Conscription Continued. (1916)

From the November 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

When dealing with, the scheme known as the “Derby Group System” in The Socialist some months back it was pointed out that the capitalist class were being pushed on to the horns of a dilemma in the endeavour to find men for the Army. This simple truth is now being demonstrated by two prominent incidents. One is the threat of raising the age for military service to 45 years, though even the “”Daily Mail” admits that the army does not want men of this age; and the other is the cry to extend conscription to Ireland.

On the former point it is significant to note that though Mr. Asquith has stated that an army of over 5,000,000 men has been raised by the “voluntary” method, no statement has been issued of the number of men the Conscription Act has brought in. With the single men this might be accounted for by the miserably small number that was available after the “voluntary” system was closed. The later application of the Act to married men does not seem to have brought much of a result if the official silence is any guide. The scandal of the medical “examinations” is a further point showing how few fit men were really available.

Now we are told that there must be a “combing out” of the various munition and other factories to obtain the young men, while the fact that the “combing” process has been steadily, if quietly, carried on for months is coolly ignored. The result here, if munition work is to be carried on at its present pressure, will be exceedingly small.

It is in this dilemma that the turn is made to Ireland. This looks surprisingly hopeful. For generations Ireland has been a nation of women, children and old people. The young, vigorous manhood has been compelled to emigrate because of the impossibility of obtaining a livelihood in Ireland.

With a population, at the last census, of about 4,300,000 in the whole country ; with an unduly large proportion of this number consisting of non-military material; with over 150,000 of its manhood already in the Army, we can see what a rich reservoir is here to make up what is so sweetly termed “the wastage.”

The difficulties already existing in Ireland, coupled with the feelings engendered by the ruthless use of the military both during and since the futile “rebellion,” would seem to make the game scarcely worth the candle. But, apparently, there are other reasons at work, and if one may take certain indications, it has already been decided to apply conscription there. The “Daily Mail” howls for it. The Nationalist Party howls against it. In such a situation the position of a third section is a useful guide.

When conscription was being brought forward as “practical politics” in Great Britain the “Daily Chronicle” claimed it would never be applied here. For answer to this, as Sir Christopher Wren says in another connection, “look around.” Now the same paper states it is estimated that 150,000 men could be obtained from Ireland, which “is a very respectable total.” But it goes on to. state “No man with any real knowledge of Ireland or any experience of its government would ever dream of applying conscription to that country,” and later on we are told ” Even were it carried . . . it could never be worked.” (“Daily Chronicle,” 14.10.1916.) In the light of previous experience this looks ominous—for Ireland. It looks as though the “deal” has already been arranged .and the shrieking of the Nationalists and the “never” of the “Daily Chronicle” are mere window dressing exhibitions preparatory to the complete swallowing of the pill.

To complete the parallel it is suggested that a “Derby Scheme” be started in Ireland. This, of course, would be a “failure” just as it was here. Indeed, many complaints have already been made that Irishmen, joining the army on purpose to enter Irish regiments, have been placed in English, Scotch or Welsh regiments much against their will. Then the authorities complain that “Irishmen are not filling up the Irish regiments ” ! When the proposed “Derby Scheme” has “failed” sufficiently this “failure” will be used as one of the reasons for conscription as it was here. Just as Asquith deceived and swindled the workers here with his “promises” and “pledges” so the Irish workers will be swindled by Redmond and Carson.

While the results in men would be small, relative to the supposed requirements of the Army, the effect would be, practically, to impose martial law in Ireland as in reality it already exists here, though not in official terms. This enables the ruling class to carry out their wishes ruthlessly and rapidly in any direction they desire while apparently observing the usual constitutional forms. That it “never could be worked,” as the “Daily Chronicle” states, is mere nonsense, for though forceful resistance might hinder and bother the authorities for a short time, ultimately it would be quite futile as the last experience of this method has shown.

Not until the working class in Ireland clearly grip the essential fact that they are slaves to the master class no matter what nationality these latter may be ; fully realise that such slavery is confined within no national boundary but is world wide; throw off the mental shackles of either “nationalism” or “religion,” and join hands with their fellow workers the world over to abolish capitalism—the cause of modern wars—not until then will they be free from oppression and tyranny and be able to enjoy the results of their efforts applied to Nature’s resources.

Jack Fitzgerald

Retrospective. (1916)

From the November 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

While politicians and newspaper scribes are foaming at the mouth over the “rights of small nations” and “our national liabilities”—to say nothing of “our” army, “our” navy, “our” allies, etc., etc., ad absurdum—the present writer took it into his proletarian head to delve among his books and cuttings relating to past history in order to find out something about the above-mentioned mysterious things. Hereunder you will find set out “All the Harvest that I reaped.”

Let us take a mental tour of the world and witness some of the doings of the British Empire (the apostle of freedom) during the last fifty years or so, and examine some of the benefits that have accrued to those who have had the good fortune (!) to be born within its pale.

We will commence with Africa, the land opened up by the Holy Trinity : Bible, Whisky, and Gunpowder.

In 1852 the control of the British Government in South Africa was limited to Natal and Cape Colony, while the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic were in the hands of Dutch settlers. The most powerful native tribe in South Africa was the Zulu nation, under their chief Cetewayo, whose territories bordered Natal. Cetewayo and the Transvaal Republic quarrelled over a certain strip of land and the matter was referred to England (with whom Cetewayo was on the most friendly terms) for arbitration. Four English arbitrators decided that the disputed strip of territory properly belonged to the Zulu nation. Yet in spite of this the English Lord High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, kept back the award for several mouths. This aroused Cetewayo’s suspicions and convinced him that his territory was going to be annexed and he himself sent to prison, as had already happened in the case of Langalibalele in 1864. Eventually Bartle Frere announced the award to Cetewayo, accompanied with an ultimatum that the Zulu army must be disbanded. This was immediately followed by the invasion of Zululand, when the English troops were completely defeated ! (Jan. 22nd, 1879.) In the end, however, the Zulus were vanquished, Cetewayo transported, and the territory divided up. Thus were the “sacred rights” of a small and trusting nation safeguarded. The whole matter in detail will be found in Justin McCarthy’s “Short History of Our Own Times,’ p. 427.

The desire of English capitalists to obtain possession of the rich gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal and their attempted annexation of the Republic’s territory led to the war which culminated in the victory of the Boers at Majuba Hill in 1881.

As the riches of the Transvaal in gold and diamonds became known to the world swarms of adventurers began to invade it and claim full citizenship of the Republic on entry—a claim which the Boers would not grant. The Chartered Company (founded in Cape Colony by Cecil Rhodes) wanted a finger in the pie, and one of their officials, Dr. Jameson (now Sir Starr Jameson, a man of great respectability !) attempted a raid on the Transvaal which was a failure. No doubt a good many readers will recall the famous trail of a few years ago, when. Von Veltheim, adventurer and sometime member of the Cape Mounted Police, was convicted of the attempted blackmail of the Joels. In this case interesting sidelights were thrown on the attempt to provoke war between England and the Transvaal on behalf of the diamond and gold magnates of South Africa.

Perhaps a quotation from Justin McCarthy would be useful at this point :

“The discovery of the gold mines had brought into South Africa a rush of adventurous immigrants from various parts of the world, especially from England and from British territories, whose principal object was to make themselves the absolute rulers of all that vast tract of country which was teeming with limitless sources of wealth. The established republics were not strong enough to secure themselves against the internal disturbances to be expected from such an invasion. The invaders may not have had in the beginning any intention or desire to make themselves the rulers of the whole region, yet it soon became evident that they would endeavour to sweep away from their path any obstacles the existing systems might set up. The rulers and people of the Transvaal Republic were determined so far as they could to manage their State according to their own ideas. The newcomers were equally determined to secure a free-way for the promotion of the principal objects they had in view when they sought for settlement in South Africa.”— (P. 538.)

Such was the material out of which the Boer War arose, resulting in the defeat of the Boers and the triumph of the British capitalists, who immediately proceeded to exploit the rich regions gained with, as I will soon show, disastrous results to the workers. Thus were another small nation’s liberties—defended !

In July 1913 a strike broke out in the Rand Goldfields (part of the region Jameson was knighted for trying to pinch). For many years native labour had been recruited for the mines by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association and the British South African Native Labour Recruiting Corporation at the rate of about 6,000 per month, and, being cheaper and more easily obtained than white men, the natives were gradually displacing the latter. The strike was chiefly for the eight hours day, better underground conditions, and the restriction of the introduction of native labour.

In the House of Assembly (South Africa), May 28, 1913, the Minister of Mines gave the following figures :

“During the ten years ended December 31, 1913, of those employed in Transvaal mines 52,205 native died and 16,556 were killed or injured in accidents. Between 1907 and 1912 32,103 natives were sent home unfit for work. In 1900 6,900 men died at mines of pulmonary disease alone. . . . No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every year—men in the prime of health.”

Well, the miners struck and the following is a report culled from the columns of the “Morning News and Leader” (11.8.13) as to the result:

“A prominent business man of Johannesburg, writing to Mr. Joseph Fels, gives a graphic description, of the terrible happenings there during the recent conflict between the military and the civil population.

He tells how the police and soldiers rushed a peaceful meeting of strikers, bludgeoning and batoning all and sundry. . . .

Though there were miles of plate glass-fronted shops to loot, very little damage was done, although at this time the crowd had complete control !

On Saturday, in the Rand Club in the afternoon some members were jeering at the crowd, when about 25 of them “rushed” the building.

Fifteen to twenty soldiers formed at the junction of two streets, facing four ways, and fired for 4½ hours intermittently. Everyone who attempted to cross the road was shot. Men were shot down who were merely trying to get away. Two children (one of twelve and the other younger) were shot whilst standing on the side walk. One poor fellow, in a spirit of bravado, stepped into the road and dared them to shoot. He was dead before he had finished speaking. The correspondent adds that an advocate of the Supreme Court told him that he watched three men shot as they were running away. A young man who was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets towards the line of fire was shouted to by the police to go back again. When nearly out of danger he stopped and looked at the soldiers and was shot dead.

A portion of the crowd who were peering round the corner at the soldiers, bulged into the street, and the soldiers fired into the thick of them, killing one man and wounding two others.

It is insisted that there was no more danger in the watching crowd than in a “parcel of school children,” as the unruly element had gone. Sixteen were killed, 150 wounded were treated in the hospitals besides scores who were treated by their own doctors.”

Other figures give the killed as 20.

By 1914 the capitalists, who had originally the control of the diamond and gold mines only, had become the owners of nearly all the land in the Transvaal as well, so that the early fears of the Dutch farmers were justified by the passing years. A writer in the “News and Leader” of 31.3.14 made the following statements on the position in South Africa :

“There are five companies, euphoniously termed ‘Land and Exploration’ companies, which between them own over thirteen million acres, mostly in the Transvaal, The biggest has a four and a half million, the smallest a paltry million, acreage. There are fifteen other companies, each of which has an acreage running into six figures, and seven with areas of tens of thousands of acres. All told these twenty-seven companies own seventeen and a half million acres, or 23 per cent. of the Transvaal.”

The land these companies possess is the very best in the country.

“These ‘land and exploration’ companies were generally floated in the first instance to secure mining rights over very large areas. Thus one company has coal rights over 201 square miles, and possesses in addition a township site. . . .”

The writer concludes as follows :

“The fate of South Africa, then, lies still in the hands of a clever, far-sighted, not too scrupulous coterie of financiers, who have now drawn into their web the farming (and this in Africa means the landowning) community.”

Now in view of the above perhaps the working-class reader will commence to wonder what 20,000 of his class laid down their lives for on the yellow South African veldt— and perhaps he will carry parallel reasoning to the existing case, where his follows are pouring their blood out on the Continent.

Before leaving Africa to continue our personally-conducted tour we will just, notice a further article relating to South Africa which appeared in the “News and Leader” for 26.7.13.

It appears that the Chartered Company (founded by Cecil Rhodes) proposed leasing to an international company one million acres in Rhodesia (that’s a decent chunk of “our” Empire to give away !) and the writer waxes somewhat indignant on the matter. He says :

“These grants of land are far too common in the British Empire. They are made too readily, and with much too little regard for native interests.

The prevalent land-owning custom in Europe is private ownership. In Africa it is communal ownership. Therefore, if we hand over great tracts of this territory to private owners and those private owners proceed to exact rents or grazing dues, the African native does not regard that as a normal economic development. He regards it as an act of aggression, of conquest—an arbitrary charge wrung from him in bitterness, and leaving behind a deep sense of injury. That resentment has been the cause of most of the African wars and rebellions since the presence of the white man in Africa.

Take this great concession in the country of the Chartered Company. The company assert that the black population in that territory is thin. But there is a considerable population—perhaps some hundred thousand or so human beings—especially as the concession allows the new company to choose selected areas throughout Rhodesia. What would be the use of the concession to the new company—a company for extracting the essence of oxen and delivering it to the invalids of Europe—if they do not possess power both over the cattle and over the labour of the country which is handed over to them ? Plainly if they are going to pay one shilling an acre for this land they will expect to possess powers of this kind. In other words, the Chartered Company is not merely leasing the territory: it is selling the people.”

Such has been the fate of small nations in South Africa under the British Empire.

Gilmac.

(To be Continued.)

Political Pantoum No.3: In Out, In Out Shake . . . (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

In Out, In Out Shake…

 

Britannia seemingly sinking,

There appears to be but one hope,

Desperate means – desperate thinking

By setting a course for Europe.

 

There appears to be but one hope

For true British leaders and led,

By setting a course for Europe?

Let’s reclaim sovereignty instead.

 

For true British leaders and led,

No giving foreigners’ free rein,

Let’s reclaim sovereignty instead,

Closing the borders tight again.

 

But there again reconsider,

Britannia seemingly sinking,

Selling to the highest bidder;

Desperate means – desperate thinking.

 

D. A.

About Socialism (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

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

2. What is capitalism?

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

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

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

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

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

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

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

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

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

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

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

8. What about human nature?

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

9. Are socialists democrats?

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

10. What is the next step?

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

If you have read this set of principles and agree with some or all of them, contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism.

Running Commentary: Corpses (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corpses

With the withdrawal of Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Richard Gephardt, the struggle to become the Democratic candidate in the next presidential election in America looks like producing as many political corpses as there are human ones in a Clint Eastwood movie.

The first to go — and of course the most famous, the most charismatic — was Gary Hart. Hart, we were told, is a liberal; his heart (no relation) bleeds for the poor, the downtrodden, the victims of discrimination. A nice guy like him could not fail to put it all to rights. And anyway he is so good-looking. But he blew it all when he not only involved himself with a leggy model but handled the crisis with a marked absence of the politician's expected ability to dissemble and temporise.

Biden's downfall came when some sharp member of his audience realised that he was in the habit of using material from other politicians' speeches, without acknowledging it. He not only pinched passages from a speech by Neil Kinnock but pretended to have a background similar to the British Labour leader's. The resultant hunt through Biden's real life story revealed that he had also once cheated at his exams. Clearly, this was a man quite unfitted to occupy the White House.

Gephardt, who once had a reputation for integrity, was laid low by an extravagant statement that more soldiers from the Vietnam war had committed suicide than were killed there. A pretty daft thing to say, you might think — and so did the Democrats, who don't want a daft person on their ticket next November.

But wait a second. The motives and reasons of the tens of millions of workers who regularly vote for capitalism are something of a mystery (why should they so stubbornly ask for more of the system which does them so much damage?), but despite that the discarding of those potential candidates raises some questions.

Does any American worker seriously expect, in the case of Gary Hart, the President to practise what he preaches and to conform to the confines of a monogamous marriage? After Roosevelt. Johnson, Kennedy. . .? Do any of them believe that the sexual activities of a President affect the manner in which he runs American capitalism? That monogamous - or preferably celibate - leaders would run capitalism any differently from libertines?

Do they expect politicians always to play by the rules, always to say original things? How can capitalism — a stale, outdated, unsupportable society — be justified other than by stale, outdated, unsupportable rhetoric? Do they really want their leaders to be honest — which would mean confessing to their own impotence and to the need to abolish capitalism?

The personalities and the individual quirks of the politicians of capitalism are of no consequence. It is the system which decides how they operate — not the other way round. Capitalist politics are all futility, often plumbing the depths of absurdity — as we are witnessing now. And the campaign proper has not yet begun.

Now They Tell Us

Shamefaced admissions about the dangers of nuclear power reactors have been part of the fall-out from Chernobyl. In the so-called democracies of the West it took, after Three Mile Island and Windscale, an explosion in a Russian plant to stimulate these admissions but better, perhaps, late than never.

At a London conference in September the head of Russian Fire Services said that Chernobyl demonstrated there is no such thing as a safe nuclear installation:". . . the very probability of an accident was considered unlikely and was not taken into account in any estimations and suppositions" was how he put it.

This example of glasnost may have convinced some people that the Russian record in these matters is better than that of other capitalist powers. The facts give a different picture.

When the prospect of nuclear electricity dawned on the world, with its promise of producing energy so cheaply that it would not be worth metering it. it was greeted by politicians, industrialists and scientists with what can only be called hysteria. Exultantly, they babbled about the benefits of this wonderful, eternally self-reproductive source of all the good things in life. Nuclear power stations quickly took on a vital role in the energy plans of the major industrial powers.

In some cases, the hysteria was under the control of a grim resolve; France, for example, splashed nuclear plants all over the country with virtually no regard for the wishes of the people who had to live alongside them. Nuclear electricity came to be seen as essential to the economies of those countries — which means to the profitable production of goods, to their competitive standing in world capitalism.

Two things were inevitable in this situation. Firstly, that comers would be cut in the hurry to build the plants; chances would be taken, essential facts and doubts about safety played down or concealed. Secondly, as nuclear energy was the new glamour industry its workers would be given a status of something akin to super stars. The team which went to Chernobyl to carry out those fatal experiments were allowed to take those frightful risks because their standing was such that they could dice with the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

But of course Chernobyl is not the only example. Which leaves us with the awful question: where next? and what will happen, how bad will it be?

Profit was the driving force behind the erection of nuclear stations and the “accidents" which they have become notorious for. Profit means that power for modern industry has to be dangerous, unpleasant, polluting. The warnings about Chernobyl came too late but the case for the social system which will have no use for anything which damages or threatens human welfare has been around for a long time.

Victorian Values, Comrade

If Margaret Thatcher would like to see the allegedly Victorian, alleged values, which she so often spouts about in action she could do a lot worse than pay another visit to Russia. In that so-called communist country which, Thatcher tells us, is basically different from England, there is a state sanctified reverence for hard work. This is the land where the memory of Stakhanov is still worshipped, where the highest form of human activity is a worker's selfless application to producing as much wealth as possible for the employers — which means as much profit as possible for them. In this case, of course, the employers are represented directly by the state.

In Russia respect for the law — for the legal structure which stands guard over the privileged social position of the ruling class — is expected to be absolute. The same crimes — like unlicensed violence and illegal theft — are punishable there as they are here but there is another category which may attract the heaviest penalties. Economic crimes, like fiddling the books of a collective, can end up with the hapless criminal facing a firing squad.

Patriotism, too, is revered in Russia, in a style which Thatcher might envy. Their national festivals are marked by enormous parades of armed marchers and displays of some of the most destructive weaponry in the world. Russian patriots find it a blood-stirring spectacle, just as British patriots thrilled to the Falklands victory parade. The mindless, unquestioning acceptance of the nonsense that "your" country is the best and merits your devoted service even to the point of death is official Russian propaganda, just as it is in Britain.

A recent practical example of these values in action was the re-organisation of Russian agriculture, entailing the merger of several ministries into one mega-bureaucracy. Over 20,000 jobs have been re-organised out of existence and, in a niggardly spirit worthy of Thatcher at her worst, the sanitary service has been abolished. The work previously carried out by this service, such as the inspection of premises and the imposition of standards of hygiene, has now been allocated to doctors employed by the Ministry of Health.

This may have been advisable from the point of view of profit but not from that of public welfare. A dysentery epidemic has been sweeping some parts of the country, its origin traced in most cases to the hygienically risky method of packing sour cream. The deputy health minister responsible for public sanitation is in no doubt that the situation has been worsened by the cuts under the reorganisation.

Supporters of state capitalism in Russia are often in the forefront of protest about expenditure cuts in this country and are quick to use evidence of their effect on vital services like hospitals and public health work. They might ponder about their attitude, when the things they protest about also happen in Russia. Thatcher's supporters might ask themselves the same questions. Capitalism, and its inhuman values, infects the entire world.

Learning, earning and yearning (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"I never let my schooling interfere with my education." Mark Twain

You might have left formal education years ago. You might be involved in it now as a student or a teacher. What, though, is your opinion about the way education is organised? Is it a pleasurable, inspiring, challenging experience? Well, if you stop a group of young people making a swift exit from school at the end of their classes or a tired troupe of teachers and ask them about their day, "pleasurable" and "inspiring" are probably not the sort of words they will use to describe their routines.

Acquiring useful knowledge and developing new skills are pursuits that people can, in the right circumstances, greatly enjoy. Why, then, do millions of people involved in formal education find it such a boring and uncomfortable business? For an answer to this question it is worth considering what is contained in the text books and what is imparted in the classrooms and lecture halls. For a clearer understanding of what education is all about, however, it is reasonable to look out of the classroom window to consider the type of society which education is designed to prepare us for. What sort of person does the education system want to make? In order to understand the instruction manual you need to look at a picture of an ideal version of the finished product.

What is Education?

The word “education" derives from the Latin word educere meaning "to lead out”. It is seen as the process whereby young people are led out from states of inability and ignorance into the workings of the world beyond — their idea being that the older and more experienced generations will equip the members of the new generation with the knowledge and abilities required in order to cope with social life. In order for society to survive it needs to produce goods and services like food, clothes, accommodation and transportation. Human history has developed through different social systems, like slavery and later feudalism, and consequently the way in which young people have been prepared for the life ahead of them has varied according to the sort of society they are to inhabit.

The commercial society we live in today is a stage in history. There is no evidence to suggest that after thousands of years of change and development human history has ground to a halt and that the style of society we have now is something that will never change. The main characteristics of today's society are quite simple and they are the same all over the world. Society is divided between the wealth producers (the great majority) and the wealth owners (a small minority). Most people have to sell themselves to an employer like a company or the state in order to get a livelihood. A price is put on everyone as they flog their lives away in order to make someone else rich. How much are you worth? £3.25 an hour? £506.78 a month? £10,000 for one year of your life? Meanwhile a few men and women live in luxury with gigantic wealth which has been legitimately robbed from the people whose energies and skills have produced it. It is a society in which a man or a woman in a pinstripe suit can take a decision which will devastate a local community, ruining hundreds of lives, by deciding to "withdraw investments" from some local industry. A couple of days later the person who took the decision could be in drunken revelry at a chic nightclub, celebrating a successful £10,000 share deal made in ten minutes while mothers from the wrecked community are weeping over the new wasteland in which their children will be growing up.

We are living in a world where conscripts to the Argentinian military forces and economic conscripts to the British forces were ordered to massacre each other in the name of civilisation. What is reasonably described as an act of insane savagery when it is committed in Hungerford is called noble heroism when it is committed in Goose Green. In the same way, Russian soldiers in Afghanistan and American soldiers in Nicaragua are being ordered to murder people in "defence" of a "good" cause. How good is an argument or a cause that requires you to shoot someone with an exploding bullet in order to persuade them?

Above all, the economic principle which governs the way we live is that of profit. Although the world can easily produce more than enough food and drink for everyone, millions of people die of starvation while farmers are paid to burn wheat in order to keep its price high. Coffee is dumped in the oceans, mountains of beef and butter beshadow lakes of wine and milk while, according to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), a child dies from poverty every two seconds. A network of well-intentioned campaigns like Live Aid and Sport Aid struggle to alleviate the plight of those on the borderline of survival but the problems remain. Workers in relative poverty, thinking twice about how they are going to pay the electricity bill, shelling out a few quid to the destitute will not solve any problems. Charity may prolong the agonies, though, by lulling people into the mistaken belief that the profit system can be humanised if people were simply to be a little more thoughtful to others. The profit system has to operate according to what is profitable, not according to what is in the best interests of the majority. Think about the priorities of the profit system. In 1986 Cancer Research in the UK tried to collect £1 million by begging from people. The research here is reasonably important because one in four people in industrial areas of the world die of cancer-related disease. During the same period the United States government spent $45,000,000,000 on military research and development and a similar sum was spent by the Russian government.

Learning Compliance

What role does formal education play in all this? Primarily it is a dull and restricting process by which people are gently indoctrinated to accept a highly undesirable, difficult, dangerous and insecure way of life. The indoctrination today is not always delivered in a stark, crude way (although it was at one time) but the net result of someone going through ten years of schooling is. generally, the acquiring of a frame of mind and a set of prejudices that make for a willing wage-slave, a follower of leaders and in many cases a military recruit. "Education", according to one writer, "is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught" (George Halifax). Certainly, judging by the dreary content of most formal education courses there is every reason for young people to quickly forget most of what has been taught. The hang-over effect though is the production of people who, give or take a complaint or a wish to reform something, are generally compliant to the type of society we have. In David Copperfield, Charles Dickens introduced the character of Uriah Heep who refers to his education as a young boy.

They taught us a deal of 'umbleness . . . not much else that I know of, from morning to night we was to be 'umble to this person, 'umble to that; and to pull off our caps here and make our bows there; and always to know our places and abase ourselves before our betters.

Local and national employers recently attended the college where I work to organise lectures and workshops for the students as prospective employees and the message was subtle but clear: the people who taught Uriah Heep had the right idea. Today's bosses have a wide vocabulary of terms to avoid being openly offensive. "Be obedient" becomes "Could you co-operate?" but the relationship of "master" and servant has not changed even if it is labelled as that between employer and employee. An official at the Department of Education and Science recently said.

We have to ration . . . educational opportunities so that society can cope with the output of education . . . People must be educated once more to know their place.

[The Listener 4 September 1986] 

In Britain today the children of the owning class attend costly private schools where they are trained in the techniques of pomposity, arrogance and the social hierarchy. Only 6 per cent of young people attend such schools while the other 94 per cent are learning how to know their place. It should not be forgotten, though, that the minority who own and control the society we live in (the owners of the factories, offices, newspapers and so forth) do not occupy their positions of power because they had expensive and élitist educations. On the contrary. They have expensive and élitist educations because their parents occupy positions of power. A person's class position pre-dates their education and continues regardless of whether they performed well or badly in school. You do not get to own landed estates or a string of factories or oilfields because you worked hard at school or college. The Duke of Westminster owns 138,000 acres including some of the most lucrative sites in London like Oxford Street, Belgravia and parts of Westminster. He owns estates in America. Australia. Wales and England including a 14-bedroom house set in 19,000 acres in Lancashire. That house alone is worth over £5 million. The Duke has one O' Level. It is interesting to note the disgust and indignation that the news media have today regarding acts of organised thuggery, plunder and looting because it was precisely by those methods that the early aristocrats acquired their estates, including the ancestors of the Duke of Westminster.

Finding Out the Hard Way

Many people who believe that you can get rich by working hard discover the real nature of class-divided society the hard way. Some may get jobs as £30,000 a year executives or become successful yuppies. Nevertheless, unlike the fully-fledged social parasites who live extravagantly from the unearned incomes of rent, interest or dividends, the upstarts with the company BMWs rely on a salary or commission for their dosh. Consequently. if the company they work for closes or goes insolvent (the closure of the London Daily News is a good recent example) they land with a bump on the floor of the economic class they have never really left. This fall will necessitate a rapid change of lifestyle and. ironically, one of the expenses which may no longer be possible in this situation is often the cost of sending their children to fee-paying schools.

Social problems like poverty and disorder are endemic to the profit system which puts the minority's acquisition of wealth above all other considerations. An economic recession aggravates these problems and it is in this social context that the government has decided to introduce a national school curriculum. Governments of whatever political complexion have to act as executive committees for the owning class. A national curriculum. whereby the same courses sanctioned by the government are taught uniformly across the country, is seen as a way of brain-washing tomorrow's wage-slaves and dole-queuers in a more efficient fashion than is achieved by today's methods. Bear in mind, though, that governments (not just in the UK) are opting for more thorough and systematic methods of "educating" young people into acquiescence but not necessarily because the ideology of the profit system is blossoming. Consider the instances from the past where centralised powers have used programmes of education to bolster their ethics and principles. At the time of the ancient Greek empire with the conquests of Alexander, the Greek curriculum was established all over the Hellenic colonies to explain and promote the culture of that empire which involved institutional slavery as an integral part of its so-called civilisation. Centuries later the Roman Catholic church was organising in a similar way. The Jesuit schools were originally intended for members of a special religious order but the schooling system was extended to cover the lay élites of medieval Europe. This extension and the social circumstances which caused it are similar to those which caused the expansion of early Greek schools. It was the insecurity, not the dominance, of the Greek colonies of Alexandrian times which prompted them to build and depend on schools to produce support for their social hierarchy. Similarly it was the insecurity of the Roman church in the time of Ignatius which accounts for the formation and rapid growth of the Jesuit schools. In both examples the school was regarded as a way of preserving a set of social values which were losing their dominance.

Today, many young people are deeply dissatisfied with what society has to offer them. Not just those who are rioting on the streets of places like Belfast. England and Sweden but also the classrooms full of people whose potential skill and creativity is being deliberately under developed because there are either no vacancies for them after school or work of a very limited kind. Some at least are healthily less reverential to authority today than they were in previous generations. It is harder than it used to be for the profit system to con young people into believing that it works in their interests, especially during a recession. So, one thing for Kenneth Baker to ponder is how long a system of indoctrination can succeed when its message runs against people's experience — you cannot make castor oil taste nice by teaching someone to call it syrup.

It was the development of the education systems in the emerging nation states of Europe last century which produced the earliest models of the school system of today. A national education system with schools teaching common subjects and with teachers produced by uniformly organised training colleges was first established in nineteenth century Prussia. The aim was to produce multitudes of workers tailored to meet the specifications of the architects of the German state. With the industrial revolution came the need for the new owners of industry to get a workforce which was equipped with rudimentary skills, the habit of obedience. servility to the bosses and there was also the need for many workers who had competence in elementary literacy and numeracy. The education system was developed accordingly to manufacture factory workers and clerks.

Education Today

Today most people who work are employed in commercial or service industries. The latest available figures show that whereas there are 6,368,000 people working in the manufacturing and construction industries there are 8,221,000 people engaged in service areas like distribution, transport and finance. (An Economic Profile of Britain 1986 — Lloyds Bank.) So schools and colleges need to prepare a workforce for these areas and to condition young people to accept the social scenery by referring to it in terms which make it seem sensible and unchangeable although it is neither. Maths and Statistics syllabuses are riddled with questions about companies, profits, redundancies and productivity where the desirability of a class-divided society is assumed as a self-evident truth. Accounting, commerce and Business Management courses ask sober questions about the economic laws which cause such misery. History courses focus on the affairs of monarchs and politicians and encourage people to grow up with a narrow, nationalistic and ethnocentric viewpoint. Some economics courses are entirely founded on the quite false assumption that there is an unavoidable scarcity of goods for the people of the world to consume. Education could be organised so very differently. It could be what it should be: stimulating and imaginative. Anyone, though, who sought to achieve those aims by simply reforming the methods or content of the current system would be faced with a frustrating and ultimately impossible task. From primary to postgraduate levels, education is geared to the economic system of which it is a part. What is the point in devoting time and energy to obtaining a few more scant resources for education when its entire stocks are overwhelmingly outstripped in scale and sophistication by those of the murder industry (the official one)? Time and energy spent on quickening the end of the social system which creates the perverse priorities is a much sounder investment.

The only way to achieve a real change in education is to change the social environment for which education prepares people. A society which converts the means of producing and distributing wealth from the private ownership of companies and state machines into the common property of the whole community would be able to direct production to one aim and one aim alone — the satisfaction of human needs. A society which abandons the division between a few who own and control and a majority who do not will be able to operate on the basis of the principle — from each according to her/his abilities, to each according to her/his self-defined needs. There is no problem with people behaving co-operatively, even on a huge scale, as was demonstrated by the millions of people who organised the monumental Live Aid across the world. No one working in any of the thousands of different tasks which needed to be done for this project worked for money. The 80,000,000 people who participated in Sport Aid with exemplary organisation testify to the same point.

Education in Socialism

Education in a classless society would not have to regiment, discipline and inculcate young people with rubbish the way it does now. Teachers are often authoritarian today as a result of the disagreeable disciplinary work the system demands they perform. In a social setting which does not create the need for people to be authoritarian, education will not need to be the flow from a "teacher" to a "learner" that it so often is now. People will be much less inhibited about venturing to teach someone who is teaching them or learning from someone they are teaching. More importantly, though, no-one would have to become "a teacher" and be lumbered with performing that function to the exclusion of other, more creative occupations. Today it makes sense to the profit system to make you into a mechanic or a nurse or a carpenter or a computer programmer and that's you done. There is no need, however, for anyone's creativity and usefulness to be restricted in this way in a society that puts human satisfaction as its top priority and profitability nowhere. Instead of being a series of unpleasant experiences foisted on people between the ages of six and sixteen education should become an exhilarating project continuing throughout life for everyone who wishes to maintain the mental vitality they enjoyed as a child.

Ignorant people are easy to fool and manipulate just as knowledge is strength. Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.

Gary Jay

Best years of your life? (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"On your first blow of the whistle, they have to freeze. Then, on the second, they must go back inside." Such was the advice given to me on starting a short spell of work as a teacher in a primary school recently. I was beginning to wonder whether my job application had been mixed up with that of a would-be prison screw. I could certainly understand the young child who says after her first day at school that she doesn't have to go the next day because "I've been there once already". The first lesson then, on entering a school is that it is compulsory.

The second lesson was that it is no coincidence that the daily routine of a school is closely modelled on that of a factory or office. Bells or sirens usher the uniform mass in at 9, out at 12, in at 1, out at 4 . . . One of the main functions of schools is to prepare the children of workers to fit into the kind of life-long routines that their parents have suffered before them. They are taught not to respect themselves and their own needs. They are taught to accept poverty and to fight for “the nation" and its owners.

The school is an artificial and hostile environment in which large numbers of children are herded together, grouped according to age and without the resources to cater for the subtleties of individual needs. In later life it would be absurd if you were only to be on friendly terms with those who were born within twelve months of you. and yet throughout the school years this is the kind of arbitrary association that is thrust on children. Then, in groups often over 30. they are expected to "learn".

The current proposals for a national curriculum and for testing at 7, 11, 14 and 16 will simply make an intimidating environment even worse. The Rutter Report (15,000 Hours) has reassured us that "prize givings are neither detrimental, divisive, nor elitist". Maybe not for the minority who get the prizes. But the capitalist approach to dealing with differing needs means being concerned with the differing needs of various employers, and therefore carefully grading and labelling the products of their mind factories for later use (or non-use).

At the same time, the capitalist attitude towards the young has always been ambiguous. Childhood is itself an artificial construction, a social concept which has emerged and changed very much in its definition over the centuries. And in the present, youth is seen as both charming and yet potentially dangerous. Creative or imaginative dreams have to be moulded so that they are accommodated to the needs of the present system, or else scorned and smashed. And this is another role of the so-called education system in present-day society.

The Intentions Behind State Education

All of these purposes of schools were present from the earliest days of state education. Before 1830 the British state spent nothing on education, and fifty years later the groundwork had been laid for the system we have today. Employers wanted well-trained workers: "The superiority of workmen of some education over those who have none must be sensibly felt by all the great manufacturers in the country" (Earl Stanhope, 1807). They wanted to be able directly to control the young, to hold back change. As the manufacturer, Andrew Ure, put it in 1861:

The uneducated state of the lower orders is a dark den of incendiaries among misrule which, if not cleared out will give birth to disastrous eruptions in every other province. A limited education might be a most effective bulwark against revolution.

And it was seen as necessary to condition workers into the role and life-style of steady and submissive wage-slaves:

We do not profess to give these children an education that will raise them above their station of business in life: that is not our object. but to give them an education that may fit them for that business.

[Robert Lowe, Final Report of the Cross Commission, 1888]

Such intentions are just as much in evidence today, with for example the recent White Paper on Education and Training, which states that the aim of current educational changes is to make "learning in schools more relevant to the needs of the modern world and. in particular, the needs of employers".

Before taking a glance at what is actually taught in schools, let us consider briefly some of the supposed "alternatives" on offer. After immense effort and campaigning, comprehensive schooling was established in Britain. And yet even some of those most vigorous campaigners will now acknowledge that many of the old frustrations and indignities still remain in the newer system of "indoctrination without discrimination". Furthermore, it has recently been argued that the current proposed reforms will effectively restore many aspects of the grammar school system anyway. Then there was the famous old Labour policy of getting rid of the public schools, not that they ever did anything about it. In fact, is it such a bad thing that we are saved the unpleasant experience of rubbing shoulders at school with the Hooray Henrys and Henriettas who will later be exploiting us? It is quite logical that in a two-class society there will be two classes of school preparing people for two different lifestyles or roles: the employers and the (sometimes) employed.

The whole nature and purpose of "education" cannot be fundamentally changed without a transformation of society as a whole. With the establishment of socialism, as a system of production for use, the idea of being dragged through a compulsory institution will have no place. Such prisons can only jokingly be called "places of learning". Education then will become a life-long and voluntary process, based firmly in everyday experience. Already, modern educational methods are recognising the value of the "problem-solving" or investigational approaches to learning. But this is still taking place in the artificial confines of schools. Socialism will not need to produce people as profit-generating commodities. So learning then can be completely voluntary. life-long and rooted in experience, as we start to refine the satisfaction of our needs.

Training Future Workers

What, in contrast, is taught in schools at present? The tone is perhaps set by a recent headline. "Business seeks a broader role with schools" (Times Educational Supplement, 21 August 1987).

From an early age. schools are teaching children to accept the curiosities of capitalism as if they were natural. And the message, once swallowed at this vulnerable age, sticks hard many years later. Take for example this self-confessed indoctrinator, describing how she introduced some 8-year-olds to the idea of "profit". She says there was

incredulity as we would have 10p every time we sold a spider, also confusion at hearing the word "profit". It was previously a concept outside their experience and I spent much teaching time after this trying to reinforce the idea of profit and how it is essential for the survival of a business.

[Child Education, February 1987] 

No doubt if a teacher was to show, more accurately, how profit is essential only for the survival and prosperity of the owners of a business, this would be slammed in the gutter press as bringing "politics" into the classroom!

Last year, in fact, Norman Tebbit accused ILEA of driving children to truancy by teaching "anti-sexist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian, CND rubbish" in schools. In fact the kind of thing that drives many of the more sensible victims to truancy" is, for example, the absurd humiliation of the weekly dose of physical jerks, or the regimentation of enforced sessions of "Country Dancing", and the arrogant sarcasm of teachers who cannot earn respect and therefore demand it as a right.

In Statistics A-level, students are expected to calculate how to set minimum standards for the proportion of faulty items off a production line, in such a way as to allow a stated set of results to pass those standards! (This reflects a common practice in industry, in which both profits and good PR are maintained by setting the standards to match the results rather than the more honest way around). And in history, an acceptance of nationalism runs quietly throughout all of the courses, as in 20th Century British History (Heinemann. 1987) which says of the 1931 National Government that "they wanted to work together to help Britain. Britain had to get out of the Depression".

Then there is religion. Under the 1944 Education Act. all pupils have to meet every day for a collective act of worship. Again, this is of course neither spontaneous nor voluntary but enforced. "Religious instruction" is also the only compulsory school "subject" on the curriculum in Britain.

Teaching Law and Order

A piece of historical crudity almost as stupid as the Heinemann variety was served up earlier this year by a policeman addressing the children of a Newcastle school I was working in: "Before the forming of the police force in 1829," he explained, "there was no law and order. There was crime everywhere". So different now, isn’t it? There is currently a fairly widespread policy in inner London of teachers refusing the police access to schools. This policy has been attacked by the NUT, as well as the government and the tabloids. Recently a surprisingly honest headteacher from St. Paul's. Bristol acknowledged that police make regular guest appearances in schools because "teachers are in alliance with power and authority. We cannot opt out in school" (Libertarian Education, summer 1987).

The 1986 Education Act requires any headteacher to have regard "to any such representations which are made to him by the chief officer of police" and the annual school governors' report should describe "what steps have been taken to develop the school's links with the community (including links with the police)". Apart from the obvious chance offered to the police to impress a vulnerable and captive audience with the wonderful way they work to ensure that ten per cent of the population remain in control of most of the real wealth, they also even supplement this PR job with "intelligence gathering" activities. A certain PC Currant recently boasts in The Job (Metropolitan Police paper) that “a lot of youngsters began talking to us, giving us descriptions and nicknames of burglars".

In recent years, this extra subject on the curriculum, known as Submission Studies (is a "Law and Order” GCSE on the way?) has become even more prominent. The 1981 Scarman Report advised:

Police assistance in the education of children in the fundamentals of an ordered society can. . . be of great value . . .  as the pressures on our society grow in intensity, the need for programmes of instruction for all children in the way government works, in the law and in the duties, as well as the rights, of citizenship increases.

The American Radical, Henry Adams, had more sense when he pointed out that "chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit". And this was followed up in 1983 by an HMI Report, Police Liaison with the Education Service, which again showed an obsession with the need to artificially implant in young minds an unhealthy awe for something called authority:

Nor can schools, because of the work they do, and the responsibilities it entails, give the impression to pupils that civilised society could function without authority and a general respect for it among the populace.

The traditional idea of "beating sense" into young children who have the real sense to question and resist the myths and tedium they are fed, has in modem times increasingly been replaced by the more "enlightened" (and ultimately more persuasive) idea of smooth-talking this "sense" into them. John Locke, writing nearly three hundreds years ago. was a capitalist theoretician well ahead of his time:

Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be used in the correction of children . . . if you can once get into children a love of credit and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into them the true principle.

[Educational Writings] 

He sums up here perfectly the modern orthodoxy, in which morality is instilled into children by self-righteous "liberal" and trendy teachers, through the use of guilt, shame and pride. Why pay for a policeman on every street comer when you can put one on 24-hour patrol inside every head?

Examples of mental, as opposed to physical punishment were everywhere to be seen during my recent experience of working in a primary school. The sarcasm so often used by teachers shows a fundamental lack of respect. Some of the more exuberant children are frequently and studiously informed that they are "deaf', that is, not listening to the boring teacher. One fairly typical tirade from a PE teacher was transcribed as follows: 

Who made that noise? Did I ask anyone to make a noise? My instructions were to spring up . . . Anyone who wants to talk come out here.. . Don't all do the same: you're individuals! Adam, do you find this hard to do. because I can give you a lot more practice if you do. . .

and so on ad nauseam.

One boy had been swearing at teachers and going home; the headteacher methodically visited every class to ensure that no respect built up for this individual’s actions. "He's been babyish, hasn't he?" she whined at each confused class. Another boy, at a school in Newcastle where I was "trained", had severe problems at home. His resulting "tantrums" during the day at school were systematically punished (not "in anger") by a teacher who then told both me and this boy that he doubted very much whether the planned punishments would make any difference at all to his future behaviour-, then proceeded to implement them in any case. One was left seriously wondering for whose benefit this ritual was being so tenaciously pursued.

One young child keenly offering to help another was slapped down with the statement: "Sit down at once; I'm the teacher here!" An 8-year-old girl who grew bored with a story about a speaking cat and commented that "cats don’t speak. anywaY" was rudely told to "shut up and stop being silly". It seemed an earnest discussion between teacher and pupil on the relative merits of realism and fantasy in children's fiction was not on the cards that afternoon. One class were being spurred on by the offer of a £2 prize for the best work, and an 8-year-old boy who. when asked to pass a book which was "second from the top" in a pile of three jovially pointed that "it's second from the bottom!" was told not to be cheeky. Examples such as these bear out the statement made long ago by Helvetius that "Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education".

Society Without Schools

Fortunately, even the stultifying experience of school does not always succeed in killing off completely the imaginative and creative "dreams" of children. On one occasion. I invited a class of children to describe their ’ideal world". The response to this included: No Maggie Thatcher, No wars, No schools, "schoolchildren paid instead of teachers", "in shops, they give you the money, and and the product", "everybody equal, plenty of money for all people every day", "everything free in shops". Several children said "everything would be free".

The idea of society without schools was laid out in William Morris' portrait of a liberated society, News From Nowhere, in which the "visitor" to that society, on mentioning schools, is confronted with a bewildered reaction:

"What do you mean by that word? I don't see how it can have anything to do with children. We talk, indeed, of a school of herring, and a school of painting, and in the former sense we might talk of a school of children - but otherwise" said he. laughing. "I must own myself beaten".

On the suggestion made by several of these children that everything should be available free, a debate was set up in which they made statements as to whether they were for or against this idea, and why. Some of the resulting statements volunteered by children on the issue showed just how much their thinking is in advance of that of their so-called teachers:

I am for the idea because people won't have to worry about debts and bills/ I don't think people will take it all . . . they might be a bit greedy, but not that much/ There would be no poor people and no posh and rich people, and even though you will still be ill sometimes, if you are you can just take the medicine and it would be free; you would not have to share things, but I still would/ Not equal shares of money, just each take what you want/ Don't knock down banks, just burn the money; use the mints for something else, anyway, the banks wouldn't exist by then, probably/ The poor would be rich as well . . . taking too much? Who would bother?/ Money would not be invented and we would be rich in our own way. Because the poor wouldn't die of hunger. I wish they could open up an orange and find enough money to look after themselves.

If these young people's imaginative efforts to solve the insane contradictions of capitalism are to flourish, and to grow into a practical solution to those contradictions, it will be in spite of and in opposition to their experience at school:

Let's get off children's backs and let them learn what they want, how they want, when they want. Learning grows where it will, where the soil and climate are right. We can no more ordain learning by order, coercion and commandment than we can produce love by rape or threat.

[Education Otherwise Newsletter. 34]

 Clifford Slapper

Are you . . . part of the system? (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Of course, we might have been born this way. Out of the womb, programmed to a kind of madness which makes us into callous competitors in a race which we are unlikely to win. Maybe we are all swines. Perhaps it is punishment for Eve eating that apple. Diseased, rotten bodies of human nature, wandering around looking for ways to express our inherent nastiness. Murder, rape, corruption. dishonesty . . . we should be grateful to the cops, the bosses, the teachers and that overwhelming sense of guilt for the sins which we think we have committed and the worse ones which we are sure that we are on the verge of committing — grateful to these forces of repression for stopping us from being our horribly, humanly natural selves.

Maybe. And maybe Jesus Christ died and was born again. Neil Kinnock is a principled socialist and the Moonies have the answer to all our problems if only we'd open our ears, closely followed by our wallets, and listen to The Truth. Life is too short for maybes. To hell with these creeps who tell children that as humans they are wretched and must repent; to hell with our 'defenders' who tell us that we must have armies and bombs. 'Man being what he is', to hell with the screwed up view of humanity which defines love as being confined to a gymnastic display beneath the sheets. Human nature is not an illness. Human beings can act in many ways, and do. How we behave is not determined by God (who is a figment of the powerless imagination) or by Nature (which is not our mother any more than the virgin Pope is anyone's father). Whatever we are — and we are all kinds of people, from caring volunteers who help the aged to vicious muggers who rape them for kicks — is a product of the society in which we live, learn and create ourselves — or are created by others who have decided what we should be.

Every day of the week Intercity trains travel across the country carrying on them vast numbers of workers who are 'on business' for the company. There can be few tortures worse than sitting next to a troupe of these travelling human calculating machines. They carry files and study graphs and talk with passion about how 'we' could increase sales in Accrington if only R&D would pull their fingers out. What boring lives these salaried servants of another class's parasitism lead. At least the factory worker does not waste time thinking about how to boost profits as he reads the paper on the bus each morning. The system has sucked these workers in: with their travel allowance, annual invitation to the MD's golf club and non-taxable ulcer, they have been swallowed into a world of caring about buying and selling and investing and hiring and sacking — a world where the cash register rings and they feel a tingle right across their soul which is not there.

Every morning on London local radio those who are part of it all are invited to talk all about it on phone-in shows. In case three hours is not long enough there is another three hours every night. Phone-in shows are like Chinese take-aways: eat like Emperors and feel hungry two hours later. But it is worth the effort, for amongst the long hours of bland noise there are those moments when clarity supersedes cliche and you are persuaded that Harry of Hatch End is speaking in a language that his bosses did not want him to learn. But for every conscious Harry there are scores of callers who have been truly sucked in to the rut of the profit system. They spend time working out ways to run it, enforce it, reform it, celebrate it. They are suckers for capitalism. This morning's topic: how to stop so many wicked workers from using the tube without a ticket. On comes Bill from Barking who is barking mad because there are too few ticket collectors; Lil from Tooting reckons that there should be stiffer fines for wage slaves who do not pay their way to work; Jack from Camden is of the view that it is all a sign of the times and nothing can ever be done to defeat the inevitability of the status quo. Meanwhile in the House of Lords a gaggle of half-dead time-wasters debate the best way to preserve badgers. Across the country thousands of reform groups plan ways to preserve red phone boxes and make prisons more humane. It is known as performing a rôle in society.

Children have the right idea. They have better things on their minds than making bosses richer and cheering on Our Boys in the Gulf. But with ''maturity" — that awful descent which marks our graduation out of innocence and into The System — comes the need to think about money and status and who is consuming whom and what and for how much. Society schools children into knowing their places within the vast scheme of things, or rather, into this huge, schemeless mess of uncontrolled relationships called the capitalist system.

In most areas there are people commonly referred to as simpletons. The ones who are not quite all there; misfits, social deviants, the crazy ones. These are the people who. sometimes because of their brains, but more often because of their surroundings, have not been conditioned to standard precision. They are rejects in terms of what the system requires from its subordinate, wealth-producing class. Of course, if society ignores them they will become confused and alienated. They will wander the streets talking to themselves, because sometimes that is the only phone-in show worth being on. They will laugh about jokes which bank clerks and social workers cannot comprehend and perceive visions which only the mad. i.e. not wholly conditioned, could entertain. For many such people life becomes one of frustration: either 'treated' by society's modern witch-doctors, the psychiatrists, with drugs meant to subdue and normalise them, or left alone to ponder the meaningless disorder of a world which appears to have meaning to those who are its tamed beasts of burden. Every so often a deranged wage slave takes a gun and does what medals are awarded for in the army — or stages a siege or frightens a baby. Such actions feed a million prejudices: ah. so this is what humans will do if they are not conditioned to be slaves, economically and culturally.

Socialists never tire of explaining that the working class is exploited: we produce everything that is in and on this earth and what we produce is stolen by the minority who own and control this earth. This is the intolerable inequality of the capitalist system.

But that is not all that is intolerable. It is enough, to be sure, to make workers rise like lions and topple this rotten system once and for all. But. just as bad — some might think even worse — than the economic oppression which this system embodies is the cultural slavery which it requires of its unconscious millions whose non-opposition keeps capitalism alive. That subordination which requires workers to smile blissfully to the latest chart-topping, mind-numbing, consciousness-crushing hit; to dance away the nights to the chat of DJs whose mid-Atlantic drawls confirm that "everything's gonna be alright"; to dream about big cars and big houses and big career opportunities; to choose your fantasy from the impoverished store of images which offer Princess Di or Joan Collins or (for those who are definitely not conversationalists) Samantha Fox. The cultural slavery of Big Mac, Albert Square and Dewsbury parents who must neurotically protect their little Bisto kids from having curry sauce on their school dinners. Is it worth it? If we were born that way life itself would hardly be worth the bother. But human nature has not destined us to be neat little cogs in the dizzying wheel of the system. We are conscious; we can imagine; we can plan together, we can stop being part of it.

Steve Coleman

Advert for the latest issue of the World Socialist Journal (1987)

Advert from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

To read the articles listed above, click on the following links:

• Editorial: Socialism —A world of unity
• The continuing trade war by Edgar Hardcastle (Britain)
• Japan: the other side of the miracle by John Crump
• What the market does to our food by Ken Smith (Britain)
• Pollution: no solution within capitalism by Ray Rawlings (Canada)
• Esperanto celebrates its centenary by Bill Clarke (Australia)
• Racism and free speech in Canada by George Jenkins (Canada) 
• Letter: Non-market, revolutionary socialism by Frank Girard (United States)
• Bellamy, socialism and utopia by Steve Coleman (Britain)
• The Parade by Sid Catt (Canada)

Party conferences: rhetoric and reality (1987)

From the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The differing moods at this year's various party conferences are a reflection of the result of the recent general election. For the Conservatives in Blackpool it is a time for self-congratulation. For the third time in a row they were able to convince a large number of people that they were best suited to running a system based on the exploitation of the many by the few. This is very similar to being able to trick the inmates of an extermination camp into believing that it can be run in their interests. This was achieved by promoting the illusory concept of "people's capitalism". An increase in home ownership and the fact that more people own a few shares in what were formerly state owned enterprises is supposed to support the view that we live in a “property owning democracy". The reality is somewhat different, home ownership for the vast majority means that they have a financial burden called a mortgage tied round their necks. As for state ownership, should any of those who happen to own a few shares in British Gas. British Telecom or any other of the formerly nationalised industries attempt to pack up work and live off unearned income it will soon become apparent which class they belong to.

At the Labour Party conference in Brighton there was a more solemn atmosphere for once again they failed to convince enough people that they are a party fit to manage capitalism. It seems that still not enough time has passed for people to forget what a shambles things were under the Labour administration of 1974-9. The dispute over how to select and re-select parliamentary candidates was resolved by a compromise suitable to Kinnock and the trade union leadership in the form of an electoral college. Forget all the arguments about the need to find a more democratic system; the truth is that a change was needed so that the successful candidates fit the new image of moderation and responsibility that the party is attempting to present. This leads on to the other vital debate for the party this year, that of reviewing policy. This means adopting a combination of caring capitalism — presenting a caring attitude for the less well off whilst making sure they remain in that position — whilst incorporating aspects of "people's capitalism". On the latter policy opportunists like Bryan Gould want the party to incorporate aspects of Thatcher's policies such as share ownership by giving workers the right to buy shares in the company which exploits them. Such a policy will be attacked by the left as a betrayal of "socialism". By this they mean a betrayal of the party's commitment to state capitalism. In response the right will argue that a radical extension of share ownership is equal to a new type of "socialism". The truth is that under the policies advocated by the right and left a system based on a relationship between robbers and robbed and production for profit will remain. But then the Labour Party has never had a clear understanding of capitalism.

Meanwhile the SDP and Liberal Party conferences were dominated by the debate, to merge or not to merge. Those in favour of merger see this as the best way of replacing the Labour Party as the main opposition. Thus principle and policy disagreements must be quietly forgotten. There are of course a few, mostly in the SDP, whose political ambitions would not be furthered by merger. Principal amongst these is David Owen. In a merged party, dominated by the Liberals in terms of numbers of members and MPs, Owen is unlikely to gain a dominant position let alone become the leader. So for him it is better to wait and see how things develop.

Democratic Principles vs Actual Practice

All the above parties claim that they are based on democratic principles and are organised on democratic lines. By taking a closer look at each of them we can see how far this claim is matched by actual practice.

The Conservative Party has always talked a great deal about democracy but a brief look at its organisation shows a gap between rhetoric and reality.

The National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations was formed in 1867 with the aim of popularising Conservative principles. The National Union convenes an annual conference of constituency associations which acts as a sounding board for Conservative opinion in the country. Proceedings at conference are usually non-controversial and resolutions are often passed without a formal vote. The party leader, elected by the MPs only, is normally responsible for appointing the central body including the chairperson and in consultation with her/his top colleagues decides on party policy and strategy. Year after year at Conservative Party conference we hear people protected from the harsh realities of capitalism making long winded speeches about the need to bring back capital punishment — never mind the cause, just deal with effects. Others will preach about moral standards and the sanctity of the family whist supporting a system in which millions starve while food rots and whilst even in their own back yards thousands of people live in slums, building materials are stockpiled and building workers on the dole queue. After the leadership speech a standing ovation is guaranteed no matter what garbage flows from Thatcher's mouth. At Blackpool the concept of democracy was confined to rhetoric whilst from every corner support for the dictatorship of the boardroom was absolute. All good entertainment if you like hypocrisy.

Meanwhile events at Brighton showed once again that the Labour Party is dominated both in its administration and in its policy making functions by the leadership of the large trade unions. They provide the party with around two-thirds of its income and five sixths of its membership. Votes are allocated to unions in proportion to the annual sum which they pay as an affiliation fee. At conference these votes are cast as block votes. Whilst the delegates from the constituency parties outnumber union delegates, the combined votes of a few large unions is generally enough to secure a majority. Many Labour supporters including those on the left whose policies are generally defeated at the hands of the block vote, claim that this structure shows that the party is the political wing of the trade unions. There are several reasons why this claim is false. Firstly the block votes are being cast not on behalf of conscious Labour Party members but on behalf of union members who in many cases are affiliated to the party because they have failed to opt out of paying the political levy. Indeed it is certainly the case that many of these same people voted for parties other than Labour last June. Secondly, not only does the block vote system fail to take into account any difference of opinion amongst those eligible to be consulted, but in most cases little or no consultation actually takes place. Even with consultation there is often confusion. Take for example, the case of the TGWU on the occasion of the contest for the deputy leadership of the party between Healey and Benn in 1981. The union consulted its members through its regional organisation who in turn adopted a variety of methods. A majority of regions voted for Healey. However the executive committee decided to recommend its delegation to vote for Benn as a majority of the largest regions had done so. At that conference the union's block vote was. in the first ballot cast in favour of the third candidate. John Silkin, after another consultation amongst themselves the vote was transferred to Benn in the second ballot.

The unions also have substantial influence on the party's ruling body, the National Executive Committee (NEC). Twelve of its twenty-seven members are elected in the trade union section. The NEC plays a vital role in managing the affairs of the party between conferences, recommends acceptance or rejection of motions put to conference and will in the next year play a vital role in reviewing the party's policies. This year Kinnock gained a tighter grip over this body thanks mainly to the unions' block vote. As the Financial Times (30 September) put it:

The centre right now dominates the sections of the executive which are determined by the votes of the unions. This produced a defeat of the two hard left candidates in the women's section.

Changes in the method of selecting parliamentary candidates and a commitment to review policy were, the FT reported, "the result of the exercise of the trade union block vote".

The Labour Party, then, is controlled not by its members or by trade union members who are affiliated to it but by a small number of trade union leaders who can usually be relied upon to support the party leadership.

Democracy is also sadly lacking in both the SDP and Liberal parties. The leadership of both constantly talk about one member one vote but once again rhetoric is not supported by practice. At two Liberal conferences in recent years majority votes have been cast in favour of a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament and on both occasions that arch democrat, David Steel, indicated that the assembly could vote for what it liked but he had the final say over policy. Only recently, with regard to the ballot in the SDP on merger with the Liberals. David Owen was at the centre of a dispute regarding the question posed on that ballot paper. The Electoral Reform Society had described it as being unfairly loaded. Owen was in fact always unprepared to accept any vote which went in favour of merger. The SDP, far from being a party with no vested interests, as it claimed to be, was, from its early stages, a party which attracted support from several leading big business figures. Articles in the Observer and the Sunday Times as long ago as 1981 revealed that the SDP's finance committee was to be chaired by David Sainsbury, the finance director of the grocery chain and Clive Lindley, millionaire owner of the LCI group, was one of its trustees. Amongst its other supporters were Lord Sainsbury, Sir Claus Moser of Rothschilds and Cob Stenham, the financial director of Unilever.

Of course it is of little surprise that parties which exist to administer capitalism, as all these parties do, have little to do with democracy, for this system has as much to do with that concept as Dallas or Dynasty has to do with providing intellectual stimulus. How can a system where the most vital function in society, the production and distribution of the means of life. food, clothing and shelter included, are owned and controlled by and in the interests of a small minority have anything to do with democracy? There is little point in members of any political party which exists to run capitalism trying to exercise control over their leaders so a certain set of desired policies can be carried out. Experience should have taught such people that even those who hold positions of power, be they politicians, or even members of the capitalist class, have no control over the system. Certain economic laws have to be obeyed. Production is governed by the need to make a profit. Its primary function is not to satisfy needs.

All capitalist political parties are based on a relationship between leaders and followers. This leadership role should not be confused with administration for that function is normally carried out by others. What we are talking about here is a political leadership whose function it is to impose on their members what is possible within the confines of the present organisation of society. Leadership is not something which is inevitable but is confined to societies where a minority rule in their own interests over the majority. This situation can only exist when that majority are not conscious of where their real interests lie.

The socialist view

In contrast to the above parties the socialist movement does not exist to run capitalism and it recognises that workers cannot be led to socialism. It exists to propagate socialist ideas and to create an organisation which can be used by workers conscious of the need for socialism. Socialists reject the concept of leadership because the nature of the society we wish to bring about cannot be established by an organisation based on a relationship between leaders and followers. Socialism means a society where the resources of the earth are owned and consciously controlled by its inhabitants. All will stand in equal relation to the means of production. meaning that each member of society will have the opportunity to use them, to have access to all goods and services on the basis of self determined need, and be involved in administering and making decisions about short and long term collective goals. Private or state capitalist minority control over the productive process and the concept of any form of exchange will be redundant in a society based on common ownership as will be states or governments which are incompatible with a classless society. With this definition of socialism it becomes clear why workers cannot be led to it. A society based on conscious democratic control by the majority can only be brought about by a majority who understand the need for it and organise themselves consciously, politically and democratically to bring it about.

Experience should have shown us all that the parties which have been in conference in the last few weeks have no answers to the worldwide problems we face. They have no answers because they stand for an outdated social system. Are you content to let that system continue on its destructive path or will you join us to bring about a sane world?

Ray Carr