So They Say: Revolutionary Prophet (1976)

The So They Say Column from the October 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionary Prophet

It had to come. The logical counter to revolutionary Socialism has been launched—“revolutionary capitalism.” Its arrival in Britain was announced by Dr. Khalil Osman Mahmoud who styles himself the most successful private industrialist in the Middle East. In spite of the “revolutionary” label, he affectionately retains certain features of what we suppose must now be called old-fashioned capitalism. For example he made the announcement "from the headquarters of his company, Gulf International, above Christian Dior’s plush London establishment in the heart of Mayfair.” As a partner in Gulf International, he, and his “revolutionary” associates, decided some years ago to enlarge the empire and contacted the equally "revolutionary” Lonrho Group. Readers will recall that so revolutionary was this company that a Conservative Prime Minister (Mr. Heath), described certain of its practices as representing “the unacceptable face of capitalism,” however, that is one of the prices of success. The link was made with the Lonrho chief, Tiny Rowland after certain basic facts had been established.

We smelled this was a man who could produce. We watched him for three years before we did a single deal with him. Now we never stop buying Lonrho shares—34m. at last count.

Sunday Times, 15th August 76

At the beginning of September, Lonrho industrial shares were quoted on the stock market at 64p each which would value the shareholding in the region of £22m. The uninitiated may be excused for thinking that Dr. Osman—who incidentally is now a Lonrho director—is just an old-fashioned capitalist after all. Where does the revolution come in?

That Certain Smile

Oh, but it does. Following Lonrho’s acquisition of the bankrupt Brentford Nylon Group, Dr. Osman underwent a unique experience and visited the newly completed Newcastle nylon factory. He expanded on the object of his trip:

To bridge the gap between workers and management from the start and to show “revolutionary capitalism” in practice. Dr. Osman’s first visit was to the union office. “I had the day of my life. I met the workers and managers. It was the first time I had met the working people of Britain. I said to them Let us all pray for the man who built this factory but could not complete it.”

It seems sincerity pays off in the end. After prayers for the dearly departed, some philosophy.

“A businessman lives to get pleasure from the smile of his working people. I got it that day in Newcastle. I went back to London and next day I met with my colleagues. I told them, we can do lots more with this factory and with people like this. If a businessman is not interested in that smile, if he goes off and spends his time on the Riviera, he’s finished.”

This is something new: Up to now the owners have lived to get surplus value from their workers. Clearly the £22m. which Osman has so far accumulated off the backs of his workers has been more by accident than design. These workers may have been smiling, the owners are positively rubbing their hands together.

Busy Doing Nothing

An American professor of neurological surgery and psychology recently concluded after a year’s research that the size of a woman’s bust influences her chances of getting lifts while hitchhiking. Fascinating stuff, and more could be on the way. Messrs. Heidrick and Struggles, an American “headhunting” company is about to conduct a survey among selected British public companies to learn how part-time (sleeping) directors got on to their particular boards, and what work they do in the boardroom to earn their fees. One City editor expressed approval of the scheme, but felt that there may be some reluctance on the part of those surveyed.

Whether the part-timers are ready to answer such questions is another matter. A good many of the questionnaires sent out by Heidrick and Struggles will, I suspect, end up in the boardroom waste paper baskets.

London Evening Standard, 31st August 76

That makes sense at least. We could have told them that these chaps are far too busy doing other things, to bother with silly questionnaires—and about work of all things!

Party Tricks

It was hard to tell if the writer of the following letter, published in the Daily Telegraph on 28th August, did not have her tongue in her cheek. She directed some stinging facts against the “lefties.”

After reading your editorial comment about Mr. Auberon Waugh and the perpetuation of the “Tory twits” myth (Aug. 25), I feel it is a pity that it is not better known that by far the greater number of members of Mensa (the high IQ society) lean politically to the Conservatives. This also holds true of members of other countries, and in fact it seems the higher a person’s intelligence the more likely is he to hold so-called "Right-wing” views.

What has escaped her attention is that IQ tests examine the individual’s ability to do IQ tests—she refers to intelligence which is something else. However it matters not a jot whether “Tory twits” are better at such tests than “Labour loonies”. Both groups are ignorant, or profess to be, of the need for the working class internationally to take control of the means of wealth production and distribution. While Mensa’s members may “lean” in every direction but the right one, this should not dissuade members of the working class from doing some thinking on their own account.

Allies in Wonderland

The London Evening Standard of 31st August reported the comments of Joseph Kraft “one of Washington’s most widely read syndicated columnists” who described Ford’s opponent, Carter, as “inexperienced, even naive” in matters of foreign policy. Carter is “an amateur who treats foreign affairs as a kind of wonderland.” Telling points no doubt, until it is recalled that even Presidents have suffered from similar deficiencies. When the pound was ‘floated’ in 1972, the matter was brought to President Nixon’s attention.

Mr. Haldeman offered the President a report from one of his economic advisers outlining the effect of the British float on the world monetary system. Mr. Nixon brushed it aside saying: ‘It’s too complicated for me to get into.' Haldeman said that Dr. Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, expected the British move to result in a five per cent devaluation of sterling against the dollar.

The President: ‘Yeah. OK. Fine.’

Haldeman: Burns is concerned about speculation about the lira.

The President: ‘Well I don’t give a (expletive deleted) about the lira (unintelligible).’

The discussion turned briefly to legislative matters before the President asked Haldeman: ‘OK. What else have you got that’s amusing today?’ 

Transcript of White House tape recording of June 23rd, 1972. Reported in the Daily Telegraph.

Nixon of course could argue that he was far too involved in fooling the American people over his part in a burglary to pay much attention. Carter’s line of defence is clear therefore—he must tell his critics that he is far too involved in fooling Americans that he can make capitalism work.

Goldwater on Democracy

Following Gerald Ford’s success in obtaining the Republican Party’s nomination for presidential candidate, the Daily Mail of 20th August carried a centre page spread on the forthcoming us election. The headline read “Now every punch a dirty one” and the article predicts that the respective camps will be taking part in “a raucous and possibly unedifying campaign.” If the words of Senator Barry Goldwater are anything to go by, the Mail has understated it. Ford’s running mate, Robert Dole, caught his attention :

Senator Barry Goldwater, no pansy himself, says admiringly of Dole: “Thank God we finally have someone who will grab the other side by the hair and drag them down the hill.”

And having done so, will then declare himself for freedom, fair play and law and order.

Getting the Priorities Right

The government published a white paper toward the end of August in response to the 1974 all-Party Expenditure Committee’s suggestion that loans, rather than grants be made to postgraduate students. These currently number 33,000.

The Government do not consider it possible to achieve worthwhile public expenditure savings in the near future by a loans scheme which spread the repayments over a reasonable period.

Daily Telegraph, 25th August 76

Although they argue that the loan scheme could be “potentially damaging in terms of social equity,” they go on to say that they will “continue to bear in mind the possibility of achieving savings in the long run through such a change.” The “social equity” will be more resilient then, no doubt. For the time being, they are in agreement with the Expenditure Committee’s main recommendation that resources should be provided “Primarily in order to meet the country’s need for trained manpower.”

One of the other guidelines for expenditure on postgraduate education “the satisfaction of the demands from students (individual demands)” was considered to be “too haphazard.”

Alan D'Arcy

The Philosophy of Anarchism (1976)

From the October 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The problems thrown up by present-day society are plain for all to see. What is not so obvious is the way to deal with them. This requires thinking about, and once workers start to seriously think about why society provides drudgery, poverty and insecurity, the Socialist alternative will become apparent. It is being content to let others do the thinking that results in failure to achieve anything.  

The Anarchist, in competition with other reformers, claims to have a solution to social problems. He claims these originate from the authoritarian state. The state is the negation of liberty in the eyes of the anarchist. It has to be destroyed before liberty can be established (Bakunin). Socialists are accused of wanting to extend the power of the state which shows how little anarchists understand Socialism.

On the surface, the anarchists’ concept of a libertarian society has led a number of people to believe that Socialism and anarchism have the same objective in mind, and differ only in method. This is erroneous. The Socialist is a materialist who has grasped the historical significance of changing economic conditions leading to changes in men’s ideas, whilst the anarchist is an idealist — that is, someone who constructs the world in his mind without reference to material and historical circumstances. The Socialist holds that the agent of social change is the class struggle. The capitalist class destroyed the feudal conditions of property, and the working class will, in turn, put an end to the capitalist conditions of property. This is the issue in the class struggle, and it has to be fought on the political field by political parties.

Social change is not possible without political power being gained by those who desire the change. This is the historical sequence civilized society has gone through and must go through in future. The emergence of the capitalist class and the working class went hand in hand with social progress in the production of wealth. They are not eternal categories, and represent the development of the institution of private property. The impulse to Socialism comes from the necessity for the working class as a whole to realize its interests.

Anarchists do not accept this view. They maintain that political action for control of the state by workers is a waste of time, because Parliament cannot possibly serve as an instrument of social transformation. Instead, they advocate industrial and everyday struggles, though experience has shown that social reform is a waste of time and leads nowhere. In pursuing this line the anarchist movement is identical with the reformers of “the Left” with their “day-to- day struggles”, and form only another fragment of the multifarious reform movements.

One group, the Anarchist Workers’ Association, has in fact moved away from the traditional anarchist position and wants to “create political consciousness amongst the working class, and seeks to develop and support working-class organization” (“Aims and Principles,” Anarchist Worker, Aug. 1976). The journal of the Anarchist Collective, called Anarchy 19, discusses at length the need for organization, and states a conflict between liberal individualists who are apolitical and what is described as the broad anarchist movement linked with the class struggle. “The wider anarchist movement finds itself floundering in a sea of confusion, largely unable to present any coherent alternative to the authoritarian Left, simply because it fails to see the need to politically organize” (Anarchy 19).

This is a complete departure from the classic anarchist position which was hostile to working-class organizations, let alone political organizations. Proudhon opposed trade unionism on the grounds that it interfered with the liberty of the subject. Bakunin, during the sessions of the First International, told workers that political action was a waste of time. He constantly attacked Marx who urged the workers to build up an effective well-knit organization for the prosecution of the class struggle on the political field.

The anarchist view is that a change of ideas in themselves, whatever the historical epoch, is sufficient for the establishment of a libertarian society, the perfect society. Rejecting, as they do the theory of social development, their philosophy is purely abstract. It has no roots in the material world, having separated man from his environment. Men are a product of their social environment, and their thoughts and aspirations are determined by it. The prevailing ideas under capitalism are the ideas of the ruling class, in favour of the wages system and private property. The workers are not revolutionary at present, and it would be impossible for them to be revolutionary without seeking the essential step of dispossessing the capitalists by the political machinery. There is no other way. Yet the anarchists persist that it can be done by direct action against the capitalists who control the armed forces. So far, the only direct action anarchists have taken has been for reforms.

The present activities of anarchists have their origin in the unsound theories advocated by their founders. Max Stirner was one such pioneer. To him the individual was the only reality. Some years earlier, Ludwig Feurbach, the German philosopher, had said the love of humanity must not extend beyond humanity. Man is the highest being for man. Stirner went a stage further. He claimed that the love of humanity was an abstract thing and only existed in the mind of man, and the only reality was the individual with his wants, tendencies, and will: “For me there is nothing above myself”. Religion, conscience, morality, the law and family, were so many fetters forced upon him in the name of the abstraction — humanity. “Right is might and might is right. If you have not got the former you have not got the latter. Every state is a despotism, even the most democratic, whether it is the despotism of one or many. I recognize nothing above myself. I feel oppressed by every institution that imposes any duty upon me”. (The Individual and his Property, 1845).

This is idealism of the highest order. The whole philosophy is based on an abstraction — the individual. Society is not just a collection of individuals, it is the aggregate of relationships. Production and distribution must be organized; labour must be based on co-operation. To talk about individuals as above and separate from the social organization of wealth production is pure fantasy.

Stirner formed what he called the League of Egoists (one ego could not exist on its own). In common with anarchists of the present day, he was opposed to Socialism. “If the socialist says that society gives me what I need, the egoist says I take what I want” (The Individual and his Property). The anarchists’ claim that common ownership and democratic control of the means of production will lead to the regimentation and oppression of the producers shows their ignorance of human behaviour. Man is by nature a co-operative animal with a common interest in making society function to the greatest advantage of all.

Three years after Stirner, Proudhon repeated the same viewpoint. For him there was no such thing as social evolution. The state was a fiction. Everything in history was born of men’s ideas. The perfect society was always possible at any stage in history if only men had discovered the ideas of anarchism. “The social constitution is innate in humanity, yet it could only be discovered as the result of long experience, and for the want of it humanity had to invent the political constitution”. (Confessions of a Revolutionary, Proudhon, quoted by Plechanoff.) This is an entirely utopian concept of human nature. Man does not have any innate principles — his viewpoints are results of his social experience.

The political superstructure of any given society, or the way in which public affairs are administered, arises from the economic basis of that society and exists to serve that basis. A change in the basis produces a change in the superstructure. The administration of public affairs at present is carried on by the state, which is the instrument of the ruling class, and it is essential as long as private property exists. In a society based on common property, the state could not exist as its function would have disappeared. The state is not the cause of private property but the effect of it. Even if the “smashing” of the state as advocated by anarchists were possible, it would not remove the condition of private property. Not that Stirner, Proudhon and Kropotkin were opposed to property — on the contrary.

Michael Bakunin died over a hundred years ago. His collected works were published by Sam Dolgoff (Allen & Unwin 1972), and he is described as the active founder of world anarchism. The same unrealistic theme runs through his entire works. He advances the theory' of collectivism, a vast network of free associations with social autonomy which may or may not federate with each other at every level, with of course the right to secede from any federation. The basis of this association was collective property: “I am in favour of collective property because I am convinced that so long as property, individually dually hereditary, exists . . .  the realisation of equality, economical and social will be impossible” (Anarchism and Socialism, G. Plechanoff, p.82, Kerr edn). Bakunin apparently was not opposed to individual property if it was not hereditary!

We are left in the dark as to how collective property can be socially administered; there is obviously no system proposed, and he was not dealing with social property. How can there be administration when any group can secede at any time? Collective property based on independent autonomous units may have had some place in a small peasant community or petty industry in an earlier stage of civilization with low standards of production but to apply the concept to a modern socially integrated economy is utopian. In any case anarchists are not in favour of democratic control, and Bakunin’s views on communism bear this out. “I detest communism because it is the negation of liberty, and I cannot conceive anything human without liberty” (p.81, Anarchism and Socialism). This theme of absolute liberty and the “freedom” of the individual which runs through anarchist literature is pure abstraction. The anarchists lose sight of the fact that we have to produce the necessities of society and require a social organization for this purpose, and the only way this organization can run effectively is by the democratic control of the majority, not by small autonomous independent units.

Prince Kropotkin followed Bakunin, and is probably the most widely read of all anarchists. He contributed the article on anarchism for the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1905. The definition of anarchism which he supplied is given as “a principle on the theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government”. The ageless nature of this description is later shown by the reference to anarchism in history. According to Kropotkin, everybody from Socrates to Rabelais and others who objected to state interference was an anarchist. He tells us that the exponent of anarchy in ancient Greece was Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy who lived around 300 BC. He regrets that the writings of Zeno have not reached us. "However, the fact that his wording is similar to the wording now in use shows how deeply he has laid the tendency of human nature of which he was the mouthpiece”. (Encyclopedia Britannica.)

This defies balanced comment, but it does demonstrate an unsound, almost spiritual approach. We can leave it for modern anarchists to explain the relevance of Zeno to the social problems of today. Kropotkin supported Proudhon’s mutualist rubbish published in The Philosophy of Poverty, which Marx dealt with in The Poverty of Philosophy: for example, rendering capital incapable of earning interest by means of a National Bank. All anarchists have to do is stop the industrial capitalist from earning a profit on his capital and the landlord and the banker to stop charging rent and interest, and this without expropriation. They do not propose to take political action to dispossess the capitalists. Industrial capitalists will not function without profit, and the workers support the wages system. The proposition is idealism gone mad. Little wonder that the capitalists have never taken the theories of anarchism seriously. How could this ethereal rubbish threaten their existence?

The shallowness of Kropotkin was exposed in the Great War of 1914-18 when he supported the Allied cause. He also supported the Russian Revolution in 1917. When the testing time came, the woolly-headed Kropotkin, in company with other figures of the international Left, was completely impotent. Not understanding the economics of capitalism they were unable to offer any clear advice to the working class who in their millions were going forward to the slaughter. The liberty of the individual met its nemesis in mass conscription.

It cannot be stressed too strongly that the political weapon is the only one which a conscious working class can use to establish Socialism. It is not possible for society to develop in any other way. If Socialism cannot be established capitalism will continue; there is not a third choice called collective anarchism, communist anarchism, syndicalism, workers’ control or workers’ states. The means of production and distribution are held by the capitalists of the world. It is of the utmost urgency that society as a whole must make them common property of society. The control of the state machine ensures ownership by the capitalist class, so that the first and only task before a revolutionary working class is to gain control of that machine for Socialism. The worker can do this by voting, but it is not just the cross on the ballot paper which makes the revolution. It is the man behind the vote. The theories of anarchism rest on the idea that a small intellectual élite can sway society: they have a contempt for the ability of the worker to understand the economics and politics of capitalism and consequently gain Socialist knowledge. They preach the gospel of despair, disguised though it may be in the romantic jargon of two centuries ago.

The old Utopians like St. Simon gave some stimulus and incentive to the development of the theories of scientific Socialism, then in its infancy. The present-day anarchist is reactionary because he advocates the abandonment of the only effective weapon which social evolution has made possible — the political weapon — and politics mean Parliament.

Jim D'Arcy

The Fraud is dead! Long live the Fraud! (1976)

From the October 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Labour MP called John Stonehouse has had the bad luck to be arraigned at the Old Bailey on a charge of fraud and. being found guilty, sentenced to seven years in clink. In case this was not unlucky enough, the poor politician had to listen to an idiot in a wig telling him in the course of sentencing that three besetting sins led to his downfall: lying, hypocrisy, ambition. Now is it not remarkable that a man be so wise, a veritable Daniel come to Judgment, and yet pronounce such an obvious load of codswallop?

Can anyone be so obtuse as not to realize that it is impossible for a man to succeed in the dirty game of capitalist politics unless he exhibits these very sins? Sins? Does not the learned ass know that these are essential qualifications for the job and that without them you might as well look for some relatively honest job (a landlord, or a moneylender, for example)? Imagine a Labour politician coming to the electorate and saying: “My friends, I will not be a liar or a hypocrite. I will not tell you that I am a socialist or that you will be one whit better off if you return a Labour government into power because I know full well—and it’s high time you did too; you members of the working class have been conned so often—that if you elect me and my friends we will administer capitalism in the way it has always ben run. Indeed there is no other way. I will tell you that I want you to vote for me because being an MP is a nicer job than being a miner or a railwayman or whatever I would be otherwise. The only difference in voting for me instead of the Tory or the Liberal is that you will have Bloggs as your MP instead of Smogs or Flogs. Or, as Tolstoy wrote to Chekhov in another context, the difference is that between cats and dogs. No lies. No hypocrisy. And of course, no votes.

As for ambition, it is news that this is a sin under capitalism. I always thought it was regarded as a virtue to become a great leader of men or a great capitalist. The judge must have been reading Mark Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral where he defended his dead friend against the charge: “But Brutus says he was ambitious.’’ Well, whatever ambition signified in ancient Rome, it is nothing to be ashamed of in capitalist society. Harold Wilson’s daddy got a picture of little Harold in front of No. 10 Downing St. to fire him with the right ideas—and the ambitious little lad got there, didn’t he?

Needless to say, we are not seriously offering sympathy to Stonehouse. It seems he was in rather too much of a hurry to make his fortune and purloined a few hundred thousand quid that belonged to other people. This sort of fraud is not looked kindly upon under capitalism, even though it is a system which is actually based on the purloining of the wealth produced by the working class by a small minority of society for their own benefit. We socialists have no truck with the Stonehouse kind of frauds. We have no regard for crooks or murderers or rogues in general, but we can leave them to the tender mercies of the capitalist establishment.

Our worry—and it should be the worry of the working class as a whole—concerns the system itself and the politicians who run it. Because look at the absurdity of this Stonehouse business. He is found guilty of fraud and no longer represents the electors of Walsall North. His party’s aim is to secure his votes from the dupes of Walsall by putting forward promises while knowing that it has no prospect of fulfilling them. In other words, the element which the lawyers call the mens rea, the guilty mind, is clearly present and renders the Labour Party guilty of intent to defraud. His successor was formerly an MP and is as sure as we are that his being elected will have no more to do with Socialism now than it had when he was in the House before. We have little regard for Labour politicians but we know they are not such idiots as to imagine that their government will do anything other than administer capitalism. How can you be at the same time a Socialist, dedicated to overthrowing the system which now rules the earth, and at the same time say that you will make the system run better for the voters—who are of course almost entirely workers? (Capitalists can choose where they live so there aren’t many in Walsall which is a place only fit for workers.)

Winnick, Stonehouse’s successor, is a leftist and knows perfectly well that by electing him his voters will not cure their unemployment, their rotten housing, their insecurity—and the mental stresses that go with insecurity and cause one in six of the voters of Walsall (as of everywhere else, of course) to need psychiatric treatment at some time of their lives and cause the NHS to devote half its beds to mental sickness—i.e. as much as all the rest of the illnesses put together. It must surely be the greatest of all indictments of capitalism that it drives millions of people this way, people who organically have nothing wrong whatever. A lunatic system fit only for lunatics. And frauds. And yet here are the workers of Walsall, having had their fraudulent MP taken from them, about to be the victim again of the swindle that eclipses his.

At the same time as we read of Stonehouse being jailed for fraud his former leader announces that he is going to do a series on TV telling what goes on in the councils of the great. The former working-class boy, now Duke of Uddersfield is already reputed to have made half a million selling his memoirs but of course he is going to help himself to as much as he can. But of course, the “sensible” politicians like Wilson and Winnick (and Foot and Callaghan and Heath and Thatcher) deceive the working class with monotonous regularity and far from being charged with the “sin” of ambition are loaded with wealth and honours. And if the workers of Walsall swallow all the decades of bitter experience of so-called socialist governments, they really cannot altogether complain “I wuz robbed”. The virgin who out of sheer cussedness determines to frequent a dark alley after she has been warned it is the abode of thugs has no right to scream “outrage!” The workers of the world have had plenty of evidence that capitalism is their enemy. As long as they keep voting for it they will deserve what leaders they get.

As a sort of postscript to the above, it is worth having a wry smile at the letters column of that Sunday paper for the intelligent (Jesus!), The Observer.

They published a letter (16th Aug.) suggesting that the crimes of people like Stonehouse, like those of Hitler, are caused by the onset of the male menopause. At one time sunspots were held to be the cause of crises. Now we don’t need to look for the kind of reasons given in this article for the emergence of Stonehouse. It’s the male menopause! A brand-new disease which none of us knew we had till it appeared in the brains of Observer intellectuals. One looked in following issues for letters pointing out the sheer idiocy of this stuff; instead a letter (30th Aug.) by two nitwits: “Quite right. We are just writing a book about it”. Must read it. Perhaps we will find out why Hitler tried his first fascist putsch when he was 30. And why Sir ’Arold was an ambitious little brat when he was 8.

L. E. Weidberg

Blogger's Note:

The Labour Party candidate, David Winnick, actually lost the bye-election but he did he regain the seat at the 1979 General Election.