American independence and its mythology (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776 is upon us, it seems like a good time for socialists to assess this momentous event. Marx, in contrast to his writing on the American Civil War, has little to say about the conflict other than that he saw it as progressive but unresolved until the North’s victory over the South in 1865.

Although we have little interest in the international and internecine struggles between members of the bourgeoisie, what of the claim that these events on the east coast of North America constituted a revolution? If so what kind of revolution and was Marx correct as seeing the transition of 13 colonies into a nation-state as a progressive event in respect of the long-term aim of socialism? A cynic might suggest it was the capitalists of both states and their hatred of paying tax that generated the conflict between them. That the early USA was almost entirely dependent on slave labour for its wealth does make the shouts for liberty and justice rather hollow and hypocritical but then the international bourgeoisie have always been masters of myth creation and, as ever, it falls to Marxist socialists to try and separate myth from reality by stripping away the ideological overgrowth.

By 1763 the British had succeeded in expelling their French colonial rivals from North America but in doing so they had all but bankrupted their treasury. To maintain a series of forts to protect the victory was expensive and Parliament resolved to raise the revenue to pay for this by a series of taxes that regulated overseas trade on the 13 colonies. The colonists, on the other hand, thought that they had done their fair share of fighting to help the British defeat the French and saw no reason to pay for the honour. The climax to this came with the implementation of the hated ‘stamp act’ which was the first direct tax imposed by the British.

In 1763 the British had also forbidden any further expansion west because, for one thing, they feared the cost of going to war with the native Americans. However, the colonists saw the west as ripe for land speculation and they proceeded to create a ‘general assembly’ in the same year to oppose these British measures under the slogan: ‘No taxation without representation’. In response London passed a series of ‘quartering acts’ that imposed British troop garrisons in many of the leading towns with the added insult that the locals should provide them with food and shelter. Boston erupted and British ships were confiscated, whilst embargoes were placed on imports and exports to the ‘old country’. This was an act of rebellion against the crown which resulted in an invasion of Boston in 1768. Boston became a hotbed of rebellion with constant tension and violent skirmishes which in 1770 climaxed with the infamous ‘Boston Massacre’ in which many colonists were killed. Riots followed including the famous ‘Boston Tea Party’ where British ships were looted and their cargoes destroyed. By now the Americans had begun to create armouries for what they regarded as an inevitable war. On discovering the location of one of these a British army marched on Concord to seize the armaments but were confronted along the way at Lexington by a colonial militia and the first battle of the war took place.

The war was to last until 1781 when the British surrendered at Yorktown to the Americans and their French and Spanish allies. The colonists had won their independence but what kind of state would they create and was it in any way ‘revolutionary’? The propaganda against Britain had portrayed it as a feudal autocracy when, in fact, the King and his aristocrats (both old and newly created) had been capitalists for a good 100 years before the rise of merchant capitalism in the new world, and parliament was the final arbiter of policy.

The American economy was mainly based on the labour of chattel slavery and people like George Washington lived like ancient Roman patricians on massive slave estates. So in its formative years the republic saw very little change from the perspective of the black slaves and the poor white farmers. Britain was well into its ‘industrial revolution’ and was a much more progressive state than its new competitor. Most of the signatories of the ‘Declaration of Independence’ were slave owners who, apparently, saw no hypocrisy between the claims of liberty and justice for the white elite and the reality of life within for hundreds of thousands of enslaved inhabitants.

Thomas Jefferson began his political career opposing slavery but ended it as a racist bigot of the worst kind. In North America the conjunction of slavery and skin colour became enshrined in the American psyche and even after the ‘emancipation’ at the conclusion of the civil war many of the formerly enslaved became ‘share-croppers’ – in effect, little better than medieval serfs. America had progressed from chattel slavery to feudal serfdom. This kind of racism was to fuel the genocide of the Native Americans and so preserve the racial and political violence embedded deep within the culture which survives to this day. Of course, socialists are not surprised at the depths of bourgeois hypocrisy but the American oligarchs seem to have taken it to another level claiming that they have no empire and that their state violence was always in ‘defence of democracy’. Perhaps the origin of their state is one of the reasons for the US’s continual political backwardness? If 1781 was revolutionary it was an extremely reactionary revolution more akin to the Third Reich and its genocidal and slave-economy policies than to the English and French revolutions.

Many historians regard the relationship between the founders’ support of slavery and their call for liberty and justice as some kind of paradox; they shy away from the truth of the origin of their country being founded on a lie. It can be said that the absence of any mitigating counterforce to the free market capitalism embraced by the oligarchs made it possible for the northern states to invest millions of dollars into industrial technology and so become one of the most powerful economic powerhouses by the end of the nineteenth century – in that Marx was correct; but what he didn’t foresee was that this extremely technologically advanced country would not also enjoy a commensurable rise in working-class political consciousness. Consumerism, religion and nationalism would prevent any important political evolution and has led to the kind of authoritarian ‘king’ figure that America now endures. The world longs for the end of the murderous American imperialism which seems, at last, to be within sight. Its birth in violence, racism and genocide and the malign shadow that has forever haunted America as a result might finally destroy it. No doubt it will be replaced, in the absence of socialist consciousness, by an equally rapacious capitalist global empire of some kind. ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ will have to wait until people realise just how to make what was and is now just a platitude into something meaningful and real.

Wez.

Public and private (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent scandals involving the once public, and now privatised, utility businesses such as those of water, rail and gas/electric have once again reopened the age-old debate between those on the left who favour public ownership of the utilities (and much else) and those on the right who think that privatisation is the only answer to the continuing travails of these services. Perhaps it might be in order to take a deep breath and look at the historical, ideological and even psychological origins of these unlikely political allegiances.

Human beings have long loved dualities in the attempt to understand the world and private/public takes its place alongside capitalist/socialist, worker/capital, reform/revolution, democracy/autocracy among countless others within polemical discourse. It is only recently that I’ve encountered any objection to this intellectual tradition courtesy of a young relative of mine claiming that she is ‘non-binary’ in her sexuality. Having long thought that man/woman was never a satisfactory duality in the first place I was not surprised by this revelation but it does serve to show the lasting power of this ideological mechanism to both inform and provoke. I won’t go into the historical origins of left and right ideological designations but their lasting allegiance to public or private capitalist economics respectively is surprising.

Nationalisation (state ownership) has a long history and we can be certain that the rich and powerful would not put their hands deep into their pockets to pay a tax that made this possible unless they could see some financial advantage. In 1858 the British state took over the East India Company to save it from the disastrous implications of the Indian Rebellion of the previous year which endangered British imperialism and the massive profits that it made for the parasite capitalist class.

In 1871 that well-known ‘socialist’ Otto von Bismarck embarked on massive state investment and control of many industries including railways, mining, agriculture, road building and, of course, the military. Needless to say that this was done, not to improve working conditions, but to accelerate German industrial development so that it might compete on the international stage both economically and militarily whilst simultaneously making unimaginable profits for his Junker supporters. Ironically Bismarck was also known as a ‘state socialist’ as well as a ‘state capitalist’ because of his introduction of a ‘welfare state’ which was supposed to blunt the increasing popularity of socialism. To do this he consulted the traitor Ferdinand Lassalle who had come up with the crackpot theory that the bourgeois state was politically neutral and could be used by the proletariat to reform capitalism until socialism was achieved. To this day leftists still use this as a programme for socialism, conveniently forgetting that it was instigated by one of socialism’s greatest enemies.

Because of these historical contradictions we have ended up with an unholy mess of Orwellian definitions of what socialism, capitalism, state capitalism, state socialism, democracy, public, private, etc. really mean. In the popular mind we can safely say that many believe socialism to be state ownership of industry and that capitalism represents ‘private’ ownership. The fact that sometimes the exact opposite is true represents the internal contradictions of capitalism and its subsequent ideological claims which, in our tabloid sound-bite media, is way too complex for their narrow political agendas. Remember that mainstream political parties are effectively PR organisations for the continuation of capitalism and have no interest in historical, economic or political truth. To celebrate the meaninglessness of it all we have two wonderful British examples: public schools are private schools and companies that go ‘public’ are secretive private enterprises with a veneer of public transparency.

The concepts of public and private predate, of course, the vicissitudes of contemporary political debate. The right to a ‘private life’ is a rather new social concept given that our species is intensely social and has lived communally for aeons. There have been many who have had to operate under secrecy for religious and ideological reasons but this is rather different since all those in power suffer from degrees of paranoia and are always suspicious of privacy in others. Hypocritically these same people are always the first to claim the right to privacy and secrecy under the name of national security.

So what does privacy really mean? Is it the need to separate yourself from others due to the shame that accompanies sexual preference or corruption or criminal intent or is it a basic human need for occasional solitude so that the contemplation of the ‘self’ can occur? True introspection is rare so it’s reasonable to suspect that the right to ‘private property’ and the bourgeois cult of individuality lie more at the heart of the contemporary concept of privacy. Your wealth is due to your own efforts and has nothing to do with the exploitation of the labour of others. This is the lie at the centre of the concept.

Privacy, with its modicum of ‘control’, militates against the reality of interdependence, the recognition of which is our only hope as a species. Individuals and their families locked up in their mortgaged jerry-built houses with security cameras and an inbuilt fear of ‘the other’ are infinitely more insecure than those who live in communities of mutual aid and respect. Divide and rule is one of the strongest propaganda tools available to the tiny parasitic elite that rule us so don’t be fooled that state ownership is public ownership because the state only exists to prevent those who create wealth from accessing it. Any state-owned business will be systematically underfunded to keep the taxes of the rich at a bare minimum with all of the subsequent industrial unrest that this inevitably causes.

We are sometimes told that ‘socialist sects’ should all join up in a mass coalition to have more power but it doesn’t matter a jot how much power you have if you are ignorant of the origins of your ideologies and the true nature of capitalism whether it’s in traditional bourgeois form or of the state capitalist incarnation – neither can, or will, improve your life.

Wez.

Was capitalism historically inevitable? (2024)

From the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

As with any ‘origin’ story it is notoriously difficult to know where to begin. We might start with the demise of the dinosaurs due to the ‘lucky’ asteroid that struck the Earth some 66 million years ago allowing mammals to flourish in their stead; or we might start with the transition of hunter gatherer communities into private property slave city states; or we might avoid all of these hypotheses and go straight to the Battle of Plataea in Greece in 479 BC.

Why? Because arguably the global capitalism we see today is mainly of a European origin and, in particular, many of its curses and blessings can be assigned to the little island of Britain. We will try to seek out all of the whys and wherefores of this theory and ask if the described economic developments could or would have happened anywhere else on the planet. Inevitability is the totem of any theory of determinism but can we ever be certain that any area of human activity could aspire to this fatalistic description? So let’s return to the Greece of 479 BC where the story begins and see if it will prove to be a robust theory or even elevate it to a tale of historical inevitability.

The Battle of Plataea saw the Persian attempt to conquer Greece finally come to an end. The outcome of any battle can be unpredictable both in terms of who will win and the long-term implications of an outright victory but on this occasion we see that the colonisation of Greece and all of the cultural implications that this implied did not occur. The subsequent intellectual and political flowering of Classical Athens could not have taken place under Persian hegemony. Thus, the adoption of Greek culture by Imperial Rome would not have happened and its rediscovery during the Renaissance could not have occurred in Europe.

It might be argued that, like Vietnam and Afghanistan in our time, the Greek states could never have been completely defeated by the superpower of its time but it was not close to being inevitable that Greece would become the dominant cultural force in European history. And again if Rome had not finally defeated the Carthaginians at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC the conquest of Europe and the subsequent spread of the death cult of Christianity – albeit in constant tension with the rationalism of the Classical inheritance – would not have evolved into the European Reformation where the protestant cause became the ideology of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

In its Puritan incarnation in England this ideology would be the foundation of the revolutionary victory of the capitalist class and the release of finance to invest in inventions and their application during the industrial revolution. This was all made possible by the victory of the parliamentary (bourgeois) army at the Battle of Naseby in 1645. In ideological terms it would seem that too much was dependent on the outcome of battles and the adoption of a historically arbitrary religion to maintain that capitalism was inevitable. But if we look at the underlying material economic trajectory and the class struggle it created what do we find?

We can see that all of the ancient civilisations of note were based on a slave economy. The majority of these slaves were captives of war but as the major empires consolidated the wars became fewer and so the number of slaves decreased. This together with the obvious economic advantage of letting the slaves (now called serfs) have a small holding of land for their self-sufficiency (thus saving the lord their upkeep) made the transition to feudalism ubiquitous in Europe.

There had always been trade between cities and principalities (mercantile capitalism) and many of these merchants became rich and yearned for commensurate political power. Eventually this conflict became violent and these merchants (proto-capitalists) displaced the kings and lords in revolutions that enabled capital to invest in wage labour and amass their fortunes from the subsequent accumulation of surplus value.

The particular nature of the ideologies that were used to get the majority to fight and die for their cause seems secondary to the class struggle and productive innovations that provoked them. In this Marxian scenario the classical inheritance and the ideology of Christianity would not be of primary importance – the human capacity for technical innovation would initiate different modes of production which in turn would create antagonistic social groups (classes) which alone could drive progress and be independent of the contemporary ideologies that were used to understand and justify this phenomenon. It would not be until the emergence of socialist thinking that these dialectical economic and social forces could be fully understood.

It is challenging trying to imagine alternative histories – Europe without the inspiration of classical Greece and Rome; the world without the combination of an early bourgeois revolution and a preponderance of surface coal to power the industrial might that allowed the small island of Britain to rule much of the globe; the world without the capricious act of Constantine the Great making the obscure cult of Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire etc.

Yet these phenomena were all dependent on the uncertainties of war and could have gone either way depending on various elements including blind luck. Europe’s state religion might have been one of the forgotten cults of Carthage and the lingua franca of the world might be Phoenician-based instead of English. But the Marxian contention is that we would still have ended up with global capitalism even if it would have taken longer (the French had to wait a full 150 years after the English for their revolution and Germany didn’t have one at all). Speaking of warfare, some soldiers came to believe that if a bullet had their name on it there was nothing to be done other than accept one’s fate – let’s hope that the world can enjoy many years of the equality and peace delivered by socialism before a meteorite crashes into Earth with our species’ name written on it.

Wez.

The media and the mob (2024)

From the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent riots, triggered but not caused by the Southport stabbings, have reopened the debate concerning who should have the right to disseminate information (news). The ‘establishment’ mainstream media have resumed their unceasing war against the ‘misinformation’ of social media.

At the heart of this debate lies the terror of our rulers and their media that they will lose control of the political narrative that they have monopolised for so long. They conveniently forget that their newspapers’ continual demonisation of immigrants has normalised racism for many and that in their desperation to evade EU banking rules through lying about the benefits of ‘Brexit’ it has been the mainstream media who have created the noxious racist atmosphere that fed the violence.

Loathsome internet ‘influencers’ like Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate and Katie Hopkins would have no cultural platform were it not for the unceasing propaganda of the mainstream media. The media have created a Frankenstein monster and now that it has served its purpose they need to control and tame it. The elite of both left and right politics condemn the ‘mob’ violence without taking any responsibility for creating the toxic cultural atmosphere that made it inevitable.

‘Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism’ (Oscar Wilde).

This was true until very recently when those outside of the media establishment (fourth estate) discovered the internet and found their voice. The powerful have always known that the control of information and, more importantly, its interpretation, is vital to their interests. Sometimes we are told that we have a ‘free press’ but the claim that it is not ‘state owned’ in no way guarantees that it is ‘free’. Owning the mass media has always been a preoccupation with the parasite class and the classic Murdoch versus Maxwell struggle was an example of this pissing contest for status within their class.

Their basic narrative is that capitalism is the only possible, and indeed the highest, creation of civilised economic organisation. This fact turns most of their ‘news’ content into mere political propaganda. Presumably they are aware that they are lying but it is not always as starkly simple as that; take the proposition that high taxes are bad for the economy since they deter investment and thus employment – and from a capitalist perspective this is true. But, from a working-class perspective, low taxation for the rich means an enfeebled infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc) which impacts exclusively on their class and so renders the cuts bad for their economic and social needs – also equally true. No amount of ‘fact checking’ can resolve the reality of this class struggle as within capitalism such internal contradictions are always present. Indeed, this is the primary ‘fact’ contained in any interpretation of information – the rest is pure rhetoric.

From the time of Ancient Rome the ‘people’ are considered to be a mindless mob when they indulge in any protest against conditions. The protagonists of the ‘Farage riots’ were universally condemned as mindless thugs without any reference to their representatives in Parliament (Reform Party) or the legitimisation of such actions by none other than the former president of the USA Donald Trump who lionised the rioters at the Washington Capitol building. The rioters of the infamous ‘Gordon riots’ were similarly condemned with no reference to the toxic anti-Catholic culture which, like the anti-Muslim environment of the UK today, was created by the establishment for their own political needs.

The alleged disappointment of Nigel Farage when he discovered that the murderer in Southport was not a Muslim is an example of the instincts of the monstrous demagogues that capitalism creates. The present political system effectively locks out the people from any democratic expression of their concerns for five years so it is no surprise that such imposed political impotence will erupt into violence occasionally. Only the time-honoured right to a ‘petition of Parliament’ still exists but this cannot change anything in the absence of real democracy.

Although the ‘outrages’ of racist violence are universally condemned by agencies of the state they do provide a useful distraction from the real causes of the symptoms of capitalism. Immigration, racism, culture wars, two-tier policing and myriad other social problems conveniently divert the working class from prosecuting the class struggle.

All of these problems affect the majority who live in the real world of capitalist exploitation but not those who benefit from it. They have no concern for, or knowledge of, those living in poverty; without access to proper health care; poor education; terrible industrial relations, low wage jobs etc, etc.

The former Home Secretary under Thatcher, Willie Whitelaw, said, as he gazed out on the extensive grounds of his mansion, that the race riots of the early eighties did not belong in the England that he recognised. Most of the racist thugs who joyfully attacked hotels containing immigrants have no knowledge or understanding of that other world of luxury and decadence. They only know the daily struggle to make a living that occasionally fails completely to provide for their own and their family’s needs. Someone must be to blame for the misery and the capitalist media always have ready-made scapegoats available to distract the politically naive from the culpability of the parasites whose cause they slavishly serve.

Wez.

Government by the few for the few (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manifestos have been published, promises have been made and intentions made opaque by the vagueness that always accompanies the usual mixture of hope, cynicism and downright duplicity displayed by establishment politicians. We can now all sit back and await the inevitable failures, betrayals and hypocrisy of a new government.

This is not a statement of cynical bitterness or even one resulting from the betrayed hopes of the past but merely a recognition of what the state (of which the government is merely the executive) was created for and how it has evolved. We are always told at election time that the people have the power to create political change by voting for one political party or another – this lies at the heart of the claim that ours is a ‘democratic’ country. Many believe the last 14 years of Tory rule has been a failure but the rich have become richer, the state has become ever more powerful and the Washington oligarchs couldn’t be more pleased with the government’s subservience to their imperial needs. From a ruling class perspective the Tories have delivered everything they desired.

Of course, there have been the odd ideologues who actually believe the propaganda and seek some kind of radical right-wing changes (Braverman, Truss, Patel etc.) who have rocked the boat but they have been seen off and it was business as usual. These individuals, together with their left-wing counterparts like Corbyn, Galloway and Abbott, really seem to believe that government action can improve people’s lives. Perhaps a reality check is timely for those idealists and for anyone who still believes that a government can be a vehicle for the profound change that our society so desperately needs.

The origin of parliament

The relationship between the King and his barons had, since medieval times, been a tense struggle for money and power. On many occasions actual wars broke out, and there were subsequent attempts to reach a settlement between the King and his court and the barons and their private armies, of which the most famous were a series called Magna Carta. The King was obliged to call on the advice of the kingdom’s magnates before raising taxes or going to war etc. This is the origin of governance through parliament.

As the nation-state became increasingly centralised during the Tudor period the financial system grew ever more complex requiring a specialism that was quite alien to most aristocrats. The ‘House of Commons’ became ever more important as it consisted of those who knew how to exploit the labour force for profit and so contributed the lion’s share of taxable revenue. This evolution was accelerated by the political revolution of 1642 and subsequently, despite an attempted counter revolution by the King in 1688, the capitalist class through their representatives in parliament became the dominant political and economic power. However, the purpose of the government did not change as its primary purpose remained to serve the economic needs of another tiny parasitic class.

Governments and the states they control have never existed to serve the needs of the people as a whole but only to preserve the wealth and power of parasitic elites. The first rule of any parliament is: thou shall not over-burden the wealthy with taxes, and so the running of the nation’s infrastructure is always accomplished with the least expenditure possible. The second rule is to ensure that no laws should be passed that in any way impede profitability, and so ensure that those who create wealth never have direct access to it, but only through a system of rationing called wages and salaries. Despite this, many political idealists continue to believe that social improvement is possible using the state and its government. But why this political illusion and the normalisation of this political lie?

Republicans ancient and modern

The capitalist class’s need to legitimise their form of government has a long history. Many ‘gentlemen’ historians of the past, and some even today, look back to the likes of Cicero as a hero of republican virtues, struggling against malign populists and demagogues like Catiline and Julius Caesar. He allegedly stood for constitutional values and anti-tyranny, but this overlooks his involvement with the murder squads that were sent out by the Senate to destroy anyone who spoke of reforming the system to benefit the people. His hands were drenched with the blood of those who challenged the oligarchs in control of a Senate (government) that ensured their continual accumulation of wealth and power.

There is no evidence that Catiline or Caesar ever intended to destroy Rome and we have only Cicero’s words to that effect. Of course he never mentioned the class interests that he served and all his rhetoric about the ‘Republic’ merely obscured his real motive to preserve the power and economic interests of the patrician elite. All reformers were demonised as wreckers of society – sound familiar?

Any governments who call themselves republics are essentially the same as their ancient counterparts. They believe in an elite that are entitled to rule through tradition and, usually, inherited wealth. Although the UK calls itself a constitutional monarchy it is, in fact, no different from the capitalist republics described above – the monarch is one of the wealthiest capitalists of them all. So the tradition for all capitalist governments is to talk continuously about democracy whilst ensuring its impossibility. But the gloomy gothic corridors of power within Westminster are not the only, or even the most important, centre of political power.

Since the Second World War the ruling class of this country have aligned themselves with the interests of the Washington oligarchs and so become willing subjects of US imperialism. No UK ‘foreign policy’ is decided without consulting this military empire (aka NATO). Even after Brexit, the EU together with the WTO and the World Bank have a significant impact on what Westminster can do economically, and this leads us to another great power on the global stage, the multi-national corporations. Their lobbying of governments is unceasing and connections with politicians, corrupt or otherwise, is undeniable. Many of the same individuals are involved in these organisations which can deservedly be called ‘the establishment’. They all share a common interest in defending their trade-routes, market share, cheap labour, natural resources etc. from the other capitalist cabals of Russia and China. But all of them are subject to the ultimate power of the anarchic fluctuations of capitalist economics which none of them, it would seem, have much understanding of.

The excuse of the recent Tory government for its manifest failures were the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine – both of which might have been predicted but would anyway have been ignored by the overriding necessity for economic ‘growth’ and bigger profits. Given all this one is tempted to ask, what is the point of national governments? The oligarchs of ancient Rome, like Cicero and Cato, could tell you why – to preserve the illusion of national/tribal communal interest and deny class division so as to exclude the majority from power.

Starmer is no different from his war-mongering predecessor Blair and will do anything to placate the power of the ‘establishment’. Like Cicero he will claim to be a protector of legitimacy and justice but will be infinitely flexible when he is required to excuse genocide in Gaza or persecute the sick and the unemployed. Remember, the parasites and their defenders like the Labour Party depend on the masses of workers to produce the means and wealth for their own continued exploitation. The real historical power belongs to us workers and we must turn away from these hypocrites, liars and fools and take responsibility for this world into our own hands.

Wez.

Fascism as ideology (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us, sooner or later, want the chaos, suffering and euphoria of existence to have some meaning. Many find meaning in relationships, family and, if they are very lucky, in their work. Others look to political/religious ideologies for answers. There is no shortage of choice in the modern world. Unlike former generations we are not only conditioned by our local experiences but we can turn to a cornucopia of ideologies courtesy of the media and internet.

It would seem that we have an almost infinite variety to choose from but, as with all forms of consumerism, this can prove to be an illusion. With the decline of religious ideologies in the technologically advanced West we see the dominance of a single political perspective that places all ideologies within a spectrum of left and right forms of capitalism. Because of historical developments we see that bourgeois representative democracies place themselves in the ‘centre’ of this spectrum. They look out upon the spread from this ‘core’ as deviations and the further away from this imagined centre the more the convenient and, in this context, descriptive word of ‘extremist’ is used. Even the Greens and environmentalist groups, after some resistance, have been placed on the left of this spectrum since they have no answers other than the tired impotent call for the reform of capitalism. Only socialists stand outside of this rigid ideologically prescriptive domination and refuse to acknowledge its political relevance.

We won’t go into the historical reasons why this universal ideology of left and right evolved but its continued dominance is plainly due to those who own the means of production, in this context primarily the media, who cannot or will not conceive of an alternative to capitalism; as Marx has said the dominant ideology is always that of the dominant class.

In the last century two ideologies came to dominate the political landscape of Europe – ‘Fascism’ and Soviet-style ‘Communism’. They were both conceived of as alternatives to ‘normal’ or ‘bourgeois’ capitalism. Any meaningful analysis of either of these types of regime reveals that they had a lot more in common with each other and with the conventional capitalism within which they evolved than they would care to admit. Both were militaristic, authoritarian, xenophobic and, most importantly, both condemned the majority to the same meaningless wage slavery and the relentless creation of surplus value to finance the lifestyles of their elites. We have explained the reasons for the failed experiment by the Bolsheviks to turn Marxian analysis into an ideology on these pages many times and it may be appropriate to label their state capitalism, among many other criticisms, as anachronistic – especially in a European context. Can we say the same of fascism?

In some respects, ideologies are impervious to the accusation of being anachronistic; all religions tend to have their roots in the distant past but this does not affect their popularity and cultural durability. We might point optimistically to the demise of religion in the western cultures but millions across the globe still adhere to values and laws prescribed by imaginary deities and their priests. Given the undoubted crimes committed by those calling themselves fascist their ideology has been elevated to the highest ranks of historical infamy. That it is merely a form of capitalism that developed in a specific cultural context does not affect its continual attraction for the dispossessed, fearful, uneducated and those desperate to believe that they and their cultural identity are superior to that of all others. The weak are always tempted to identify with the strong so that their own frailty and fear is diluted.

Is it possible to conceive of the world without the use of an ideological lens? Socialists believe that we can at least negate some of the conditioning that we are all subjected to through a study of history. It would seem that all ideologies are generated by and serve certain groups (classes) and that the actual content of them is of little importance compared with the political control that they enable.

It would be impossible to seriously maintain that the conflicts in England during the revolution of the 1640s had anything remotely to do with the preachings of an obscure rabbi 1600 years earlier in Judea. What promoted Puritanism were the political needs of the rising class of capitalists. This historical ‘class struggle’, so socialists believe, underlies all ideological belief.

We embrace this struggle for what it is and have no interest in lecturing people about the moral strengths and weaknesses of comparing left and right or the possibility of repairing capitalism through the application of one ideology or another. The inhuman outrages committed in the name of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are the results of ideological detritus used by the oligarchs of Israel and Palestine to justify their greed, fear and hatred. This visceral hatred of the working class for their counterparts in another culture is the lifeblood of ‘fascism’. One of the excuses used for the Russian oligarchs’ invasion of Ukraine was that it was a hotbed of Nazi fascists – forgetting the vicious brand of rabid nationalism in their own homeland.

Fascism and its left-wing counterpart will always find fertile ground to grow within the corrupt and rotting capitalist culture. No amount of wishful thinking that we have ‘moved on’ and that such ideologies are anachronistic will put these genies back in their respective bottles. They cannot be countered by mere moral or rational argument but only by class consciousness that understands their historical origins and the political elites that they served.

There are some who believe that this too constitutes just another ideological perspective but even if this were true then at least it serves the needs of a class composed of the vast majority of the human species. Socialism can never be imposed by any elite and so the resolution of the class struggle can only be achieved through the understanding by the majority of what they have to do to counter the need for ideologies and the political ignorance and historical anachronisms that they all represent.

Wez.

A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work? (2024)

From the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The expectation, within an exchange economy like capitalism, is that products and services are exchanged in a like-for-like measure of value. The money you pay for anything is a contract of exchange based on the promise of equal value. Your money is a universal commodity that legally ensures this and, for the most part, it will be a reality of economic activity. Although universally accepted this description of a transaction makes a rather naive assumption about the nature and definition of ‘value’.

Economists have long pondered on this phenomenon and continue to disagree as to its nature and even its efficacy in describing financial activity. There are deep ideological reasons for the attempt to divide the disciplines of politics and economics but anyone genuinely seeking to understand the history of this most basic, and important, social activity will quickly discover the impossibility of doing so.

The defenders of capitalism will go to great lengths to try and prove that the system has coherence, equality and fairness built into its transactional process so that any hint of irrational and exploitative elements will be described as originating in ‘ideological extremism’ or be completely ignored. Such is the grip of this economic propaganda that very few are willing to concede the possibility of the establishment of a non-exchange economy called socialism.

Consider the meaning and implications of the title of this article in the light of what socialists believe to be the most glaring example of an irrational and unequal economic exchange within the capitalist system – the exchange of labour for wages. We have all heard the phrase: ‘He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’. This hints at both an economic suspicion and a moral criticism of the system based on a notion that price and value are not the same thing. As described above we usually experience an assumed parity of value when we buy anything and, despite the vagaries of supply and demand, this is indeed the case. But if we describe wages/salaries as the price of labour power we see immediately a disparity of value that this represents in terms of the value produced and the profits enjoyed by non-producers.

The only possible conclusion is that wages do not represent the full value of what a worker produces – if it did there would be no profit and no capitalism. Labour power is the only commodity that can produce more value than is represented by its price (wages). If this is a correct analysis it condemns the capitalist system as one of exploitation and theft which is why, as mentioned above, those who defend the system could never acknowledge this obvious truth and go to such great lengths to obfuscate it in their tortuous economic theories.

This doesn’t imply a massive conspiracy theory against the truth but merely a profound ignorance of the reality of economic activity. How has this come about? Socialists contend that it is because of the confusion and misunderstanding of the relationship between price and use-value. To try and untangle this we have to go back and understand the concept of value.

It is a fascinating study to understand what different societies in different times have considered valuable. Other than human qualities like intelligence, courage, moral integrity and compassion we have attributed value to objects of our and nature’s creation such as gold, silver, gem stones, art, music, antiques, etc. Phenomena of great utility like oil, gas, water, metals and wood have enjoyed varied levels of prestige through the ages but one thing above all others has been valued the most – social status through the accumulation of wealth together with the political power it generates.

To overcome the impracticalities of direct exchange via barter one item of wealth ultimately evolved into currency (money), something that could be exchanged for anything else. As trade expanded it became necessary to produce such coins in a universally acknowledged medium of value such as gold or silver which was in turn superseded by a legal attachment to these material incarnations of value and then merely to the prestige and power of the state (fiat money). But at the root of all of these commodities is human labour. Gold and oil are not valuable because they are rare but because of the labour-time needed in finding and extracting them (due to their rarity).

The price of the labour power expended to do this is determined by the amount of labour needed to create (training, etc) and maintain it (means of life/standard of living). But the price paid for labour power is always much less than the price paid for the results of labour like gold and so on. Those who produce wealth only get in return the value incarnated in the price of their labour power (wages) and not the price incarnated in the value of what they produce.

Surplus value is the difference between the wealth represented by the wages of producers and the wealth generated by their labour. When the products of this labour are exchanged (sold) this magnitude of difference becomes profit – part of which can be resurrected as capital which is used to expand this whole cycle of exploitation over again and again. Capitalism depends on the fact that a day’s wages do not represent the value of a day’s work. No ‘redistribution’ of wealth can overcome this essential fact of capitalism. Exploitation occurs at the point of production and is immoral, irrational and a relic of the past. No form of exchange economy within an advanced technological culture is needed – indeed capitalism represents a fetter on production. It is a remnant of class inequality and has no shred of economic coherence or relevance for the 21st century.

Wez

What has capitalism ever done for us? (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some who read Marx’s seminal work Capital are quite surprised, or even shocked, to encounter the great revolutionary extolling the virtues of the capitalist mode of production. We even encounter reactionaries using this to somehow justify their faith in the contemporary version of capitalism and its corrupt and destructive nature. They seem to believe that this shows even capitalism’s greatest enemy to be complicit in their admiration for exploitation, inequality and injustice.

For socialists this merely illustrates their ignorance of the evolution of the productive forces and the historical context it creates. Just as the Left continually point to the promotion of the state ownership of industry in The Communist Manifesto as still being relevant as a policy today we see a complete misunderstanding of how history proceeds and how it decides what political strategies are relevant at a particular time and place and not the ideological needs of the radicals of either the Left or Right.

It goes even deeper than this because for many, and unfortunately this includes the great majority, it is inconceivable that although humanity has created the economic systems we cannot control them – they control us. Just as in nature the evolutionary forces are beyond the control of any particular species so the cultural and economic manifestations of human productive activity have been a matter of mystery and so elude those who seek to understand and so control them. Ironically, we only realise this now because economic evolution’s current historical context has made this possible. Marx wasn’t born with a specific genius to understand capitalism but capitalism created the possibility that someone like him could understand it. Everything depends on historical context – and here’s why.

The success of our species is entirely due to our technologies – from bone axes to nuclear power and from the invention of language to its abstraction called writing our frail bodies have been protected, to a great degree, from the murderous rigours of nature. The eventual symbiosis of humanity and its technologies evolved into a total synthesis where it became meaningless to speak of one without the other. An understanding of humanity and its cultural evolution became the study of modes of production and the specific classes that became politically dominant because of this.

Any dissection of the propaganda/ideology of these dominant groups always reveals an economic foundation. In this country in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the struggle between capitalism and its representatives and the reactionary forces of feudal autocracy was bloody and without pity. The superficial religious ideologies of either side were promoted as the cause of the conflict but we see it now as the climax of a great class struggle created by emerging and old forms of production and their economic and political prerequisites. We also see that the attempted establishment of socialism by the True Levellers or Diggers was premature and only happened because of the political anarchy of the time. Not only were Cromwell and his bourgeois followers extremely successful at war but also at commerce, trade and exploitation. With the exception of a brief attempt at a counter-revolution in 1688, which was easily crushed, capitalism was established and the liberation of the productive forces was unleashed.

This ‘Industrial Revolution’ is what Marx refers to in his praise of capitalism. To him the creation of an educated working class together with the explosion of production (which made such education necessary) were the requisites of socialism. Capitalism was, for him, just a stepping stone towards socialism. Those who thought that socialism could be imposed without going through this capitalist stage have only to look to the tragedy of Bolshevik Russia to find their answer.

Today after unprecedented acceleration and change we find that capitalism has developed to a stage where automation, computerisation and organisation have the potential to liberate humanity from hunger, disease, ignorance, superstition and cultural isolation but instead we see food destroyed because it cannot be sold at a profit, medicine being priced beyond the means of those who need it most, systematic subversion of education into ideological conditioning, rising religious intolerance and the turning of information into fake news on the internet. Why? Because capitalism, like feudalism before it, has become a fetter on production. Production for profit necessitates buying power to create viable markets but also partly negates this consumerism by continually seeking to hold back the wages of those who produce the commodities that they are obliged to buy back! Today’s historical context renders capitalism irrational and anachronistic.

In the movie Kingdom of Heaven the character Balian asks Saladin: ‘What’s Jerusalem worth?’ The Saracen leader turns and says ‘Nothing’ but after a pause he turns again and says, with a smile, ‘Everything’. The same reply would be relevant to the question that is the title of this article. Capitalism and socialism are not involved in an eternal struggle resembling positions of ‘right or wrong’ or ‘good or evil’ but rather one of the recognition or otherwise of historical inevitability. The tiny parasite class and their ideological lickspittles of the mass media would still have us believe that in the midst of economic crises, war, pandemics, poverty, racism, genocide and crime that capitalism is still ‘the best of all possible worlds’.

Wez.

Education, politics and language (2009)

From the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today’s education system is presented as preparation for a ‘career’ ignoring the political conditioning it also involves.

Our species is unique in terms of the length of our childhood. Most believe this to be so because of the advantages of learning which can be passed on culturally. In the natural environment as opposed to the cultural human one, we would not progress very far if we had to learn through personal experience how to create the technological world in which we live.

Vital in this process is an efficient way in which to communicate the lessons of the past – language. As a child grows it exhibits a skill for language that still amazes those who study and analyse the process. Capitalism depends on an authoritarian social structure that seeks to justify and protect the minority who currently have social power. It is not surprising to socialists, then, that these values are also communicated within the process of the ‘education’ of the young. Together with the more obvious forms of coercion: continual testing to destroy communal feelings by presenting others as competition; enforcement of uniformity in appearance to suppress individuality; living by the clock to impose the illusion of the normality of life as a wage slave; the presentation of ‘careers’ such as in the military or banking as being acceptable rather than lives celebrating murder or the exploitation of their fellow man – there is also a far more powerful and subversive use of language that this article will seek to illustrate.

Before continuing this analysis we must mention the other type of education that exists within capitalist societies – what, in this country are called public schools. They possess, unsurprisingly, a very different ethos than that described above. For the children of the elite who are not taught at home, these institutions exist to prepare their pupils for university where they learn the techniques needed for the City, Westminster, Inns of Court or any of the other institutions dedicated to the suppression and exploitation of the majority class. That this is self-evident to socialists but is seen as an expression of envy and class ‘hatred’ by the Establishment and even by many members of the working class itself is testament to the power of education and its social values (on both sides).

To the powerful, of course, a socialist education is political manipulation based on propaganda. That to many the education system is seen as preparation for a ‘career’ rather than political conditioning is evidence of the subversion of the very language used to describe the world. In an effort to present the current social structure the language used presents it as the only possible world and any alternative as either naïve or dangerous fantasy. Why else would it be considered reasonable to debate the existence of a supernatural entity that created the universe (God) but ridiculous to explore the possibility of a stateless and moneyless rational society?

Speaking of money – a great way to start an analysis of the subversion of language in this society. How many times have we heard that money can give us ‘independence’ and ‘choice’? For instance it is said that it gives us the ability to travel. Apparently we don’t need the labour and talent that produces cars, boats, trains and planes. What need do we have of shoes, food, clothes and maps to get to our destination? The idea that money can create these things is one of the great illusions implicit within our language.

All the coloured paper and shiny coins in the world will not get you across water unless someone builds you a boat – and not just someone but hundreds and even thousands are involved in producing the possibility of travel. Money represents an involuntary contract that involves an interdependence of, sometimes, global labour – the complete opposite of ‘independence’. And how many times have you heard it said that King Henry built this castle and Lord Muck built that stately home? No designers, masons, architects or carpenters were apparently involved. For many it is money that creates our world and not the interdependent labour of us all. What is this if not a political subversion of language?

Perhaps the ultimate triumph of this kind of linguistic perversion is the contemporary view of what constitutes ‘politics’ itself. We are told that we live in a ‘democracy’ in which we are free to choose what kind of society we live in. But the most important of all political decisions – what the community produces – is never subjected to any kind of democratic process. Instead the city brokers merely decide which commodities will deliver the greatest or most reliable profits. In other words these decisions are made by a tiny elite minority in the interests of an even smaller minority. In capitalist society the only ‘choice’ voters have is who will decide how taxes are distributed to create and maintain the state infrastructure – armies, police, road, rail, law, health and social security system and, of course, the education system.

Even this choice is only ‘given’ to the people once every five years between two political parties with no important differences in ideology. And this is political democracy? Apart from its obvious farcical and unjust nature it makes politics so boring. It’s not just cynicism that turns people off from this ‘media politics’ it is that it’s been sucked dry of meaning and now only represents platitudes and repetitious clichés. But this is the way our rulers like it. Their media continues to produce meaningless garbage about political celebrities (leaders) and evil foreigners or unions, knowing that while their readers are obsessed with such trivia nothing will ever change. This is the primary aim of our education system – the inculcation of language without political meaning.

 

For over one hundred years the task of the socialist party has been to counter the propaganda of the status quo. Not just in ideological terms but in trying to restore meaning to political language. Even our opponents have to admit that the meaning they give to words like socialism, democracy, human nature, economics, history and politics itself is very different from ours.

Although socialists grow weary of redefining the very language of politics for every individual new to our perspective it is quite possible that when we find we do not have to do so, then change is close. For although the ruling class seek to own the language as they own everything else, the needs of a highly technical means of production necessitate a higher and more flexible education system. Their wealth may give them power but it cannot give them intelligence or talent – for that they need us.

It may be that the days of a narrow education to fit the needs of a narrow division of labour are past. More of us are not able to tolerate the public school, university ‘experts’ pontificating on politics any more. They must take responsibility for the dire state of the world. The majority are taking possession of knowledge and do not need politicians, priests, doctors, scientists, prime ministers or any other type of ‘leader’ to make political decisions on our behalf.

Wez.

Letter: Rubel and Marx (1982)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rubel and Marx

I write in response to an article by ALB (Luxemburg) in the June Socialist Standard. He makes several comments that I find difficult to understand.

According to Rubel, says ALB, Marx saw the working class as having an "ethical" or "historical" mission to abolish capitalism. ALB later goes on to say that apart from the word "ethical" Rubel's position is similar to the SPGB’s in that if the working class do not make the conscious choice to abolish capitalism or make this "ethical decision" to do so then capitalism will continue.

I believe ALB to be wrong when he assimilates the words "historical" and "ethical" because the ideas these words represent are not compatible. The "historical" mission of the working class is the materialist understanding of its position as a class in society and the pursuit of its own material advantage through the political struggle with the opposing class. This specifically excludes any ethical or moral considerations which to a materialist are irrelevant to the politics of socialism. And so surely when a socialist speaks of the "conscious choice" for socialism he is most definitely not thinking in the “ethical" way that both Rubel and ALB seem to think.

Andrew Westley, 

Sawston. Cambs.

Reply:

Of course the "conscious choice" of the working class to establish socialism will be based on a recognition that it is in their material interest to do so and not on some abstract moral principle and we never meant to suggest otherwise.

We don’t however want to get into an abstract semantic argument about the relative meanings of the words historical, ethical and moral. Suffice it to say that some people argue that any situation in which there is a choice involves a moral or ethical decision; in other words, they are using these words virtually to mean the same thing as choice. We don’t use these words in this way. Rubel does. But there is no need to make a fetish of mere word-forms where the meaning is the same: that socialism can only be the outcome of a deliberate, conscious choice on the part of the working class, in pursuit, as we said, of their material interests — but a choice nevertheless.

Editors.

Video Review: German cultural history and socialism (2024)

Video Review from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 2019 the German band Rammstein released a single and video entitled Deutschland and to anyone interested in popular culture and its relationship with politics this has to rate as one of the most powerful and revealing pieces of work. Rather like this band’s relationship with Germany my relationship with their music is very mixed. As a lover of power guitar riffs I find them matchless but the grotesque nature of some of their imagery I could do without. However, the insights into German culture that they provide are interesting and show an understanding of the popular zeitgeist. I searched the internet for English subtitles but failed to find a suitable version but this may be an advantage for English viewers because in the ignorance of the German language we can focus on the imagery – which is primarily the subject of this essay.

Here are some of the visual references used in the video. We had the aftermath of the battle of the Teutoburg Forest where the Roman legions were famously stopped from expanding the empire further into Germany; the knights of the Holy Roman Empire and the Teutonic knights; the savage Lutheran monks of the Reformation; the 30 Years War; the Hindenburg disaster; the inflation and decadence of the Weimar republic; the Nazis and the V2 rocket; the East Germans in space; the East German ‘communist’ regime; the Red Army Faction in the West and lastly the birth of a Leonberger puppy. A typically (in the context of this essay) Germanic bleak view of their own ‘history’.

It will be noticed that there are no ‘great men’ like Frederick the Great, Arminius, Bismarck or Hitler but only a succession of disasters with the implication that these were caused by some inherent characteristic of the German culture and people. A nice touch is that ‘Germania’ herself is portrayed by a famous black German actress and is the only woman to make an appearance. I say that there were no actual historical characters portrayed but there was one important exception – Karl Marx. He is identified with the East German Bolshevik puppet regime in the form of a looming statue and this is an anachronism to which I will return. Lastly the closing credits sequence is one of the most poignant I have ever seen with a beautiful piano version of another Rammstein song based on the German fairytale of Snow White.

Many of these myths and images were devised by the nationalist intelligentsia of the new German state in an effort to create a ‘German’ historical identity. Of course Rammstein has subverted this project by rejecting any heroic or romantic elements but there remains an acknowledgement of just how powerful the myth is by their embracing an antithetical version of it. Like the children of abusive parents there is still a need to love them – as they say in the lyrics: ‘Germany, your love is a curse and a blessing. Germany, my love I cannot give you.’ I suspect this is how many Germans feel about themselves and their cultural identity. They suspect that they have a darkness of the soul.

This was not always the case. After unification in the nineteenth century Germans were full of optimism for the future as is evidenced by the mass membership of the Second International. But this was to be fatally undermined by the nationalism that destroyed it and made the descent into the madness of the First World War possible. The socialism of Marx and the First International was lost. Many reasons are given for this including the theory that it was the failure of the German revolution of 1848 that enabled the slide back into autocracy and militarism which was to last, with the exception of the short-lived and failed Weimar Republic, until the Nazi defeat in 1945. With the partition after the war the Bolshevik puppet state of East Germany was identified with socialism and since this is where Rammstein originated it’s not surprising that we see Marx identified with this state in the video.

This identification with a cultural past is one of the main aspects of nationalist politics and is an important obstacle to socialist consciousness. Of course we are all created by the historical context into which we are born and there are many positive aspects of all cultures that should be celebrated but the danger is that political elites use them to create myths of superiority and exclusivity that form the foundations of reactionary nationalist ideology. Cultural development depends on the intersection of human communities and a flourishing delight in the novelty and ingenuity of invention and imagination of other people and their language and myths – it is the enemy of the fear caused by ignorance and the political manipulation and creation of suspicion that elites use to protect their wealth and power when they feel under threat.

There has been a long and celebrated aesthetic contrast between the Europe of the north and that of the south. The Mediterranean cultures of Greece and Rome have represented light, logic and democracy whereas the dark forests of the north represent the brooding aesthetic of the Romantic and the Gothic. It was the Goths who destroyed the Western Roman Empire and inaugurated the European ‘Dark Ages’ where the material culture and intellectual progress of the classical age was lost for hundreds of years until it flickered back into life during the Renaissance. We can enjoy both aesthetic traditions but the political consequences of Romanticism have always been highly problematic. Can we make cultural connections with political evolution? The Enlightenment was the inheritor of the classical tradition of reason and logic but in the hands of the bourgeoisie it became an oppressive and inhuman transition from quality to quantity – everything had to have a numerical equivalent before it was considered to be a ‘science’.

From what cultural inheritance does socialism emerge? Perhaps, like capitalism, socialism has primarily European origins – certainly the Marxian tradition is steeped in the tradition of French politics, German philosophy and British economics. German culture gave birth to both Nietzsche and Marx whose legacies still combat each other today. German nihilism still haunts us and perhaps, after Auschwitz, always will. As socialists we must never ignore cultural myths and realities. As this video shows, such identification still runs deep within the working class.

Wez.

Socialists and the Left (2022)

From the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people don’t realise that not only does the Socialist Party deny being part of ‘the left-wing’, it actively opposes it.

During the last century capitalism saw many profound economic and political convulsions and these gave birth to countless political movements which claimed to either be able to ‘fix’ the system or to have transcended it in the name of socialism. For various ideological reasons many journalists, historians and other cultural commentators accepted this self-identification by such groups without considering the definition and history of socialism. The upshot was that any ‘radical’ movement, from the Labour Party to the Bolsheviks and from the Khmer Rouge to the Social Democrats, could call themselves socialist. The term socialist and/or communist had lost its meaning in a swamp of Orwellian double speak. Not that this was the only word to suffer such a fate, as the terms democratic, scientific, freedom, liberation, justice, equality and countless other progressive ideas were also gobbled up and spat out by capitalist culture and its ideologues.

What was left was a choice between so-called right-wing capitalism and left-wing capitalism or, in other words, no choice at all. Through all of this one organisation obstinately stayed outside of this ‘mainstream’ political consensus – the World Socialist Movement (WSM). It continues to be dismissed for being ‘sectarian’, impossibilist’, ‘elitist’, ‘purist’ and other even less flattering names. The fact remains, however, that despite the Left’s mass following and success in attaining power, both constitutionally and through violent coups, it has changed nothing and in many parts of the world has made things worse for the working class.

Back to 1789

Anyone who thinks our opposition to the term ‘left-wing’ is merely semantic should remember the origins of the battle between socialists and the Left. The political designations of left and right go back to the events of the French Revolution of 1789. The French National Assembly was composed of those who supported the king (who sat on the President’s right) and those who supported the revolution, who sat on the left. Ever since that time political analysts have tried to fit all ideologies into these binary categories of ‘reactionary’ (right) and ‘progressive’ (left).

From the beginning this was not a very helpful tool for understanding political perspectives and developments as the ferocious debate between the Marxists and anarchists of the First International illustrates, since they were both supposed to be members of the left-wing. It is only recently that mainstream political commentators have started to give up on this simplistic fiction, because of the development of ‘populism’ and ‘environmentalism’, both of which refuse to fit neatly within the old categories. The WSM have long since regarded both the left and right as being merely different ways of supporting capitalism and have always opposed both.

Initially most groups calling themselves socialist shared an understanding that the concept referred to ‘the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.’ Eventually some groups, unwilling perhaps to abandon capitalist features like money, authoritarian institutions and national identity etc., began to talk of reforming the current system rather than a revolutionary abolition of it. Their elevation of the state as an institution that could serve the working class instead of oppressing it was at the root of the divergence between socialists and the Left. Such was the way that the ultimate political oxymoron was conceived: ‘state socialism’ .

Bismarck’s ‘welfare state’

The first champion of ‘state socialism’ was Ferdinand Lassalle, who was prominent in organising the first socialist party (Social Democratic Movement) in Germany but came to believe, in contrast to Marx, that the state was a politically neutral organisation that could continue to exist in socialism. Ironically it was Otto Von Bismarck (German Chancellor and bitter opponent of socialism) who, after meeting Lassalle, instituted some of his ideas by creating a welfare system in Germany in the 1880s. He did this to try to stall the growing popular support for the Social Democrats.

Ever since that time the capitalist state in various countries has organised welfare systems (pensions, health care, unemployment benefit, etc.) not because they are an expression of socialism but because they are beneficial to a modern capitalist economy. However, any benefit to the working class is undermined because of the capitalist’s hatred of taxation and the chronic underfunding this always causes. The same is true of the state ownership of various businesses mainly connected with infrastructure. To prevent the rise of monopolies within services and production vital to all the parts of the bourgeoisie, state ownership (nationalisation) was and still is a widespread economic necessity for many capitalist states.

The term ‘public ownership’ suggests that the state is politically neutral and can be associated with some form of socialism when, in fact, the very opposite is true. Those who work in the ‘public sector’ will be the first to tell you that their wages and conditions are always in the firing line when the frequent calls to curb public spending are heard. What further compounded the Left’s misunderstanding of the political role of the state were the events unfolding in Russia in 1917.

Lenin’s state capitalism

The Communist Manifesto proposed the state ownership of key industries in order to accelerate the levels of production to those required to establish socialism, but this was never understood by Marx to be socialism itself. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, this was their main economic strategy to transform the country into an industrial powerhouse. Lenin announced that state ownership was ‘socialist’ and argued that it represented a transitional stage to something else called ‘communism’. He went further in declaring that his party’s coup d’état represented a socialist revolution that had swept away capitalism. To add to the confusion he used Marx’s phrase ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’ to justify his autocratic regime. Lenin was being dishonest since he knew that the establishment of socialism in Russia was impossible at that time and that what he was creating was state capitalism.

All the crimes and suffering caused by the Bolsheviks continued to be ideologically justified in the name of socialism. Because of the rise of the reformist Left (which had backed the financing of the First World War in Germany) socialist consciousness had already been fatally eroded, so that many of Europe’s intelligentsia hailed the Russian Revolution as ‘socialist’.

To this day many still believe that socialism means the state ownership of the means of production. It remains a key ideological feature among the Left, who continue to insist that it will help bring about the reform of capitalism, which will benefit the majority (and even lead to socialism). But it’s a fantasy that’s detrimental to human happiness and even to the planet. Since 1914, when the Left betrayed the working class and supported the Great War which led inexorably to the Second World War and then the ‘Cold War’, we have witnessed the constant failure of leftist policies.

In the 21st century the working class are still producing the whole cake while having to beg the rich for a few crumbs. The state exists to prevent the working class from accessing the product of its own labour. This organised theft is legitimised by governments, both left and right, who go through the motions of democracy insofar as this is tolerated by their capitalist masters (as long as their interests are not threatened). The left put on their suits and support business and war to further their political careers whilst leading the world to catastrophe.

Socialists will continue to attack the delusional cul-de-sac of reformism which has failed so miserably, and state capitalism, which usually leads to the gulag.

Wez.

SPGB Meetings (2023)

Party News from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Via the SPGB website:

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a Zoom meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305 (or type the address into your browser address field). Then wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Justice (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us have a sense of “justice”. We can all be outraged if we personally suffer from what we consider to be an injustice. Socialists are often surprised by just how shocked people can be when the inherent injustice of the capitalist system impacts on them as individuals. For many, politics is felt to be remote from their personal lives. It is only when an individual tragedy is suffered that some become politically aware and “active”. An obvious example is when innocent bystanders are injured or killed in a “terrorist outrage” of some kind. The irony is, of course, that such acts are invariably motivated by someone else’s sense of injustice. This might just include the desire for social justice and it is this we will seek to define.

Children are often heard declaring the unfairness of this or that. Amongst siblings any perceived parental preference for one over the other is felt as an intense injustice. In nature this battle for parental attention is a matter of life and death. In humans it is more often a matter of emotional validation for the child. A childhood without the expression of love from the parents is a lonely and terrible place. Any reasonable person would expect a parent to maintain some kind of equality in their response to all of their children. And here is the basis of any concept of justice – social equality. We expect to be treated by others the way we attempt to treat them. The fact that our insecurities and ignorance sometimes make this impossible only increases its importance as a social necessity.

Of course these sentiments have not always been, and in some parts of the world are still not, accepted. For instance it is only in relatively recent times that a female child is considered the equal of a male child. Furthermore, the whole concept of social equality is considered an anathema in hierarchical societies while in Western Europe it is morally acceptable but considered impractical as a political reality.

To an impartial observer, perhaps a tourist from another planet, there is a glaring contradiction between the values expressed by those in power and the social reality. Nowhere is this more exemplified than in capitalism’s legal system. The power of the state is justified by the claim that the law is applied equally to every citizen. Theft in all its forms, with one glaring exception, is condemned and its practitioners pursued. But profit is the ‘raison d’être’ of the whole system and what is this if not lalised theft? The exploitation of labour may be legal but isn’t the taking of wealth from someone without exchanging something of equal value the definition of theft?

A similar hypocrisy exists concerning the crime of murder. The intentional killing of one person by another is illegal and immoral unless committed during a war when the offender is quite likely to receive a medal. Even if we concede the illogicality of the system can it be said that it is applied equally to all? Only the most naïve of us can maintain this when a “good lawyer” can cost a fortune in contrast to one appointed via legal aid.

When the capitalist class began its conquest of political power during the English Revolutions of the 17th century they converted not only the mode of production but also the theory of justice that rationalised its ubiquity. The enclosure of the common land already begun by the old regime was accelerated until wage slavery became the only option for the majority to sustain itself. So like all the subsequent bourgeois revolutions, the capitalist system was created through acts of theft and murder. This new reality was continually defended by theories of justice, which sought only to legitimise the new rulers, and their source of wealth and power – the exploitation of labour for the extraction of profit. Although many were aware of this hypocrisy and sought to redress the injustice of the realities of their lives via trade unions etc., historically there was no alternative to the capitalist mode of production – until much later.

Someone once said that a child has no understanding of justice because it will readily condemn the weather, when it prevents some activity or other, as unfair. It is the same with socialists, that person said, the system is like the weather and we have no power over it – it is the only reality and when socialists complain of its injustice we are like children shaking our fists at the elements. But events are undermining that identification of capitalism with nature as the only reality. Humanity now has the power to feed the world several times over and it is only the law of production for profit that prevents it. Capitalism has evolved the mode of production to a point where it has become an anachronism as an economic and political system. It has indeed created the nails for its own coffin

Theories of “justice” evolve and change in response to the economic realities of human life, and that history might represent the redemption of humanity from its invention of private property is a seductive idea. What the writer knows for sure in his humble role as a socialist propagandist is that capitalism and its defenders are now dealing with a remorseless tide of discontent fuelled, amongst many other things, by the tension between its promises and its reality.

Wez.