The Review Column: Co-op in Trouble (1967)

The Review Column from the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Co-op in Trouble

The latest published results of the Co-operative Wholesale Society confirmed something which everyone knew. The Co-op is well down the slippery slope.

Net trading profits are down from over £3 million in 1965 to £792,000 last year; retail societies’ share of the national retail trade has fallen from 11.9 per cent (1957) to 8.8 per cent (1967). The Sunday Citizen has died, the final collapse coming when the CWS management cut its advertising and public relations spending, which the Citizen relied on, by £800,000.

The Co-op has been left behind in the great post war retail boom. While firms like Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer’s were making rich with their skilfully designed stores, their thoughtful employment policy and their keen prices, the Co-op has seemed to exist with a death wish. Some of its cakes and biscuits, for example, taste as if they came out of a cement mixer and some of its fashions look as if they were designed by a man from the government surplus store.

The CWS is now facing the fact that it can either die, or at best exist feebly—or it can compete. It has chosen the latter. Philip Thomas has been brought in from profit conscious Associated British Foods as chief executive. He has appointed several new top managers, among them another man from ABF and one from Boots. And the axes are starting to swing.

At this year’s CWS Annual Meeting. Thomas promised “hurtful and unpopular decisions . . . substantial economies”. Already some staff privileges have been withdrawn and mergers and closures of factories, with consequent sackings, are in the offing.

In all this, only a passing reference has been made to the fact that the Co-op was once supposed to be different— an example of Socialism, no less, within capitalism. The ghost of this ludicrous idea still walks, and Thomas is out to exorcise it. “Commercial realism . . . the inevitability of economic pressure”: these are the words he is incanting as he tries to save Ihe Co-op’s commnercial soul.

Middle East

To anyone who does not understand the word, it is Socialism which has been at war in the Middle East. President Nasser claims to be a Socialist, and so do many of his allies. There is even something, which they do not define, which they call Arab Socialism. Israel once said that Socialism was being built there, that the kibbutzim were a new way of life free from the commercialism of capitalist society, and that within its borders men would find new freedom and dignity.

But in the recent flare-up both countries showed—if this was necessary—their true nature. Egypt intensified her arguments about the legality of Israel’s frontiers, over the conquest of the port of Eilat and over the extent of Egyptian control over the Straits of Tiran.

Disputes over territorial boundaries and strategic positions, carried on within the complexities of international law—and often in the end by armed force are a familial part of capitalism. They have nothing to do with Socialism, which will be a society without national boundaries and international economic rivalry.

Israel is now the most powerful military nation in the Middle East. Conscription there is comprehensive, with even women battle-trained, and the whole thing is backed up by the sort of hysterical nationalism which demanded the appointment of strong man Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defence.

This intensive militarism had its effect against the ill-trained Egyptian army. These are just some of the descriptions used in just one edition of the Times last month, reporting on the Israeli advance: “masterpiece of mechanized war . . . quick thrusts . . . ruthless air attack”.

Militarism and patriotic hysteria are among the most unpleasant of capitalism’s by-products. They are two of the many antisocial attitudes, so common today, which will not exist under Socialism. That they are so powerful in Israel reveals, if nothing else does, the nature of society there.

Muslims at War (1984)

From the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war between the capitalist ruling minorities of Iran and Iraq is now in its fourth year. Both parties are able to buy as much military weaponry as they require — invariably from the same sellers. Neither side is prepared to compromise; both are determined to carry on fighting until the other accepts its terms and conditions of cease fire. The war could continue for years; so far it has cost the lives of more than a million workers -many of them youths — who have no interests at stake whatsoever. Poison gas has been used; civilian targets have been hit by long-range rockets and fighter planes are dropping napalm bombs. The war is now a testing laboratory for new means of destruction.

The origins of this conflict can be traced back to before the First World War, when Britain, France and Russia agreed secretly to divide the Ottoman Empire between themselves so as to expand the market for their commodities into the heart of the Middle East. After World War One Iraq became a part of the British overseas colonies. Then, in accordance with the principle of Divide and Rule, the whole political map of the Middle East was redrawn, with Iraq showing a majority of people of the Shiite faith. Shiite is an Islamic sect and the official religion of the Iranian ruling minority. Geographically, northern Iraq included a part of Kurdistan, as does Iran. The rich lands along the eastern side of Shatt Al-Arab fell within southern Iraq, but the Iranian ruling class objected to this and attempted to occupy all of the eastern side of the waterway. Iraqi territory was then under British protection, so the Iranian ruling class was impeded in its efforts.

When the map was redrawn Iraqi government fell into the hands of Arabs whose faith was, and still is, Sunni — another Islamic sect. Shiism and Sunnism are conflicting Arab faiths; only a minority of Iraqis are Sunnis. Iraq has never enjoyed political stability because it has constantly suffered from the territorial ambitions of the Iranian ruling class, who lost no opportunities to attack their Iraqi counterparts. Since the 1930s there have been groups existing within the mountains of Kurdistan in Iraq who have rejected the authority of the Iraqi government. As well as the Kurds, the Shiite majority in Iraq has resented Sunni government, feeling that they have been humiliated and discriminated against by the Iraqi ruling minority. In fact these divisions are rooted in economic and political interests and only take the form of religious conflicts. The Iraqi ruling minority was selected at the outset by the British government and have been used as a fist of iron to rule on behalf of capital, including the substantial overseas investments in Iraq. The Iraqi government has machine gunned demonstrators on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi towns. They sent the RAF on bombing raids against the villages of Kurdistan and Arab tribes saw no reason to give up their ways of living and submit to the central authority of Iraq.

As a result of the widespread unpopularity of the government Iraq became a paradise for political opportunists, whose policy was to establish a new government claiming to represent all Iraqi people (not just the Sunnis) and claiming to be committed to individual freedom. In reality, extreme nationalism was the common characteristic of all of them and in the long-term they helped to make the situation-in Iraq even worse. At the head of each of the opportunist parties was an individual or elite drawing support mainly on the basis of tribal loyalty or by bribery and pressure. Each party aimed to capture political power, often using unscrupulous and undemocratic methods such as the infiltration of the Iraqi army. As a result of these tactics, one military coup followed another; the one which brought the present Iraqi ruling elite, the Socialist Arab Baath party, occurred in 1963. Within twenty four hours of the Baath coup the new rulers eliminated their opportunist rivals, so establishing a dictatorship.

The Socialist Arab Baath Party took power with a policy of rigid nationalism and Arabism. They tolerated no opposition, although Baathist ideology was out of touch with the mainstream of Iraqi society. Firstly, more than one quarter of Iraqis are not Arabs and therefore opposed Baathist Arabism. Secondly, most Iraqi Arabs opposed Baathist ideology and openly opposed it as an alien idea. The Baathists responded in extreme terms: they started deporting people of Iranian origin to Iran; they attempted to "Arabise” Kurdish villages and towns; they organised an aggressive military campaign against anti-government forces. The Baathist policy gave the Iranian ruling class a chance to revive their old territorial claims east of Shatt AI-Arab, using the political situation in Iraq as a pre- text. The Baathists refused the Iranian demands, claiming that it was an insult to the Arab nation. Iran used military force to take over eastern Shatt AI-Arab and sent military supplies to anti-government forces in Kurdistan. The Iraqi government in- creased its pressure on the anti-government Iraqi Kurds and, after a hard military campaign, it seemed that the Iraqi government were losing. As a result, Saddam Hussain, the Iraqi dictator, went to Algeria in 1975 to meet the Shah of Iran in order to persuade the latter to stop supplying anti-government forces with military aid. In return the Shah, and the class which he represented, was officially granted eastern Shatt AI-Arab. After this the anti-government forces in Iraqi Kurdistan ceased to exist, but it was a deep humiliation for the Baathists. Another Iranian score needs to be mentioned at this point: in the 1960s the Iranian ruling class gained control of three small islands in the Arabian Gulf which had previously belonged to Britain. The Baathists were resentful about this, believing that these three islands should belong to “the Arab nation”.

The acceptance of Iran’s territorial claims left deep scars on the Iraqi Baathist regime, but they were saved by the fact that hard currency started to rain on them as a result of massively increased Iraqi oil revenue in the mid-1970s, caused by the increased demand by the world’s industrial capitalists. The Baathists devoted a substantial portion of this revenue to buying arms, which were only too readily supplied by the capitalist superpowers. Meanwhile, in Iran the old regime of the Shah collapsed as a result of popular discontent and was replaced by a dictatorship consisting of the followers of Ayatollah Khomeni. The new regime demoralised the Iranian army by executing its officers and dismantling many of its units in an attempt to prevent a counter revolution. This gave the Baathists the opportunity they had been waiting for to take military action against Iran and win back what they had lost. The Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980, was started by the Baathists in the belief that it would be won within a few months. It is a continuation of an old struggle over control of territory and natural resources.

The war in Iran and Iraq is not in the interest of the working class, who are slaughtering each other so that their rulers can expand their spheres of ownership and control. Very few members of the Iranian or Iraqi ruling classes have been killed in the war over the past four years. It is workers — over half a million (more than Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki added together) — who have had to do the dying.

Rahman A. Ahmad

Syria: Bashar Lives Up to His Name (2012)

From the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anybody can claim to be an opponent of the present Syrian government, but what kind of a regime is it proposed to establish in its place?

They have been calling it “the Arab Spring”. Various dictators around the Mediterranean have been overthrown, and successor regimes, more or less distinct from the ones that went before, have been installed. Tunisia’s dictator was thrown out first, to be followed by the dictators of Egypt, Libya, and the Yemen. Now there is a more or less open rebellion in Syria, aimed at overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, the local despot.

The lands stretching across from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf were among the earliest areas to develop what is often called “civilization” – that is, human beings living en masse in larger and larger cities. The Syrian city of Aleppo, for example, has been continuously inhabited for at least five thousand years, and Damascus probably for nearly as long. Several religions trace their origins to this part of the world. Fervent believers in the book of Genesis have often speculated that the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the talkative serpent, and the extremely fertile tree which produced “knowledge” as well as apples were located somewhere in the vicinity. This move to city-dwelling was the result of the spread of the idea of private property, where the land and trading concerns, and anything else which produced wealth, belonged to a small upper class, while the rest of the population, virtually propertyless, worked for the benefit of this group of owners.

Separate states came into being, each ruled by a group of owners. Inevitably, violence became common as people tried to seize economic and political power for themselves within a state, and as each state tried to impose its power on neighbouring states. And so the human race began to know organized warfare. As societies based on private property became more common there was more strife and more violence, and the lands to the east of the Mediterranean became the scene of repeated conflicts. Surrounded by great land masses – Asia to the east, Africa to the south-west, and Europe to the north-west – invading forces came repeatedly from all directions; great armies murdered, looted, raped, and destroyed; empires rose and fell. The result was a great hotchpotch of peoples, each believing themselves to be racially different from those around them, and having different and hostile religious beliefs and loyalties.

Imperialist carve-up

A hundred years ago, this area was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Turkey. Then came the First World War of 1914-18, which the allied powers claimed was to protect the rights of small nations, but which turned out in the end (as you might have expected) to be more about extending the rights of big nations – or the rulers of those nations, at any rate. The Ottoman Empire was on the losing side in that war, and so was carved up at the end of it for the benefit of the victors. The lands between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf were shared between two of the victorious Allies, Britain and France. Britain got (for example) a stretch of territory which it divided up into three separate states, Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine; and France divided up its share into Syria and Lebanon – the latter was kept separate because it seemed it might well have a Catholic majority (like France).

After the share-out at the Treaty of Versailles, both Britain and France had to deal with rebellions in the newly acquired territories. Iraqis who objected to the British take-over were bombed into submission. One Arthur Harris was a young squadron-leader there.  He had found how effective (and risk-free) it was to bomb obnoxious tribesmen on the North-West Frontier in India, and now he did the same in Iraq, helped by the fact that the rebellious Iraqis had no aircraft or anti-aircraft defences. The young airman is supposed to have said, “the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand.”

Bomber Harris was able to put these lessons to good use in the Second World War when he organized the carpet bombing of working-class areas in German cities – that was where the factory workers lived; the houses were smaller and closer together, and of course bombing richer areas would not kill or injure so many of the people who actually did the work. The French had the same problems in Syria as the British did in Iraq; Syria saw a widespread revolt in 1925-7. Fortunately the French were able to bring in troops with much better modern armaments against the lightly armed Syrians, so they were able to establish their superiority.

Coups and counter-coups

Then came the Second World War, which revealed that both Britain and France had now fallen into the ranks of second-class powers, and neither was able to keep up its colonial empire. Iraq became independent, and so did Syria. The prize of forming the government of Syria and ruling it on behalf of its native upper class was vigorously contested. Coups and counter-coups were constant: in the ten years between 1946 and 1956 there were twenty different governments and four newly-drafted constitutions. The same story of violent take-overs continued, even including a “union” with Egypt in 1958, which fell apart in 1961. But such regular upheavals are not good for business; and in 1963 the so-called “Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party” took over. It was not Socialist at all, of course; it had a programme under which the state would run industries and would enforce stability without bothering too much about free speech and so forth.

For a time the fighting for office continued, but now the hostilities were between factions within the Ba’ath Party. A new group seized power in 1966. One of the successful plotters, Hafez al-Assad, became Minister for Defence. After four years and a final capture of authority: Hafez al-Assad became President, and, in fact, dictator. (The two leading members of the former government went to jail.) Hafez was an Alawite, that is, a member of a Shia Muslim sect, and before long Alawites were put in positions of control in the army and in every government body. This was particularly necessary, because most Muslims in Syria are Sunnis, and many Sunnis regard the Alawites as heretics. Any opposition was dealt with as every dictator deals with it: imprisonment, torture, death. Hafez is accused of carrying out thousands of extra-judicial killings. An attempted assassination in 1980 failed: the machine-gun missed. Within hours, 1,200 Islamists held in jail had been slaughtered in their cells at Tadmor Prison by armed groups led by Rifaat al-Assad, the dictator’s brother. But after the confusion and uncertainty of the previous decades most of the Syrian upper class was happy to go along with the new regime. As for the ordinary Syrians, with Hafez, now in control of the newspapers, the radio, and every other means of information, was able to create a nationwide feeling that stability was better than the disorder and constant shifts of the past and began building up his own personality cult. As the Russians had been propagandized into supporting Stalin and the Germans brainwashed into supporting Hitler, so the Syrians were now conned into supporting Hafez.

There was still trouble from some malcontents, especially from those who fancied becoming the rulers themselves. In 1982 there was an insurrection in the city of Hama led by the Muslim Brotherhood who wanted to establish a stricter form of Islam. Hafez ordered the troops in – picked formations commanded by his brother Rifaat – who bombarded Hama, destroying much of the old city and killing (estimates differ) between 15,000 and 40,000 Syrians, nearly all civilians. Rifaat, it seems, later boasted that he had killed 38,000 people in Hama. Two years afterwards Rifaat tried a coup of his own, aiming to replace his brother; it failed, and Rifaat now lives in exile in London. But being the brother of the dictator he had been able to assemble extensive business interests, and he now lives in some comfort in a ten million pound mansion off Park Lane. If you kill one person you will probably end up in jail; but killing thousands seems to have fewer repercussions.

Hereditary despot

Like many dictators, Hafez wanted to be the boss even after he was dead. He had several sons, and the eldest, Bassel, was groomed to succeed him. His second son, Bashar, was allowed to go his own way, and he became a doctor. In 1992 he came to England and studied to become an ophthalmologist – an eye specialist. Then in 1994 Bassel was killed in a car crash. Without asking the Syrians or (apparently) even his own family Hafez now decided that Bashar would have to be the next strong man. And when Hafez died in 2000 the tame Syrian parliament that had previously passed an Act to say the President had to be at least 40 now hurriedly passed another Act to say that he had to be at least 34, which, by great good luck, was exactly Bashar’s age. So Bashar was promoted to field-marshal, which is a rank not many eye doctors have reached, and took over as dictator. There was a “vote”, of course, in which Bashar was the only candidate, and it was announced that 97.3 percent of the Syrians had voted for him. (An improbable result: in our discordant society it is unlikely that 97 percent of voters would agree what day of the week it was). He ruled for seven years, and then another “vote” was held.  This time the officials in charge thought it would be a good idea to claim an even better result, so they said that 97.6 percent had supported the dictator.

Bashar has proved to be a chip off the old block: dissent is dealt with by torture, imprisonment, and death. When early in 2011 a big demonstration was held against his rule, the demonstrators were chased away by the security forces. The regime announced first that there had been no demonstration, and second that there had been a demonstration in favour of Bashar. Protests continued in many towns and cities across the country; soldiers began deserting and taking their guns with them.  Now Syria appears to be on the brink of civil war, with the army moving in to kill any who oppose Bashar and bringing up artillery to pound any supposedly disloyal areas. Districts regained by government forces are decorated with corpses, either with their throats cut or decapitated. Some estimates of the dead put the total as high as 8,000. Many other countries have decided that Bashar cannot survive and regularly issue statements deploring Bashar’s excesses, though Russia and China, in both of which democracy is a rude word, cannot apparently see anything wrong with Bashar’s dictatorship. It is curious to hear the American government, rulers of a country which killed at least 100,000 Iraqis (many think the death toll was at least half a million, or even a million) claiming how shocked they are by a death toll so much smaller than the one they have achieved.

Some people in Syria still support Bashar. They include Alawites, since the privileged position they have held since Hafez took power may provoke revenge if Bashar falls; the Druze, an unorthodox Muslim sect; and the Christians of half a dozen different denominations. All of them fear that if Bashar is succeeded by a Sunni government extreme Islamists may persecute minorities. And, of course, Bashar’s close friends and relatives back him to the hilt.  Bashar’s wife is called Asma. Her parents were Syrians living in London, and she was brought up in England.  And while Bashar’s trusted soldiers and militias polish up new ways to torture and murder the regime’s opponents, Asma has been ordering luxury goods from Paris, including a £10,000 consignment of chandeliers and silver candlesticks.  Why shouldn’t Bashar’s inner circle champion him?

The opponents of Bashar are from every point in the political spectrum, including some who, if they gained power, might well establish a regime compared with which Bashar would look like Little Bo Peep. Those who opposed Stalin included loathsome dictators like Hitler; those who opposed Hitler included loathsome dictators like Stalin. Anybody can claim, probably with absolute sincerity, to be a zealous opponent of the present Syrian Government; but a much more significant question is this – what kind of a regime is it proposed to establish in place of Bashar’s? There are those who think that if Bashar was killed out of hand like Gaddafi of Libya, or hanged like Saddam Hussein of Iraq, or put on trial like Mubarak of Egypt, or chased away into exile like Ben Ali of Tunisia, then democracy with free speech and free elections would miraculously appear fully formed. That may, to say the least, be over-optimistic. No one knows exactly what the future holds; but it is certain that at the present time anybody or any group replacing the present rulers of Syria will continue to run Syrian capitalism for the benefit of the Syrian capitalists, whatever cosmetic reforms they may think it necessary to make.

Alwyn Edgar

War in Syria (2016)

Book Review from the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’, by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami (Pluto Press, 2016)

Of all the countries swept by the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, Syria has been the most unfortunate. The sole response of the Assad regime to peaceful popular protest was ruthless violent repression, eventually resulting in a devastating many-sided civil war, intervention by rival regional and world powers, and massive flows of refugees within the country and across its borders. The authors have drawn on a variety of sources, including interviews with direct participants in the events, to produce an illuminating and often harrowing account from an anti-authoritarian left-wing perspective.

The book begins with necessary historical background, focusing mainly on the various divisions within Syrian society and on the origin and evolution of the Ba’ath (Arab nationalist) regime under Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar. Chapters 3-4 portray the nonviolent phase of the ‘revolution from below’; Chapter 5 explains how resistance to the regime – inevitably under the circumstances – came to assume a primarily military form. Chapter 6 discusses the growth of the initially weak Islamist forces. Chapter 7 (‘Dispossession and Exile’) describes how millions of Syrians became refugees. Chapter 8 highlights the cultural renaissance that accompanied the uprising. Chapter 9 deals with the failure of old opponents of the Ba’ath regime inside and outside the country to play a significant role. The last chapter analyzes the attitudes of the international left toward events in Syria. An epilogue brings the story up to date as of October 2015.

Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami give a preview of their analysis in the Preface. In the areas where the government machine broke down ordinary people began to run their own affairs: ‘For a few brief moments the people changed everything.’). But then

 ‘the counter-revolutions ground them down. The regime’s scorched earth strategy drove millions from the country; those who remained in the liberated zones were forced to focus on survival. Syria became the site of proxy wars, of Sunni-Shia rivalries, of foreign interventions. Iranian and transnational Shia forces backed the regime; foreign Sunni extremists flocked to join the Islamic State… Nobody supported the revolutionaries. ‘

Note that the authors perceive not one but two counter-revolutions – the one represented by the regime and its foreign backers (Iran and later Russia), the other by the Islamic State (IS) and its wealthy patrons in the Gulf States. They even find covert links between these two forces: Assad assisted the growth of Islamism by releasing many Islamist militants from prison. Islamist predominance in the anti-regime camp is very much to the advantage of Assad, enabling him to present himself to a confused world as ‘the lesser evil.’

There is evidently widespread bitterness among non-Islamist oppositionists that they have received so little material and moral support from the West and from the international left. It is true that the slogans of the uprising initially emphasized ‘Western ideals’ like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’ Western politicians, however, are at best ambivalent about ideals; what they need is clients who can be trusted to serve the interests of the West and its regional allies. There is good reason to doubt the reliability in this capacity of Syrian ‘revolutionaries’ who, for instance, criticize Assad for insufficient militancy in the face of the Israeli enemy.

As for the international left, most of it – under the influence of its Bolshevik core – is inclined to support (‘critically’ or otherwise) the Assad regime. That is because ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ – their ‘enemy’ being not the world capitalist system but merely ‘US imperialism’ and its Zionist ally. Such is the stance, for example, of the Stop the War Coalition. It is only in the circles of the anti-authoritarian left that Syrian democrats can hope to find sympathy.

Although clearly written and coherently organized, this is a demanding book to read for anyone not already familiar with the complexities of Syrian society and the many political trends and movements within it. But if you want to understand what has been happening in ‘the burning country’ it is well worth the effort.

Stefan

We are all Socialists now (1962)

From the April 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was back in the 1880’s that the Liberal politician and sometime Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir William Harcourt, coined the phrase “ We are all Socialists now." It has proved a shrewd blow in the defence of capitalism.

If Socialism meant solving capitalism's administrative and taxation problems, Harcourt’s Finance Act stepping up death duties and his plan to unify the government of London, qualified him to call himself a Socialist. But as Socialism did not and does not mean anything of this kind the phrase is untrue, absurd and misleading—particularly misleading because it prevents clear thinking about Socialism.

It had a surprising success, being instantly blessed by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. Like many habits and fancies of his, it became the fashion. It helped the Tories and Liberals to give a new slant to their propaganda and deceived many simple-minded “Labour’’ reformists into thinking that the capitalists were being won over to Socialism.

While the phrase is no longer used, the idea behind it has spread all over the globe and all countries now have their politicians trying to protect capitalism while calling it Socialism. Apart from the U.S.A., where some politicians still defend capitalism under its own name, it has become almost the universal rule for capitalist parties and leaders to clothe themselves in Socialist-sounding slogans. Marx wrote that one country should learn from another, but instead of the workers of the newly formed countries learning from the older ones how to guard against the deceits of capitalist propaganda it has been the leaders of the new countries learning the trick of capitalist propaganda to mislead their own followers. In gratitude they ought to put up statues to Harcourt who first thought of it.

So as capitalism digs itself in in the old countries; or struggles for world supremacy in the case of State capitalist Russia and China; or progresses towards industrialisation in Africa, India, and Asia; more and more it is done under the leadership of men falsely claiming that they are building Socialism.

Of course, it has its variations of detail and emphasis. The new President of Syria declared that the new Syrian way of life was to be “conservative Socialism." He had just thrown out the troops of another “Socialist," Colonel Nasser. Nasser doesn't have to descend to vulgar disputation about the merits and demerits of Syrian “conservative Socialism” because his own variety of capitalism called Socialism traces back to Mohammed. “The State established by Islam and founded by Mohammed was the first Socialist State. Mohammed was the first to apply the policy of nationalisation in those days.” Daily Worker. 24/7/61.)

Nkrumah of Ghana is another “Socialist ” who clings like a leech to capitalism. He promised “new, challenging, bold and dynamic” measures to build “complete Socialism” and rather outshines Nasser and the Prophet because he has got himself known as the “Messiah” already. Of course, the “complete Socialism” is only eyewash for the voters, and according to a report in the Observer (2/7/61) the so-called “Socialism” towards which Nkrumah is moving was “defined by one of his most brilliant lieutenants as ‘Roosevelt’s New Deal'." What a laugh Roosevelt would have had at the thought that his masterly strokes to keep American capitalism functioning tolerably were really designed to do the opposite and destroy it!

One of the absurdities of those who seek to represent capitalism as Socialism is to say that nationalisation—which is State Capitalism—is not capitalist but Socialist. So every politician who ever sponsored governmental interference in business or nationalised an industry to help capitalism generally, from Disraeli to Attlee and Bismarck to Kemal Ataturk, thereby becomes a “Socialist.”

If this were really so, the brotherhood of capitalist "socialists" can get ready to welcome a new member, because it is reported that Franco's government is going to nationalise the Bank of Spain.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Passing Show: What it Means (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

What it Means

In The Times recently there was a reference to President Nasser’s nationalisation policy, under the name of "Arab Socialism"; and on the same day (27/10/61) there was a report of a speech by the President of the Senegal Republic in which he referred to “ the Negro-African form of Socialism.” So much confusion is caused by reformist politicians in every part of the world wishing to masquerade under false colours that it was not surprising to read (in the same issue) the following report of a meeting of the so-called “ Socialist International ” (which is in fact a collection of Labour Parties):

  A particularly able speech was made by a delegate from the Action Group of Nigeria, who, he said, had recently announced that they were going to embrace democratic socialism, and were now hotly discussing what that meant.

For the benefit of the Action Group of Nigeria, democratic socialism means nothing that socialism does not already mean. Socialism, being a system voluntarily entered into by society as a whole, and being without any coercive forces, is by definition democratic. In the same way, it is pointless to talk about Arab socialism or Negro-African socialism; one might as well talk about Birmingham Socialism or Tooting Socialism. Socialism is in its essence international, and knows nothing of racial or national differences.

All that is needed to complete the confusion is for the Labour Parties of the Common Market countries to join together and start talking about “Common Market Socialism.”

Apes

Reviewing a recent book (African Genesis, by Robert Ardrey) a Sunday Express writer triumphantly records the author’s conclusions about monkeys and apes (22/10/61):

  He shows clearly that their most powerful inborn drive is, first, for status; next, for territory (both family and tribal); and, only third, for sex. Thus such things in men as ambition, patriotism, and a yearning for a house of one’s own are not—as many fashionable thinkers have tried to make us think—an artificial product of an artificial civilisation. They are natural and inborn, especially in the higher animals.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept what Ardrey says about apes, his premises clearly do not support his conclusions. It would only be possible to reason in this way if man was descended from the monkeys or the apes: but, in fact (although this may be news to the Sunday Express) no scientist has ever maintained that this is so. What all scientists do now maintain is that man and the other primates are descended from a common ancestor. So what has to be explained is why man has left all the other animals far behind, while the monkeys are still swinging in the trees. And if the main interests of apes are, first, status, and second, grabbing more territory, that would go a long way towards accounting for the great gulf between man and monkeys. Men have developed in the way they have simply because they co-operated—they lived together amicably in tribes and owned property in common. As Engels says (in Chapter 2 of The Origin of the Family): 

   For man’s development beyond the level of the animals, for the achievement of the greatest advance nature can show, something more was needed; the power of defence lacking to the individual had to be made good by the united strength and co-operation of the herd. To explain the transition to humanity from conditions such as those in which the anthropoid apes live to-day would be quite impossible; it looks much more as if these apes had strayed off the line of evolution and were gradually dying out or at least degenerating . . .  Mutual toleration among the adult males, freedom from jealousy, was the first condition for the formation of those larger, permanent groups in which alone animals could become men.

No satisfaction

Who said this? "There were literally thousands of jobs in industry which gave no satisfaction to the worker and never could . . .  as a result among the great working class areas of the country” men were getting no "sense of fulfilment . . . from the tedium of their day-to-day jobs.” 

It was no Socialist, agitating for a new society; it was the head of the state-capitalist board which now runs the coal-mines—Lord Robens. He was speaking at the recent national conference of the Institute of Personnel Management. It would be difficult to think of a much stronger argument against our present form of society than this—that the workers get no sense of fulfilment from their jobs, which occupy so large and so central a part of their lives: yet here we have one of our leading operators of state-capitalism saying just that.

If Lord Robens really believes this, it is about time he thought of resigning his job and joining the Socialist Party, since that is the only way he can help to bring about a change in the situation.

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: Saddam's Death Penalty (2006)

Editorial from the December 2006 Socialist Standard

It was nauseating to hear President Bush pontificate about the decision to execute Saddam and using words such as "victory" and "justice". If Bush could have cited any moral superiority he has over Saddam then his words might have carried weight, but the simple truth is that this was one opportunistic and blood-drenched killer revelling in the misfortune of another and, far worse, for political expediency.

The very fact that the death penalty was passed on Saddam two days before the US mid-term elections, at a time when Bush's popularity in opinion polls was recording a serious fall, can hardly be ignored. Saddam had been in custody for two-and-a-half years before any charge was levelled against him and the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court miraculously came into existence the same week he was captured. When the time came Saddam was no longer a tool of US foreign policy but an instrument of Republican Party domestic policy.

The first thing to observe is that Saddam's trial was not an Iraqi legal procedure; it was a White House coordinated process from start to finish. It was funded by a $138 million grant from Congress and orchestrated by a large team of staff know as the Regime Crimes Unit and operating from the US Embassy in Baghdad.

It was Washington and London who selected the trial judges, who were then sent to London to be trained on how to handle the case and who were then taken to Italy to rehearse the trial.

Several judges stepped down, one having been rounded on by the Iraqi government because he was considered to lenient. Three defence lawyers were kidnapped and murdered and a similar fate befell one witness for Saddam. Many have asked why Saddam could not have been tried in a similar manner to Slobodan Milosevic whose case was heard at The Hague. Quite simply Washington would have pooh-poohed such a suggestion, just as it has refused to recognise the International Criminal Court or judgements laid down by the International Court of Justice. Indeed the US has little regard for any international legislation or treaty, including the Geneva Convention. All are seen as meddlesome in the pursuit of its global corporate interests.

Historical amnesiacs would do well to remember that Saddam came to power via CIA assistance and was financed and chemically-armed by the West for many years in his war against Iran. Successive American and British governments turned a blind eye to his atrocities, including his mustard gassing of Iranians and the poison gas massacre of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja in 1988, only showing concern when he invaded Kuwait without the nod from Washington and worried the pro-American oil sheiks of Saudi Arabia in the process.

From 1991 up until the US-led invasion of 2003, an estimated 1 million Iraqis died as a result of UN Sanctions. When, Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of State to Iraq, was questioned on American TV about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of economic sanctions, she commented that it was "a price worth paying." Since the 2003 invasion some 655,000 Iraqis have been killed. Throughout Saddam's 24-year reign he never killed this many humans. Meanwhile, US-led intervention in Iraq in 15 years has resulted in the deaths of almost 1.75 million. And this is in the name of justice!

There is of course nothing the warring factions in Iraq have to celebrate about the death penalty. Their lot has not been improved one iota since the US-led invasion and even if they live in a relatively stable Iraq they will exist as wage slaves, their lives subordinated to dictates of profit-merchants and the whims of religiously-aligned warlords, their future always over-shadowed by the dangerous game of geo-politics, their blood worth far less to the powerful than the country's oil.