Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Voice From The Back: Masters of deception (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Masters of deception

We are led to believe, by the media, that the men and women who make up the government are motivated by the highest moral standards of honesty and decency. So what are we to make of Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat who wrote the following essay published by The Foreign Policy Centre and reported in the Observer (7 April)? “The postmodern world has to start to get used to double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But, when dealing with old-fashioned states outside the postmodern world continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself.”


State of the nation?

It is said that clear thinking leads to clear speaking. That clarity of thought is reflected in lucid communication. If that is so, what must the US President’s thought process be like? Here he is reported by Newsweek (22 April) as he tries to communicate something or other. Your guess is as good as ours as to what he is on about: “And so, in my State of the – my State of the Union – or state – my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation – I asked Americans to give 4,000 years – 4,000 hours over the next – the rest of your life – of service to America.” Eh?.


Arms and hypocrisy

The journalist Alex Bell recently gave an update on the British arms trade in the Herald (6 May): “One of those statistics that lodges in the mind and rarely gets revised is the one about Britain being the third largest exporter of arms in the world. Time to update it, as we’re the second largest. In the last twenty years our arms industry has grown by a factor of 10. According to the Institute for Strategic Studies, revenues from the arms trade were more than $5 billion in 2000, or twice as much as France and Germany combined. They were around $500m in the mid-1970s . . . Don’t forget that just as Tony Blair was trying to calm the border dispute in January between Pakistan and India, he was in Delhi trying to flog jets.” So what happened to that much vaunted “ethical foreign policy”?


The childhood destroyer

Capitalism has only one drive – make profits. In that ruthless drive the planet is poisoned by pollution, the rivers and lakes are turned into sewers and human life is stunted, broken and destroyed. Perhaps the greatest indictment of this Frankenstein society is the way it treats the old, the disabled and the most vulnerable group of all the world’s children: “One child in eight has to do work that could harm them physically or mentally, the UN labour agency claimed. Some 246 million children are in unacceptable forms of child labour, with 179 million in hazardous mining, fishing and construction, says the ILO, but 8.4 million children are caught up in slavery, trafficking, forced recruitment for battle, prostitution, and pornography.” Herald (7 May)


Tory braveheart

The Scottish Parliament over the years has illustrated that it can be just as silly as Westminster when dealing with social problems. In a country that has all the usual features of capitalism – poverty, drug addiction and homelessness all this backwoodsman Tory could proffer to the parliament’s deliberations was the following piece of nonsense: “A Tory MSP has lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament, calling for William Wallace to be officially recognised as a “patriot” before the 700th anniversary of his death in August 1305. Phil Gallie, the Tory constitutional affairs spokesman, said the anniversary of Wallace’s death was an opportunity to ‘right wrong’.” Times (9 May)


God and mammon

According to a recent Church of Scotland report they are losing 17,000 punters a year and, unless this trend is dealt with, they could cease to exist by 2050. So concerned are they about the potential drop in income that the Moderator commissioned a journalist to produce a book entitled Outside Verdict; An Old Kirk in a New Scotland. The author proposes tithing members’ salaries and flogging off manses and overseas churches:. The book states: “There are too many people in the kirk who refuse to think of it as a business, who think that because this money is being used for God’s work, contemporary business practice need not apply.” Sunday Times (12 May). But isn’t it also the business of the Church to tell gullible workers on a Sunday morning not to thirst after the material things of this world, to be content with their lot and look for their reward in the next world?




Euro, Euro on the Wall (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Blair has used that pathetic excuse for accountability, the television interview (in which two powerful men get to spar verbally before the massed ranks of passive spectating viewers) to float the possibility that he might support a referendum over the Euro soon. It was on Newsnight’s series of interviews where Blair told Jeremy Paxman that he was willing to be remembered as the Prime Minister that took Britain into the single currency. This slight admission, couched in Blairean caveats and obfuscations, was immediately spun by the loyal sheep in the press as a serious indicator of the state of Downing Street thinking on the Euro, a move in the cabinet chess game.

The reason for Blair’s caution is the deep indecision over the Euro issue, not only among politicians, but also among their paymasters in the capitalist class. His position of stating that he will only ever act in the “national interest” (i.e. in the interests of those as own Britain) is merely re-iterating the obvious, until our masters can actually work out what actually is in their interest. Socialists are able to point this out with ease, as we have done several times in the pages of this journal. What we need to do, as well, is observe quite why the capitalist class is itself undecided.
 
In socialism, Europe will be fully unified by having no money
 
One of the basic premises of the materialist method of examining society is that ideas simply do not just fall from the sky, but instead develop over time through the actions of people within a particular set of circumstances. That is, human beings make society and its values/ideas, but within the constraints imposed by the actions of other human beings, and the relations between those people. This accounts for the clash of ideas and political opinions not only between classes, but within classes as well. It is the constraints and actions of people within the capitalist system that has produced the running arguments over the Euro.

Contrary to what some groups believe, the capitalist class is not an eternally cohesive, Machiavellian cabal perfectly capable of imposing its will and interest on wider society. It is riven by differences as each capitalist strives to pursue their own economic interest and seize as much a share of the surplus value produced by social production as they are able, by every means at their disposal: legal, political, economic or criminal. The means by which each capitalist secures their share of surplus value determines their economic interest, and each capitalist will do everything within their (considerable) power to secure and enhance that interest. Capitalists who export will want to see an army capable of defending their interests, manufacturers want stability and low wages, transporters want to see low oil prices, etc.

The relations of these economic interests of British capitalists to the EU can be seen by looking at the trade statistics; in 1999 the UK exported £84 billion worth of goods to EU destinations, as compared with £55 billion to elsewhere. Overall, then, 61 percent of trade was to EU purchasers. Further, the UK receives 52 percent of imports from EU member states. Taken on their own, these statistics – other considerations aside – indicate that the capitalist class should favour the Euro in facilitating trade with its major partners. If we look, however, behind the national abstraction of the UK capitalists’ interest, and look instead to the more specific details, then a different picture emerges.

For instance, each statistical region of the UK, bar one, exports the majority of their goods to the EU, some, such as Scotland, send 70 percent of their produce to an EU state. The exceptional region is London. London exports 55 percent of its produce to non-EU destinations. Of course, under capitalism, it is not the size or population of a region that determines its say, but its wealth, and London’s non-EU exports represents 8.15 percent of all UK exports, and 20.7 percent of all extra-EU trade: a total of £11.3 billion worth of exports. Likewise, London imports £21 billion worth of goods from outside the EU, representing 11 percent of import value, and 58 percent of the capital’s import trade. This represents an enormous share of UK trade, and much more than any other single region can lay claim to. (All Stats ‘Regional Trends 2000’, ONS)

This regional disparity is significant for one main reason: when looking at the distribution of national types of industry, it’s clear that over 80% of London’s businesses are in the service sector. Whilst this includes retail firms, it also includes insurance companies and stock brokers, etc. The presence of the City of London region, and the financial and stock exchanges is a big factor in this preponderance of the service sector in the region and many of its exports and imports are a product of international financial transactions, the shuffling of electronic claims to riches from one side of the world to the other, and trading in currencies.

A great many of these London firms, then, will be dependent on being able to extract economic rent from exploiting the restrictions on capital investment caused by currency blocs, whether from pounds to dollars or pounds to Euros. They thus not only have an interest in trading with economic partners other than the EU, but also retaining the pound to protect their income from transaction costs. It is this combination of interests which leads to economic nationalism being prioritised over joining a trading currency zone.

Given the historic and continuing cultural, administrative, and ideological importance of London, the national capitalist class would be unwilling, to say the least, to go directly against the interests of this important sector of British capital. Specifically, a great many of those service firms in London depend upon its centrality to the British state for their business, an interest they would be willing to defend. Add to all this that the minority of exporters to outside the EU still add up to a substantial number who will be willing to side with those who derive their interest from London, and then we begin to unravel some of the reasons why the capitalist class is at a seeming impasse about its potential future economic interests due to its divided internal composition.

This situation accounts, at least in part, for the political situation with regards to the Euro. The Tory Party has traditionally had a strong faction of ideological nationalists whose attachment to the idea of Britain is not contradicted by any personal interest in pursuing the Euro project (indeed, many, as small business folk, will have to bear much of the implementation cost of the Euro). Likewise, the Tories established themselves as a party close to the financiers in the City of London during the Thatcher period and, just as importantly, as being closer to the political, cultural and economic interests of the United States and Wall Street than the EU. These attachments currently enable Labour leaders to try to depict the debate as being about unregulated international finance capital versus domestic industrial/manufacturing capital, playing on old prejudices of ‘wealth producers against bankers’ and attracting support from their allies in trade unions associated with manufacturing.

It is not a question, though, of the ineluctable differences between two essentially different models of capitalism, as Labour hacks will kid themselves, but personal competition between capitalists and the political fallout from this. Furthermore, the consequences of this situation are already beginning to be played out. A week prior to Blair’s statement, Prescott and Byers announced plans for English regional devolution: that is, greater political autonomy being removed from London and spread to regional assemblies as want it. Aside from tapping into the same liberal seam of thought as inspired national devolution to Scotland and Wales, it also provides a means for capitalists in regions outside London to be able to have more control in order to be able to direct their affairs without the interferences by capitalist interests in London. This is in line with the concept of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ by which the supporters of the Europe project hope, among other things, to bypass the influence of those interested in British ‘national’ capital and its historic ties with US finance.

Of course it all goes to show that the nation, and nationalism, are not an eternal and essential characteristic of human beings as some would have it, but are solely a tool for pursuing the further interests of sections of the master class at given points in history. Indeed, the current situation of market interpenetration between British capital and that of its EU partners is itself the result of over forty years of state policy (a fact that some capitalists will be aware of), and if they finally decide against pursuing economic union with the EU, they could equally look around the world for other options.

As such, the working class has no interest in this passing show of inter-capitalist squabbling over the Euro, except to note the spectacle and prepare for the day when there are no more nations to be interested in and money to squabble over.
Pik Smeet

Marxian Economics (2002)

Book Review from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx and the Classics. An Essay on Value, Crises and the Capitalist Mode of Production. By John Milios, Dmitri Dimoulis and George Economakis. Ashgate. 2002.

The book’s title reflects the fact that in one sense Marx was in the tradition of Classical Political Economy, building on the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo both of whom like him propounded a labour theory of value. On the other hand, Marx regarded his work as a “critique of political economy” (the title of one of his books and the subtitle of Capital).

Marx’s critique is straightforward enough. Smith, Ricardo and the others imagined that they were studying economics as if it were a natural science like physics or chemistry whose laws were valid for all times and places. Marx pointed out that what they (and he) were in fact studying were phenomena that only came into being under specific historical and social circumstances – predominating production for sale on a market with a view to profit – and that the laws and categories they used (such as value, price, money, wages, profits, rent and interest) were not useful or valid for all time and for all economic systems. Value didn’t exist before capitalism came on to the historical scene and wouldn’t exist after capitalism had disappeared.

This meant, the authors point out, that when Marx used the word “value” he did not mean the same thing as, in particular, his immediate predecessor, Ricardo. Whereas for Ricardo value was an empirically observable phenomenon that could be measured directly in terms of the amount of socially necessary labour-time needed to produce it from start to finish, for Marx value was an intangible social relation and which would exist under any economic system. As such it could not be measured directly, not even in terms of labour-time. All that could be measured was its expression as “exchange-value”, ultimately as a monetary price (which, due to the averaging of the rate of profit, was only indirectly linked to a commodity’s notional labour-time content).

The authors criticise Marx for not always sticking in his writings to this distinction and for occasionally slipping back into Ricardo’s position. This may well be true – there is certainly a discrepancy between his endorsement, albeit rather lukewarm, of labour-time vouchers in one place and his devastating criticism of schemes for labour-money elsewhere – but it should be borne in mind that in his first publications – The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and A Critique of Political Economy (1859) – Marx didn’t distinguish between value and exchange-value and that, apart from Volume I of Capital (1867), all his other writings on economics were unedited, hand-written notes, prepared for publication by others after his death (Volumes II and III of Capital, Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse). Since Volume I of Capital was carefully edited and seen to publication by Marx himself (incidentally, after most of his posthumous publications had been written) in cases of ambiguity or even contradiction it is what he wrote in this that must be regarded as his considered view.

On two keys points of understanding the way capitalism works the authors reach the same conclusion as we have, on the so-called “law of the falling tendency of the rate of profit” and on the reason for economic crises.

Much ink has been spent on the falling rate of profits (sometimes called, in view of so many predictions which failed to materialise, the falling rate of prophets). Many consider it to be a key element of Marxian economics, an economic law of capitalism uncovered by Marx. Marx’s point is simple enough. Capital is divided into “constant” capital (buildings, machinery, materials, etc) whose value is simply transferred unchanged to the product in the course of its production and “variable” capital (the capital laid out in employing productive labour) so-called because this is the only element of total capital whose value “varies” through productive wage-labour producing a “surplus value” over and above its original value. Marx calls these C, V and S respectively and so expresses the rate of profit as: S/(C + V). It is clear that, from a purely mathematical point of view, that as long as S/V (the rate of exploitation) remains unchanged if C increases faster than V the rate of profit will fall. Marx set out one good reason why C would tend to increase faster than V: technological advance. With this more of the accumulated capital takes the form of means of production (C) than of additions to the wages bill (V).

However, Marx deliberately chose not to call this the “law of the falling rate of profit” but merely the “law of the falling tendency in the rate of profit” (an odd formulation since something must either be a law or tendency but not both, but this was taken from one of Marx’s unedited papers). This was because he knew that other factors than technological advance could affect the outcome and that it could not be assumed that these would always be constant (as “the law of the tendency” as stated above assumed). Marx went on to list various “counter-tendencies”. Two in particular stand out.

The first is what he called the “cheapening of the elements of constant capital”, by which he meant factories, machinery, etc, and the ways of using and organising their use, becoming cheaper than previously. For instance, technical advance need not necessarily translate itself into C rising faster than V and would not if the inventions and innovations were more “capital saving” than “labour saving”. C could also rise less than V for non-technological reasons such as falls in raw material and energy prices due to market conditions.

The second was an increase in the rate of exploitation (S/V), i. e., the amount of surplus value produced per unit of productive wage labour. This in fact is another consequence of technical advance and indeed, under capitalism, is precisely why technical inventions and innovations are introduced, the capitalist class waging a non-stop class war against the working class to increase the amount of surplus value extracted from their labour—what might be called the “law of the rising tendency of the rate of exploitation” or indeed even the “law of the rising rate of exploitation”.

It should be clear that if C does not increase faster than V and/or if S (the amount of surplus value) increases, then (other factors remaining the same) the rate of profit (S/C + V) will not fall. Which means that, in the world of real capitalism, the outcome of these tendencies and counter-tendencies cannot be predicted in advance. As the authors put it:
“. . . the Marxist ‘law of the falling tendency’ in the rate of profit, although logically sound, is not a theoretical reflexion of the actual trend of the rate of profit . . . it applies under certain conditions . . . that may well not exist in a given capitalist society. Furthermore, it influences the rate of profit along with a variety of other factors not directly associated with technological innovation, factors which Marx considered to remain constant when presenting his ‘law’. This means that a falling profit rate in a given capitalist economy over a time period, which may be established on the basis of concrete empirical analysis, can be due to factors other than those related with technical innovation and the ‘law of the falling tendency’, which means that a further investigation will be necessary, if one wants to locate the exact causes of the profit rate’s course” (pp. 155-156).
The authors take the same approach to the reason for economic crises under capitalism to reject the same views held by some in the Marxist tradition as we do:
“Crises are conjunctural suspensions of the conditions for unimpeded reproduction of total social capital. They constitute transitory manifestations of the internal contradictions of capitalism and not permanently operative causal relationships inherently governing capitalist relations (a permanent deficiency in consuming power as against production, or the ever acting ‘law of the falling tendency in the profit rate’)” (pp. 182-3).
We are obliged to add that chapter 4 on “The Question of ‘Commodity Fetishism’“ is both confused and confusing and detracts from the rest of the book. In fact, when the authors venture into philosophical matters they follow too much the theories of the now completely discredited French philosopher, Louis Althusser, who ended up murdering his wife and confessing that the only work by Marx he had read properly was his journalistic The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. There is also a hint, at the very end of Chapter 3, that the authors could think that the banking system has the power to “create” a “volume of credit . . .which constitutes a multiple of all forms of liquid assets and reserves”. If this were true—that the banks can lend out more, much more than what has been deposited with them – then it wouldn’t be true that labour is the sole source of newly created value. Not only Marx but the Classics Smith and Ricardo too would have been mistaken.
Adam Buick

Media musings (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Through the media, the working class is constantly exposed to a significant flow of mind-numbing drivel and misinformation. Important issues of the day are distorted, totally ignored or relegated to the margins of page eleven or broadcast as minor news items on the TV. Sensationalism is used to increase market shares and sell adverts, which thus brings in profits. In this latter regards newspapers can be said to be a means of exposing us to advertisers rather than of telling us what we need to know.. The market for a newspaper is advertisers – other business out to make a profit – and the product us! It would be no bold assertion to say that the editor of a daily tabloid is far more interested in the number of advertisers he attracts than the news he reports – though the latter pulls in the former. Thus the never-ending hunt by tabloid hacks for the latest sex scandal to feed a readership hungry for insignificant gossip and trivia, a readership consequently bare to hundreds of adverts a day.

It is easy to despair at endless streams of workers leaving their newsagents in the morning clutching the Sun or the Daily Star, knowing the news they will be reading during their lunch break will be that regarding the love life of a soap star, instead of a piece on US foreign policy or the situation in Israel. A recent issue of the Sun carried a full page photograph of David Beckham’s injured foot and readers were asked to put their hand on the foot at 12.00 midday and pray for its speedy recovery because the English football team were so dependent upon it. Reportedly many workers did just that in the belief that a concerted countrywide focus on the injury would miraculously heal it. If things were that easy, they could have printed a photo of the Queen Mum and asked for readers to place their hands on it and pray for her resurrection.

The fact that so many workers are prepared to buy such newspapers each day reveals how big the task facing socialists is. All these workers need a real education they will never receive via the press or TV. The capitalists are wonderfully aware of this – an unenlightened working class is hardly going to pose a threat to their interests; the real threat comes from a class conscious majority, hungry for useful information, who don’t give a shit about how many hamsters Freddy Starr eats or how many women Jack-the-lad from Coronation Street has bedded.

Everyday, British people are subject to the media for an estimated 4 hours every day, either via newspapers, radio or TV, so it is important for the master class that they can control and manipulate the media for their own ends. Major media corporations in Britain are enjoying a growing monopoly. Just five companies account for 85 percent of all newspaper sales, with Murdoch’s News Corporation controlling over 60 percent of newspaper circulation. As well as this it also has vast shares in Twentieth Century Fox, Harper Collins publishers, BSkyB and StarTV, which covers most of Asia and the Middle East, numerous newspapers and TV stations in Australia, Stream in Italy and Sky Perfect TV in Japan, giving it access to the minds of almost two-thirds of the global population. AOLTimeWarner – the world’s largest media company – owns CNN, 40 percent of US cable TV, 50 record labels, countless magazines, as well as being the world’s largest Internet Service Provider.

Needless to say, such media corporations and the likes of Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing media mogul, have interests that conflict with those of the workers. Thus it is in their interests that news and important issues we should know about are distorted and kept from us, or presented to us in such a way that we end up with tunnel and distorted vision, unable to make informed decisions or engage in intelligent discussion. Thus the media is very much a part of the indoctrination system, reinforcing the basic social values that ensures the survival of capitalism – passivity and sub-missiveness to authority, the virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or illusory enemies, a suspicion of anything outlandish or threatening to the status quo and national pride, etc.

Because people are misinformed, they are oblivious to the real nature of the system that exploits them. This then makes it easy for the media to confuse the workers by hiding real power from view. The result is – and this is intentional – is that they blame governments, their allegiance to political parties often switching overnight because of a newspaper’s slanted coverage of certain policies and social conditions. A newspaper like the Sun can make all the difference to a political party’s electoral chances. Hence Tony Blair’s visit to Australia to prostrate himself in front of Rupert Murdoch in 1997, fully aware that the Sun can run post election headlines such as “It was the Sun what won it” (which followed one Tory election victory). The fact that it is the capitalist system that is seriously faltering, creating problems governments just can’t cope with (because it is the system controlling them, not vice versa) would be too dangerous to print or report.

With the arrival and popularity of the internet and the consequent boom in computer use, opportunities for access to real information are now at an unprecedented high, giving anyone interested a chance to find out for themselves the real story behind news that the media otherwise would have us believe is inconsequential. The “information revolution” has placed a wonderful tool at the disposal of the working class. But a tool is only useful if used correctly. If we fail to use this tool to help us pursue our own class interests, then this “revolution” becomes just so much mind-numbing entertainment the masses will get addicted to and which the powers-that-be will eventually use to steer our thoughts away from the pressing matters of the day. Maybe there is more to Tony Blair’s plans to get a computer in every home by 2005 than we think! Would he really promote computer use if he thought the workers would be accessing informative websites in their spare time?
John Bissett

Well endowed (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The market system continues to demonstrate its incapacity to efficiently provide people with a home. On 15 May the media was filled with reports of a crisis in endowment mortgages. Some 3.6 million people in the UK are facing a shortfall in their home mortgages, out of the some 6 million policy holders.

Endowment mortgages are a way of paying a mortgage by investing in the stock exchange. They enable policy holders to reduce their monthly repayment flow by only paying off the interest, while their policy matures in stock market investments to repay the original advance in a lump sum at the end of the loan period. Effectively, they allow people to buy houses by gambling on the state of the stock exchange.

These mortgages were very popular in the 1980s, a period when the Government were lauding the stock exchange and encouraging people to become home-owners. Poor results on the stock exchange, after the fallout from the speculative dot com bubble, have seen returns on endowments dwindle. A sample 25-year endowment maturing in 2001 would have fetched £93,145, whereas one maturing in 2002 would fetch some £77,096, a shortfall of £16,049.

Although the mortgage holders have benefited from recent low interest rates, many will still face a distressing and uncomfortable time finding the necessary money to keep a roof over their heads. Many are calling for investigations into possible mis-selling of endowment mortgages, with lenders being accused of playing down the risks involved in the policies.

Corporate perfidy is at most a symptom of the problem. As the master class continues to try to shape society into its own image, it encourages the workers to try to behave like capitalists: investing the resources they have to live on into the market casino. From their perspective, this both binds the workers to the interests of capital, and provides a source of money to manipulate for profit.

Without the reserves of resources that capitalists themselves have, though, workers leave their necessities of life exposed to the vagaries of competition. Where a capitalist just sees the magnitude of their fortune shrink, workers see their money becoming insufficient to maintain them. The distinction between the exchange value of money and its use value threatens the very homes of millions of workers, and very firmly sets out the barrier between the interests
Pik Smeet

World View: Zimbabwe: from bloody elections to extra poverty (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The old adage that “a hungry man is an angry man” is one that finds echoes in the deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the same dilemma is to some extent threatening the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a whole. The future looks increasingly bleak.

Long faces are a commonplace in the streets in most (if not all) urban areas. Queues for basic commodities are unending. This has given blank cheques to the unscrupulous, profiteering vendors who charge exorbitant prices for scarce commodities such as the staple, maize meal, sugar, cooking oil – to mention just a few. The irony is that Zimbabwe was once a significant regional supplier of agricultural products.

These shortages are human-made rather than natural. Mugabe’s fast track land reform programme has offered to the people every kind of hindrance and no encouragement at all. The shambolically executed “re-settlement programme” has seen the displacement of some of the 4000 white commercial farmers by would-be peasant farmers, many with very slight practical experience and little or no equipment. The question is why is this happening now? Why, since coming to power in 1980, had Mugabe done so little to progress the question of “land redistribution” before now?

Under the Lancaster House agreement, land redistribution was to be implemented on the basis of “willing buyer – willing seller” with Britain putting up the money to make this arrangement work. But the formula never really worked. Moreover, many of the existing white farmers are “people who bought farms after independence, encouraged by Mugabe in the 1980s to develop farmland. Mostly, they were local whites who decided to take up farming, or return to it, but some came from South Africa” (CNN.com/world, 16 August, 2001). What little land that was redistributed tended to gravitate into the hands of people like the “relatives of ministers, army generals, permanent secretaries, directors of government departments and local party bosses” (Mail & Guardian, December 14, 1998.) There are reputedly at least 600 commercial farms (exceeding 1000 hectares each) belonging to rich blacks, mostly with links to ZANU-PF.

In the early years of independence, falling commodity prices on the world market – a common predicament faced by many developing countries – led the Zimbabwean government to succumb to IMF pressure to introduce austerity measures. In 1991, an Economic Structural Adjustment Plan (ESAP) effectively “liberalised” the economy by privatising state-owned firms, slashing social spending, and facilitating inflows of foreign capital. However, this only made matters worse. It decimated the manufacturing sector of the economy, destroying over 50,000 jobs. Real wages began to fall and the economy stagnated. In addition to this Zimbabwe’s involvement in a protracted war in the Congo imposed a crippling burden on the state.

This was the background against which we saw increasing outbreaks of industrial discontent during the 1990s which led, in due course, to the formation in 1999 of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai was a trade unionist. But protest was not confined to the urban areas; in the rural areas too increasing impatience at the slow pace of land redistribution likewise threatened to undermine support for the regime. Faced with a growing opposition within the country the Mugabe regime then began to increasingly resist IMF pressures to further “reform” the economy which caused the IMF and the World Bank to suspend all further loans to Zimbabwe in 1999.

It was in this context and with the prospect of a presidential election in March 2002 that Zanu-PF began to take up the cause of land redistribution more vigorously. This move was cynically calculated to win support from the rural population (while the threat posed by urban workers was reduced by such Machia-vellian tactics as were outlined in April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard). Mugabe received plaudits from the rural peasantry with the slogan “Land to the people!” and that was enough to enable him to scrape home with 1.6 million votes compared to Tsvangirai’s 1.2 million (if you disregard those among nation’s 5.6 million registered voters who were prevented from casting their vote). But having been returned to power, the Mugabe regime has now has to contend with an economy that is largely in ruins.

To make matters worse, there has been a terrible drought. The resettled farmers’ efforts were substantially undermined by this event which affected the whole country. Droughts are not uncommon in this part of the world and in the past the government used to have adequate stockpiled reserves – amounting to more than 1 million tonnes of maize – to cover such eventualities. However pressure from the World Bank forced the state to sell off these stockpiles with the result that it now has to import maize from elsewhere at a considerable cost

The government had received early warnings from concerned bodies in Zimbabwe (and many international bodies as well) about the drought and that their reserves would not suffice as far as the needs of the people were concerned. But because of Zanu-PF’s culturally induced paranoia of winning (elections), they, through the minister of Lands, Agriculture and Resettlement, Joseph Made, dismissed these reports as baseless and mere speculations concocted by unscrupulous organisations to defame the credibility of their government.

So all Zimbabweans are now waiting for the masquerading, self-proclaimed “socialist” – Mugabe – to fulfil his promises of land and bread. There is a noticeable difference in outlook, not to say suspicion and even hatred, between rural and urban folk, something that the Mugabe régime has itself fostered. The former tend to support the government because of its promise of more land which they see as the answer to the problem. The generally speaking, better educated urban workers, on the other hand, tend to support the MDC and know all to well that the country is now under sanctions and their “illegitimate” government has no foreign currency to deal with the growing food crisis. They see the lives of Zimbabweans as that of a man submerged in a duck pond up to the lips. The slightest ripple of misfortune will serve to drown him.

The fact of the matter is Mugabe and his counterparts are dangerous men, passionately dedicated to capitalist doctrines and contemptuous of the masses. His regime can offer nothing but more suffering as a precondition of some never-never land of economic salvation. On the other hand, the MDC is itself hardly much of an alternative to recommend, dominated as it is by capitalist interests. Their economics advisor Eddie Cross, a leading member of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has already talked (before the election) of continuing where Mugabe left off by privatising the top parastatals in the country and getting “government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years” (quoted in P. Bond, Radical Rhetoric and the Working Class during Zimbabwean Nationalism’s Dying Day”, JWSR). Hardly something likely to benefit the workers of Zimbabwe.

In the meanwhile, Morgan Tsvangirai has refused to accept an offer of a coalition government. The South African and Nigerian presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo respectively have failed to convince Tsvangirai before the recent Commonwealth troika meeting held in London. This led to the suspension of Zimbabwe from the club for a year. What a mess: from bloody elections to extra poverty.
Bigboy Musemwa

World View: Rebellion in Nepal (2002)

Deuba and Dubya
From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

In early May, at the White House in Washington DC, Deuba met Dubya. The Nepalese prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba met President George W Bush in the Oval Office to discuss how the US could help Nepalese security forces in their six-year conflict with the country’s Maoist rebels.

Deuba, who also met with Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condleeza Rice, had every reason to come away smiling, commenting “President Bush . . . is very much supportive of our campaign against terrorism and he has assured us he will help in many ways.” Bush promised him $21 million in military aid and doubled US development aid to Nepal to $38 million in 2003.

Defending the deal, one White House spokesman observed: “Nepal is an example, again, of a democracy and the US is committed to helping Nepal.”

Colin Powell had said pretty much the same when he was the first US Secretary of State to visit Nepal in January of this year. Thanking Dueba for his war against the “terrorists” he said: “You have a Maoist insurgency that is trying to overthrow the government and that is really the kind of thing we are fighting throughout the world.”

Nepal has a population of 23 million, made up largely of impoverished subsistence farmers who lend the “Communist” Party of Nepal (Maoist) much support and who feel the rebels represent a voice that their government all but ignores. It is this grassroots resentment of the government that the Maoists have tried to tap into since 1996.

Although the guerrilla campaign is six years old, having commenced when a Dr Baburam Bhattrai went underground to begin the Maoist insurgency, much of the current wave of unrest can be traced to that fateful night last June, when the crown prince murdered most of his family including the “liberal-minded” King Birendra. Birendra had been reluctant to use the army against the Maoists fearing the situation would escalate. This changed when his brother Gyanendra took the throne. The mourning over, the rebels launched an offensive that was cruelly repulsed by the army. Although the conflict has raged for six years, half of the deaths have occurred in the past year, since Gyanendra began relying on the army instead of the police.

Rebel leader and one time university academic “Comrade” Prachando (otherwise known as Pushpe Kamal Dahal) is a great admirer of Chairman Mao, modelling his insurrection on that carried out by Peru’s Shining Path movement and intent on establishing a “communist state”, a “people’s republic”, in Nepal and, indeed, holding out much hope for the alleged inherent revolutionary potential of his peasant fighters.

The unrest has destroyed the country’s tourist industry, a primary source of income. What few civil rights the Nepalese enjoyed have been suspended. Newspapers have been censored, thousands have been arrested and detained without trial, there have been widespread human rights abuses and many disappearances, and political corruption is rampant. In the rebel controlled areas of the country, the Maoists have established their own courts and banks, press-ganged children as soldiers and targeted teachers. To sustain their activity, the rebels extract taxes from businesses, not only in the areas they control but right under the noses of the security forces in the capital.

Deuba flatly refuses to negotiate with the rebels who, to put pressure on him, target bridges and power stations with explosives, and kill political opponents. Not so two years ago when Deuba was all for negotiations, even chairing the Consensus Seeking Committee – a body set up to seek a peaceful political solution and supported by the government – until it concluded that the uprising had its roots in grave societal inequality. A month ago the rebels were pressing for negotiations, negotiations turned down by Deuba who was far more responsive to US overtures, keen to expand their “war on terrorism”.

To label the rebels “terrorists” and to announce a state of emergency has thus become a convenient way for the Nepalese rulers to avoid addressing the cause of the unrest. Supplying guns to aid the Royal Nepalese Army is much cheaper than trying to reform their corrupt and unworkable system or to address any of the grievances of the impoverished majority. The situation is also favourable to the US. Evidently since Bush’s “War on Terrorism” State of the Union Address of that same month, the US has been focusing increasingly on states and organisations with no connection at all to Al-Qaeda, spreading its tentacles and influence ever wider, and always on the pretext that this is part of the “war on terror” and blind to the fact that this is another conflict rooted in inequality and oppression.

The “People’s War” in Nepal is ostensibly a war of liberation, but it is led by people inspired by Mao Tse Tung, only hopeful of establishing a system of state capitalism in an economically backward country, a system the US is hardly going to welcome with open arms. Though we are on the side of impoverished workers everywhere, this is quite simply another instance of a “revolutionary” group attempting to lead the masses from capitalism and down the road to capitalism under a different name.
John Bissett

Letter: Race question (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Race question

Dear Editors

I am a member of the trade union UNISON. I have just received, as have other members, a questionnaire asking me my name, address, telephone number, whether I am male or female, all of which, including other information, is necessary for UNISON’s records. I was, however, asked to state whether I am “white”, “black”, Irish, of Pakistani origin, or “other”. I wrote after ticking “other”, that I was “a member of the human race”, as I had on the recent government census form. While I accept that UNISON has good intentions (it has always opposed racism in the trade union movement), I feel that stating one’s alleged “racial” or ethnic origins is from a working-class viewpoint divisive.

I was also asked to state if I was a member of the Labour Party. I stated that I was not. I added in the small amount of space provided that I was a member of the Socialist Party (of G.B.). Did I do the right thing?
Peter E. Newell, 
Colchester, Essex


Reply: 
Yes—Editors.

Letter: Religion – yet again (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion – yet again

Dear Editors

I find it amazing that you exclude religious people from membership considering true Christians in particular hold Socialist beliefs, “any serious Christian is a Socialist”, that is a quote I read somewhere and it is very true, the bible preaches love, tolerance, equality, and helping out each other, because together we can accomplish anything. It is the Church Leaders and the Right-Wing radicals that ruin it, and make God look bad. For example, many Christians hate homosexuals, but here is a problem (1) the bible says all sins are equal before God, so there is nothing bad in particular about homosexuality, lying is just as bad , (2) the bible says only God can judge, that means any Christian that treats a homosexual with disrespect is not a true Christian but a hypocrite. The point is real Christians are Socialists, and I myself am a Christian but have a lot of left leanings. Thanks for your time, and good day.
Richard Wilson (by email)


Reply: 
We never said that a Christian (or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Scientologist) could not want a socialist society. People can be right for the wrong reason. All we said was that people who don’t take a non-theistic, materialist approach to things are not eligible to join the Socialist Party. If your theological point about the bible teaching that all “sins” are equal is true, e.g. that killing someone is no worse than telling a lie, then the bible contains more nonsense than we thought—Editors.

Letter: Bad news (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bad news

Dear Editors

Capitalism is the one killing us. When one turns on the radio, television or reads newspapers, there is always repeated similar headlines.

What makes the news “worth” reading has to do with some death somewhere, a death which in sane conditions would have not taken place. The news could also be about war, crime, accidents, poverty and/or some other sort of evil. You could hear, for example, that terrorists have attacked and that thousands of people including children and the disabled are reported to be missing (to void the “impolite” language of saying are reported to have died). “The army in X has overthrown the government and so and so many people are expected to be displaced or dead”. “The war in Y has left many dead, thousands of houses and other property destroyed and many thousands of people are displaced and homeless and are in need of relief food and other basic needs, and an impending disaster is likely due to the overcrowding and lack of sanitation”.

What presently makes news worth listening to or reading is always bad news. Many print and electronic media profit heavily from such headlines. There are individuals, groups and governments who are quick to sponsor and fund war and crime because in the insane capitalistic present society crime and war pay. The arms and ammunition industry (if at all it is an industry anyway) profit from the sale of weapons that are meant for human destruction. Most governments especially in poor and developing countries spend much of their resources and borrowed funds on strengthening their defence and protections at the expense of their citizens.

The physical and mental energy, the financial and material resources that are spent in countering the effects of capitalism by charity groups could be wisely and usefully spent in giving the world’s population scientific socialist education, the only education that opens the minds of people and gives them an understanding of the world we live on. It is this scientific socialist education that is the only intellectual energy that will end capitalism (and with it the evils mentioned earlier).
Weijagye Justus, 
Uganda

Letter: Euro-fascism? (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Euro-fascism?

Dear Editors

The views expressed in your reply (Socialist Standard, April) to my letter regarding a possible fascist European nation state developing at a later stage reveal an error in assessment.

Fascism is not just a military dictatorship capitalist state, seeking “a place in the sun” for markets and raw materials, but is primarily a counter-revolutionary force, created to crush within its own borders, serious trends developing for “social” change that could lead to “socialism”, by large sections of workers.

Whatever our view of the 1917 Russian revolution, the event put “the fear of God” into the ruling élite of Europe. Hitler’s Germany was called “a barrier against Bolshevism” by the then Governor of the Bank of England. “A bastion to prevent the spread of ‘Communism’”. After 1917, revolutionary movements abounded throughout Europe.

Your detailed summary of the present European Union is irrelevant to the case on a future European Nation State, the one-government assembly containing delegates form Europe’s regions of national councils. To assume, as you do, that in a revolutionary situation the delegates would never be legislated by majority to vote for fascists’ policies by the regions is politically naïve. The fact that some Tories are opposed to a European state, preferring closer economic links to the USA, does not diminish the view of genuine dangers for the workers of Europe.
Lionel Rich, 
London NW6

Reply: 
There are at least two things wrong with your nightmare scenario about a European Super-State somehow coming into existence and then going fascist.

First, your revival of the old “Communist” Party line that fascism is “primarily a counter-revolutionary force”. This implied that Bolshevism was some sort of revolutionary force. In fact, by the 1930s Bolshevism was a rival totalitarian ideology and movement to fascism which shared many of the latter’s features (one-party state, mass rallies, leader worship, concentration camps, etc). We repeat that, in our view, both Fascism and Bolshevism are to be explained from the concrete historical circumstances facing the ruling class in Italy, Germany and Russia in the first part of the 20th century and which are not being repeated at the present time (and are not likely to be). In fact, fascism today is related to opposition to immigration rather than open support for dictatorship. Of course as long as capitalism lasts what limited democratic procedures exist will not be 100 percent secure, but we would have thought that the growth of a genuine socialist movement would make them more secure, not less as in your nightmare scenario.

Second, there is the uncomfortable fact for you that most fascists today – the BNP, Le Pen, National Front, etc – are, as you urge us to be, against the Common Market. Apparently, they think they have a better chance of making progress if Europe is divided into separate, competing states with each having its own distinct nationalist ideology that they can latch onto. Which is one reason why, although we are against the Common Market as we are against any capitalist arrangement, we don’t want to touch the nationalist opposition to it with a barge pole. It is why we advocated constructive abstention (by writing “World Socialism” across the ballot paper) in the 1975 referendum on the issue and why we will be advocating the same thing in the referendum next year or the year after on the euro—Editors.

50 Years Ago: “A Word on Marxism” (2002)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not an exaggeration to state that to-day “Marxism” is becoming almost a household word. Unfortunately this does not mean that over the wide world millions of people have become thoroughly acquainted with the fundamentals of Marxian doctrines. Rather does it signify that the word “Marxist” has become the modern equivalent of “heretic” or “turk.” In other words, when a man is to-day called a “Marxist” people are usually expressing strong disapproval, although they may have little or no idea of the real meaning of the word they are using. As members of the working class concerned with the crying social evils of the modern world we cannot afford such loose thinking. We do not brand or abuse our political opponents; but are concerned rather with a thorough examination of their point of view. We do not reject or accept their statements out of hand. Marxism must be treated likewise by all serious-thinking men and women, and to do this we must ascertain exactly what we mean by the term.

Like the word “Socialism,” or “Marxism” has, over the course of the last century, been largely abused and misrepresented. We can, however, in brief form put the essential ideas of Marx as follows:-
  1. Materialism.
  2. Materialist conception of History. (Including the class struggle.)
  3. Theory of Value.
These three components of Marxism are in indivisible unity. The so-called “Marxists” of the “Red” variety who claim allegiance to Marxism yet at the command of their Russian masters flout the class struggle and the most elementary conclusions to be drawn from the theory of value can lay no authentic claim to their title. No one with even an elementary understanding of the Marxian outlook can at one time claim to be a Marxist and in almost the next breath speak of his Christian faith and belief in God, as do many members of the Communist Party, including the one-time prominent Douglas Hyde of “I Believed” fame. Such people have failed to understand the most striking feature of Marx’s ideas, i.e., each central proposition implies and leads logically to the others. Materialism, so to speak, the foundation stone, is a philosophic view of the universe, irreconcilably opposed to religious dogma.

[From an article by J. Lestor, Socialist Standard, June 1952.]

Obituary: Lewis Hopkin (2002)

Obituary from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Swansea branch are saddened to have to report the death of comrade Lewis Hopkin at the end of April. Lewis was born in 1933 and joined the Socialist Party in Swansea in 1959. When he went to London to study as a mature student at the London School of Economics he transferred to the old Wood Green and Hornsey branch. He later moved to Salford where he worked as a lecturer in sociology at the local polytechnic and was an active member at different times of both Eccles branch and Manchester branch.

He had been born on a farm near Swansea and was a native Welsh-speaker (he translated the only article so far to have appeared in the Socialist Standard in Welsh in July 1969 on the occasion of Charles Windsor being declared Prince of Wales). He remained a farmer at heart, eventually moving to a farm in Anglesey and giving up lecturing. He later moved back to South Wales to the farm where he had been born and where he was buried in a rare public display in a Welsh village of non-belief in god and religion.

Lewis was an occasional contributor to the Socialist Standard over the past 40 years, his last article appearing as recently as February this year. In this he reaffirmed that the working class, properly understood, remains the agent of change from capitalism to socialism. On his return to South Wales and to the branch he first joined he had enthusiastic plans for renewed activity, both in his own reading and writing and in the organisation of meetings. But the cancer he had suffered from for a number of years finally prevented this.

We extend our sympathy to his wife Ann, also a member, to their four children and to the other members of his family.

New Socialist Party pamphlet (2002)

Party News from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Life is a collection of 28 published and 5 unpublished short stories by Socialist Standard writer Heather Ball. Many readers liked Heather's distinctive writing style and found it full of charm, warmth, humanity and humour. Sadly, Heather died before she could complete her writing project. This collection of her stories, published by the Socialist Party, is a memorial to her indefatigable commitment to socialism. Send a cheque made payable to the Socialist Party of Great Britain to 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Price £3.00.




Blogger's Note:
I'm not sure what happened but for some reason the text of this pamphlet isn't available on the SPGB website, and it also looks like it is currently out of print. Therefore, reproduced below is the introduction to the pamphlet, and links to Heather's short stories mentioned in the introduction. Four of Heather's unpublished short stories which were originally included in this pamphlet are not currently online but they are on my to do list.


Introduction to A Socialist Life by Heather Ball

This is a collection of short stories first published in the Socialist Standard between July 1995 and November 2000. They are brought together here for two main reasons. First, readers have appreciated Heather's distinctive style of writing — they find it full of warmth, humanity and pervaded by a gentle sense of humour. And second, those who haven't previously read anything by socialist writers may find their appetite whetted by Heather's collection.

Sadly Heather died before the project was complete. This collection of her stories is thus a memorial to her indefatigable commitment to socialism.

Most of the collection is divided somewhat arbitrarily into three parts—people, places and situations. In fact all the stories concern people in some way—their ideas, their behaviour, their strengths and weaknesses, their frequent niceness and occasional nastiness. To a large extent places are the contexts in which people live and work, and situations arise out of people trying to cope with the opportunities and problems that they face.

Part 1 starts with Heather's recollections of her parents. Her father was a lifelong Bolshevik, but he taught her how to be a socialist. Her mother endured a life of struggle against poverty, a struggle that included occasional selective stealing to feed and clothe her family. In 'Ordinary People' Heather talks about the men and women who do valuable work, despite sometimes being patronised by ‘experts'. In ’Humankind' she describes how people are normally helpful sociable beings despite their capitalist environment. The same point is well illustrated in 'The Bailiffs' when, after Heather's family furniture is repossessed, the neighbours rally round to replace most of what had been taken.

Next a group of elderly neighbours discover that it's good to party. In 'Passing the Time' Heather finds that chatting about the Queen Mother can be a chore and a bore. Later Heather is visited by Mr Brown, a Social Security Officer, and she wonders whether he is aware that his job depends on the fact that in capitalism some people go to the wall.

In Part 2 we see Heather as a schoolgirl making her revolutionary debut by organising a strike against a tyrannical teacher. The next piece is about Heather's fellow pupil, the unassuming Dorcas, who told the truth about her dislike of the school and most of its teachers and was roundly castigated for doing so. At a 'Careers' interview Heather's school bosses scoff at the idea that she wants to write. An office, shop or factory job was what they had in mind for her. In 'Uncles' she relates how as a child she watched her mother pawn her father's best suit to a man she at first believed was a not very nice relative.

The next few stories are about the places and people Heather encountered as a young worker. In 'The Office' she confesses that she was too young to realise that, rather than failing the workplace, the workplace had failed her. 'The madhouse' is Heather's name for the small hotel she worked in, and she observes how things can go quite well when the boss is on holiday. Then follows an amusing and perceptive account of how she applied for, and rejected a really lousy job as a capstan lathe operator.

As an adult Heather goes to the doctor and is told not to worry about the present profit system and its consequences — whose is the saner point of view, the doctor's or hers? She goes to an open day at her child's school and is mildly mortified at the treatment she receives on inadvertently gatecrashing a room reserved for the bigwigs. A much different kind of place is 'The Naff Caff’, featuring cheap grub and animated (often political) conversation. Within its walls, muses Heather, 'dwells a little bit of socialism'.

Part 3 links people to situations. First, the process of joining the Socialist Party. Not an easy one. Hopefully others will react as Heather did on hearing the case for socialism for the first time: 'SPGB, where have you been all my life?' Next she tells how setting up a literature stall can good way of opening people's eyes to an alternative to capitalism, and meeting their 'human nature' and other objections. In Norwich, elsewhere, a lot of misguided youthful energy goes into 'Direct action': reclaiming the streets, cutting fences, daubing statues, setting up peace camps, guerrilla gardening, critical mass bike rides — in short, 'pissing about with capitalism'.

The later stories are more by way of personal reminiscence, though they all illustrate facets of Heather's socialist life. She puts 'Cleaning Houses', still too often regarded as women's work — in sensible proportion, while not quite going to Quentin Crisp's extreme position that after four years the dust doesn't get any thicker. In 'Ethics' Heather rejects combative and mistrustful capitalist values in favour of unspoken socialist acceptance and acknowledgement of mutual existence. And she rejects 'Ageism' and other discriminatory policies which say who shall have jobs and who shall not. Diana's death is an opportunity to reflect on 'Misplaced Admiration': an occasion for lauding the cosmetic, the contrived and the overly sentimental, rather than a better life for all. Finally, Heather attends a meeting of 'Alcoholics Anonymous' to learn how to fight the demon drink.

Part 4, Last Thoughts, contains only two stories, both written after Heather had been diagnosed as suffering from motor neurone disease. Her frustration is clear in 'Small Talk' as she becomes 'impatient with the foolishness of existence'. But optimism and humanity reassert themselves triumphantly in 'Consciousness', with Heather certain that The system will never succeed altogether in eradicating the understanding we all share of being human and needing one another.'

Included in part 5 are five stories that for one reason or another were not published in the Socialist Standard. In 'Adoption' Heather writes of her feelings about her adopted granddaughter, to be loved and cherished as all children should be. In 'Books' we are able to compare our favourite choice of reading with Heather's. 'The Car Boot Sale' shows her speculating that socialism will give us the same opportunity to give and take things without the intrusion of money. 'Vegetarianism' gives Heather the opportunity to explain how, as a child, she came to this philosophy and its consequence for eating habits. Finally, she writes of her wartime experience of evacuation as very much a mixed blessing.

Heather wrote from the heart as well as the head. For her socialism meant more than just common ownership and the absence of poverty and war, etc. Economic equality and the resolution of class conflict were only the beginning. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in 'Humankind'. And perhaps no single paragraph exemplifies the biting anger, the humour and the inspiring sense of aspiration that characterised her view of socialism:
"[in present day society] there is an erosion of everything socialism requires and capitalism despises — co-operation, self-respect, love even. I hesitate to use the word 'love' when talking about human relationships' — the suspicious sidelong glances I get sometimes make me wonder if it is thought I am advocating multiple orgasms for everyone. Love to me represents the possibility of having such good feelings about ourselves that we can afford to have them about other people too. Yet in this miserable society where money and exploitation must come first, we are discouraged from showing too much concern for one another in case this detracts from our real purpose—to provide profit and power for a minority”.
Michael Gill 
Stan Parker 
2001


Part I People

Part II Places

Part III Situations

Part IV Last Thoughts

Part V Unpublished
  • Adoption
  • Books
  • The Car Boot Sale
  • Vegetarianism
  • Evacuation

Socialist Party Summer School (2002)

Party News from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard