time they reach the age of 21 about a quarter of all males have come to the notice of the police. Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, attempting to discredit the Labour Party argument that crime springs from the dereliction of neglected inner cities or in chronic unemployment, has recently told of episodes of mob violence by young people in the more prosperous rural towns. For the Tories, the comfort in this is that these apparently wild people were born in the 1960s when, as all devotees of Margaret Thatcher are aware, the morals of Britain were in the flaccid grip of permissive hedonists like Roy Jenkins. with their derision for the proper ethical bases of society such as religion, the family, property, the rule of law. the royal family, the small shopkeepers of Grantham . . .  One of Tebbit’s favourite themes has always been the moral laxities of the Swinging Sixties. If it can be shown that those iniquitous times gave birth to a generation of hardened criminals, their lives of anti-social disruption mapped out for them when they were still micro-dot embryos, then the Thatcher government is not only absolved of all responsibility for the crime wave but is encouraged to get on with the job of re- imposing lost morals, through the agency of people like William Rees-Mogg.

The cure, one might think, threatens to be rather more deadly than the disease. In any case the argument might have some force were it not for the fact that young criminality did not begin with the 1960s. People who were teenagers then will remember the heyday of the 1950s Teddy Boys, whose elaborate hair style, drape jackets and thick-soled shoes were a delinquent uniform. Then there were the Mods and Rockers, whose idea of Bank Holiday fun was a running fight along some cowering sea front. The figures bear this out. Between 1938 and 1960 the number in every 100,000 of the 14-21 age group who were found guilty of indictable offences more than doubled. Between 1950 and 1960 crimes of violence committed by people aged 14-17 increased by 216 per cent and by those aged 17-21 by 153 per cent. Young crime was surging upwards a long time before the 1960s. according to Howard Jones, writing in 1967, ". . . the present increase in criminality is greatest among young people, whose share of the total seems to increase almost year by year. (Crime In A Changing Society ) Juvenile crime, a lot of it violent and senseless, was at that time also flaring up throughout Europe and North America

The fears and prejudices which young criminals stimulate, often among older workers who want to spend their last years in something like peace after a lifetime of drudgery, are easily exploitable through promises to impose fierce punishment. Control of offenders is now the vogue, rather than the “caring" approach which was enshrined in the Children and Young Persons Act of 1969. This piece of law was supposed to have the hitherto unremarked solution to young people's problems and therefore to their wayward behaviour. In fact the Act has never been fully implemented and now lies partly repealed, a discredited relic which in its day caused magistrates to fume impotently at the restrictions it imposed on then powers to imprison young offenders. Partially in response to this the 1982 Criminal Justice Act introduced the system of Youth Custody which, among other things, allowed magistrates to send youngsters to prison for however long they thought right, up to the maximum in their power. The result was an immediate increase in the numbers of young people in custody 70 per cent more for 14-16-year-olds. In 1987 over 20,000 men aged 17-21 were given a custodial sentence.

But these reforms have been no more successful than those they replaced and young law-breakers continue to be a preoccupation for the police, the courts and the penal system This has confronted the government with a problem which can be briefly outlined like this: crime committed by youngsters goes up year by year; shutting the youngsters away confirms rather than cures their delinquency; custody is not only ineffective but very costly; but the courts and the voters are in no mood to accept a more lenient way of dealing with young offenders; therefore there must be yet more reforms which will satisfy the appetite for control and punishment without involving a prison sentence. This reasoning has been around for some years now and has been responsible for a number of informal attempts to assuage punitive desires while keeping young offenders out of prison. Now the government has produced a Green Paper — Punishment, Custody and the Commentary — which has stirred up a lot of protest as well as approval.

The Green Paper introduces the concept of Punishment in the Community. Its most newsworthy proposal is the electronic tagging of offenders as a method of checking on their whereabouts and, in that way, sometimes imposing a kind of house arrest by remote control. The tags are electronic transmitters which are strapped to the wrist or ankle; this sounds awkward and offensive and that is how they look Some tags emit an unbroken signal which is transmitted by telephone to a central monitoring point, so that the wearer cannot move far from the telephone without this being known. Other tags can be programmed to give out a signal in response to a random telephone call. It is also possible to attach a breathalyser to the telephone so that the monitor calling from the other end would know, not only that the person wearing the tag is where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there, but also how much they have had to drink and when Big Brother would not only be watching you but checking up on your breath as well. . .

The Home Office insist that the whole project is still at the investigatory stage, one of a number of ideas they are putting up for discussion. A number of tags have been bought from abroad and are being attached for testing to the limbs of over-compliant civil servants. In America the tags are produced by companies like Bl Home Escort Systems of Colorado, Digital Products Corporation of Fort Lauderdale and Corrective Services Inc of Palm Beach. So far none of the equipment is made in this country but if the idea is implemented companies like Racal Chubb and Marconi, already close'y watching developments, would hope to be cut in on such a nice little earner

The Green Paper puts its proposal;. with an optimism which, though unfounded, is by now familiar. "Punishment in the community", it says, “would be particularly suitable for young men and women, who are likely to grow out of crime”. But there is no cause to believe, that building yet another sentence option into the system would reduce the numbers sent to prison; experience tells us otherwise. There has not been any shortage of choice open to the courts — fines, community service, suspended sentence — but in many cases these have been applied in such a way as to result in more people being sent to prison While the legal draftsmen labour at their sections and sub sections, their clauses and sub clauses, the prisons are crammed more and more, tightly What is overlooked is that the people who draw up the laws and those who pass them have no control over those who implement them. In many cases measures which were designed as an effective alternative to prison have been used as an alternative to those already in existence. In others, legal provisions have been virtually ignored, for example, despite all the publicity about the "short, sharp shock" regimes at detention centres, it turned out that many of the youths sent there actually enjoyed the tough regimes. Now so few are being given that sentence that the places are being converted into low security adult prisons.

Again, the experience of electronic tagging so far should not encourage the Home Office to go ahead with it here. Apart from the many technical snags encountered, basic problem with the tags is that they can be used only with someone who has a stable address and access to a telephone things which many of the people likely to be seen as fit subjects have little chance of having. A recent study by NACRO says that problems with the tags in Canada and the USA have been such that their use is severely limited. Most programmes apply to fewer than 20 people and in February 1987 only 826 tags were n operation throughout the USA, one-third of them on motoring offenders. 

Although the Home Office are unlikely to be unaware of these facts, the signs are that tagging offenders will go ahead in this country There will then be yet another degrading and gruesome ritual in the processing of people who have offended against capitalism's laws (the Green Paper states that 95 per cent of crime is against property). There will be another bureaucratic structure with its hierarchy and its forms in triplicate and different colours. Some vengeful appetites will be gratified. There is an alternative to this persistent mess but it will not be found in any Green Paper.

Ivan

Heart-stopping (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The biggest cause of rheumatic heart disease was lack of sufficient food and, by his estimate 400 million people throughout the world were malnourished. He said enough food was produced to give every person a satisfactory diet of 2,500 calories, but food was grown to earn money and distribution was thus unequal". 

Professor Christiaan Barnard, reported in The Johannesburg Star, 22 March 1988.

Observations: Dealing in death (1988)

The Observations Column from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dealing in death

In the week that 290 men. women and children aboard an Iranian civil airliner were blasted out of the sky, and the rest of the world was condemning the American military. British capitalism was congratulating itself on the sale of billions of pounds of armaments to the Saudi Arabian ruling class.

The British media failed to inform its readership and audience of the connection between the two events. They echoed the response of the British capitalists, who were overjoyed at having superseded their American cousins as the foremost dealers of death in the Gulf states. Coverage ranged from extolling the sales as a personal triumph for Thatcher and hooraying the safeguarding of 24,000 jobs in the arms industry, to sticking two fingers up in the air at the Americans The jingoism accompanying this triumph omitted, of course, to remind those on the end of the brainwashing that the purpose of the commodities is to kill human beings.

The majority do not yet understand that the interests being defended in military actions in the Gulf and elsewhere are of no concern to them whatsoever. While the killing of Iranian workers was undertaken by members of the American working class, it is the determination of capitalism to protect its trade routes, markets and strategic supplies that is ultimately responsible for such murderous incidents and the profitable sale of sophisticated means to these ends.

Class of 88

The conferring of degrees took place in a suitably grand place The great hall of the university, built in the later part of the nineteenth century, reflected the munificent philanthropy and aspirations of the capitalists responsible for its erection In that age of certainty they saw no irony in depicting on the exterior of the building a frieze showing the working class labouring at the production of wealth, wealth that enabled the capitalist to endow this centre of learning

Prior to the presentation of degrees the professorial staff of the Faculty walked in procession through the great hall. (1 note, for male readers interested in pursuing a career in higher academia, that beards are de rigeur.) The pomp and ritual of the ceremony seemed to underline the hierarchical structure of society, an impression reinforced by the Vice-chancellor in his winding up address. The graduates, it was implied, were merely small cogs in a large machine.

References to working for the common good failed to disguise the assumption that an alternative system of society to capitalism is impossible. One was left with the feeling that to present these dignitaries with the news that they too are members of the working class — the propertyless majority who sell their labour-power, whether physical or intellectual, in order to live — would cause them to throw up their hands in horror and deny the fact vehemently, albeit in beautiful prose.

At the end of the ceremony, as the new graduates wind their way slowly out of the great hall, some serious, some smiling, some smug, some shy, it is difficult not to be cynical. For most of these youngsters believe that the piece of paper just conferred on them, the result of years of hard work, is their passport to success. Capitalism, of course, does nothing to discourage this attitude. Indeed, before returning the hired gown and mortar the new graduate will find waiting for them a copy of Graduate Post, the newspaper for student and graduate jobhunters. Here, another piece of the capitalist indoctrination jig-saw falls into place. Shock, horror’ “Teaching shortage poses threat to economy" screams the front page. "See inside for immediate and forward vacancies" it cries. What do these people think? Do they believe that the years spent at university were designed to encourage their personal development as human beings? Don’t they know that this is a capitalist world they're living in? They may have a degree but they are about to become wage-slaves like the rest of us.

Dave Coggan

Compensation announced for farmers (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agriculture

Annual compensation payments of up to £200 a hectare will be offered to farmers who “set-aside" at least one-fifth of their arable land by taking it out of production for five years. Mr John MacGregor, Minister of Agriculture, announced in the Commons.

Mr MacGregor said that the new EEC scheme to reduce surplus agricultural production by set-aside of agricultural land was agreed in principle at the European Council in February, It was compulsory for member states to introduce the scheme for the I988-89 crop production year, but participation was voluntary for farmers.

Land set aside would have to be kept in good agricultural condition as fallow, put to woodland or used for non-agricultural purposes, it could not be grazed.

Land developed for residential, industrial, retail or similar purposes would not be eligible; but the scheme would not include other limitations on non-agricultural use, though planning controls would continue to apply.

Rates of payment would vary. For fallow land and woodland, the payment would be £200 a hectare a year, except in the Less Favoured Areas, where it would be £180 a year. There would be a reduction of £20 in either ease if the fallow area was rotated round the farm.

For non-agricultural use the set-aside payment would be reduced by £50 a hectare.

There were Conservative cheers when he said he had decided not to take up an option under the Community rules to permit land set aside from arable crops to be grazed by livestock, subject to limits on the numbers, because of the difficulties of ensuring proper controls and the adverse effects which such an option could have on existing livestock producers, especially in the upland areas.

Payments would be based on farmers' arable crop pattern in 1987-88 and the first payments would be made for the 1988-89 cropping year.

The Times (15 June 1988) giving details of payments for not growing food.

A class warrior (1988)

Book Review from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Churchill's War, Vol I: The Struggle for Power by David Irving (Veritas. 1987)

Despite the detailed research which goes into many historical works, they often tell us more about their authors than the subject matter in question. This offering by provocative right wing historian David Irving is a case in point

Churchill's War is a companion study to Irving s earlier work Hitler's War, remembered by many for its claim that the Nazi dictator knew nothing about the Holocaust. The main thrust of this volume is that Churchill, conspiring with Jewish leaders and Russian diplomats, helped provoke a war that Hitler did not want and ultimately led to the dissolution of the British Empire. In turn this resulted in the post war ascendency of the United Slates and, worst of all, Russia

The author s basic premise — that during the 1930s the British Empire had reached its most "magnificent extent" — is to say the least, superficial. After the 1914-18 war Britain ceased to be the major commercial and financial centre of the world and the Second World War merely served to confirm America's ascendency, along with state capitalist Russia.

It is a pity that Irving's erroneous interpretation of history tends to overshadow much of the detail he has uncovered about Churchill himself, for some of it is well worth reading and sheds a good deal of light on a man who was an implacable opponent of the working class until the end. For instance, he reveals that Churchill's fascination with war and his indifference to public suffering were documented again and again

In 1944 crowds jeered him when he appeared in dazzling RAF uniform in a newly blitzed suburb of London and declared "This the thing! It is just like being back in the best days of the blitz again".

For those who choose to remember him as a bulwark against fascism, the book records his praise for the "discipline, order, goodwill and smiling faces" of Italy's corporate state. The future ally of Joseph Stalin also commented to Roman Journalists in 1927.

If I had been an Italian I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism . . . your movement has rendered a service to the whole world

When First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 Churchill recommended selling enplanes to Italy in return for motor boats, as a way of developing fruitful Anglo-Italian trade. Rather better known is his reference to Hitler in the Evening Standard of 17 September 1937:

If our country were defeated I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to out rightful place among the nations

Of course, statements and actions such as these make a nonsense of the claim that Britain fought a war against the Axis Powers for ideological reasons, or to protect freedom and democracy. Churchill acted in the interests of his class and was a protagonist for war when circumstances dictated it. While il is not for socialists to comment on the strategic conduct of wars, it is worth remembering that Churchill was responsible for a number of disastrous battle campaigns in both World Wars, which resulted in the loss of thousands of working class lives.

Roosevelt apparently labelled Churchill a "drunken bum". David Irving provides him with perhaps a more fitting epitaph still: "He was rarely a creator, always a destroyer".

DAP

Funds Appeal (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It is a long time since we made an appeal for funds in these columns and we do so only when the work of the Party shows signs of outstripping its finances. 

To sell the Socialist Standard at 40p and to try to keep the price-range of our literature as low as possible involves a subsidy from the General Fund which slowly erodes it. Add to this the routine things like electricity, telephone and rates, and it is not long before we have to look round to see what we can cut back on. when we should be expanding our activities for socialism and going forward. 

We are well aware that our fellow workers to whom we address this appeal have their own financial worries. If. however, you think it is worth getting rid of the system which produces them, please send as much or as little as you can. 

Cheques should be crossed, mode payable to the Socialist Party of Great Britain and sent to the Treasurer at 52 Clapham High Street, London S W4 7UN.

50 Years Ago: Immigrants and unemployment (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are asked if we want foreign workers to take jobs away from British workers, and on the surface it looks like a reasonable point of view. Actually it is baseless. It is true that if an Italian waiter comes to London he may get a job in preference to a British waiter, just as hundreds of thousands of British workers have in the past managed to get jobs in America and many other foreign countries. But unemployment in the mass is not caused by the size of the population and does not increase because the population is increased, whether by births or by immigration. Capitalism everywhere normally has its unemployed, no matter what the population figures may be. If unemployment disappeared, then the workers would be able to demand more wages, and this would reduce profits to the vanishing point. Unemployment is, therefore, a capitalist necessity. The capitalist himself deliberately creates it by installing labour-displacing machinery in the effort to keep costs down and profits up.

[From the editorial "Should aliens be allowed in?" Socialist Standard, September 1938.]

Socialist Party Meetings (1988)

Party News from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I actually went to the debate in Luton featuring Steve Coleman and the Labour Party's Kelvin Hopkins.  I would have been 17 at the time. I can't remember if it was this Luton meeting or another one where I missed the last bus and, as I was living in the age of no mobile phones and no phone at home, I had no other option but to duck and dive the streets of Luton overnight until I could get the first bus home the next morning.  Luton city centre even back then was not for the faint-hearted at 2 in the morning. 

It's a shame there isn't a recording of the meeting. I remember an older Labour Party supporter in the audience who mentioned that he worked in a factory alongside an SPGBer when he was a young man, and he couldn't reconcile the SPGBer's revolutionary fervour with the fact that the SPGBer used to do all the overtime on offer.  Kelvin Hopkins was on the Left of the Labour Party, and was elected to Parliament in the 1997 Labour landslide. He ended up representing a constituency in Luton for the next twenty years. Coleman was an able representative for the SPGB and, even in 1988, when Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party, he anticipated the real future of the Labour Party. I specifically remember him mentioning at that meeting in 1988 that the person to watch out for in the Labour Party was not Kinnock or Hattersley or even John Smith: it was Gordon Brown. Well, he anticipated half the future . . .