Sting in the Tail: The Numbers Game (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Numbers Game

Listen, John, I've just been reading the November / December issue of Labour Party News. It's full of Neil Kinnock and his pals on about the wonderful future they offer "our country" if they get in.

And they've got their own Premier Savings Account at "competitive rates of interest", a competition with a £10,000 tax-free prize, a Visa card, a lottery, and organic wines! Couldn't find a mention of socialism, but you can't have everything, can you?

They’ve got a lot of new members too; 140 here, 35 there, but the official "Recruiter of the Year" is a Nottingham youngster who roped in 200! It's easy, John, there's a membership form inside if you want to join: no conditions, no questions asked.

All this recruitment looks good — what's that you say? Labour's membership has dropped from 350,000 in 1980 to 288,000 now! Christ, that Nottingham youngster had better get his finger out, hadn't he?

Open Secrets

For fifty years groups of Leninists have been boring-from-within the Labour Party.

Because their own ideas have very little electoral support, they hope to gain influence in the Labour Party which they see as "the mass organisation of the working class".

There have been many such hopefuls down through the years of which "Militant" is only the best known. As would-be Bolsheviks they exist as "secret" groups but always there are the inevitable defectors to reveal all.

The latest group to be shopped is "Socialist Organiser" which, according to an ex-member, is:

. . . completely committed to remaining within the Labour Party, and will jump through each and every hoop the (Labour) NEC places before them to save themselves.

The Guardian (24 December)

These groups are an obstacle to Labour's chances of running British capitalism and are being rooted-out, but doubtless there will in the future be others willing to jump through endless hoops in pursuit of Lenin's useless and discredited ideas.

Princely Piffle

Prince Charles, authority on ecology and architecture, has been airing his views on

politics and economics.

Speaking on French TV he

. . . called for a balance between the ideals of capitalism and communism.

The Guardian (24 December)

What he meant by "communism" is, of course, what existed in Eastern Europe and which he described only last year as "one vast prison". What "ideals"of this system does he admire?

The Prince continued:

We need capitalism, but perhaps with a more human face. We need a system in which big capital becomes more and more Interested in local communities. . . and the developing countries.

As if capitalism will do this as an act of altruism and without taking profits into account!

This ignorance of capitalism's priorities is further revealed by his call for banks to lend to "gifted" young people to start their own businesses. Alas, the banks

. . . weren't in the slightest bit interested because young people had nothing to offer as guarantees.

We doubt if bank depositors would share the Prince's desire to see their savings lent without collateral.

Let's hope that HRH knows more about ecology and architecture than he does about politics and economics.

Keen as Mustard

During World War II over one thousand Australian servicemen were used as human guinea-pigs in experiments with mustard gas. Many of them had up to 95% of their skins burned and a top-secret film recorded the horrific details in glorious technicolor.

Were these men prisoners of the Japanese and the victims of a bestial atrocity? No, it was the Australian and British governments who conducted the experiments on them.

All this emerged in a BBC2 Horizon programme on January 14. The experiments were supposed to provide information for "defensive" purposes should Japan use mustard gas, but Horizon revealed that the Allies intended to use the gas on the Japanese: they decided on the atom bomb instead.

Probably the most shocking revelation for many who saw the programme was that the human guinea-pigs were all volunteers. One of the scientists involved in the experiments said that the men "knew what they were in for". This was only partly true because the call for volunteers made no mention of mustard gas, and the men certainly didn’t know there would be such long-term after-effects as leukemia and damage to internal organs.

There is nothing new in workers volunteering to perform capitalism's dangerous tasks. They are forever risking their health and lives in the service of their masters, and it is nothing new for them to be rewarded in cruel and inhuman fashion.

Gulf Reality

While TV commentators move toy tanks over sandy table tops and gush on about "pincer movements" like demented schoolboys: the realities of war are much more soberly summed up by one of the participants of the real war.

Here, for example, are the unexpurgated thoughts of Captain Ronald Thomas, from Stoke-on-Trent and A Squadron of the 16th /5th, as he watched his soldiers load their missiles for what might be the last hours of peace. "Yes, I'm frightened of dying. Everyone's thinking about it now." (A pause here.) "But you know, I'll be really pissed off if I didn't see my family again. I've got four kids. I’d be fucking angry if I was killed."

The Independent (15 January)

Anger is, of course, understandable but it is only anger based on knowledge of how capitalism leads to armed hostility that is of any use in combating the threat of war.

Reality Gulf

Now that hostilities have broken out in the Gulf, it is reassuring to learn that those with a hot line to the deity are showing a touching compassion.

Although Dr Robert Runcie and Cardinal Basil Hume acknowledge that It was sometimes necessary to resort to war, they said in a joint statement that they had emphasised to John Major "our concern that only the minimum force necessary to secure the UN objectives should be used, without inflicting indiscriminate damage on Iraq and its citizens."

They also urged the Prime Minister to safeguard sacred Muslim sites from attack in Iraq.

The Independent 15 January

When the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Roman Catholic Cardinal unite on joint statements, you can be sure you will get a dose of arrant nonsense. "Indiscriminate damage" is the nature of war. There are no rockets or bombs that select the guilty and spare the innocent.

However it is touching to that they are concerned about fellow divines in Iraq — no hiding out in the sacred sites!

Cooking the Books: No such thing as a workers’ budget (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘What would be a workers’ Budget?’ the Trotskyist Workers’ Liberty asked on Budget Day. With graffiti on a wall saying ‘Tax the Rich’ as an illustration, the article expounded:

‘A workers’ budget would tax the rich heavily’. ‘A workers’ budget would rebuild public services and restore real wages and benefits’. ‘Increase corporation tax’. ‘No easing of the rules can square the circle and win the resources needed to rebuild public services and real wages without taking from the millionaires’.

Taxing the rich to increase wages and benefits and provide better public services is fantasy politics. It’s not going to happen and, if it was tried, would precipitate a massive economic crisis.

The article cites a calculation that ‘a wealth tax, increased capital gains tax, and a few other items could raise £50 billion a year’, but that’s only 6.25 percent of the £800 billion currently spent on health, education, and pensions and other benefits. So the bulk of the money ‘to rebuild public services and real wages’ would have to come from taxing profits. The article mentions doubling corporation tax to over 50 percent of profits (but even that wouldn’t raise enough). This would reduce both the incentive and the amount for private corporations to re-invest in maintaining and expanding production. Hence, the reduction in production and a massive increase in unemployment.

The slogan ‘Tax the Rich’ assumes the continued existence of the rich, the continued division of society into the rich and the rest, into a class which owns the means of production and lives off an unearned property income (profit, interest or rent) and a class which, excluded from such ownership, depends on working for an employer for a wage or salary.

The assumption is that the rich should continue to exploit the workers but that part (most) of their income should be taxed away to pay for higher wages and better public services for the rest. It is the fantasy of capitalism being made to serve the interests of the non-capitalist majority.

The absurdity, let alone the infeasibility, of such a social arrangement — the capitalist as capitalist for the benefit of the working class — is obvious.

Some naive leftwingers might believe in this but we doubt if the leaders of Trotskyist groups do. For them, proposals for a ‘workers’ budget’ will be an application of the cynical tactic of proposing something to attract worker support but which they know won’t work, in the expectation that, when it doesn’t, the disillusioned workers who fell for it will turn to them for leadership in an assault on the capitalist state.

Real socialists are honest. We say that under capitalism there can be no such thing as a ‘workers’ budget’ as this implies that capitalism could be made to operate in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. But experience has repeatedly shown that it can’t. The only budget that there can be is a capitalists’ budget.

What the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, set out on 30 October was what the British capitalist state plans to spend in the next tax year (which in the UK, for some odd historical reason, starts in April) and how it intends to pay for it.

The various measures she announced were based on the supposition that the government can bring about growth. But it can’t. The most it can do is to create conditions that could encourage business investment. This in fact is what all budgets have to try to do and why they must all be capitalists’ budgets. There can be no such thing as a workers’ budget.

Blogger's Note:

A leading member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Martin Thomas, replied to this column on their website.

SPGB Meetings (1995)

Party News from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There was a report of the October 25th debate with the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (Socialist Organiser) in the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard. As I mentioned previously I actually attended this debate. I remember it got rather heated and acrimonious, with both the audience members and the speakers getting a bit arsey. When they debated again in early '97 there was definitely some bad feeling left over from the previous debate on both sides.

Trotsky in Euroland (2002)

From the September 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have always argued that Trotskyism and Leninism is a non-revolutionary current, part of the extreme left-wing of capitalism. This was demonstrated at a fringe meeting during the SWP's annual Marxism event.

This meeting involved an internal debate between three of the organisations comprising the "Socialist Alliance", concerning the issue of the euro. Two broad viewpoints were expressed: those firmly in the "No" camp and others who took an arguably more pragmatic approach.

First up was the International Socialist Group (ISG) whose speaker argued that opposition to the euro (and the EU in general) is where class politics should start. As the EU was a "Bosses Club", socialists should naturally oppose it and given the "monetarism" of the convergence criteria/stability pact, we should realise that this will mean increasing attacks upon the working class.

This position was attacked by both the other groups, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL) and the Leninist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). They argued that this logically leads to "little Englandism" even if this was not the intention.

The CPGB speaker proposed an "active boycott" of any forthcoming referendum arguing that class struggle would be more effective given an integrated European working class. So for the CPGB, Euroland offers reluctant possibilities.

It was interesting watching these pseudo-revolutionaries trying to come up with the correct tactical formula and giving a "working class" spin to what is an internal capitalist class debate.

I publicly ventured an alternative: tell us workers the truth! Tell us that global capitalism is our enemy, whether one group of capitalists support the euro or not. Tell us that class struggle and democratic organisation are prerequisites for the revolution which will abolish private property, wages and money itself (including the pound and the euro). Naturally, this got the usual looks of incredulity and a pleasing nod from the AWL speaker who mistakenly thought I was echoing his earlier point about "independent working class action".

I added for the benefit of the ISG supporters that even if Britain did stay outside the eurozone, the pound would still be affected by European Central Bank decisions and any subsequent machinations on the foreign exchange markets. As for the austerity measures, these would happen anyway because of the need to reform the European "social democratic model" so as to better compete with the likes of USA and Japan.

What this all shows is that despite their militant phrase-mongering these people will lead the working class up yet another reformist dead-end — if given an opportunity. Their politics falls safely within capitalism.

Dave Flynn 

“How Solidarity (in the Struggle for Reforms) Can Change the World” (1998)

Book Review from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Solidarity Can Change the World. Workers Liberty. £3.95.

Believe it or not, but there are still some Trotskyists in the Labour Party. One such group has published this pamphlet, which is a collection of contradictory articles by Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky introduced by their leader, Sean Matgamma.

The leader’s view—as expressed in the title, to be understood as “How Solidarity (in the Struggle for Reforms) Can Change the World”—is that “the struggle for reforms and transitional demands is now the indicated way the British working class—but not only the British—and the labour movement can revive”. This is the old argument, advanced by Trotsky in his founding manifesto for the “Fourth International” in 1938 (included here), that socialist consciousness will develop out of the struggle for reforms within capitalism: when workers realise that they can’t get the reforms they have been campaigning for they will, Trotsky pontificated, turn to the “cadres” of the Fourth International for leadership.

Quite apart from the fact that this has (fortunately) never happened, this argument has always been more of a rationalisation of their reformist practice by shamefaced reformists who want to imagine that they are revolutionaries. Since it is reforms they want there is some logic in being in a party that has a chance of exercising political power. So perhaps after all it is not really surprising that there are Trotskyists in the Labour Party, licking envelopes and knocking on doors for Blair and his crew.

Adam Buick

RESPECT: the “unity” coalition (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new political gathering on the left wing has been formed and is attracting some attention to itself of late. But what is this group and what will it mean for the working class?

R.E.S.P.E.C.T, standing for “Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environment, Community, and Trade Unionism” was formed on 25 January when over one thousand people gathered in central London for the launching of the new organisation.  The group has been initiated by ex-Labour MP George Galloway, posing as some kind of figurehead, and the Socialist Workers Party, the Stop the War Coalition, and various smatterings of other left wing groups and trade unions.

The initial declaration of this new organisation uses the language of socialism: “We want a world in which the democratic demands of the people are carried out; a world based on need not profit; a world where solidarity rather than self-interest is the spirit of the age”.

Observers will have noticed that they remain silent on how this new world is to be obtained, instead focussing on the mass discontent whipped up by the political blunderings of George Bush, Tony Blair and other spokesmen of the western capitalist class, in particular on the recent invasion of Iraq and the anti-war sentiment this provoked.

The anti-war movement was vast up to a point, and served as yet another example of how capitalism’s interests are not tied up with those of the workers. The spontaneous outburst of protest against imperialist war was an inspiring event for any socialist, but, as we know, the movement was massively ignored by the powers-that-be, and led to a feeling of let-down among those workers who thought that capitalist parties represented them. Now that the war has reached its conclusion, many people may be searching for a new “political alternative”.

Respect has stated on several occasions that it wishes to be that alternative. For instance:

  “But the yearning for a political alternative is even wider than the anti-war movement. Pensioners, students, trade unionists, Muslims and other faith groups, socialists, ethnic minorities and many others have been deeply disappointed by the authoritarian social policies and profit-centred, neo-liberal economic strategy of the government.”

However, so far they have held back from talking about how they intend to get to this new alternative or even about whether they think it will work within the present economic system. The majority of their propaganda to date consists of highlighting the recent problems of the capitalist class in Britain and elsewhere, but where they fail is that they seem to be under the impression that the current administrators of capitalism are unpleasant, lying manipulators and exploiters by choice rather than the system itself being to blame.

On some level it is perhaps unfair to judge just yet, since Respect is young and has yet to make an impact on the political scene, and on one level they are correct: there is a yearning for change. There has been a yearning for change ever since class society developed, that yearning of course is more generally known in socialist circles as the product of the class struggle. The class struggle is the irrefutable antagonism of interests in present society between the class that owns and profits from the means of production, and the class that creates the wealth but does not possess any means of producing wealth of their own. Those who “yearn for change” are certainly aware of some form of injustice or antagonism inherent in present-day society, and may be attracted to the new Respect coalition. Unfortunately, since Respect is not direct about what exactly they are aiming for, and how it is to be achieved, they run the risk of becoming caught in the quagmire of popular but ineffectual reformism.

List of Reforms

To date, Respect has provided the working class with promises for a better world, peace instead of war, riches instead of poverty, happiness instead of misery, but is quite silent on a possible future away from capitalism, and have instead stated the following aims to adjust the present economic system:

1. An end to the war and occupation of Iraq. We will not join any further imperialist wars.
2. An education system that is not dependent on the ability to pay, that is comprehensive and gives an equal chance in life to every child no matter how wealthy or poor their parents, from nursery to university.
3. A publicly owned and funded, democratically controlled NHS, free to all users.
4. Pensions that are linked to average earnings.
5. Raising the minimum wage to the European Union decency threshold of £7.40 an hour.
6. Tax the rich to fund welfare and to close the growing gap between the poor and the wealthy few.
7. The repeal of the Tory anti-union laws.
8. Opposition to all form of discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs (or lack of them), sexual orientation, disabilities, national origin or citizenship.
9. The right to self-determination of every individual in relation to their religious (or non-religious) beliefs, as well as sexual choices.
10. The defence of the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. Opposition to the European Union’s ‘Fortress Europe’ policies.
11. We will strongly oppose the anti-European xenophobic right wing in any Euro referendum. But we oppose the ‘stability pact’ that the European Union seeks to impose on all those who join the euro. This pact would outlaw government deficit spending and reinforce the drive to privatise and deregulate the economy and we will therefore vote ‘No’ in any referendum on this issue.
12. Support for the people of Palestine and opposition to the apartheid system that oppresses them.
13. An end to the destruction of the environment by states and corporations for whom profit is more important than sustaining the natural world on which all life depends.

So ends this rather lengthy list of reforms and promises.  It is aimed at drawing in many disillusioned people eager to see the better world promised come to realisation. The reforms won’t work though, because of a basic misunderstanding of the type of society we live in. We live in a capitalist society, a society where goods are only produced for profit. In such a society, it’s logical that the creation of profits must take precedence over everything else. Hence the Socialist Party’s policy of not advocating reforms, since attempting to attack this profit-making machine with piecemeal reforms, rather than consistently aiming for the complete abolition of capitalism itself, is doomed to failure and frustration.

There is a chance those among the SWP already know this, since it ties in with the Trotskyist approach to reforms and struggle, but as long as they hold that the working class as unable to develop a revolutionary understanding of society, they will continue to attempt to deceive us by providing us with “transitional demands” in the hope that the workers will become so enraged at capitalism being unable to work in their interests that they will want a revolution. In reality people can simply become disillusioned with the reforms put forward by the left wing and abandon any interest in politics.

It would be of interest to see just how large a hold the SWP has on the rest of the coalition, as they reportedly made up half of the delegates at the founding conference. Speculation on the chance Respect may go the way of the Socialist Alliance seems already to have entered the minds of many people, and it’s a strong possibility that infighting between the SWP and the other groups may break out just as it did in the SA.

Voices from the remnants of the Socialist Alliance

At the conference to launch Respect in Portsmouth, it was interesting to note that questions from the audience and replies from the speakers hinted that the Socialist Alliance was a spent force, and one that nobody would wish to see again. It seemed to be held by the audience of students and workers that the SA had failed miserably, and that its policies had been ineffectual and misguided from the very start.

While this would be a ray of hope to revolutionary Marxists that the working class are starting to become increasingly annoyed at Trotskyist attempts to manipulate them, it’s of interest how some of the parties who made up the SA are reacting to the Respect Coalition.

The so-called “Socialist Party” of England and Wales (SPEW, formerly known as Militant Labour) have issued a statement to the new coalition, claiming that they will support them in the European elections but feel unable to join with them for the moment. They dredged up the past where they butted heads with the SWP inside the SA, with the end result that they left the organisation and the SWP consolidated its stranglehold. They also appear to be upset that they were not invited to join with the coalition earlier, a strong indication of the antagonism between Militant and the SWP, but since they are not a part of the new coalition (something the SWP is certainly pleased about) it seems they will have little effect on the future of Respect.

Although the Communist Party of Britain (who publish the Morning Star) never was a part of the Socialist Alliance, their reasons for not joining with the Respect Coalition shed light on the SWP’s relationship with the rest of the Leninist Left. In a statement on the new group they said:

    “We reject participation in the Respect Coalition proposed by George Galloway and  others. It is a narrowly-based front for the SWP which has emerged from the remnants of the failed Socialist Alliance, and is likely to divide not only the labour movement but  the anti-war movement as well. Its main constituent organisation holds quite different views to those of our party on the role and potential of the trade union movement and its leadership,     on the national question and the nature of imperialism, and on the socialist countries past and present.”

The text is somewhat sceptical as to the ability of the non-SWP factions in Respect to resist an attempt by the SWP to overwhelm the entire organisation, but time will tell if such scepticism is well founded.

Other statements follow that the CPB believe the new coalition could be harmful to a movement that wishes to “recapture” the Labour Party and “return” it to the interests of the working class. How exactly a pro-capitalist party such as Labour, which is and always has been for the continued existence of capital, can be turned towards the interests of socialism is something that will remain a mystery.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL) remained in the Socialist Alliance, and is a small but vocal group of Trotskyists, so far refusing to join Respect and heaping all manner of warnings of impending disaster on its reformist and opportunist tactics. Focussing on George Galloway, who has been set up as a “leading figure” in the coalition, they have attacked his pathetic claim that he needs “£150,000 a year to function as a leading figure” and also his shady ties to the former dictatorship in Iraq. The AWL attacks Respect’s soft approach to socialism, in so far as Respect’s only mention of the word socialism is that it makes up the “S” in the word R.E.S.P.E.C.T.  Up to now the AWL has been the most eloquent voice of protest and warning heard from the Leninist Left, but its repeated calls for the standard Trotskyist demands of nationalisation and state control do not impress the revolutionary Marxist nor any worker who does not simply wish to see the current free market regime replaced with a system based on state capital.

While the CPGB (not to be confused with the old CPGB whose name they picked up and who publish the Weekly Worker) has joined with the Respect Coalition, like other groups, it has voiced concern about overwhelming SWP involvement in the new coalition’s politics, via a leaflet that they distributed at the Portsmouth meeting, which is summed up in the following:

 “In order to keep a disparate alliance together, the Socialist Workers Party, which will surely make up the bulk of the convention, and its allies are     junking principle after principle to launch Respect.”

We are certainly hearing voices of caution from several groups, some outside of the Socialist Alliance and some within, who are wary of SWP interference in this attempted new movement in left wing politics.  This could be a simply matter of political feuding; some left groups may be jealous of the SWP’s numbers and disturbing tendency to use this to pack meetings or on some occasions intimidate and/or initiate violent attacks on its political opponents.  

However, we should not forget that a lot of these groups would not for a moment hesitate to act in the undemocratic and pushy manner that the SWP do, if they thought it would hasten their aim of introducing a state capitalist regime in Britain such as that which was started by the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Conclusion

While it may seem unfair to judge a new political movement before it has had an effective chance to prove itself, it would seem that we should not get our hopes up for Respect. As stated and proved, they have made it clear they are advocating reforms to capitalism, and while these reforms may at first seem attractive, it is certain they would always be at odds with the very nature of the economic system we live in, i.e., capitalism. Lacking an honest revolutionary stance for a new society, reformism becomes caught in a pointless and frustrating circular battle with an economic system that is based on exploitation. As long as the accumulation of capital takes precedence, either in the hands of the individual capitalist or state institutions, the primary concern of exploitation of labour and making profit will take precedence over the concerns of human need.

It may seem cynical to write off the coalition completely, but when even former allies in the Socialist Alliance are showing such doubts on its ability to create a new workers movement, it’s clear to socialists that Respect should be treated with caution if not scepticism. The fact that if and when Respect have any success, George Galloway is bound to come under attack by the media for his supposed friendly links to the old regime in Iraq. A man such as Galloway with such a dubious political background can only spell trouble for Respect’s appearance as credible left wing organisation, but for the moment they seem oblivious to this danger.

One thing is certain though, a socialist organisation will get nowhere without a firm grasp of democracy, sound Marxist principle, a disdain to conceal its socialist objective, and a membership in full possession of the facts about current society and the revolutionary alternative. Respect has none of these organisational principles, and is showing no sign of understanding or desiring to develop any of them.

Dan Read

An Open Letter to ‘Workers’ Fight’ . . . (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

I see from No. 17 of your publication Workers' Fight that you are (and I quote) “a group of revolutionary Socialists aiming to build a party which stands firmly for the interests of the working class”. That Workers' Fight stands for ‘‘a party democratically controlled by an active working class membership and which preserves its political independence”.

You say in your Statement of Aims (Where We Stand) that:

  Capitalism is a vicious system to buttress the strong against the weak . . . to keep millions in poverty so that a few may prosper . . . It is a system of massive waste and social disorganization.

And that:

  Labour Parties, Social-Democratic Parties and Communist Parties have joined capitalist governments and managed capitalism . . . The Labour Party is a capitalist party.

Finally, that:

  The only way out is for the working class to take power and bring the economy under a rational working class plan . . . Having overthrown capitalism and established social ownership of the means of production the working class will build a truly communist society in which, at last, the principle will be “From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.”

To which we say Hear! Hear! we’ll go along with most of that. The only question we would ask is: “Why have you got to form a new party for all this?” The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands for communist society. It opposes the Labour and Communist Parties, and is democratically controlled by its membership, with no leaders. What is more important, it has taken these attitudes consistently for many years, which is the guarantee that it will continue them.

You say that you:

  consider all other political groups to be seriously inadequate in theory and practice. We favour unity in action with these groups and a serious dialogue about our differences.

We also are in favour of serious dialogue about the class interests of the workers, like you, and would therefore start it off with some criticism of your "serious inadequacies” (in our view, of course).

Although your statement of aims says that "the only way out” for the workers is to overthrow capitalism and establish Communism, we find a number of aims in it which are not this. For instance, you also stand for a national Minimum Wage, for Work for the Unemployed, and you defend the nationalized industries of the U.S.S.R. and "similar” countries against capitalism. You also support the struggles of oppressed peoples against Imperialism.

Even worse, in your criticism of Socialist Worker and Workers' Press (much of which is quite reasonable) you propound your own suggestions such as:

  Cut rents; take the land and buildings off the big property owners; nationalise the banks, the building societies, and other money-lending institutions; nationalise the building industry.

Finally, and this is our chief disagreement and your “serious inadequacy”, you write:

  We believe that the Parliamentary road to Socialism is a crippling illusion. The capitalist class will not leave the stage peacefully, no ruling class ever has. Socialism can be built only by smashing the State machinery (Army, Police, Civil Service).

In our view, what you have to understand first is that demands for nationalization of the building industry or anything else are not Socialism and do not lead to it. Bismarck was nationalizing the German railways in 1870 for war against France. The loudest advocate of the nationalization of the Bank of England was "Comrade” Lord Beaverbrook, and Lord Attlee’s government kindly obliged by doing it. The first Act to nationalize Britain’s railways was introduced by Gladstone in 1844 when still a Tory.

"Work for the Unemployed and a national Minimum Wage” are not workers’ Fight but the unfortunate workers’ Plight. Liberals and Tories have supported them for years, not to mention the "capitalist” Labour Party. What has become of “to each according to his need”? You cannot square the circle. Either you are Socialists, opposed to the reform of capitalism because reforms perpetuate the capitalist system — or you will water down your socialist objective by futile demands for reforms which most capitalists would support, like "taking the land away from the landowners”.

It’s all very well to denounce the Socialist Labour League and the International Socialists for “defining capitalism out of existence”, and accusing them of making “Socialism always a distant beacon of the future”. But as long as you advocate reforms you, like them, are reformists and will never make a revolutionary party, which has to be anti-reformist.

You have got to face the facts one way or the other. Face up to the reality of the unpopularity (momentarily) of a straight clear-cut Socialist programme, or support reforms. You cannot consistently do both. Supporting rent strikes, and demonstrating against the war in Vietnam, are not Socialist policy and do not bring Socialism a second nearer. Neither is your “active working-class participation” in the Labour Party. If you join Labour parties, you are reformists.

Finally, and this is probably the most “serious inadequacy” of all, your crass ignorance of the aim and purpose of parliament. For after all, like it or not, the logical outcome of anti-parliamentarianism is illegal rebellion or insurrection. It is not a question of what the capitalist class will or will not do, but what the workers can or cannot do. And one thing it is certain they can not do is challenge the armed force of the government outside Parliament.

In your programme you state that you are intending building a party "controlled by its membership”. You do not realize this, but you got this idea from the S.P.G.B., which has always jealously guarded its Socialist integrity by ensuring that reformists cannot enter it. This idea also belongs to the question of the method of obtaining Socialism. There is no opposition between the aim, Socialism, and the method, democracy. It is not whether capitalists will be bellicose or comatose in face of a Socialist challenge, but whether a party exists which has the infallible guarantee of Socialist knowledge in the heads of its members to control the actions of its parliamentary representatives who will be mandated delegates.

It all finally boils down to this. The working class has got to learn; when it gets the knowledge, it will do the deed. I’m sorry, Workers’ Fight, but if this is the best “fight” you can put up you would do better stopping at home in bed. You have picked up a lot of quite sound ideas but failed to see that the Socialist case is a monolithic whole. So long as you continue to peddle the dilapidated fourth-hand remnants of the discredited Leninist and Trotskyist “tactics” you are not really fundamentally different from the other Trotskyist splinter groups.

Horatio.

Blogger's Note:

I know this can all be rather confusing but Workers' Fight was one of the earliest incarnations of what is now known as the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. The common thread through all these organisations - dating back to 1966 - is its leader, the Irish Trotskyist Sean Matgamna. By 1972/73, WF were an independent Trotskyist organisation, having just been expelled from Tony Cliff's International Socialists for persistent factionalism. At this point in Matgamma's Leninist Life, his organisation were orthodox Trotskyists but they are better known today for their - for Trotskyists - unorthodox positions in relation to the Israel/Palestine question and on the class nature of the Soviet Union.

Alright up to a point (2019)

Book Review from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Many Not the Few. An Illustrated History of Britain Shaped by the People. By Sean Michael Wilson and Robert Brown. Workable Books. 2019. £9.99.

This is a primer, in the cartoon form of conversations between a retired trade unionist and his granddaughter, of working class, or rather lower class (since it starts with the Peasants’ Revolt), history, aimed at those new to trade unionism and ‘labour’ politics. Wat Tyler, the Levellers, the Diggers, Peterloo, the Chartists, the match girls’ strike, they are all there. When, however, it comes to the twentieth century and the formation of the Labour Party it becomes tendentious; which no doubt explains why it comes with a preface and recommendation from Jeremy Corbyn.

However, Corbyn might be embarrassed (or maybe not) by the anti-EU and pro-Brexit stance taken at the end. This, no doubt, is due to the ‘history adviser’ being Doug Nicholls, a frequent contributor to the Morning Star and first chair of Trade Unionists Against the European Union. There is a mysterious reference to a ‘Worker’s Liberty’ website on page 109, odd because if that’s to the trotskyoid AWL they are anti-Brexit. In any event, dragging in Brexit will date the book and, besides, has nothing to do with working class history.

Adam Buick

Socialism or Trotskyism? (1995)

Party News from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

A debate between the Socialist Party and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty ("Socialist Organiser") was held in the University of London Union on 25 October. Although nominally about the events in Russia in October/November of 1917, the debate widened as the evening went on to involve discussions about the nature/politics of the AWL and the Socialist Party in 1995.

Debates about the Russian Revolution have been one of the most common areas of disagreement over the years between Fake-Socialists and genuine Socialists. Fake Socialists of the Leninist-left have of course defended their "heirs apparent”—the Bolsheviks and their coup of 1917, whilst it has been the job of real Socialists to point out that Socialism can only come about when a majority of workers organise democratically for it to happen.

AWL speaker Mark Osborn began his argument by asking us to appreciate the historical conditions of Russia in 1917 and to subsequently try to understand the "real intentions" of the Bolsheviks. They didn't really want to ban opposition and shoot workers who disagreed with them—"Peace, Bread and Land”, that was their real programme. On one level Osborn is right, the historical circumstances meant that any new ruling class in that situation would be forced to act in a certain way that may appear draconian and repressive—but of course if we really understood the “real intentions" of the new "protectors” of the working class interest we would sympathise, wouldn’t we?

Well no actually. The Socialist Party speaker. Adam Buick, argued against this point by pointing out that Socialism can only come about when a majority of the working class want it. How could this come about in a society where only 10 percent of the population were working class?

The point is, that whatever the “real intentions" of the Bolsheviks were, the objective materialist reality was that a new ruling class with a state capitalist programme had come to power. Any attempt to rationalise this as being in the interests of the working class because “they said so" is to fall into idealist speculation. After one has defined a situation as being “of the workers" or “workers' party” or indeed “workers' state"—anything can be subsequently justified. This is because arguments of this sort are based around the "ends justifying the means" and this is precisely where Leninist logic comes unstuck.

However, the real rub is that the AWL propose a similar way of bringing about "Socialism" in 1995 as the Bolsheviks did in 1917. Despite the fact that the working class is now global, they still insist that workers are not capable of organising a democratic majority revolution. This idea for the AWL is "utopianism". Workers should treat these self-appointed "Saviours" with the contempt they in turn show the working class.

As this is just a report (as opposed to a full-scale critique of Leninist-Trotskyism), there only remains to briefly mention a few other aspects of the debate. Those aspects can only be described as a succession of parodies, half-truths and lies. According to the AWL the Socialist Party advocate a purely parliamentary strategy, oppose reforms that actually benefit workers and don’t organise in the trade unions. It doesn't seem to matter how many times we inform them to the contrary that they are not actually arguing against our case, they continue making straw-men out of the Socialist Party's case seemingly because with out these distortions they wouldn’t have any kind of argument at all.

There are supporters of Lenin and Trotsky who do actually know how to argue on the issues without deliberately distorting what you say (although such people are few and far between). The AWL once again showed themselves up for being poorly informed and demonstrating a poor standard of argument even by today’s standard of Leninist-Trotskyist politics. 

Dave Flynn

Sting in the Tail: The C of E and reality (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The C of E and reality

A Church of England vicar in Hertfordshire caused uproar by telling children “that neither Santa Claus nor the Tooth Fairy was real” (Independent, 18 December).

The Rev’s job is safe, though, because his flock has forgiven him.

  “And there was support for him from the Right Rev David Jenkins, the controversial former Bishop of Durham who, writing in today’s Independent, agrees that the teachings of Christianity would benefit from the separation of fairytale from reality.”

Would it really? If all the fairytales about life after death, heaven and hell, virgin births, devils, angels, holy ghosts, etc. were separated from the teachings of Christianity what would be left?


AWL backs a loser

Like fleas on a dog, would-be Bolsheviks have for over fifty years been hanging onto the Labour Party.

The latest group is the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) which is totally obsessed with Labour which it sees, despite that party’s anti-working class history, as being worthy of support because they can “win significant support for socialist ideas inside the party”. What they mean by “socialist ideas” may be gauged from their approval of the misnamed Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MP’s.

At election times the AWL actively works for Labour to the farcical extent of delivering into working-class homes literature full of ideas and policies which they themselves condemn!

Of course, Tony Blair is their arch-villain and is denounced as a “grinning idiot”. Perhaps he is grinning because he is thinking “How can I lose when even opponents will be working and voting for me? With enemies like these, who needs friends?”

Shouldn’t each AWL member be asking themselves just who is the idiot there?


Circumstances alter attitudes

Francis Lee and Alan Ball, chairman and manager of Manchester City FC, have been complaining about “over-paid”, under-talented stars” (Manchester Evening News, 16 December).

Said Lee, “We are talking about people with Frank Sinatra’s tastes and Frank Spencer’s voice”, while Ball yearned for the days when managers could “hit players in the pocket” by dropping them.

So top players, and it is only those at the top, are taking advantage of a favourable market, but Lee and Ball must know that British football’s biggest stars were paid a pittance until the abolition of the maximum wage, and they should remember how short players’ careers can be, so why shouldn’t they cash in while they can?

Anyway, football’s chairmen and managers were saying much the same about players when Lee and Ball were in their prime in the 60s and 70s, but did that stop the pair going for the best possible deals they could get?


“Dearer” means “cheaper”

For years the package holiday industry has been increasing and then decreasing the prices and the number of holidays in its brochures in futile attempts to anticipate the market.

Last summer’s heatwave helped make 1995 a disaster, and the industry engaged in a ruinous price-war which sent profits into a tailspin. To avoid a repeat of this, the industry’s giants, Thomson’s, Airtours and First Choice, have cut summer ’96 holidays by 10 percent and upped brochure prices by around 17 percent.

First Choice’s chief executive Francis Baron claimed that this means the industry is “set for a bumper year”, but advance bookings are 30 percent down on 12 months ago, and in a desperate move to drum up business the big three have announced discounts bigger than the price increases!

Yet another price-war is underway, and the package holiday industry remains a prime example of the anarchy of the market in action.


A ducal visit

Those sanctimonious old Tories who prate on about “Victorian values” must have been touched by the Duke of Westminster’s proposed Xmas visit to the Liverpool as reported in the Observer (24 December).

The Duke, reported to have a £2 billion fortune, will take his wife and two eldest daughters from his Eaton Hall estate near Chester to visit drug addicts on the streets of Liverpool.

It is not only backwoods Tories who are impressed by this. Dr Sue Ruben of Liverpool’s Drug Service also applauds the visit:

“Many of my clients have very low self-esteem and anything that gives them a sense of worth, even a short visit by a Duke, is worthwhile.”

How a visit by one of the richest men in Britain will give a “sense of worth” to desperate workers living in hostels is beyond our comprehension. A “sense of rage” should be nearer the mark.


Causes of war

Socialists are forever pointing out that all modern wars are fought over markets, trade routes, military bases and other economic concerns. Defenders of capitalism, on the other hand, like to imagine that wars are fought over ideologies like, freedom, democracy, self-determination and other high-sounding ideals.

Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, commenting on the recent “peace” deal is quoted in the Independent on Sunday (31 December) as saying:

  “I can say we achieved half our goal— we have half of Bosnia, more than 40 cities and some good land.”

Well, who has got it right? The socialists or the defenders of capitalism? And how much of a “peace” deal is it, when half of Bosnia is only half of Karadzic’s goal?

The “nine eleven truth” movement by John Moeller

From issue 3/110 of the newspaper, Solidarity, which is produced by the British Trotskyist organisation, the Alliance for Workers Liberty.

A meeting in the Casa, the former headquarters of striking dockworkers in Liverpool. Nowadays it is the usual location for left wing events in town. The hall is so crowded that some listeners have to stay outside in the corridor. It might be triple the size of a normal lefty audience. Who has attracted this many people? It's Mr David Shayler.

Shayler used to work as a spy for the British Security Service, until he discovered that his employer doesn't stick to the usual official ideals of liberal democracy (the branch he worked for tried to kill the Libyan leader Gaddafi with a car bomb). Shocked, Shaylor quit his job and told some professional secrets to the media, which led to his temporary imprisonment.

Generalising his own experience with the intelligence services, Shayler was one of the prominent figures who claimed after 11 September 2001 that the attacks on the World Trade Centre were not caused by Islamist extremists, but by the Americans themselves, namely by the CIA.

Conspiracy theories of these type have become very popular all over the world during recent years. A whole movement has emerged - in the UK too - called the "nine eleven truth" groups , investigating what is "going on" behind the scenes of events like 9/11.

When you listen to their discussions two typical features of the conspiracy theorists become very obvious: the presumption of an idée fixe, which has to be justified afterwards; and a highly selective perception, which takes everything in account which is likely to give evidence for that idea and ignores everything which contradicts it.

"We mustn't let ourselves be divided", insists Mrs Annie Machon, David Shayler's co-defendent and former colleague, "no matter what in particular one or another believes to have happened on 9/11, the important thing is that we all agree that the official version cannot be true."

To prove their case the "truth activists" adapt rather bizarre theories, which are far more unlikely than the official version. David Shayler, for instance, claims that what we have seen flying into the WTC were not real aeroplanes, but mere holograms, projected into the sky to cheat us.

Why do people believe in this stuff? And, an even more basic question, why are they so keen on speculating about unlikely "truth" about an event which happened thousands of miles away and had little direct impact on their lives?

Shayler explains his motive: "Our democracy is in danger . . . the spies have become so all-powerful that they're already controlling even our elected members of parliament. If we won't stand up and act, this will lead to a totalitarian rule of one kind or another." This alarmist statement expresses an idealistic view about liberal democracy which is very common among the "truth movement": Elected representatives are there to carry out the will of the people and to look after their well being, aren't they? If our needs and desires are neglected by those representatives the only explanation is that there must be someone who secretly prevents them from doing their job - either by cheating, or by corrupting them.

In fact, they are doing their job quite well. The function of states in the capitalist world market is to provide convenient conditions for investors and to protect property. If they don't do so, they will fail in the competition against other states. Thus, whether they like it or not, democratic rulers have to organise the effective use of their electors' labour for the accumulation of capital, with all the negative effects this causes.

The trick of bourgeois democracy is that it also encourages people to participate in the discussion on the improvement of their own exploitation! This has proved to be much more effective than dictatorial rule - at least in wealthy countries which can afford to distribute some benefits to workers for their participation.

Are the conspiracy-searching activists basically democratic idealists who have gone mad, driven round the bend by elected governments who do the opposite to what they expected? That's part of the explanation. However, where does this idealism comes from" There are elements within the milieu who don't hesitate to cheer on even the most barbaric Islamist actions, if they are directed against the American empire and the alleged conspiracy behind it. That is nihilism not idealism.

The element of truth which underlies the "nine eleven truth" movement is that, as they say, we really don't have the sovereignty over our own lives. But we don't need a secret plot to explain that alienation.

It is more productive to think about the alarm clock that interrupts your dreams in the morning and forces you to work; or the boredom and stress of wage labour which steals your time and energy; or the permanent threat of personal failure in competition which undermines your mental and physical health; the exclusion of both material wealth and the satisfaction of participating in the productive co-operation of society while you are unemployed; the security service men who prevent you from taking what you desire in shops and warehouses. And so on...

The majority of people don't have control over their lives because they are detached from the means of production and have to sell their labour-power as a commodity. There have been times in history when this insight has been relatively widespread among working-class people, impelling them to organise themselves collectively to improve their living conditions or even to do away with the system of wage labour.

But we live in a time of defeat of working class organisations. That has led to atomisation, isolation and therefore impotence of the individual. It has become increasingly difficult for people to imagine how to fight collectively for their interests.

The situation has made a whole leftist milieu ready to adapt conspiracy theories of Shayler's type: a struggle against the imaginary evil of a world wide conspiracy becomes the substitute for the struggle against the real evils which occur in everyday life in capitalist society.

The total absence of economic questions in the debate at the Casa was one of the most conspicuous details of the evening. "You must speak to your neighbours, your colleagues, your family members", urged Mrs. Machon, "to make them aware of the lies they are telling on TV about 9/11!". Well, it's all right to communicate with the people around you - but why start a conversation on such an odd topic rather than on questions which affect your lives directly?

If the "nine eleven truth" groups were simply a movement of concerned citizens observing the intelligence services and accusing the bourgeois state when it violates its own laws and ideals, there wouldn't be much to oppose. But they are something different.

Their conspiracy theories claim to give an exclusive insight in the hidden causes for all the evils of the world. In doing so, they lead attention systematically away from the most important immediate antagonisms. They spare people the possibility of confrontation with the powerful and the risk of failure.

This worldview is attractive and hermetic, and hard to criticise. This type of thought is not, as it has been argued, a first step to becoming more conscious and critical about the problems of society, but the opposite: it is a kind of collective psychosis which increasingly detaches people from reality.

The fact that a meeting of the lunatic "nine eleven truth" sect takes place in the location where struggling dockers used to meet a decade ago, is a horrible indication of the lamentable state of the British left of today.

John Moeller