Reforms and Reformism
Dear Editors,
I am unable to sympathise with your views on “reform" movements. I realise that reforming capitalism cannot alter the world considerably, and that the only way many of the world’s problems can be solved is through socialism. However, could reforms not produce a base from which establishing socialism is easier?
Could reforms not aid the plight of the homeless, the people suffering on NHS waiting lists or countless others? Would not a Labour government improve things in Thatcher's Britain?
I see how energy can be (and has been) wasted in efforts to reform society, when the only answer to many problems is socialism. But. do you oppose the use of the little energy it takes to vote for reformists. even if it means a choice between "the lesser of two evils"?
GS,
Cumbria
Reply:
We can understand why people might want to use election time to register their rejection of Thatcher and all she stands for, but doing this by voting Labour (or any of the other non-Tory parties) is to assume that the problems people have had to suffer under Thatcher have resulted from the evil intentions of one woman and her ministers rather than being an inevitable consequence of the way the capitalist system works.
If Thatcher has clobbered wage and salary earners this has been because she is the prime minister of a government of capitalism and because any government of capitalism has no alternative but to preside over the operation of a system that can only work as a profit-making one in the interest of profit-makers and to the detriment of satisfying needs.
Those who remember the various Labour governments of the sixties and seventies can testify to the fact that the Labour Party in power behaved in basically the same way — they froze wages, they opposed strikes, they cut social benefits, they imposed health charges, they kept and developed nuclear weapons. The only difference was one of style: the Labour ministers clobbered the workers with reluctance (or so they said) rather than with relish like Mrs Thatcher, but the end result was the same. If in many respects the anti-working-class measures taken by capitalist government since 1979 have been harsher this has been because the economic depression has been deeper in this period.
So, no, a Labour government would not "improve things in Thatcher's Britain". It would merely represent a change of government personnel — a reshuffle of ministers — that would leave unchanged the capitalist system that is the real cause of problems such as housing, health, education, transport, pollution and the threat of war. After all, didn't Kinnock tell last year's Labour Party conference that a future Labour government would retain the market economy (that is, the capitalist economy) and to try to make it work better than the Tories. Making capitalism work, however, inevitably means putting profits before needs (as all previous Labour governments have done) and opposing trade union action — the only effective response workers can make to protect their interests under capitalism.
While some reforms might be able to alleviate, at least temporarily, problems facing some workers, they will never be able to solve any of the multifarious problems from .which workers suffer under capitalism. This is because reforms are aimed only at treating effects while leaving the cause (capitalism) unchanged, and as long as capitalism continues it will create problems for those who depend for a living on working for an employer for a wage or a salary. More accommodation might indeed be provided for some of the homeless but the housing crisis would remain. As our correspondent accepts, the only lasting solution lies in the establishment of socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production with production for use not profit and free access to consumer goods and services according to self-determined needs.
We cannot agree that reforms could “produce a base from which reforms of capitalism that have been sustained have been those which contributed to the more efficient operation of capitalism as a profitmaking system. Better schools to provide a better trained workforce; a national health service to patch up sick workers and send them back to work quicker; suburban rail or underground services to get workers to work more rapidly, and so on. In fact, capitalism, being a system that constantly changes as new profit opportunities open up (and old ones disappear), needs to be reformed all the time. In this sense bringing in reforms is part of the job of any capitalist government. So, a strong case can be made for saying that reforms are necessary to capitalism and help keep it going. Not that this is a reason for opposing them if they bring some marginal and temporary benefit to some workers, but it is a reason for rejecting the idea that reforms could somehow help towards the establishment of socialism.
Editors.
Interest rates
and living standards
Dear Comrades,
In the February Socialist Standard it is stated that millions of workers will suffer a fall in their standard of living because of the rise in interest rates, including mortgage interest rates, and that since coming into office Mrs. Thatcher has hoped that home owners would “abandon traditional working-class demands for higher wages and salaries".
Such statements could encourage readers to accept the mistaken belief that working class standards of living are determined by movements of prices and interest rates. What governs working-class living standards is whether capitalism is in a phase of expansion and profitability, or the reverse, and the ability of the unions in a period of expansion and profitability to interrupt the flow of profits by strikes and thus get concessions from the employers.
With regard to the first statement, when interest rates rise lenders are as better off as borrowers are worse off. and among the lenders are those workers who have savings on deposit in building societies and banks.
More importantly, whatever Mrs. Canute Thatcher may have hoped, workers, whether home owners or not, have defied her orders and have gone on pressing large wage claims during the recent years in which production and profits have been rising fast. In such a period, as Marx pointed out, "wages rise generally and the working class actually get a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption”.
In every year since 1981 total wages and salaries have risen by more than the rise of prices on the official index (which includes mortgage interest and other housing costs). When production and profits slacken off and start to fall no doubt the working class will lose part of what they have gained, as happened in 1980 and 1981.
Tony Dobson for Camden Branch
Reply:
We were talking about effects in the very
short term.
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