The building industry (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism ignores human needs. In the name of efficiency it wastes energies and stops or restricts production; in the name of market freedom it erects a barrier to free consumption; in the name of economic rationality it produces the most irrational contradictions. Food is dumped in the sea: people starve to death. Sick, inhumane, and historically outdated, the capitalist system goes on creating its disgusting social contradictions—and will continue to do so until workers decide to reorganise society on the basis of production for use instead of profit.

Consider the construction of housing. The skill and technology to provide every human being with decent accommodation has existed for decades; no person need live in the street or in a slum or, indeed, in the modern slums, designed by architects who have been instructed to design homes consistent with the poverty of their future inhabitants. Every man. woman and child could live in decent accommodation, but the facts of capitalism are far from allowing that to happen. Let us take a good look at these facts:

• In England and Wales alone there are 1,207,000 occupied dwellings which, according to the Department of the Environment, are unfit for human habitation.
• There arc 994.000 homes in England and Wales which lack one or more of the basic sanitary amenities.
• According to the government, 800,000 families are living in overcrowded dwellings.
• The fact of officially homeless families runs into tens of thousands. These families are often broken up, placed in hostels or left to find room in the overcrowded homes of relatives.
• Every night many thousands of workers live in the street, often with no more than a cardboard box to protect them from the cold. These street-dwellers are not “eccentric tramps", but unemployed youngsters who had come to urban areas in search of jobs, impoverished men who cannot afford rented accommodation and women who lack jobs or family support.

These are facts which the government produces; the Socialist Party merely reports them. Read the most recent report of the Building Research Establishment or the government-compiled House Condition Survey. As facts, they not only demonstrate that we are living in a society of serious deprivation, but that there are no workers who can even be secure from such threat as long as homes are built for sale or rent rather than solely for use. A worker who lives in “decent" rented accommodation today could lose his or her job tomorrow and be forced to live in slum housing or, if money runs out. on the street. But not only the unemployed live in poor housing: faced with the choice between running a car, taking a pleasant holiday or having to pay the mortgage on a decent home, many an apparently affluent worker has to accept inferior housing.

Even those workers happy with their homes are ever insecure. In the recession, with self-styled members of the "middle class” falling deeper into financial hardship, mortgage payments to the Building Societies are not always kept up and so more than 5,000 homes were repossessed in 1983 as a result of mortgage payment arrears. The recent rise of 2.25 per cent in mortgage rates was the second biggest increase ever. As unemployment rises, particularly within the professional and managerial sector of the working class, so will the number of “home-owners” (mortgage- payers, in fact) who will have to seek inferior dwellings. Others will struggle to pay off the mortgage at the expense of the upkeep of their homes, thus paying for the privilege of living in a pleasantly situated slum. None of this need be so: unfit dwellings. insanitary conditions, overcrowding, vagrancy, choosing between pleasant shelter or a holiday, repossession of homes— these are all features of a system which does not build houses to live in (that would be too simple for the wise minds of the economists), but to sell on the market with a view to profit. It is only because shelter is a commodity rather than an entitlement that the housing problem exists. Indeed, there is no housing problem in our society—there is a social problem arising from the capitalist system, which is not to do with bricks, cement and labour, but with rent, interest and profit.

Never before has the construction industry been able to use such advanced techniques as are available in the mid-1980s. Ask any building worker and he will tell you that, technically, it has never been easier to build decent structures. New materials, mechanised tools and computer design methods make it possible to provide really pleasant dwellings in the time it used to take to produce only shoddy products. In short, the productive forces present no problem to the construction industry. So, are we producing more homes than ever? No. Is what is being produced better than ever? In the vast majority of cases, no. Are efforts being made to intensify the rate of construction of homes so that the conditions outlined above can be eradicated? As an answer, let us examine a few more facts:

• Approximately half a million workers in the construction industry are on the dole: they are not "needed" to build houses.
• Housebuilding annually has fallen to its lowest level since the early 1930s. There is no "demand" for houses.
• There is currently a brick surplus: they have produced more than they can sell. There are more unoccupied homes in London—where thousands are homeless—than there are families needing homes. The homeless cannot afford to pay for the use of the unoccupied shelter.

These are perverse contradictions. As need intensifies, so the construction industry contracts. This does not happen because the owners of the construction companies are wicked people who like ignoring needs. (No doubt some of them are disturbed by the squalor and deprivation caused by their economic decisions.) But those making decisions in the construction industry are not employed to consider the needs of the consumer or the producer, but those of the investor. Those who invest money in the construction industry are not looking for moral dividends, but material gain in the form of profit. So, if it is more profitable to build offices than homes—or squalid dwellings rather than attractive ones—or to cease production altogether rather than satisfy existing needs, those are the decisions which are taken. It is the capitalist system, with its concern for profit before human need, which forces those in control of production to behave in ways which create ludicrous social contradictions.

Accounting for deaths

To those who want to know how it can be rational for nearly half a million building workers, most of whom are skilled, to be thrown on to the scrapheap of the unemployed, the simple answer is that they have been sacrificed to the god of profit. In order to maintain (or increase) profits the construction companies had to employ less workers to do as much (or more) work. For example, in 1981 John Laing (the third biggest contractor in Britain) reduced its workforce by 16.7 per cent, and Wimpey (the biggest) threw out 15.3 per cent of their workers. In addition to laying off workers, the construction firms have made profitable use of the so-called youth training schemes, which are no more than means to provide cheap labour power to the capitalists at a time when young workers have little choice of job. The capitalists who own the construction industry have also used the recession to go as far as they can to destroy the trade unions in their industry. Many firms—particularly sub-contractors who have for years made fortunes out of treating their workers like dirt—will not consider an applicant for a job if he possesses a union card. The increasing tendency to use non-unionised labour has meant that there are wider discrepancies than ever between workers doing the same jobs on different sites. The trade unions, for their part, have been forced virtually to suspend their campaign against lump labour: these days even some of the most militant building workers of past years are often forced by economic circumstances to accept jobs at below the union rate. UCATT officials admit that as long as there is mass unemployment in the construction industry their power to organise is severely limited. One consequence of this is that construction workers are often employed in highly unsafe conditions. Indeed. it is another irony of this mad system that at a time when there is more legislation than ever on the statute book defending safety conditions for building workers and when the technology of construction is safer than ever, the number of accidents in the industry is increasing faster than it was a decade ago. This is happening because of the need to complete jobs quickly and without care, because non-unionised workers are forced to accept dangerous hazards at work, because many of the young wage slaves being brought into the industry have not done apprenticeships and make mistakes, and because it is often cheaper for an employer to run the risk of paying compensation than to go in for expensive safety measures. In short, the cost of a life is a price which the accountants can afford to allow for without letting profits suffer. That is why. according to UCATT, there were more workers killed in the construction industry last year than were killed in the entire Falklands war.

Before the First World War Robert Tressell wrote what is still the finest account in English of working-class life in the building industry: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. All these years later it is still a favourite among construction workers—and the tragedy is that after decades of what the lying capitalists call “progress" the conditions are still very similar. One condition which is strikingly the same as ever is the constant concern of capitalists to produce shoddy (and therefore cheap) buildings where they can get away with it. Capitalism is a system which sticks art (pictures of old Dukes wearing blond wigs and tights) in the galleries and claims to revere creativity, but when it comes to useful production shows contempt for craftsmanship and enterprise. It is very easy for idlers like the Prince of Wales to make pious noises about the ugliness of modern buildings while he roams around from palace to palace, but the socialist concern with architecture is not to have more attractive showpieces in central London (the opinionated Prince was sounding off recently about the new extension to the National Gallery), but to have pleasant structures where it really matters: in places where the majority of people live and work. Of course, it would be utopian to imagine that capitalism could allow beauty to take priority over profit: it is not likely that the architects will be called in (by Royal command) to design pleasant working conditions for the workers on the line at Ford or to replace the squalid council estates with homes fit for humans. The majority of workers can only afford to rent or buy relatively dull and badly designed accommodation. Under this system you get what you pay for. That's why those who build the mansions spend their wages on the rent of second-rate homes while the parasites who own the construction companies live in mansions—usually with a spare cottage in the country for weekends.

What will a socialist society do to the construction industry? Firstly, the purpose of the new social order will be to produce for need and not for profit. So, there will be no concern in the minds of those involved in construction work other than to build what people need. No person need ever again be homeless; no person need live in a dwelling which is unsanitary. Secondly, socialism will end wage slavery, where the labour power of the producers is a commodity to be bought by the highest bidder: builders will produce according to their ability, without receiving wages, in the confident knowledge that they, like all men and women, will have free access to all of the goods and services which humanity can create. Thirdly, there will be no need to produce inferior buildings for "inferior" people to live in. Socialism, which will be a classless society of common ownership and democratic control, will produce the best for everyone. As a matter of fact, it often involves more effort to produce inferior buildings than it would to produce decent ones: one of the perverse features of capitalism is that hours and days are wasted by “experts" working out ways to create rubbish when it is easier (but costlier) to create a decent product. Fourthly, socialism will not allow men and women to endure intolerable hazards for the sake of productivity. That is not to say that there will not be accidents, in a society of production for use. but—and this is the opportunity which socialism offers—there need never be another builder killed because construction is organised on a purposely unsafe basis. Finally, socialism will offer the builder the respect which he (and she, let us not forget) deserves as an artist. In a capitalist society the artist is respected for the useless products of his creation— the more ornamental and useless the more “artistic” the creation must be. In socialism we can start taking pride in useful creations: homes, offices, factories, ships, hospitals. Even today you will often meet workers who take pride in saying that they helped to build that housing estate—but they had no control over its design, they were forced to make it a second-rate product, or if it is worth taking pride in you can bet your Jubilee Mug that they cannot afford to live in it. So, instead of a society of palaces for parasites, why not let us build a society of the best for all? Why not, in other words, join the biggest construction industry ever seen: the movement for world socialism? 

Steve Coleman

Democratic epidemic (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In October 1851 the American Journal of Insanity published an article on “A New Form of Insanity":

In Berlin, a curious subject for a thesis has been found by a student in medicine . . . M. Groddeck has discovered a new form of epidemic, whose virus has of late circulated throughout the Continental Nations with a rapidity contrasting strongly with the solemn and stately march of cholera. Its development. indeed, has been all but simultaneous in the great European capitals . . . M. Groddeck's thesis, publicly maintained, is entitled “De morbo democratico . . .": on the disease of democracy, a new form of insanity.

Social conservatives at the time would have been too busy opposing Chartism to be able to read American academic journals. But in 1984 there are still those who cling to the belief that the movement towards economic and social democracy is like an unnatural disease, to be treated with regular doses of patriotic ideology. Britain, we are told, must be democratic, because its trade rival, Russia, is a dictatorship. The reason for this nonsense is that conservatives, in whatever party, are defending the interests of a small group whose privilege depends on democracy being treated as a joke.

What is the basis of present-day society? Government Inland Revenue statistics show that the richest 3.2 per cent in Britain today own 84 per cent of private listed shares, 91 per cent of private companies, and 88 per cent of the land. According to Tory doublethink, this is called a "property-owning democracy". There is a constant conflict of interests between this minority and the vast majority whom they employ to produce profit for them. The minority accumulate all wealth produced over and above the wages and salaries on which workers survive. This paradox of a rift between those who produce wealth and those who possess it brings us to the first quality needed to avoid contracting the disease of democracy: Tory Logic. In 1976, the Director-General of the CBI, Campbell Adamson, was quoted as saying: "We believe that the lower the increase we can give ourselves as a nation next year, the better off we will all be”.

How can it be that “the nation” is better off if we are paid less? Because capitalism is based on a fundamental class division between owners and producers. An employer who spends £100 on materials and machinery in a week, and £100 on a wage to a worker, then accumulates all the surplus value that is produced. By mid-week, the worker has created £200 worth of saleable commodities, thus covering the employer’s costs. But the worker must continue, and all that is created during the rest of the week is surplus value, which serves to increase the capital of the capitalist class. This is the legalised robbery on which present-day society is based. For example, in the British Oxygen Company sixty-three people hold between them 155 million shares. In 1981 the average “value added", or wealth created, by each worker in that company was about £10,000: more than twice the average wage.

The talk of democratic rights in Britain means little more than that we delicately forge for ourselves the very chains that bind us. Thousands of old people every winter in Britain have the democratic right to die of hypothermia because they cannot afford to both eat and keep warm: millions of workers have been democratically ordered to stop producing useful things because those who own the productive machinery are experiencing one of their periodic slumps in profit . . . And there is no democracy involved in the terror of war which now confronts the world as a result of competition over the world market. There is nothing democratic about the Home Office Circular No. ES 8/1976 (released under Labour and endorsed by the Conservatives) on the aftermath of a nuclear war:

District and borough London controllers should assume that one of the priority tasks for their staff . . . would be to collect and cremate or inter human remains in mass graves . . . there would still be a problem of several weeks, and perhaps months, of an above average rate of dying from disease and radiation effects. Nevertheless, a return to the pre-attack formalities should be the objective in the longer term.

And yet it is those very “pre-attack formalities”, the nature of the present social order, which would have been responsible for such a nuclear war in the first place.

Market magic?

What, then, is the sanity praised by defenders of the global profit system? Adam Smith’s magical “invisible hand” of market forces is now somewhat different from what it was in the eighteenth century. Markets today are no longer small, local, or self-contained but international. The buying and selling system has come to dominate the entire world over the past two hundred years. However it is reformed or modified, from the Kremlin to the White House, the market cannot be made to serve real human interests, the needs of humanity as a whole. The only demand which the profit system can ever recognise is that which is backed up by cash. That is why 30 million people starved to death last year, the equivalent of one Hiroshima every other day, one casualty a second, even though the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has shown that the world’s resources, if properly developed, could feed three times the world’s population.

The capitalist slogan is profit before the needs of the majority. In Britain 3,000 people die every year because they lack a kidney machine costing a few thousand pounds, while over £1.9 million is spent every hour on armaments to defend British markets. In a market society, workers themselves are produced as mere value-generating objects. The Which Book of Money calculates that a child costs £32,000 to produce and look after to the age of 18, taking account of the mother’s loss of earnings. Capitalism has to put price-tags on people, from new-born babies to the cards in the windows of employment agencies, selling lives of creative work for a few thousand pounds a year. All human relationships are transformed into exchange transactions, with varying degrees of subtlety. The Schools Council’s latest (and last) report says children in schools are “like shoes or bits of metal, which are inspected at the end of the production line and sometimes rejected as substandard”. The only exception to this is the public schools, so-called because they are private, where most of the products are labelled “success” however stupid they might be. This is because those schools cater for a useless parasite class who have no part in production or distribution except to obstruct it through class ownership.

No amount of political waffle or rhetoric from those who seek to conserve this chaos can hide the real level of discontent which exists in society. The suicide rate in Britain has now increased to 5,000 each year, and is still rising. This indicates only the tip of the iceberg of intense social misery. The religion of nationalism, racism and conservatism, is irrelevant to the millions of workers who are concerned to eradicate that misery through political and social action.

What do socialists want? We want the working class to put the wealth of society, and the machinery for producing that wealth, in the hands of society as a whole. This is the practical alternative to the market system which currently exists throughout the world. Where people are in need of housing, socialist society will re-organise resources to build houses — not for sale and profit but for use. “Insane!" scream the conservatives who defend the capital of the minority. But look at the present “sanity”: human needs are no less now than they were in the sixties, and yet there has been a massive reduction in the production levels of most major industries, in response to the dictates of profit and the market.

There is only one alternative to the fatal destructiveness of competition, and that is the creativeness of co-operation. The establishment of a system of production solely to satisfy human needs across the globe, rather than for profitable sales in the world market, is more urgently needed than ever. Democratic control of society will be the culmination of a long history of class conflict and will be able to resolve all the contradictions which arise out of the class division in society. It is in the interests of workers everywhere to dismiss the complacent. flippant cries of panic coming from those who are either rich enough or, more likely, sick enough, to want to conserve a “civilisation” founded on poverty, violence and war. The profit system can only offer us prolonged frustration, interrupted by the occasional hysteria of mass slaughter, when wars are fought over the spoils of international capital.

Common ownership of the world’s resources will represent the most compelling and exciting step humanity has taken. To hold back that step is to invite the trade cycle to dominate our lives, imposing its alien forces and needs on the daily lives of the entire population. When you next hear somebody trying to defend the profit system, remember the theory of M. Groddeck, quoted at the beginning of this article, about a new form of insanity. Because when you hear the political rhetoric which praises the magic of market forces, with all references to the starvation and destruction which are produced by those forces neatly edited out, you might just feel tempted to contract the disease of democracy and to stand for the sane alternative.

Clifford Slapper

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A recording of the SPGB's Birmingham Branch's meeting on 'Terrorism' (speaker: Christine Moss) is available at the following link.

"Subscribe!" (1984)

SPGB Advert from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: I. T. — for profit or for democracy? (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Further to the article by ALB in the July Socialist Standard which dealt with the possible use of information technology in socialism for stock control and the communication of needs to production, it was mentioned that computer operators would be using their skills to a socially useful end for the first time. A particular example of the present destructive use of this technology is the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham.

It is now known that this benign title is a euphemism for an elaborate spy set up which employs about 9,000 workers in the headquarters and throughout the world wide network of listening posts, known as the Composite Signals Organisation. The work of these establishments is that of spying on other capitalist states, particularly state capitalist Russia and its dominions in the eastern bloc. It has its counterpart in America, which is the National Security Agency, and doubtless its even more secret equivalent in Russia.

This international espionage involves the most sophisticated communications technology. At GCHQ they have in use the CRAY I, the world’s most powerful computer, capable of making 150 million calculations per second and of storing 30 billion words. The principal function of the CRAY I has been to decrypt soviet and other information, transmitted in code. As well as the world distribution of listening posts, information is also gathered via satellite surveillance. Space technology is vitally involved for both photography and for listening in to telephone and wireless communications. Apart from the CRAY I, other computers are programmed to sift through the voluminous data which becomes available. Recently the Geoffrey Prime spy case, and the banning of trade unions at GCHQ. have focussed attention on its work.

In his article, ALB illustrated how the technology involved could be adapted for the organisation of production for need, but he quite rightly dismissed the idea that world production in socialism would be controlled by a single huge computer. He stressed the practical need for different scales of productive organisation on local, regional and world levels. He suggested a hierarchy of computer networks, or to put it differently, a decentralised information system, corresponding to the different scales of productive organisation which could monitor production in relation to needs and, for example, the availability and use of materials, etc. Can I suggest that this practical use of information technology for human needs would be vastly more simple and straightforward compared with the sinister complexities of its present use?

Moreover, such an information system in socialism would be completely open with free access to any part of it. This factor is vital to democracy, which cannot operate without freely available information. Although computers and communication systems are described as "information" technology, their use under capitalism is not to make information freely available. Both state and private enterprises and the state machine itself operate in secret, with dismissal or imprisonment for those who break the rules. By itself, the concealment of information condemns a society as being undemocratic and corrupt.

Yet when everything has been said, responsibility must come back to the workers on whose skills the running of these systems depends. Their skills could be adapted so easily for the running of a sane, democratic society concerned solely with needs. Adaptation would have to take place, yet with such establishments as GCHQ and the world Composite Signals Organisation the equipment and skills are already in place for the operation of a completely open world information system as part of the practical running of production for use. To repeat ALB's conclusion, "all that is lacking is the will to change society so as to be able to take full advantage of it"

Pieter Lawrence

Tatsfield, 

Kent

Debate—Marx v. Christ (1984)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

Letter to the Editors from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I feel you must be entirely misinformed as to what religion is if you dismiss it all as “primitive superstitions” for, though that may apply to some religions, and even to some Christian denominations, the basic message of Christ in relation to our fellow humans was “love your neighbour as yourself". You may say, “What about the Old Testament?”, but a lot of what is said there was “updated" by Christ and the whole Christian code in relation to others summed up in the above-mentioned quotation. The early Christians lived in a community where "they would sell their property and possessions and distribute the money among all, according to what each one needed” (Acts 2).

The meaningless ritual and the hierarchical structure which some churches indulge in is, I suppose, what you Editors object to and. as a Christian, I object to it myself; but those are merely the trappings of religion, the peripheral details. The basic message, the real living truth, is to forget oneself for the common good of all — obviously to love God with all one's might, but that is not the issue at stake here — and that is all that really matters. There is no place for selfishness, or greed, or indeed any desire for personal gain at the expense of others, in Christianity, and neither is there in socialism.

The early Christians formed a socialist society which worked perfectly when everyone cooperated, until it grew too large. The links between socialism and Christianity are too strong for you Editors to brush them aside — or are your theories so firmly entrenched that you will not back down? If that is the case, you are hypocritical and therefore no better than any other political party and I will not join you.

Yours in anticipation of a considered reply to a carefully considered comment.

Alison F. Hayes,

Leeds.

Reply:

The first point in your letter accuses us of being entirely misinformed regarding the origin and evolution of religious beliefs. But you surely cannot be unaware of the mass of anthropological and historical evidence which informs us quite unequivocally that all religions, including Christianity, evolved from and are founded on nothing more substantial than primitive superstitions. Whatever personal experiences or inner visions you and others may have had, however revered the words of the priests and prophets as handed down to us. when closely examined they never amount to very much.

"Gods” are literally inconceivable, literally indescribable, literally indefinable. There are no steps you could take or investigative action you could engage in to bring these fantasies into focus or into a semblance of reality other than by an irrational abandonment of all normal verification procedures. Hence you are left with merely a belief, a faith handed down to you by people less knowledgeable, less informed than yourself and whose motives and intentions are totally irrelevant to your life. And one must always bear in mind that those who claimed the authority to vouch for "Divine Revelations" are the very same people whose over-heated imaginations and demented devotions gave birth to the "revelations" in the first place. What an abject denial of the dignity of intellect and reason it is to respond, in the face of all this, with the cry ". . . leave me alone — I’m content in my ignorance and feel safer being told what to believe than thinking for myself".

"The basic message of Christ” to which you refer was an exhortation to believe in a meaningless (even though up-dated and humanised) God and not the commendable, well meant homilies you quote. The very core of Christianity lies in the former and you cannot escape the consequences of that by emphasising the latter. We cannot tell from your letter how much of Christianity, as traditionally understood, you have already discarded: does your unloading extend to the mysticism, the "miracles". the claims made by the founder and the so called supernatural events attending his birth, death and after? If so, then you’re in the dubious company of other retractors who, mindful of the absurdities of fundamentalists, attempt to renounce the 90 per cent they find unacceptable and take on board merely the 10 they find congenial. But as the whole edifice is of a piece and you are not in a position to pick and choose, you take the lot or you leave the lot; logically you have no other choice. You, it seems, wish to pick the nice but ineffectual ethics.

The links between socialists and some Christians, to which you refer, have always been tenuous although they were forged in the heat of common hopes, desires, and expectations of a better life and an end to inequality. hunger, suffering, fear and all the other avoidable afflictions and indignities both are subject to. But socialism is one thing and Christianity quite another. The early Christians could not have had any comprehension of socialism as understood in this and the last century; it serves no useful purpose and only confuses matters when attempts are made to dilute the one and up-grade the other.

Above all, socialists work to lift the burden of ignorance and in this endeavour we must be implacably opposed to all religions because all require ". . .  the blessed state of innocent, undoubting, unquestioning faith. . .”; whereas, in our view, social progress can only be achieved by the very opposite intellectual stance. Behind the many bastions defending capitalism and obstructing progress towards socialism lurk authoritarian theologians who peddle anti-democratic attitudes, who belittle the strengths and self-developed abilities of "mere mortals" and. in condemning us all as “weak vessels", seek to undermine workers’ confidence. Their doctrinal claptrap has always been an obstacle to progress and the advancement of science.

Regrettably, your concept of Christianity is a minority view. You say that it is ". . . to forget oneself for the common good of all . . . There is no place for selfishness or greed or . . . desire for personal gain at the expense of others . . .” You claim that this is the true Christianity, but throughout its history, from the first parables to the recent blessing by the Chief British Christian of troops on their way to kill (Christian) Argentinians, it has upheld the domination by a minority ruling class over the majority subject class; it has reinforced and defended the political and legal powers of that dominant class at the expense of the majority; it has always sought, through charity and by extolling the virtues of suffering, to excuse poverty and thus ensure its continuation; its holy writ calls on the poor and downtrodden to abjure protest and political action and to “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s". It has served and still serves as an apologist for every and any cruel autocrat, tyrannical despotic regime, every exploiter and ravager since the Romans realised it was tailor-made as the best unifying, pacifying and thus the best controlling agent they could hope to find.

The world would undoubtedly be better, pleasanter, more tolerable, less stressful. if everyone abided by the tenets you outline. But this wouldn't touch the basic problems or their causes. How could it be otherwise when the nature of world capitalism requires of us and inculcates entirely opposite attitudes and behaviour. This system, which we seek to replace, dominates all aspects of life including the toleration or active promotion of religions, so long as they serve a useful purpose. Modifications, twists and turn-abouts are fairly easy to engineer as and when required: in the hands of skilled manipulators employed by the ruling class and its agents in the bureaucracy and religious hierarchies, the believer is a pushover. Witness the case with which workers are hyped up on the heady cocktail of religion, patriotic jingoism, nationalism and monarchy (or its equivalent). The intention is patently obvious: to ensure that the populace identify their own needs and aspirations with those of their class enemies.

You want to see a change in people's behaviour and attitudes. Good, so do we. But behaviour and attitudes spring from social and economic structures not from the condition of the "soul": relationships and roles are geared to the particular way the production and distribution of goods and services in any given society arc organised — to the particular requirements of those who possess the means of production and, of course, the right to cease production if it suits, never mind about needs or moralities. Socialism, on the other hand, would be conducive to the kind of harmonious cooperation you envisage. Satisfaction of one’s own needs would not have to be at someone else's expense; and the results of common effort, ingenuity and inventiveness would be commonly owned and freely available, not privately owned and only available if profitable.

There cannot be any receivers, responses or answers “up there", only an infinite succession of question marks. You may ask. “. . . but in that case, what is it all for; how did it all start; where did it all come from; what is the (its) purpose; where is it all going; where will it all end; what are we all doing here?" To these and similar questions there is only one possible answer: of all the past and present explanations, answers and accounts proffered, the least tenable, the weakest case, the proposition which accords with the fewest known facts, the claim which is the hardest to swallow, the assertion which requires the highest suspension of all reason and rationality for the longest period, the theory riddled with the most holes, stitched together with the greatest number of non-sequiturs and perverse presumptive leaps, is the one which invokes an “Almighty Personage" or “Being'’

You need not remain wrapped in the suffocating, mouldering bunting and handouts left over from a 2,000 year old Billy Graham Crusade, however acceptable some of that philosophy of "social concern and personal responsibility" may still be. Christians do not have exclusive claims to such a philosophy. We also seek to change hearts and minds — not by force or convoluted mysticism but by the only practical method open to the human race: self-help.

Editors.

Tolpuddle to Gdansk (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was one hundred and fifty years ago that six farm workers from Dorset were arrested and taken to Dorchester prison for the "crime" of swearing a secret oath of loyalty to the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. The state used an obscure Act of 1797 (outlawing the swearing of secret oaths within the armed forces) as a means to bully the Tolpuddle trade unionists. Speaking in his own defence at the Dorchester Assizes George Loveless, the most prominent of the six trade unionists, stated: “We were uniting together to preserve ourselves, our wives and our children from utter degradation and starvation". The judge, Baron Williams, acting as judges inevitably do on behalf of the class which grows rich on the degradation and starvation of the exploited, sentenced the men to be sent to a penal colony in Australia for a period of seven years. Baron Williams' explanation of his savage sentences was that:

  The object of all legal punishment is not altogether with a view to operating on the offenders themselves, it is also for the sake of offering an example and warning to others

In short, the object of the legal intimidation was to warn other workers to keep away from trade unions. The capitalists, who had ensured that unions were illegal prior to 1824, acted in response to the growth of the trade union movement in the 1830s — a growth which led to the formation of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834, with a membership of half a million workers. The persecution of the Tolpuddle martyrs was meant to nip the trade unions in the bud.

Unfortunately for the parasite class, the exploited were not willing to bow to state bullying. A massive open-air rally was organised in London (it took place in Copenhagen Fields, a few hundred yards away from where the Islington branch of the Socialist Party meets) and over 150,000 workers turned out to show the bosses that they supported their brothers from Tolpuddle. In 1819, at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester, the bosses had used their militia to kill thirteen workers and injure many more when wage slaves had dared to assemble. But in 1834 the workers were able to show their strength and the bosses retreated: the Tolpuddle martyrs were given a free pardon and a passage back to Britain. Workers in 1984 owe them respect, for it was their courage and determination — and that of the thousands of workers who showed solidarity with them — which has enabled us to organise in our unions today.

Trade unions are necessary bodies for fighting the industrial battle against those who live by robbing us of the fruits of our labour. In general, unions can do much to defend and improve wages and working conditions. But socialists are far from uncritical of the unions. We observe the lunacy whereby unions pay for the upkeep of the Labour Party, which defends the very social system which necessitates exploitation. We observe the likes of Duffy, Chapple and Murray ignoring decisions made by union conferences and being rewarded for their efforts on behalf of the class enemy with the chance of a free ticket into the House of Lords. We observe the fact that workers at the Head Offices of ASTMS. NAI.GO and BIFU are currently involved in industrial action against the bureaucrats who employ them — that Clive Jenkins of ASTMS regularly crosses picket lines manned by his own employees. The trade union movement in Britain leaves much to be desired but, for all of its faults, it is there to be used by workers who want to minimise the extent of their exploitation.

It is a tragic irony that the so-called socialist countries, in which the Tolpuddle martyrs are well remembered, are today producing their own martyrs, who have dared to stand up to the lie that they are living in a classless, socialist society and demand the right to join a real trade union. Of course, workers in Poland are allowed to join a union but only one which is run by their state employers. The absurdity of such bogus unions will become clear if it is imagined that miners in the state-run coal industry were only allowed to join a union as long as it was controlled by the NCB.

In Poland — as in all of the so-called socialist countries — it is illegal to form trade unions which are not run by the employers. It was for that reason that Solidarity was formed in 1980. Because Poland is a capitalist society, divided between exploiters and exploited, the state responded to the action of their wage slaves in just the same way as the capitalists of Britain in 1834: they rounded up the union activists and locked them in prisons. Indeed, one hundred and fifty years after the men of Tolpuddle were attacked for their act of class solidarity, hundreds of Poles who refuse to let Solidarity die are incarcerated in the unceasing class war between wage labour and capital.

We do not hear a great deal about the Gdansk martyrs from some of those who are ready to glorify the memory of the Tolpuddle martyrs. The Communist Party of Great Britain, which is currently busy editing the Morning Star in the law courts, is quick to show solidarity with martyrs past, but conspicuously silent about martyrs present. Arthur Scargill. who is currently leading his union in its battle against their state employers, is of the view that for the Silesian miners to have an independent union against their state employers is an act of what he has called “sabotage”. Of course, Scargill and other assorted Stalinists are no less hypocritical than Thatcher and her fellow-liars who express pious concern about the right of workers in Poland to join a trade union while they force the workers at GCHO in Cheltenham to give up their union rights. Before twisters like Thatcher start making noises in defence of unions in Poland they ought to take a look at the "democracy" in Britain which allows the police to erect road-blocks along the motorways in order to prevent one group of workers expressing solidarity with another.

The police, who have been given the dirty work of defending the power of the capitalists of Britain against the indignation and frustration of those whom they exploit, would do well to think about the activities of their fellow workers in Poland:

   A Polish policeman received a standing ovation from the Solidarity Congress in Gdansk yesterday when he demanded its support for a trade union of police . . . Several policemen. including a police captain, have been dismissed for trying to organise such a union . . . “Are we not entitled to the same rights as other workers or are we only suited to dirty work?" he asked . . . Forty thousand policemen, including some in the security division, have applied to join, he claimed. (Guardian. 29 August 1981.)

According to a recent report of the International Labour Organisation, thousands of workers have been thrown out of their jobs for remaining in Solidarity and at least sixty have been killed since martial law was declared in December 1981

It is not only in the state-capitalist countries that the class war is producing martyrs. In South Africa the president of the biggest trade union was arrested and murdered by police last year. In numerous dictatorships — some backed by the American Empire, some by the Russian Empire and others by both or neither — it is dangerous to organise trade unions which have any power. Workers should remember that members of our class are being killed, beaten up, discriminated against and made insecure today and not just in the past.

In a world which now, more than ever, is a global village where modern technology has made it easy to unite, the means are at hand for workers of all lands to join our efforts into one movement. We must remember than an injury to one — whatever the nationality or the colour or the sex of the victim — is an injury to our class.

Unity to improve our condition of wage-slavery is not what workers in the late twentieth-century should be organising for. The treadmill of trade unionism as an end in itself can only ease the intensity of our exploitation; what is needed is a society where there is no exploitation of employee by employer because there are no classes. Socialism, which will be a society without classes, employment or state machinery, will mean the abolition of the wages system. In a society without wages people will give according to their abilities and take from the goods and services which are available according to their self-determined needs.

From Tolpuddle to Gdansk — from Kronstadt to Orgreave — from Peterloo to Soweto — the class struggle, which throw's up countless victims, has not gone away. It will not come to an end until the capitalists are defeated by the workers. That defeat will not require workers to use violence against the bosses — unless, of course, the capitalists have undemocratic ideas about making martyrs of themselves by defying the will of a conscious, socialist majority. But first we must build that majority, and it is for every worker to ask themselves the crucial question: am I to make use of the right to unite which the martyrs of Tolpuddle stood for — and millions of workers have yet to gain — or will I be a martyr to the system which robs workers of our dignity?

Steve Coleman

Telling the difference (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you pay for a bottle of milk and with the first mouthful discover the contents to be whitewash, how would you react? Would the person who sold you the drink convince you that what you were drinking was milk because that was what was on the label of the bottle? Today, many nations around the world describe themselves as "socialist" or “communist” but it is a fact that the present economic and social system operates globally and socialism is yet to be established. If you observe the social arrangements in any region of the world, the hallmarks of a class divided society are evident: the division between the rich and the poor: the minority who own and control the means of life and the majority who produce all the wealth but have to rely on a wage, salary or dole in order to live; the rationing system of money; prisons and police forces to deal with the continuing discontent bred by the competitive commercial rat race, and so on, ad nauseam. If socialism is to have any meaning it must signify something different from capitalism. We would be easily fooled if we took societies like Russia, China or France to be socialist simply because their politicians find it advantageous to use that label. We would be taken in by the whitewash.

Socialists are sometimes challenged with the question: "There are so many varieties of socialism what makes you think your definition is correct? Why do you think your idea is the only one which deserves the label of socialism?" Our response is to invite such a questioner to consider the evidence. Consider the basis of society as it is organised in countries which are described as "capitalist” and "socialist". What are the principles on which wealth is produced and distributed? What is the basic lifestyle of the majority of the people? What social characteristics do these societies share and what distinguishes them?

Recently there were two interesting programmes on Radio 4 on the subject of socialism. An International Assignment (5 May 1984) examined the question "What is Socialism” by looking at various societies on which this title is commonly stuck. The following month Analysis (6 June 1984) asked "Who wants socialism?", directing this question to an array, or rather disarray, of Labour Party politicians. In the International Assignment programme we were taken around the world and given commentaries, by BBC local correspondents, on the "socialism" of the area in which they were based.

All of the evidence confirmed the view that these places are really an integrated part of capitalism. Socialists use the word "capitalism" to describe the existing social system in which a minority owns the means of production — the land, factories, mines, offices, transport systems and communications networks — and where the production process is operated to produce commodities for sale at a profit. Under this system a person's needs can only be met insofar as he or she has the money to pay for them to be satisfied. The commercial system is inherently competitive. Not only do companies rival one another within national boundaries, but nations form into trading blocs which themselves are in competition with each other over new markets and territories to exploit. The real nature of global capitalism can be seen in the trading links between nations which, according to their labels, should be completely hostile to one another. Representatives of the wealth-owners of "Communist" Russia and "Capitalist" South Africa are in regular contact to arrange the pricing of diamonds on the world market. These countries are the main areas of diamond mining and the interests of profit on each side take priority over the rhetoric of their régimes. In an attempt to overcome the effect of the miners’ strike, Mrs. Thatcher's government negotiated with Poland's General Jaruzelski to import coal from Poland. There are clear social and economic differences between nations like Britain and Russia, although it is worth remembering that the greater freedoms enjoyed by workers in places like Britain have only been won after long struggles. Socialists describe the Russian Empire and similar nations as "state-capitalist" because the minority who own and control the means of life are the high-level bureaucrats and politicians who control the state machinery.

All of the BBC radio correspondents informed us of the difficulties encountered by governments trying to square their quest for profit with their mouthing of socialist slogans. Class-divided China was aching with problems for the majority whose work keeps them in poverty and their masters in luxury. The government said this hardship was a necessary expedient in building socialism. The correspondent seemed confused about this, and he had good reason to be. The programme sought an opinion from an English politician, that famed Labour Party egalitarian, Dame Judith Hart. She said that nationalisation was not really socialism and that we needed to work for another form of common ownership. Socialists would agree with her on that, but the Labour Party has never stood for anything but the profit system. Common ownership, where everybody owns all social wealth, and where there is therefore no need for government, is not something the Labour Party advocates.

The correspondent in Austria noticed that much of what many left-wingers in Britain advocate as problem-solving reforms already exist in Austria, with no great joy for the workers there. Seventy- five per cent of credit, insurance and financial business is conducted by state-owned banks and institutions. For the last fourteen years the government, describing itself as "socialist", has implemented a reform programme which would be supported by most left-wing parties. One third of the gross national product is accounted for by companies where the state is the main shareholder. There has even been a Welfare Slate there since before the second World War. But what about the workers? The basic condition of the wealth-producers is still all that it can ever be under capitalism: those who can get employment receive a wage which is worth less than the value of what they have produced. Their problems of poverty and insecurity remain unsolved.

The next port of call was France. More twisted doublethink. Since President Mitterrand and his “socialist" government came to power three years ago, France has perfected the technology for the neutron bomb; commissioned a new nuclear submarine and developed its own land-based missile system. Another difficulty which the correspondent observed was that the government justified its expansion of the death services — the military machine — by explaining that this created much needed employment. Those groups who campaign simply for more exploitation within capitalism, “jobs for all", have to answer for this.

The political travelogue continued. The locations were different but the tales were similar. In Portugal, where the radio journalist said that the reddest thing about “socialist” Portugal is its bank balance. With inflation running at over 30 per cent the government is hugely in debt and is inflicting a series of austerity measures against the workers, complying with an instruction from the International Monetary Fund. In Spain the government is blaming the severity of its anti-working-class policies on the trouble created by the previous government. Then to Africa, where a variety of grimly anti-working-class, autocratic regimes had adopted the name and vocabulary of socialism as titles of convenience. often as part of a strategy to attract military assistance from the Russian Empire.

Diluting the truth

Since its formation in 1906, the Labour Party has always sought political power to run the profit system. Its manifestoes have always been crammed with policies on the military forces, the financial and taxation systems, and a variety of ways in which wage-slavery should be controlled. Even the Labour Party’s declaration of intent to establish “socialism” is clear on this point: Clause 4 of its objects refers to the “common ownership of the means of production. distribution and exchange”. What does this mean? If there is common ownership, so that everyone owns everything, then there is no need for a means of exchange, there is no need for money. It is clear that what is intended by this object is another variant of state-capitalism — a social system with money and banks and working for wages and therefore with exploitation. Listening to the politicians speak on the programme Analysis, some of the reasons the Labour Party had its most catastrophic general election result for half a century became apparent. It is confused. Robin Cook, for instance, who was Neil Kinnock’s leadership campaign manager, stated that Neil was popular because he was articulating a vision of socialism and a set of priorities which is shared by the vast majority of mainstream activists. What vision of socialism was that? It must have been uttered surreptitiously between making dance videos with Tracey Ullman and trying to match the national chauvinism of Winston Churchill:

We must show that we have positive policies which are based upon the implacable requirement that the interests of the British people must predominate. (Leadership election manifesto 1983.)

Later on in the programme, Roy Hattersley, the Deputy Labour leader, was speaking about the need for Labour to build a new set of ideas:

We’ve rejected what the newspapers call Marxism or extremism by an immobilise position. We've decided that the best thing is not to have any ideas unless the ideas turn out to be too dangerous.

No political party can have no ideas, although the SDP/Liberal Alliance seems to be making a good attempt. Quite what Hattersley means by this remark is puzzling to say the least. John Golding, another prominent Labour politician, was more direct. He admitted:

I don't think there is any point in arguing about ideology or what is socialism. My own experience tells me that that takes you nowhere.

There can be no denying that the arguments John Golding has engaged in have taken him nowhere, nor that, so far as socialism is concerned, nowhere is the place the working class has been led to by the Labour Party. Discussion and debate and an understanding of what socialism is and how to get it are, however, indispensable preconditions for the democratic establishment of a socialist society. There is no point in simply spending energy “doing things” and "getting involved in activity" if you have no clear idea of your political objective. If you have a clear idea of what you want to cook and how to cook it. the result will he a success. There would be little sense in shovelling all the ingredients together and mixing them on the basis that at least you are doing something.

Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Grimsby, himself speaking in culinary terms, unashamedly expressed the role of the politician:

The job of the politician is to take the truth and dilute it with flavouring and colouring matter to make it saleable to a wider electorate.

There are many supporters of the Labour Party who want social equality, an end to competitive society and a peaceful, prosperous world. But they are not supporting a party which can ever bring about such a social system. Labour's record of managing capitalism is riddled with all of the anti-working class actions to which any government is forced by the economics of the profit-system. It has broken strikes, frozen wages, cut already low grade social services, closed schools and hospitals and acted as a recruiting sergeant for the bosses in times of war.

John Lennon’s song Imagine is about a socialist society:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace . . .

Whether or not it was opportunism which prompted the Labour Party to use this song on a recent Party Political Broadcast (29 May 1984), it is scarcely a fitting anthem for a party whose leader had pronounced three days before:

We are committed entirely to the security and defence of our own country and full participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. (Guardian, 26 May 1984.)

Working class experience of mistitled "socialist” nations and misleading parties like the Labour Party will rub away their credibility, but that in itself is not enough. For socialism we need a majority of socialists ready to run the world in the most productive, creative and enjoyable way possible. It’s a good idea but it needs to be made more than that.

Gary Jay

Running Commentary: The laws of nature? (1984)

The Running Commentary column from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The laws of nature?

An established part of what is sometimes called the charm of an English summer is the series of social and sporting events at which the ruling class both disport themselves and demonstrate their privileged standing in capitalist society.

Summer is the time for top hats and elaborate dresses — and elaborate and nonsensical regulations about them — at Royal Ascot. It is the time when a few youths under elaborately hyphenated surnames play out, as if it were some epochal battle, the Eton and Harrow cricket match at Lords. It is the time for royal garden parties, when practised toadies make their way, in rented clothes, to Buckingham Palace to consume a little food and to profess a huge delight should they so much as see, let alone touch or talk to, a royal personage.

These rituals, and the others, are often the subject of both admiration and gentle derision, as if they were no more than harmless eccentricities. We are all assumed to accept them without discomfort as if class divided society, in which a small minority wallow in boundless riches while the useful, working majority grapple endlessly with the pressures and degradations of poverty, exists and operates under some eternal law of nature.

Implied in this expectation is also a warning, for it is a perilous business to go against the laws of nature. Class society must, therefore, be allowed to go on its way unmolested by any talk of a revolution to put the majority into ownership of the world.

For the ruling class this is of course a very comfortable argument for this law of nature sanctions their enjoyment of innumerable costly meals and clothes, of opulent homes and expensive schools for their children. It grants them an enormous consumption of wealth in the production of which, as a class, they have no part. Those who do produce all the wealth — the other class — are also subject to the same law of nature, which allots to them the role of enduring poverty.

Except that it may be described as a stage in human history, there is nothing natural about capitalism. Neither is it eccentric and it is certainly not harmless. It is a malignant society, responsible for an enormous burden of human suffering, all of it unnecessary and which could be abolished in the immediate future. This is the reality behind the season, this annual opportunity for the capitalist class to flaunt their riches before the world and. in that way, to defy the working class to do anything about it.

Directions to Greenham

The embattled women of Greenham were recently visited by Pensioners for Peace, an organisation whose members think like this: “We have seen that two world wars and dozens of localised lesser wars solve nothing"; and "I have six grandchildren and I want a future life for them". Perhaps they were drawn by the popular assumption that the anti-nuclear movement stands for peace; it is common to see car stickers with the CND symbol, against a rainbow background, with the slogan "Give Peace A Chance".

But anyone who wants to give peace a chance should be thinking a long way beyond CND, which has the limited object of persuading the British government to abandon, on its own, its nuclear weapons. CND has no policy for the abandonment of what are called conventional arms, nor for the disbanding of the armed forces or any part of the coercive state machine; indeed it is safe to say that the majority of CND members support the continuance of the state. CND is not a pacifist organisation; its members do not declare that they will oppose all wars and refuse to take part in them on moral grounds. How could it make such a claim, when it is chock-full of members of political parties which always stand up for the interests of the British ruling class when there is a war?

CND does not attempt any analysis of the cause of modern war, which would enable it to pronounce a solution. It opposes the socialist argument that to end war we must undertake a social revolution to bring about a fundamental change in relationships in society. Instead, CND thinks the human race can continue to scratch its way through this social system, with its fear, its destruction, its deprivation. The best it can offer is an effort at humanising some aspects of capitalism—a pious hope that the system will act out of character and begin to fight its wars in a more gentlemanly way.

Pacifists, or anyone who in interested in setting up a world without war, should ponder these facts before they commit themselves to membership of CND. It is true that one of the world's most urgent needs at present is the abolition of nuclear weapons. But this will not be achieved by any methods which allow that capitalism will carry on—by methods which aim at reforming capitalism. These weapons grew up directly as a response to this social system’s needs and its priorities, which are immune to any appeal on the grounds of human interest. They are as typical of the system as buying and selling, rich and poor, privilege and deprivation. Only the abolition of capitalism will end war and all its weapons. Workers everywhere have a united interest on that score and there is an urgent need that they assert it.

Release into slavery

In the first days of July hundreds of prisoners were released before their time, many of them to exchange the rude security of prison life for the state of being homeless, jobless and aimless. Their abrupt transition into freedom resulted from Home Secretary Leon Brittan using his powers to widen the scope of releasing prisoners on parole by reducing the qualifying period for it.

There need be no concern that this came about through any softness on the part of Brittan, than whom a less sentimental man would be difficult to imagine. There are other reasons; importantly a long-standing concern at the chronic overcrowding in prisons, as the numbers behind bars have stayed obstinately above the level described by Roy Jenkins, when he was Home Secretary in the sixties, as “intolerable”.

At the same time the evidence has been piling up to show that, while prison has little effect on crime rates, it is also the most expensive way of dealing with the criminal. The sacred phrase “cost effectiveness” has been heard in the august, secretive chambers of the Home Office. Reforms have been tried — the suspended sentence, the deferred sentence, community service — but the prison population has remained high. This has brought the advocates of cost-effectiveness to their latest solution — to let the prisoners out early, a reform which will of course last as long as the courts don’t fill the prisons up again.

This may not be pleasing to those who regard anyone who has been in prison as a sort of wild animal, unsafe to walk the streets with innocent children and frail pensioners. Neither does it please those who are expected to work within the confines of cost effectiveness — the probation officers and social workers who now have the role of controlling the released prisoners — when all along they have kidded themselves that their job was. inviolably, to put people before the balance sheet.

All such delusions are unhelpful, because they evade the fact that a society based on property rights defines crime in such a way as to protect the privileges of the ruling class, which must always mean against the interests of the majority. In the name of the ruling class a massive historical offence is committed — the offence of exploitation, with all the misery and destruction which it legally entails. Of course this social system puts human welfare very low in its priorities; it could not function in any other way.

No one should be under any misapprehension; those prisoners, happy as they may be at their unexpected change of fortune, have not been released into freedom but into wage slavery.

Woman’s touch

At the end of the spasm of ballyhoo called the primary elections. Walter Mondale went to the Democratic convention with his party’s nomination apparently in his pocket. Of course there might have been some last minute hitch for him; there have been shock nominations in the past and conventions, ungentle occasions where arms are agonisingly twisted and political debts ruthlessly gathered in, are not always predictable.

As Mondale assumed he would be the Democrats’ man against Reagan in November he turned his attention to the matter of who should be his running mate, the Democrat candidate for Vice-President. This is always a complicated, tricky business, more a matter of tightrope walking than arm twisting which Mondale. with his background, should know more about than most people.

The usual object in selecting a running mate is to arrive at a balanced ticket — a pair of candidates who between them appeal to almost every accessible prejudice among the voters. That was why Kennedy, wealthy and sophisticated New England Irish with a reputation as a “liberal", swallowed his antipathy for Lyndon Johnson and asked the coarse, rich, folksy Texan to run with him in 1960. With what results we know.

But if the polls are correct, Mondale has an especially tough job ahead of him. which means that his tightrope walk had to be particularly slick and delicate. Apart from anything else he needs to expunge the workers memory of those ghastly years as Jimmy Carter’s Vice President, when capitalism in America and outside would do hardly anything right for them.

When Mondale let it be known that he was considering selecting a woman he got a plentiful press coverage with admiring profiles of the women concerned, implying that they were something special among the administrators of capitalism. It might be a smart move for the Democrats to put a woman into the field — a touch of excitement and evidence that they are liberal, tolerant and progressive to set against the image of Reagan’s ageing, conventional attitudes.

Any American worker who feels like puking at the sight of Nancy Reagan simpering adoringly at her Ron might have found the thought of the Democrats’ Geraldine Ferraro irresistibly attractive. It is quite common for workers to mistakenly believe that the personality of a candidate is significant.

Now that the Democrats have chosen Ferraro we shall probably hear a lot about the merits of having a woman trying to run capitalism — except that in the time of Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher there is no need to labour the point that this is no happier nor more fulfilling a society under female leadership than under males.

The selection of the candidates, like the campaign itself, is a matter of cynical deception, as the Democrats and the Republicans try to persuade the American working class that it is worth choosing between two slightly differing styles of running American capitalism. Mondale and Ferraro are intended to present as a seductively handsome couple but if there is any hope in the election it lies with those few who are aware enough to look beneath the facade to the cruel reality.

Madness or sanity

Are there still any fossilised members of the Communist Party who greeted, as a move to safeguard peace, the recent announcement by the Russian “Defence" Minister Ustinov that Russia has increased its missile carrying submarine fleet off the American coast and can now hit American targets within ten minutes?

Ustinov was responding to the siting of American cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe and he warned that any increase in these missiles will lead to a step up in their Russian counterparts. So if World War Three breaks out the missiles from each side will be passing each other on their way to 

their targets and within minutes a large part of the world will be devastated.

Any alarm at this prospect should be tempered by the realisation that this is the deterrent theory in practice — the theory which is supposed to have protected us from war since 1945 and. unless some meddling disarmers take over, will continue to keep us safe. The less gullible will realise that the deterrent theory is really another name for the arms race. And who can guess how this one will end — what unimaginably frightful weapons will yet be developed, what will be left of life if they are used?

The supporters of the deterrent theory respond that its whole point is that the weapons will not be used. If the theory is correct, there will be a lot of hardware left to rust in its siloes; a lot of intricate knowledge will have been devoted to something which will, in effect, be thrown away. And all of this will have happened through a concern, in Moscow and Washington and London, to protect human lives and happiness.

So far, however, capitalism has not worked like that and there is no reason to expect it to. The conflicts which are endemic to this social system are still in existence; the world remains divided into powers in rivalry over markets, material resources, trade routes. This rivalry is the immediate cause of modern war; to understand that is to understand why capitalism expends so much of its resources in the production of such devastating armaments.

In this horrific situation, the best that capitalism's protagonists can offer is a sham debate between the advocates of deterrence and disarmament in which both are in basic agreement that capitalism can somehow be run in the interests of its people. Both, in other words, deny the system's essential character.

The truth is that capitalism cannot operate without war. The function of any state is to foster the interests of its ruling class, which means that governments manufacture — and if need be use — the most destructive weapons available to them. We are now at a point where people all over the world accept, almost without question, the fact that a modern civilisation will produce things which can destroy it within a few minutes. It is tempting to call this madness. except that from capitalism’s viewpoint it has an awful sanity.

Gentlemen and players (1984)

Editorial from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Assiduous image-building has succeeded in presenting Margaret Thatcher as a remarkable, even unique, political leader but there is one way in which she is tediously conventional and outworn and that is in the delusions she has nurtured among the people of this country. Delusions like patriotism — the idea that British people (assuming there can be a satisfactory definition of them) are worth at least ten of any foreigner, particularly of French and Argentinian people; or that something manufactured in Britain (even if it is made from parts and material originating abroad) must be much better than a similar article from overseas. Delusions like the insistence that the nuclear, monogamous family offers some inherent benefits and that we should therefore discipline ourselves to live within its repressions, as the people who suffered Victorian England are (mistakenly) supposed to have joyfully lived. Delusions like the propaganda that irresponsible wage claims of greedy workers inevitably result in an inflated currency, which acts like some cancer on society and which must be cured if we are to experience the prosperity which the politicians have been promising us for so long — whether there has been an inflated currency or not. And finally, the delusion that Thatcher's strong leadership has brought a new, stiffer purpose to our lives when before we were spinelessly preoccupied with selfish indulgence of our reckless whims.

It can be said about these delusions that they are at least obvious and defiantly stated; Thatcher seems to take much pleasure in her reputation as an Iron Lady whose stare can dissolve opponents in all the capitals across the world. But one effect of this has been the promotion of an opposite image and of the equally false idea that this offers a useful alternative to Thatcher. Partly because of her ruthless dismissal of her opponents from the Cabinet and partly because of an opportunistic anxiety that Thatcher’s attitudes and image will in the end erode the Tories' support, there has grown up on the back benches a kind of shadow Conservative government made up of sacked or disgruntled politicians. There are people like Francis Pym, whose credo The Politics of Consent was recently published and who was himself once the beneficiary of another's sacking — that of Lord Carrington, who is also among the shadows along with his henchman Ian Gilmour. Then there are the foppish St. John Stevas and the emphatically non-foppish William Whitelaw. Of course we should not call Whitelaw by that name; he was not formally sacked — nothing so terrible could ever happen to so comfortable a figure — but subjected to being brusquely kicked upstairs to the House of Lords.

By any standards these sacked ministers make an impressive bunch of what the political correspondents might call administrative talent (which means that they get into the same mess as the others, but have a talent for it). It all shows that Thatcher does not look at all kindly on any hints of doubt or disloyalty from her henchmen. no matter how popular they may be in the party. Harold Wilson (another one we should no longer call by his common name) who was noted for a squeamish reluctance to throw anyone out of his governments. must be looking on in wonder.

The shadow Conservatives share some notable characteristics. Some of them are aristocrats; their families have for a long time been called by peculiar names and titles and they are allowed occasionally to dress up in an especially strange way. They are all very rich, often with huge land holdings. And they are all gentlemen, with courtesy oozing out of every stripe of the old school tie. They are sure, one feels, to look after their servants and their tenants and they probably think of all that wealth they own. and the luxurious life style that goes with it. as a trust which they hold on behalf of the less fortunate in society. Of course if any of the less fortunate should try to improve their luck with a bit of direct, acquisitive action, or suggest that their masters and mistresses might lay down the onerous burden of their trust, there will be trouble in which courtesy will not be too much in evidence. But for the moment that does not happen and the alternative Conservatives can present themselves in this avuncular light, as the standard bearers for the true, historic Toryism which is supposed to be based on everyone being secure and taken care of in their allotted station in life (even if it is not clear who did the allotting). This is not at all the style of the brash, self-made representatives of Thatcher Britain like Lawson and Tebbit with their rather cruder ideas on the unequal ownership of wealth in capitalist society.

The alternative Conservatives make their appeal — which again is conventional and outworn and is actually very popular in the Labour Party — that the present state of British capitalism results from a deliberate act of policy by Thatcher and her crew. The government, runs the argument, does not have to be as it is; neither does the Conservative Party; neither does capitalism.

If this were true things could be very differently arranged. If Thatcher and Tebbit could by an act of will create a slump it must follow that they could by another such act end it and instead create a boom. We would have the sort of capitalism which has not yet been experienced, totally under the control of the experts and the politicians. totally predictable. In fact none of them have ever been able to do this; it is largely a matter of luck, which reputation a politician gets stuck with in history, dependent on which phase capitalism is going through when they are in power. Politicians must operate within the economic laws and motivations of capitalism; their role is largely to respond, in varying degrees of confusion, to events rather than to fashion them. This is as true for the gentlemen wets like Pym and Carrington as it is for the bone-dry Tebbit and Lawson.

So is there, to adapt a well-known phrase, no alternative? For so long as the working class support capitalism’s existence, the answer to that question must be that no, there is no alternative. There is no benefit in the working class changing their support from one set of politicians to another. Capitalism is not like some benign country estate and it cannot be organised as if it were. It cannot put human welfare in the forefront of its concerns. It cannot be controlled by any leader or expert. It must produce problems like poverty, sickness and war. Workers who are seduced into thinking that things would be different under a government of less abrasive personalities are deluding themselves.

Those few who are not so deluded have the alternative. The problems of capitalism — and among them we can count the system's politicians both roughly obnoxious and smoothly devious — will be abolished by a social revolution which will make the means of life the property of the human race. That revolution must come as an act of will of a politically conscious working class, who understand the choice before them: will it be the anarchy and chaos of capitalism or the order and abundance of socialism? To opt for socialism w ill be a decision for plenty and human harmony. It makes a healthy contrast to what is on offer from all the politicians, whether in power or out — a world of misery and suffering, where our very survival is in doubt.

Party News (1984)

From the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Party’s presence at the rally to mark the 150th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs was very productive: 170 July Socialist Standards were sold, 1,000 leaflets on the subject of the Tolpuddle martyrs were distributed, and dozens of back-issues of the Standard were given out.

New Party groups have been formed in Bournemouth and East Anglia and both are on course to do well in the effort to expand membership. It is hoped that there will be a new group in Beddau before too long and Doncaster group has been stepping up its activity recently. Any readers in these areas who would like to get involved are urged to get in touch with the addresses listed on the inside back page.

Some members of Manchester branch are working on plans to carry out a campaign of activity in Yorkshire, probably in September. Readers interested in being involved — or who have suggestions about places in Yorkshire where meetings could be organised — are urged to tell Manchester branch, either in writing or by telephone.

Any members or supporters of the Party who are going to college or university in September/ October and would like to be put in touch with local members are urged to approach the Propaganda Committee at Head Office. October, when university terms begin, is an ideal time for socialist activity and any members or supporters who are interested in fixing up a meeting will be given assistance by the Party.

It is probable that there are some regular readers of the Standard who have friends who would be willing to become subscribers. One way to boost the sales of the Socialist Standard is by persuading one or two others to subscribe. Other ways of boosting circulation would be to persuade your local library to subscribe, to arrange for your trade union branch to subscribe, or to give a subscription to a friend (or enemy for that matter) as a gift. Any information from readers about bookshops willing to sell the Standard would be most welcome.

Any readers wanting specific news about activity in their area are requested to approach their nearest branch or group or to write to Head Office.

Steve Coleman