So They Say: Public Eye (1977)

The So They Say column from the August 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Public Eye

A great deal of emphasis is placed nowadays on the way a thing appears; while this is no bad thing in itself, the importance of a “good image” tends to increase as the wares offered become less and less satisfactory. Any salesman, or politician hawking his policies is aware of this. In turn this progression can lead to the “image” representing the opposite of the truth and the State is no newcomer to the trick. Recruiting posters for the armed forces give the impression that most of the applicant’s time will be spent living it up on distant beaches.

Sir Robert Mark, the recently retired Police Commissioner, says that the police force too has found it useful to give certain false impressions which assist it in the work of the State.

The real art of policing a free society or a democracy is to win by appearing to lose. By that I mean, for example, that it would be disastrous in dealing with situations like Grosvenor Square or Red Lion Square if we were to rely on water cannon or teargas or particularly violent methods. I think our technique is more sophisticated. We have a singularly attractive horse, she is the Brigitte Bardot of the 230 horses that we possess and she is trained to simulate death on the word of command in front of a television camera. This is the way to make sure that the police image which the British people like to have is maintained.

London Evening Standard, 15th July 77

Performers and Performance

Many reasons have been put forward to explain what is called "Britain’s poor economic performance.” The odd thing is that almost every one of them seems to have an opposite number: Wages are too high—wages are too low, likewise prices, investment and inflation. To further confuse the issue Mr. Francis Pym, Conservative front-bencher, has added what he sees as the dread cause.

Ceaseless party crossfire was the main cause of Britain’s poor economic performance in recent years.

The Times, 14th July 77

On form to date, it is possible that one of the Labour windbags will soon propose more “crossfire”(?) as a solution. However Mr. Pym seems to have short-circuited this possibility by remarking:

There was more in common now between the millions who voted Conservative, Labour and Liberal than the issues which divided them. Many did not seem to like the choice offered and feared that whichever they chose, they might get an unsatisfactory result.

Mr. Pym may not know much about capitalism’s economics, but when it comes to the choice which voters are faced with, he knows exactly what he is talking about.


Make us an offer

And Mr. Pym is not alone. Stung by Conservative taunts that the Liberals had made their agreement to vote with Labour on purely opportunist lines, Mr. Emlyn Hoosen (Liberal MP) surely disarmed critics in Parliament with his candour:

The present government had behaved very badly for their first two years in office and there was little to choose between the red devils opposite and the deep blue sea on the other side of the House. Their past behaviour had put the leader of the Liberal Party in a dilemma.

The Times, 12th July 77

The dilemma being that the Liberal Party, like a tick bird, has to fly from hippo to hippo to gain sustenance. The notable difference being that the tick bird does serve some useful function.


Hoots

This writer once had a canvasser call who, when asked about the candidate’s particular policy, replied immediately that she didn’t know much about it— the candidate was her son and she was only helping him out. The Scottish National Party canvassers clearly run into similar problems on the doorstep and this provoked someone into writing the SNP Canvasser’s Manual—their equivalent of “How to make friends and influence people.” It gives mock questions, together with sample answers; and techniques on how the SNP canvasser might “convert” the listener. One ploy is to throw yourself into it—think in terms of

The person coming to this door is going to be the most interesting person I’ve ever met . . .
   Never attack something a man says he had admired, it was better to agree and then to add: Pity he’s in the wrong organization.

The Times, 6th July 77

The SNP however have been caught with their kilts down as Labour and Conservative MPS, none of whom is short on hypocrisy, make hay with this sort of pandering technique and SNP have pulped the unsold copies in embarrassment It seems a pity to add to their discomfort, but one piece of advice contained in the manual struck us as particularly unnecessary:

It might be valuable for the canvasser to explain his own reasons for joining the party. But do not talk about seeing the light or make it sound like a new religion.

If nothing else the SNP have added A new dimension to their much loved phrase—Scottish oil.

Alan D'Arcy

PLO in retreat (1984)

From the January 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even capitalism’s grotesqueries do not usually run to civil war in the absence of a nation-state, but that is precisely what has been happening in the Lebanon. The Palestinians, uprooted and dispersed at the lime of the formation of Israel in 1948, are engaging in fierce inter-factional fighting. Even before the latest events, it was the case that more Palestinian guerrillas had been killed by the armies of their supposed allies, the other Arab states, than by Israel; but now. Palestinian is killing Palestinian.

In June 1982. Israel launched a full scale invasion of Lebanon, supposedly in retaliation for the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to Britain. Soon there were over 100,000 Israeli troops in Lebanon and the capital, Beirut, was bombed and besieged. About half a million Palestinians live in the Lebanon, many of them since 1948 in the more-or-less permanent settlements known as refugee camps. In August that year, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) began to evacuate its headquarters in Beirut. The following month, the Israeli army acquiesced as Phalangist Lebanese militia massacred upwards of two thousand men, women and children in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

Dissent within the PLO ranks has greatly increased since the withdrawal from Beirut. Syrian-backed opponents of PLO chief Yasser Arafat have been attacking troops loyal to him. The Beirut defeat weakened Arafat's position, as did his willingness to talk to King Hussein of Jordan over an American peace initiative in September last year. The manoeuvring of Hafez Assad, the Syrian President, led to Arafat being expelled from Damascus (where he had gone after abandoning Beirut) last summer and going to the Northern Lebanon coastal city of Tripoli. There he and his supporters have been bombarded by dissident PLO men and the Syrians, who have forty thousand troops in the Lebanon. The rebels — led by men such as Ahmad Jibril and Abu Mousa — accuse Arafat and his clique of being corrupt. building large houses and even harbours and helicopter pads for their own use from PLO funds (Guardian 23 November 1983). At the time of writing, the PLO seem likely to be forced to evacuate Tripoli, perhaps under a United Nations flag, though it is not clear where they will be able to go.

Lebanon is a former French, earlier Turkish, colony. It became "independent" in 1943, but has remained embroiled in the murderous power politics of the Middle East. Its internal politics are dominated by two coalition groups: the Lebanese National Movement (L.NM) is a reformist grouping which supports the PLO and its main rival is the Lebanese Front, dominated by the Phalangist party (founded in 1936 and named after the Phalange of Franco’s Spain). The Phalange opposes the PLO, has collaborated with Israel and supports the expulsion of all Palestinians from Lebanon. Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Phalangist militia and president-elect of Lebanon when assassinated in September 1982. had gone on record as saying that in the Middle East there was one people too many, the Palestinians. No apologist for Zionism could have been blunter. These were the ideas that motivated the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

The Machiavellian tactics of Syria and President Assad lie behind much of the present turmoil and the possible escalation into war with the American part of the ludicrously-misnamed multinational "peace-keeping” force. Despite brave words about retaliation for encroachment of its airspace, Syria has done nothing in response to Israeli and French air-raids on parts of Lebanon it controls. Syria's Russian-supplied armed forces are operating only against the PLO. Ironically, it is the Palestinian cause that Assad claims to be espousing, and whose chief spokesman he intends to be. A country with scant supplies of oil, Syria can only become powerful by conquest and/or influence. The plan for a Greater Syria encompasses Jordan and Palestine as part of Syria: control over that part of Lebanon not in Israeli hands is a first step on this road. Assad has retained dictatorial power in Syria for thirteen years; in 1982 he killed over twenty thousand Muslim fundamentalist opponents of his regime. In 1976, during an earlier civil war there, Syria invaded Lebanon in order to contain the Palestinians and the Lebanese National Movement, and supported the Phalange — all in the name of Arab nationalism and the Palestinian "revolution".

The expansionist role of Israel in all this must also be remembered. Some Israeli military leaders have made no secret of their strategic aims: the Lebanon to be cleared of foreign forces and re-established as a christian-dominated state, the West Bank and Gaza annexed to Israel, the PLO destroyed and Jordan converted into the Palestinian state. The even less rational wings of Zionism claim that, as large parts of Lebanon belonged in Biblical times to Asher, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, so they should belong to Israel today! This kind of nonsense — hankering after past glories that only benefitted the ruling class anyway — seems as prevalent in the Middle East as in most parts of the world.

Meanwhile Israeli oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories continues. Palestinians on the West Bank have been dispossessed of their homes in favour of Israeli settlers. They must carry identity cards and are subject to military orders which, for instance, prohibit such subversive acts as the planting of fruit trees. One Palestinian is quoted as saying:

 For the moment, the Israelis have divided us into two categories, the educated, who cause trouble by talking about social and political rights, and the labourers, whom they need. They would like to expel the first and keep the second. (Time 21 November 1983).

The Palestinians are seen by Israel as at best, a source of cheap labour.

There are those who see the PLO and the Lebanese National Movement as representing something more than just a nationalist organisation. For instance, one member of the Palestine National Council writes:

Israel's war against Lebanon was . . .  intended to destroy the first successful alliance between the Palestinians and a nationally committed Arab movement as well as the first liberated national zone where the alliance could have developed a prototype of a liberated Arab national polity.
(Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. in Race & Class, Spring 1983)

The claim, then, is that a PLO/LNM alliance would pave the way for "national liberation" throughout the Arab world, which would involve the removal of such despots as Assad and Hussein. This would explain why both Israel and Syria are opposed to such a development. But such claims are nonsense. A "democratic secular" Palestine would be a capitalist Palestine. forced to exploit its workers just as Palestinian oppresses Palestinian in intra-PLO feuds today. All leadership must be overthrown, Arafat and Jibril as well as Assad and Shamir.

Like the Zionists, the Palestinians have embraced a dangerous myth about the past; in their case, the myth that pre-1948 Palestine was some kind of paradise. It was no such thing: most Palestinians struggled along on tiny plots of land, under the weight of massive debts, exploited by a class of landlords. Palestine did not belong to the Palestinians, any more than modern Israel belongs to working class Israelis. They have yet to realise it, but the workers of the entire Middle East — within whatever irrelevant national boundaries they now live — have an identity of interest, that 

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Dreaming of Ending Poverty (2016)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Ending poverty need not be a utopian dream’, was the headline of an article by Philip Collins in the Times (2 September), subheaded ‘Thomas More’s vision of a perfect society may be outlandish but it reminds us that Britain can change for the better.’

This year is the 500^th anniversary of the publication of More’s Utopia in Latin. An English translation appeared  in 1551. More did imagine a regimented society with for instance, as Collins pointed out, everyone having to dress the same. But it is not this aspect that has interested socialists. It’s his imaging a society without private property where there is planned production to meet needs and whose members have free access to what they need ‘without money, without exchaunge, without any gage, pawne, or pledge.’

Collins (who was Blair’s speechwriter) is an open supporter of capitalism and thinks that a society based on minority ownership of the means of life and production for profit can end poverty. By ‘poverty’ he means a lack of enough means of consumption.  As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation puts it, ‘poverty means not being able to heat your home, pay your rent, or buy essentials for your children.’ 

This is a consequence, for some, of poverty in the means of production as these are owned and controlled by a minority only of society. Such poverty is the basis of capitalism and so is never going to be ended as long as capitalism lasts. But what about poverty in the means of consumption? Most people in Britain are able to heat their home, pay for their housing and buy essentials for their children and so are not poor in that sense. They get enough to keep themselves fit for work, raise children to replace them, and save something for their old age. But some, over 10 percent of the population, do not

How does Collins think this can be ended? He follows the Rowntree Foundation which has elaborated a plan to ‘solve’ poverty. Under this, by 2030 ‘no one is ever destitute; less than one in ten of the population are in poverty at any one time; and nobody is in poverty for more than two years.’ This doesn’t sound like ending poverty, more like accepting that ‘the poor ye shall always have’ and trying to palliate it.

In any event, their plan is based on there being steady long-term economic growth, which capitalism is incapable of delivering. This, because under it production goes through a series of ever-recurring boom/slump cycles, during the slump phase of which poverty increases. The plan also assumes that more money will be allocated to pay more effective benefits whereas this would eat into profits and, in a period of slump, as there has been since 2009, governments are obliged to cut back on benefits to relieve the burden of taxation on profits.

Despite what Collins claims, abolishing poverty under capitalism is an unrealistic dream. Ensuring that everybody, literally everybody, gets decent food, clothing, housing, education and the other things needed for an enjoyable life is only possible on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production because society, freed from vested interests and production for profit, would then be in a position to use modern technology to produce what is needed to do this. As More pointed out, ‘seying they be all thereof parteners equallie, therefore can no man there be poore or nedie.’

Editorial: Corbyn - Set up to Fail (2016)

Editorial from the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Labour Party Conference in September, Jeremy Corbyn successfully saw off his challenger, Owen Smith, and will be leading the Party into the next General Election with promises to build half a million council homes, nationalise the railways and invest in the Green economy. Will a Corbyn-led government be able to live up to its promises?

The history of previous Labour governments does not augur well. Like Jeremy Corbyn, they made bold pledges, but faced with the reality of the capitalist system, they had to backpedal or go into reverse and implement anti-working class policies that would have made the Tories proud.

Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of the 1929-31 Labour government, cut unemployment benefit and public sector pay in response to the Great Depression. Clement Attlee's 1945-51 government did establish the NHS and introduced some reforms that were beneficial to workers, but it also sent in troops to break the dockers' strike of 1949 and developed the UK's first nuclear weapons. Its nationalisation of the coal and steel industries was not the victory for the working class as some imagine, as these industries, like their counterparts in the private sector, have to operate at a profit, and this, at times, involved pay disputes, redundancies and strike action.

In response to a balance of payments crisis, Harold Wilson's government of 1964-1970 introduced an incomes policy to limit workers wages, and re-introduced prescription charges in the NHS. It opposed the seamen's strike of 1966 and, although stopping short of sending troops, it supported the American war effort in Vietnam. It also gave its backing to the Nigerian government, in its civil war against the Biafran people, which resulted in mass starvation.

The Labour government of 1974-1979, in response to the recession of 1974-75, initiated a programme of public expenditure cuts and, in order to combat inflation, introduced an income policy restricting workers’ pay, which resulted in the winter of discontent in 1979. It also employed troops to break the firefighters' strike in 1978.

Then came along New Labour in 1997, which also promised a bright future after the Tory years. It introduced the Private Finance Initiative bill, which introduced private capital into the public services, and participated in the invasion of Iraq.

The Labour Party was formed in 1906 not with the aim of abolishing capitalism but with that of reforming it in favour of working class people. But capitalism can only work in one way -- to accumulate wealth in the interests of those who own and control the means of production at the expense of those who have to work to create this wealth. Labour governments can implement some reforms, but cannot change fundamentally the way capitalism works.

When workers are presented with our case for abolishing capitalism and establishing a world society of common ownership without wages, money or nation states, they usually dismiss this as utopian and argue that it is more realistic to elect a reforming Labour government. However, we say that it is the policy of the Labour Party to reform capitalism that is utopian, and that our vision of socialism is the only realistic option.