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.