The Tory Cuts (1980)

From the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

TUC Day of Action — for what?

It should be obvious — capitalism cannot be run in the workers’ interest. The “Day of Action” is saying chuck out the Tories and put Labour back. “Thatcher Out!” and “Stop the Cuts!” are hollow catchwords suggesting futilely that Callaghan and Company back in power will have the answers. Capitalism has not got an acceptable face.

WHAT LABOUR DID IN POWER

What hypocrites Trade Union leaders and Labour MPs are. They claim to be opposed to the anti-working class policies of the Tory government, conveniently forgetting that it was the anti-working class policies of the recently demised Labour government which disillusioned so many workers, putting the Tories in power.

Don’t forget 

Under Labour: 1.5 million workers were on the unemployed scrapheap because it was not profitable to employ them.

Under Labour: The rich actually got richer - 1% possess more wealth than 80% of the whole population.

Under Labour: Most Trade Union leaders and Labour MPs supported the “social contract” to keep wages down. 

Under Labour: Public spending was ruthlessly cut — by 2.8% in 1976-7 and by 6.3% in 1977-8.

Under Labour: The police were used to break strikes and the media was cynicaliy manipulated to inflame public I opinion against strikers.

RETURN OF OLD GANG

Mrs Thatcher and her cronies make no secret where they stand. Unashamedly they uphold the profit system, opposing every measure which threatens the power of the capitalists. Thatcher’s heaven is the free market, where the rich can exploit the workers without too much interference, and where the poor are free to live in poverty and misery.

Booms, slumps, national rivalries and threats of war, are all continual and inevitable features of capitalism. The Tories respond to the present economic crises exactly as did the last Labour government: drastically cutting state spending on education, housing and health, while stepping up expenditure on the armed forces to £1 million per hour of every day.

REVOLUTION OR REFORM

Six Labour governments in over 55 years have not solved a single fundamental working class problem. The capitalist class — a privileged minority — still control the means of producing and distributing wealth. Workers still have to sell their energies to an employer for wages. The essentials of life are still produced primarily for capitalist profit. These are the fundamental features of capitalism, causing the major social ills of today — poverty, insecurity and war. Tackling these problems piecemeal cannot be the answer, it has failed dismally in the past and will fail in the future.

Tweedledee-tweedledum, Tory-Labour roundabout politics have proven bankrupt. Instead the working class must organise knowledgeably, democratically and politically to dispossess the capitalist class of their ownership of wealth, take over the means of production and distribution and convert them into the common property of the whole community.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain rejects reformist policies and advocates social revolution. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interest of the workers; those who claim otherwise are not realists — they have been wrong every time. Join us in the struggle for world socialism the most worthwhile of causes — abolish wage slavery, establish common ownership and social equality. 

Letter: Christianity, again! (1980)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editors

The article ‘Christianity Confidence Trick’ (March Socialist Standard) is an ignorant parody of Christianity. I am a Christian and a socialist. I am also a member of the ‘Christian Socialists’, who are proud to include in their number Donald Soper, who has endured years of opposition to his socialist views in his church, and some support. Similarly, a host of priests like Camillo Torres have led the opposition to repressive governments. It is so easy for the Socialist Standard to flaunt its white sheet, while remaining comparatively aloof from the dirty world of political life.

I don’t believe in the literal truth of myths like the Virgin birth, or of the gross parody of Genesis presented in ‘Confidence Trick’. Has the Standard never heard of poetic truth? I suggest that the author of the article does some research into the involvement of chapels in the fight for better conditions of work, and the continuing fight to ensure that men, of no matter what colour or nationality they may be, are treated with the dignity and respect that is their due, as brothers in Christ.

David Fraser, BA 

Newton, 

Rugby 

REPLY

David Fraser searches desperately for some way of linking his Christian superstition with a commitment to Socialism. Donald Soper (who was given a peerage as a reward for his efforts in the service of distorting socialist ideas) is cited as a ‘Christian Socialist’, and so is Camillo Torres. All that these Christians have done is to have adapted their religious twaddle to fit in with the popular liberal sentiments of their day. Religious leaders have usually been forced to re-interpret their dogmas as conditions have changed, but Christianity has only been accepted by the establishment because it serves to defend. the status quo, even if some Christians might favour a reform or two. If Lord Soper is a socialist why is he a member of the Labour Party, which has always been committed to the continuation of the capitalist system?

Mr. Fraser does not believe that ‘myths like the virgin birth’ are literally true, but that they have something to do with ‘poetic truth’. If he means by this that they are stories which are symbolic of some deeper meaning he ought to tell us what the deeper meaning is (and how he knows what it is) — and while he's about it he had better inform the millions of gullible people who have been taught by churches, schools and missionaries that the Bible contains the words of unquestionable truth. We note that Mr. Fraser has failed to dispute the three criticisms of Christianity which were contained in the article, ‘Confidence Trick’: that there is no such thing as human nature; that supernatural forces (gods) should not be believed in; that the legendary character of Jesus Christ was an unattractive one.

Editors.

A way out of the mess? (1980)

From the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February Socialist Standard we published an article — The French Movement for Abundance — which critically examined the ideas of an organisation called the Mouvcmcnt Français pour L’Abondance. In this issue of our journal, which deals in some detail with socialism and how and why it will be established, we think it is of interest to publish an article which looks at another organisation in France which has some interesting ideas.

Editorial Committee

Socialism means different things to different people. To some it means social reforms, to others state ownership of industry, to others the kind of one-party state that exists in Russia or China. Very few people however view socialism in the same way as the Socialist Party of Great Britain, that is as a worldwide society without buying and selling in which production takes place not for profit but solely to satisfy human needs. Since its formation in 1904 the SPGB has defined socialism in this way and so it is always refreshing, in a world overwhelmingly hostile to our ideas, to meet with individuals or organisations whose view of socialism bears some similarity to our own.

One such example is to be found in a recently published book in French by Maurice Laudrain[1] illustrating the ideas of an organisation called the Centre de Prospective Socialiste. In the book Laudrain points out that all the so-called “Socialists” and “Communists” at present vying for power in France are bent, not on doing away with capitalism, but on administering it. For Laudrain capitalism means the whole economic system of buying and selling which keeps a small minority extremely rich and powerful and the vast majority, all those who depend on a wage or salary, relatively poor, problem-ridden and powerless. This system, he argues, has as its lynch-pin “profitability” which “sacrifices on its altar the interest of peoples”(p.53), brings insoluble problems such as unemployment and corruption, and prevents the realisation of the abundance of goods and services which modern technology is capable of producing. “The way out of the mess”, according to the author, is through the abolition, by democratic means (by people consciously voting for it) of the present “exchange economy” and the introduction of what one of his mentors, Jacques Duboin, termed a “distributive economy of abundance”(p.144). Therefore those few already conscious of the need for such a change “must make an immense effort to spread their ideas and educate people to accept them”(p.l69).

So far so good. A sound analysis which could easily tempt us to see a companion socialist organisation growing up in France. But unfortunately a close reading of the book yields some crucial snags which would make any association between the SPGB and the Centre de Prospective Socialiste quite impossible.

First and foremost the kind of society advocated by Laudrain is to be established not on a world-wide scale but in France alone, in the hope that later other countries will follow its lead. To the question: ‘How could a single isolated country have the resources to satisfy the needs of all its population and how, anyway, could it possibly stand up to a hostile capitalist world around it?’, the author’s reply is that “we must look for support to the only anti-capitalist forces” (Russia and China) (p.180). Here we meet the long perpetuated myth of state capitalist countries like Russia and China having something to do with socialism. This is all the more surprising, as the author has correctly described capitalism as an “exchange economy”. How he can therefore see the exchange economies of Russia and China as anything other than capitalist is quite perplexing. One wonders too how he can fail to see the capitalist nature of these countries in their engagement in the same kind of military rivalry for world markets, trade routes and raw materials as carried on by the avowedly capitalist countries of the West.

In fact Laudrain hopes that a “Socialist France” would continue to do business with the capitalist countries around it—business based on exchanges of goods rather than of currency, in the same way as the countries he styles “anti-capitalist” trade with the capitalist West.

However the economic model he visualises for his new France is not that which operates in those “anti-capitalist” countries. What he favours (and this is not surprising for someone who wants to do away with buying and selling) is the abolition of money and the wages system. But (and here is the rub) his alternative is not free access to all goods and services according to the dictum: ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his need’, but a “new” system of non-circulating labour vouchers whereby people would have access to goods according to the number of hours’ work they put in.

Now this idea is nothing new. As the writer himself points out, it goes back to Marx’s conception of how socialism would work in its earlier stages until the techniques of production had been built up sufficiently to meet people’s needs without rationing. Now, over a hundred years later, advanced technology has created such a potential for abundance that society, once the majority of its members want it, can pass immediately from the wages system to complete free access without any intermediate stage of rationing.

That this immediate creation of abundance could not take place in a single country is self-evident and is what has led Laudrain to propose labour tokens as a means of distributing the necessarily limited wealth of one country (France) among its population.

Both labour vouchers and the detailed (24 page) blueprint drawn up by the Centre de Prospective Socialiste for the management of the new French society are quite unnecessary anyway. The similarity of conditions and problems which capitalism has imposed on the whole advanced industrial world and the speed of modern communications mean that once socialist ideas have become so widespread as to be irresistible in a country like France, that same process will have operated in Britain, USA, Germany, Italy, Russia . . . And once socialism is democratically established as a world system, it will be up to the majority who have established it to decide then, democratically, on the precise details of its structure and day-to-day management.

If Maurice Laudrain and the Centre de Prospective Socialiste sincerely aim at a revolutionary change to a society organised on the basis of human need instead of profit, we would invite them to look closely both at our criticism of their views and at the case we put forward for the establishment of such a society

Howard Moss

[1.] Sortir de la pagaille (The Way out of the Mess), Paris, Les Publications Universitaires, 1979.