In the News: Nobody cares about you! (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, has anything positive come out of another instalment of British capital’s election farce? Well, 41 percent of those eligible to vote on 7 June turned their backs on it altogether. The representatives of capitalism and the media have done no end of moaning about our “apathy”, but then, of course, they are never going to give workers the credit that we might actually have seen through capitalist political “democracy”. So, maybe we can talk of rejection rather than apathy. But are there any positive challenges or alternatives coming from the working class?

Any readers from the Bristol area will have seen the posters and stickers stating “Nobody Cares” and “Vote Nobody”. Well, on 3 May (the date council elections were originally meant to take place) people in the Easton area of the city did indeed really have the chance to “Vote Nobody”. Thousands of forms were delivered ahead of an “election” held at Easton community centre, where those voting had a choice on the question “who do you want to run Easton?” between Bristol City Council and “Nobody”. 150 local people participated, with the result being Council – 5, “Nobody”– 145. The Nobody campaign then “derecognised” the council and invited people to meet on Thursdays at the community centre, at an assembly where they could discuss local issues. There are now a few “You are now entering free Easton” signs to be seen around the area.

As reported in the Big Issue South West (April 30–May 6 edition): “We’re telling people to ‘Vote Nobody’ for two reasons,” said campaign spokesman ‘Nobby O’body’.

“Firstly, we want to ridicule the idea that democracy is working. Democracy isn’t about ticking a box every four years to choose between a few cloned candidates whose manifestos say almost exactly the same thing. Secondly, on a more serious level, if the council is failing local people, we believe that the community has a right to say that it doesn’t recognise the council’s authority any more”. (The Vote Nobody campaign can be accessed at: http://uk.geocities.com/votenobody)

The “Nobody” team then went on to encourage people pissed off with the political con-game to express themselves by writing “Nobody” across ballot papers in the general election on 7 June. Spoilt ballot papers? Sound familiar?

Yes, in this respect there is more than a little common ground between the Socialist Party and the Nobody team in the elections just gone. We were both saying, if you are opposed to all the political con-merchants and the capitalist interests for which they stand – why vote for any of them? Why not vote for yourself, for a change, rather than just saying “voting changes nothing”? Why not vote “Nobody”? Or, better still, as we support the use of the vote as a potential revolutionary form of political expression, write “world socialism” across your ballot paper?

Both the world socialist campaign and “Nobody” rejected all the parties of capital. And, in the case of the 3 May Easton “referendum”, the Nobody campaign was perhaps tentatively exploring the sort of community/workers’ councils embodying direct working class democracy that would be vital in any future social and political movement for socialism. In our case though we are slightly more specific that this must be accompanied by electoral action to win control of parliament for the revolutionary working class. This in order to neutralise the capitalist state and its forces of repression, express the revolutionary desire of the working class majority and formally dismantle capitalism and its state apparatus. These, of course, are questions and situations for the future. But at least we have seen in Bristol, for any criticisms that could be made, a positive reaction to the evident failure of capitalist politics of all shades to work in the interest of the working class and their communities.

Local Socialist Party comrades delivered our own “anti-capitalist guide to the general election” leaflets to homes in Easton, putting our case for the rejection of capitalism’s election charade and for the rejection of the capitalist system entire – and for self-organisation to build a free society based on the principle of from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. So let’s put self-emancipation and the abolition of capitalism on the agenda. Let’s vote for ourselves for a change, and act for ourselves for a change – turning “apathy” into positive action.

Ben Malcolm

Socialist? Feminist? (2001)

Pamphlet Review from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Ashes of the Old Century, A Better World’s in Birth . By Andrea Bauer. (64 pp. $4.50 from Red Letter Press, 409 Maynard Ave. S., Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98104, USA.)

This is the Political Resolution adopted by the 1999 convention of a US trotskyist organisation called the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP).

I’m not sure which “better world” the title of this pamphlet is referring to, but it is certainly not planet Earth. This is a world where the state capitalist dictatorships of the Soviet bloc were “workers states” and “. . . societies in which the profit system had been overthrown and production and distribution were organized essentially in the interest of working people”. A world where “nationalization of the credit system” is a socialist demand. A world where the working class must be led and directed by “trained, dedicated revolutionaries” rather than rely on our own conscious actions. Most unbelievably of all, a world where workers “. . . respond with anger and pressure, not cynicism and apathy, when the Second Internationalists (Labour and Social Democratic parties) fail to act as their representatives”.

Its somewhat upsetting that the FSP styles itself as a “socialist, feminist” organisation. An organisation which regards itself as feminist while defending state capitalist regimes as “workers states” should ask itself some questions. As a system of society in which the FSP claim the profit system had been overthrown we should expect women to have liberated themselves from the shit capitalism throws (disproportionately) on them. Was this really the case though? Not quite:

“. . . women in Eastern Europe lived under a system of formal, legislated equality. Women had the legal right to work, and most barriers to women’s employment were lifted. Mandated equality, however, is not the same as freedom. Women were not given a choice of lifestyle, but were obligated to work. Since “equality” was imposed by the state, there was no public dialogue about the changes in women’s roles, and sexism and discrimination persisted, both in the public and domestic spheres. Women were still expected to do all of the child rearing and housework, for example, while working the same hours as men.”

In Romania, women were required to bear four, and then later five, children; many died from illegal abortions, or were allowed to bleed to death if they refused to reveal the names of illegal abortionists. (http://civnet.org/journal/issue3/cfbeco.htm)

Life for working class women in the state capitalist/”communist” states was a life not a million miles away from that of a working class woman in the openly capitalist “west”. What sort of liberation is offered by the “workers states” which the FSP see as a model for socialism if we are just going to continue being wage slaves and women are going to continue to be crushed by the burdens of a patriarchal class society?

Even the high percentage of women in national legislatures and public office in eastern bloc countries relative to the west is deceptive when comparison is made with percentages of women in the Party bureaucracy:

“In the bodies which did have real power—the communist parties’ central committees, for instance—there were almost no women” (http://www.oska.org.pl/english/womeninpoland/perpectives/2.html).

Just like the western states these “workers’ states” were systems of minority-class economic, political and social domination, with male authority figures at the top. That women are suffering disproportionately in the changeover period following the collapse of the eastern state capitalist bloc and losing many of what gains were won under state capitalism is an argument for abolishing the capitalist system altogether, not going “back to the future” to a “workers’ paradise” that never existed.

Ben Malcolm

Sickness and the system (2000)

From the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are drugs and medicines produced for and why are they produced? The rational answer (in a rational scheme of things) would be that they are to prevent or cure illness and promote well-being. However, we live under capitalism and, as we know, this means things don’t work that way. A striking example of the priorities of drug production in the capitalist system was given the Channel 4 programme Unreported World on 22 September.

This programme was about the rising incidence of sleeping sickness, a lethal disease carried by the Tsetse fly, in Sudan. After being almost eradicated during the 1960s this horrible disease is back with a vengeance. The situation is grim and you might be forgiven for thinking this might be because there is no effective treatment. In fact there is. it is known as DFMO. However, it is not an option as it is not being manufactured at an affordable price. In short, no pharmaceutical company is actually producing an existing treatment for sleeping sickness as there would be no profit in doing so. While it is needed desperately this medicine is thus withheld and for the lack of DFMO medical workers are forced to treat people using arsenic, of all things.

Some interesting facts came out during the report. Only one in every hundred drugs is developed for what are known as tropical diseases (diseases, that is, which occur in areas of the world where the majority of humanity lives). Of those that are, apparently many are by-products of different research. As there is seen to be no profit in producing drugs for people and health services who have little or nothing to buy them with the research is just not done. it is known for instance that really effective protection against malaria is a scientific possibility, but that it won’t see the light of day because the research wouldn’t be profitable for drug companies. The breakthroughs which could be achieved if scientific knowledge was not enslaved by the profit system don’t take much imagining.

The sick twist in the tale of sleeping sickness in Sudan was that the only hope of DFMO becoming an affordable treatment for those who need it there is the drug’s other known property—it slows facial hair growth. It is possible that DFMO may be marketed by Gillette as a cosmetic product and that this might lead to the price dropping enough for it to be affordable for the treatment of sleeping sickness. After the heart-breaking sight of a little child in terrible distress being given a spinal tap to see if the disease had entered her brain the truly disgusting nature of the upside-down priorities of capitalism could hardly be clearer. The answer to the earlier question is of course that drugs and medicines are produced with a view to yielding a profit. If people’s needs don’t fit in with this, then so much the worse for us.

During a chat I was having recently my mum, a professional nurse, commented that if people weren’t allowed medicines then what was the bloody point of making them. We were talking about a similar no profit—no treatment situation here in this country: namely working-class people with Multiple Sclerosis being denied access to the drug Interferon due to it being “too expensive”. The same goes for everything else; food, housing, clothes, electrical goods—if people can’t have them then what is the point of producing them? To sell or withhold them in the pursuit of profit as the boss class decides. All that wealth, produce and technology utterly wasted when it could be used for the benefit of us all.

The real question is not about whether we can afford medicine. It is about whether we can afford the profit system and the capitalist class. Whether we live in Sudan or in England, the answer is no. The sooner we get on and dump them the better.

Ben Malcolm

Reflections on “Reflections on June 18” (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The events in London and in many other places around the world on 18 June 1999 were significant and, in many ways, encouraging. Here we had “an action which attacks capitalism itself”. An action which claimed to attack capitalism itself, rather than a particular aspect of it. What’s more, let’s not forget this was global: actions and demonstrations were undertaken from Bangladesh to Nigeria to Germany to Uruguay. Since then there has been the “Battle in Seattle” accompanying the World Trade Organisation meeting and there’s more to come with events planned for 1 May no less (M1Y2K).

So, plenty of interest for those of us trying to organise for world socialism—and we in the Socialist Party are serious in wanting to talk with anyone who shares our aim of abolishing capitalism, with its destruction and wage slavery, and replacing it with common ownership and a united, classless human society.

One of the interesting things to come out of J18 has been a collection of articles written mainly by people involved in the events, called Reflections on June 18. What is most heartening is that these contributions show a critical and thoughtful attitude. Without exception they are written with a view to progressing from what they see J18 to have been towards a deeper understanding of how capitalism really dominates us, and of how we can get rid of it. They are particularly aware of the dodgier political perspectives of some of those involved. Specifically, they pre-empt what may become a major ruling class tactic to stifle any coming movement against capitalism—i.e. that of presenting “capitalism” purely in terms of finance capital (stock market wheeler dealing) and “multinational corporations”. And in a way, by concentrating in the UK on “the City” J18 has shown the dangers of this. All the Square Mile is is one of those places where the thieving bosses gamble with the wealth they extract from us. The profits and power of the ruling class comes though from the wider capitalist mode and process of production and exploitation. As one article puts it:

“Capitalism is not a place (‘financial centres’) or a thing (‘multinational corporations’), it is a social relationship dependent upon wage labour and commodity exchange where profit is derived from capital’s theft of unpaid labour” (our emphasis).

Concentrating on “nasty” finance capital and multinationals and defining “capitalism” in those terms can only end up as a massive diversion from the goal of abolishing the capitalist system. In fact it is potentially disastrous. As more than one contributor in Reflections on June 18th notes, targeting “finance” and “big business” (or the WTO) is something a lot of disparate groups can agree on—including those of the extreme nationalist right. The idea of “bad” multinationals as the “undemocratic” enemies of government and the nation state is bound to be seized on enthusiastically by both nationalists and smaller, local capitalists. Equally with the notion of “globalisation” being the real problem—as though capitalism as a system hasn’t always been a globalising one. It is the nature of capitalism as a system to seek to expand remorselessly—until, that is, we end the whole system of class ownership of the means of production, of wage labour and of production with a view to profit.

Which sort of leads to the issue of the “activist mentality” raised by one article. This makes an important point about what social revolution is all about:

“[T]he identification of some cause separate from one’s own life . . . is fundamentally mistaken—the real power of capital is right here in our everyday lives—we re-create its power every day because capital is not a thing but a social relation between people (and hence classes) mediated by things.”

Until, of course, we decide as a majority to take the political action necessary to change our lives.

Ben Malcolm

Agitprop (2000)

Book Review from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘More Agitation: Political Satires and Other Poems’, by Bob Dixon. (Artery Publications: Bromley, 1999)

There are some good little poems in here, and a few I could either take or leave. Bob Dixon has also written some criticism on children’s fiction in his Catching Them Young books, looking at the head-fixing “literature” that has been aimed at children in order to help mould them into good little workers with the required levels of patriotism, fear, and conformity. In this spirit a foreword to this collection states his principled position that he would like these poems to be used in schools, but never “in connection with any examination, test, or competition”. Good stuff. Though it is debatable whether poems called “The Poet, in Capitalist Society, Speaks” or “Fascist Haiku” are ever likely to see the light of day inside the classroom.

In the poem “The General Election” the poet is visited by various politicos who don’t impress him much. Refusing to pledge allegiance to the Labour candidate he asks, “I’m a socialist/so why should I vote for you?”. Too right.

Then, a “Marxist man” sails into view. Who could this be?! I’d like to think this might refer to someone presenting the case for common ownership and self-emancipation, but fear we may be talking the Left Wing of Capital here. However, the poet is going to vote for him—as long as there’s not going to be any backstabbing or “shilly-shallying”. Get those pigs ready to fly! Next up is some fascist knuckledragger. So, it looks like Tweedledum and Tweedledee have been joined by Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.

Apparently some of these poems have appeared in Socialist Worker. Funny; they don’t really seem them, y’know. Perhaps some eulogy to the massacre at Kronstadt would be more in the SWP line.

Ben Malcolm

Letter: More on socialism (1999)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

More on socialism

Dear Editors,

It’s been good to see the lively debate over the directions we should take as revolutionaries, in the recent letters on the “S” word question.

Although I am in favour of keeping “Socialism” in our party name, we shouldn’t let ourselves get too hung up about words—any word can become abused and misused; indeed you only need to think how the term “democracy” has been rendered almost meaningless through its use by state and corporate mouthpieces. Descriptions such as socialism, communism, anarchist-communism, Free Access and Common Wealth are all valid, if used meaningfully, for the sort of society we dearly wish to see. There is nothing to stop us using a multitude of words and descriptions for what we stand for in our propaganda (another word that has become distorted!). What’s important is that we get our ideas over as effectively as possible. There is no reason why we should constantly shout “Socialism” from the material we produce and distribute, and anyway, much of the time we don’t.

However, for many many people the words “socialism”, “socialist” hold the sort of vision of an alternative, free society that we stand for. This makes it a strength, and something that will attract people who consider themselves politically aware or socialist to the World Socialism Movement. The title “socialist” connects us to the long tradition of revolutionary ideas and movements of which we are a part in a way that Free Access, for all its merits, probably doesn’t.

The important thing would seem to be that socialists take an open-minded and non-dogmatic approach to the way we present and develop our ideas. Discussions like this should hopefully stimulate us to think how best to spread the message of self-emancipation and common ownership.

Ben Malcolm, 

Bath

Reply:

And unfortunately, socialism must be near the top of the list of words that have been abused—.- Editors

 

. . . And more

Dear Editors,

I agree that it is imperative for the Socialist Party now to hold more firmly than ever to its name. The end of the century has at last seen the demise of the big con, Leninism, and has also seen the self-unmasking of that other confidence trick, Labourite “socialism” (both of which equated socialism with nationalisation ). It would be too easy now, and a mistake, for the Socialist Party to let itself be seduced by the present lack of interest in the word socialism, by abandoning the name to which the Socialist Party alone has a right. As the one party truly representing the working class, we should know better than to give in to the pessimism of the moment. Wasn’t it a Socialist Party speaker recently who said, “The next century belongs to us”? We can’t afford to throw away our name, now that the name-stealers are at last tired of playing with it at our expense.

The Socialist Party is the one party (together with our companion parties of the World Socialist Movement) which stands, and has always stood, for socialism: a stateless, moneyless, classless world community, democratically controlled by the whole of society and with free access to the goods and services people need to live as true human beings. The Socialist Party must be proud of its name and now, more than ever before, must stand by it.

I see nothing wrong, however, with extending the name, logically, to World Socialist Party: full title, World Socialist Party (Britain), a party of the World Socialist Movement.

Anthony Walker, 

Christchurch, Dorset

World View: Repression—in exile (1998)

From the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The past couple of years have been a somewhat turbulent time for Tibetan refugee communities, Tibetan Buddhism in general, and for those who idealise the Dalai Lama. Far from fulfilling his fantasy status as some sort of “saintly” icon, the Dalai Lama has followed what can be seen as a political programme of repression not that dissimilar to that of the Chinese state, from which so many have fled.

In 1996 he announced a ban on the worship of a Buddhist deity called Dorje Shugden, declaring somewhat vaguely that he had discovered Shugden to be a “Chinese” spirit who was somehow physically threatening both his own life and the future of Tibet. He declared this ban not only in his capacity as a “spiritual leader”, but as head of a government-in-exile. For the Dalai Lama is the supreme head (unelected) of a state; albeit a state-in-waiting (Tibet) that is based in Dharamsala in northern India. It has a sizeable state machine; a parliament, cabinet, government departments, and most notably a Security Bureau. To fund this a tax is levied on all Tibetan refugees, non-payment of which results in official loss of “citizenship”. On the question of democracy, when the Vice President of the Tibetan parliament was asked if any political decision could conceivably be taken in opposition to the Dalai Lama he answered, “no, not possible”.

Those refusing to accept the ban on Shugden have accordingly been labelled as enemies of the state and Chinese agents and, in reference to Tibet’s provision at paper constitution, the government-in-exile has declared that, “concepts like democracy . . . are empty when it comes to the well-being of the Dalai Lama and the common cause of Tibet”. The lengths to which the Dalai Lama would be prepared to go to maintain his authority were hinted at in an interview in 1997 where he stated:

“If . . . there was only one learned Lama . . . alive, a person whose death would cause the whole of Tibet to lose all hope of keeping its Buddhist way of life, then it is conceivable that in order to protect that one person it might be justified for one or ten enemies to be eliminated . . .”

No prizes for guessing who and what is being referred to here then—and so much for peace and love.

The resulting “justified” actions taken against those refusing to comply with the deity ban have included the dismissal of all such dissidents from government employment and the report that the residents of at least one monastery were “persuaded” to sign forms in support of the ban by the presence of Indian state police. Some 300 cases of house arrest, destruction of personal property, and harassment by Dalai Lama supporters have been reported, including one case of a family being forced from their home by a large crowd, which petrol bombed and ransacked their house. In addition posters denouncing religious dissidents have become commonplace in Tibetan exile communities. These notices generally include the name, address and photo of the particular “enemy of the state” and the schools their children attend. It is little wonder that some have become refugees all over again.

The Dalai Lama recently helped promote the products of the Apple computer company under the advertising slogan “Think Different”, which is interesting when compared with an official statement of his that warns: “If you can think by yourselves it is good . . . it will not be good if we have to knock on your doors.”

Tibetans, both under Chinese rule and the rule of “their” government-in-exile, face a choice in common with the exploited majority everywhere: conformity imposed by gods and masters or the struggle for real freedom presented by socialists.

Ben Malcolm

Buddhism—a big zero (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism by David Edwards, Green Books, 228 pages, £9.99.

It is well worth reading this book, or at least around two-thirds of it. Much of Edwards’s work revolves around an incisive analysis of US foreign policy and the nature and operation of the media industry.

The sheer scale of what successive American governments have done to further the “national interest” (i.e. the creation of market-friendly world conditions overseen by effective client states) is exposed at some length. From the installation by military coups and coercion of murderous regimes throughout the South and Central Americas, to the subsequent official training and funding of the state death squads of those regimes, to the more indirect support given to other “friendly nations” (Algeria, Indonesia etc) who maintain conditions favourable to US capital through mass murder; the whole story of America’s fight for “democracy and freedom” is shown in all its bloody reality. Indeed, if you were so inclined, you could write a whole new chapter on it every month of every year. You could include the headings “Panama” and “Somalia”, two other parts of Planet Capitalism where the World’s Copper has recently been to restore Law and Order. In both, atrocious destruction and loss of civilian life was the result. However, for public consumption these onslaughts were labelled “removing dictatorship” (installed, incidentally, by the US) and “peace-keeping”—labelled and packaged for the proles by the media, that is.

Which brings us to Edwards’s analysis of the role of the media, which he credits largely to Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. Essentially, hideous acts of state terrorism are generally presented as noble quests for justice, not because of some conspiracy or official state censorship, but because of the basic operation of capitalism. It’s all about money after all: the ruthless securing of markets, trade routes, raw materials to make the world safe for the profit system-and the media (as it is vaguely termed) is part of that system. Edwards puts it well:

“The modern mass media is not, as some . . . like to remark, controlled by corporations; it is corporations. Businesses do not control the car industry; the car industry is big business. Likewise, the media is made up of large corporations, all in the business of maximising profits . . . This immediately suggests that, at the very least, media corporations might have a tendency to be sympathetic to the status quo, to other corporations, and to the profit-maximising motive of the corporate system . . .” (p.62).

Far from some Orwellian vision of state control ITN, the Guardian, and pals are voluntarily “on message” because this is in the long-term interest of their product. Although the odd “exposé” of “scandals” is acceptable (the cleaning up of the system’s image can only make it more secure after all), an attack on the foundations of their system is unimaginable. As Edwards puts it, the media operates in such a way as to ensure that “something remains ‘missing in the middle'”. By their very nature media corporations could hardly provide their consumers with the missing analysis that links corporations and western governments with massacres in Guatemala and starving children.

Sad to say that after an approach such as this the final third of Edwards’s book is so infuriating. The contrast actually seems disconcertingly odd, but then this reviewer is a socialist. I will restrain myself from actual anger if only because Edwards informs us that the “real enemy . . . is anger itself”. Earlier he identifies problems, such as the rape of Latin America, and their cause: capitalism. His conclusion, though, is not the abolition of that system; and therefore the book’s title is misleading. Edwards counsels that we, as individuals, practice compassion and meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Rather than urging us to relieve the capitalist class of their power to oppress and destroy us he advises us to pity and nurture them, because then they will surely stop their anti-human activities.

To summarise, he argues that “rich and poor are united by suffering” and that if the rich became a bit kinder by way of the individual promotion of “compassion for . . . both rich and poor”, then our problems would just melt away.

So what has Buddhism got to do with revolution? Nothing at all apparently, as Edwards sees nothing wrong with the rule of a parasitic elite, just as long as they are nice about it, and the approach he suggests can only lead to the continuation of the abusive system he has previously bemoaned. Compassion for the bosses? This book itself contains enough reasons why we should give the lot of them the boot immediately.

Ben Malcolm

Letters: Class War (2007)

Letters to the Editors from the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class War

Dear Editors

I read the review of Ian Bone’s Bash the Rich (March Socialist Standard) with interest as a few years back I had a couple of pints with the author in a pub in Bristol. And until recently he could be found selling the excellent community news-and-scandal sheet The Bristolian in that same fair city.

Indeed, one of the most interesting sections in his “confessions” deals with his involvement in a similar publication in Swansea during the late 1970s called Alarm. Populist, pro-working class publications are evidently what he does best, and the mother of them all of course turned out to be Class War.

Here’s my “confession” . . . I always had a bit of a soft spot for CW. Their political positions (such as they were) were always closer to the Socialist Party’s than most anarchists and any lefties. And the paper in its heyday was something to behold. But – and it’s a big but – their avowed methods were, and are, different from ours in the extreme. Bone quotes a comrade of his criticising elitist violence (as opposed to political mob violence) by stating ‘petrol bombs are far more democratic than dynamite’. OK then, but isn’t democratic political action even more democratic still? And, of course, CW famously developed a veritable obsession with the “middle class” that they saw as standing between us and the ruling class.

As his memoirs end abruptly around 1985 we can presumably await further fond rememberings, no doubt featuring tales of the anti-Poll Tax conflict of the early 1990s. Until then, Ian, if you’re reading this, where on Earth did the bloody Bristolian vanish to?

Ben Malcolm, 

Bath.

Capitalism

Dear Editors

Thanks for the review of my book Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction (March Socialist Standard), which I appreciate. I introduce the notion of a stage of managed capitalism largely in order to contrast the tendencies of the period (roughly speaking) 1850-1970s with what has happened since the 1970s. I agree that there are continuities across this watershed – the concentration of capital has, for example, steadily increased – but I think we need some notion of a different stage since the 1980s in order to make sense of Thatcherism and New Labour, their similarities and their difference from old Conservatism and old Labour.

While it appeared to many in the 1970s that capitalism was collapsing, and there was plenty of evidence they could draw upon – notably the global decline in rates of profit – capitalism did seem to get a new lease of life in the 1980s.

On the issue of whether the Soviet Union was a form of state capitalism, I would argue that the institutional differences between the Soviet system and the capitalist countries are sufficiently great to warrant the treatment of the Soviet system as fundamentally different, though I would agree that the Soviet Union was a part of the capitalist world economy rather than distinct from it and that it was another means by which labour was systematically exploited. If one treats the Soviet system as a form of state capitalism it is also more difficult to make sense of the 1990s transformation of Russia and its consequences, which flowed from the introduction of capitalist mechanisms.

Perhaps you are too pessimistic on the possibility of changing capitalism, since there have been many important institutional changes in many different countries at many different times. By change you mean change from rather than change of! Are there any signs that a change from is going to happen?

James Fulcher 

War

Dear Editors

I agree with Bob Dixon (book of poems reviewed in the March Socialist Standard) that the working class do not give much thought to wars. Some regard them as part of life. You can see this from the way they buy poppies and the way they attend ceremonies which glorify wars. Although many join the forces for adventure and to escape poverty. But we must try to change this culture of war by any means we can including by poems like Bob Dixon’s. If you join the forces you will be expected to kill and be killed. All wars are illegal and you will be expected to fight for the ruling class. Who will put poppies on your grave? You will become part of the poppy day parade. No sympathy. No comment. Just silence. Like the dead.

Joe Boughey, 

Newton-le-willows.

Death penalty

Dear Editors

In his article (Socialist Standard, March) John Bissett explains some of the cruelties of the death penalty, and talks movingly of his own experience of trying to support someone on death row. As a constitutionally secular society that, ostensibly at least, champions the right of the individual, executions in America seem particularly perverse.

Of course, it’s unlikely that anyone reading this letter is likely to have any overly idealistic ideas about the American government (to say the least!) but couldn’t we at least hope for them to not engage in such a seemingly obvious contradiction of the values for which they claim to stand?

A real turning point for me, in my understanding of both the death penalty and my attitude towards it, came from reading the book ,Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment the American Conscience and the end of executions, by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell. I really found this to be one of the cleverest and most illuminating books I’ve ever read. I was honestly bowled over by the skill with which the authors tackled this subject. Rather than dwelling exclusively on the point that executions aren’t terribly nice for the person getting killed in this manner, and then vilifying anyone who possessed the inhumanity to express even the slightest sympathy for it under any circumstances ever (as I might have been tempted to do) the authors adopt a diametrically different approach – seeking to understand, rather than pass judgment, on everyone in any way involved in the death penalty process or expressing an opinion on it.

The authors draw a distinction between personal emotions concerning violent crime, and government policy. As they put it: “we can well understand how a husband or sister of a murder victim might want to tear the killer limb from limb; we’d probably feel the same way, at least initially. Yet this does not provide a clear indication about what society should do with convicted killers.”

I’ve had a few conversations with people who regarded themselves as supporters of the death-penalty who I’ve managed to bring around to agreeing it wasn’t a good idea, by first expressing sympathy for their sense of indignation and wish for vengeance, and then gently asking them if they thought the death penalty would really help stop such things (i.e. violent murders) from happening.

The authors explain how the condemned man comes to serve a symbolic purpose – representing evil that needs to be purged, and, a “hard” attitude towards crime generally. This is of course relevant to other groups that can come to represent evil, and towards whom a similarly “hard” attitude is seen as appropriate, i.e. “Islamic terrorists”.

The death penalty is significant not just from the point of view of the suffering it causes to its victims (and everyone else involved in the death penalty process – a point explained by Lifton and Mitchell), but also because it is related to fundamental moral and psychological issues that are a part of everyone’s lives, to do with justice, vengeance, forgiveness, and the value we place on human life. By improving our understanding of these, and learning to ditch the attitude of considering people as “evil” in favour of recognizing them as flesh and blood humans like ourselves, erring and misguided though they may be, we can start to gain a recognition of our shared humanity that, when shared by enough of us, will help bring an end to all instances of inhumanity and neglect.

Adam Waterhouse, 

Bristol

Labour and the work ethic (1997)

From the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

  In the aftermath of that great non-event that was the general election we can soon expect to see what measures the new Labour regime has in store for us in its mission to make British capitalism yet more ruthlessly "efficient" and exploitative.

One person who should know is Labour’s own "Prince of Darkness”, political gangster- extraordinaire Peter Mandelson (Minister Without Portfolio). In BBC 1's On The Record programme (11 May), amid the waffle and lying (and his claim that economic growth could bring “prosperity for all” is a twenty-four carat lie), he dropped us at least one very interesting clue. More than once Blair’s whizzkid identified as a key Labour objective the reinforcement of the work ethic and in so doing signalled the government’s commitment to further putting the screws on the working class.

The “work ethic” has a history as long and as horrible as modern capitalism. With roots in the Calvinist Protestant variety of religion it was swiftly seized on by the capitalist class as a powerful ideological weapon. At the time of the industrial revolution it was all the bosses could do to make their workers knuckle under. Only recently driven off the land by enclosure and made completely dependent on working for a wage, the new working class was not used to the regimentation demanded by industrial capitalism and resistance to it was widespread.

The bosses’ response, alongside the removal of all means of living independently of the wages system, the threat of mechanisation and naked repression, was to hammer home the belief that work for the sake of work was a great and noble thing. From being simply a means to an end, the work ethic held up work as an end in itself, to the point of becoming the meaning of life. This was a convenient ideology for the capitalists as the labour of those forced to work for them was the source of their wealth and power. More convenient still was their success in grinding this belief into the population at large, so that the exploited not only accepted their exploitation, but became more or less enthusiastic about it.

This process has continued to the present day, with the lesson continually drummed into us at every stage of our lives that giving up the bulk of our time and energy to the creation of profit for the ruling elite in jobs we usually hate is somehow a desirable way to live—indeed the only way to live. “Education” in schools and colleges is only the most obvious way we are conditioned (or brainwashed) into accepting the work (or slave) ethic and our subservient position in the system. It was after all no accident that the departments of education and employment were merged.

It is hardly surprising that Mandelson should than have expressed such zeal for reinforcing this ideology. Capitalism likes us to be as cheap, obedient and eager to knuckle down to the job as possible and this has become ever more so as the “global market" and suchlike has forced national economies to get rough, tough and more mercilessly exploitative than ever.

In a world of "flexibility", short-term contracts and job insecurity the work ethic may be more important than ever to the ruling class in securing a working class resigned to the anxiety of slaving away in whatever employment the system chucks at it. That firm bosses' favourite the Job Seekers Allowance is an attempt to cut social (in)security expenditure, but also to ensure that the unemployed are "actively seeking" work, i.e. are firmly locked into the treadmill of work by being forced by sheer poverty to search for absolutely any job going, even when such jobs are non-existent.

At the back of the Minister’s mind may be the fear that capitalism's restructuring and long-term mass unemployment has led many people to lose their identification with a certain “career” and even with the whole world of employment: many people are sensibly asking themselves whether wage and salary labour is really that desirable after all.

To counter such developments, we can expect the Labour government’s commitment to the work ethic to be reflected in their education, social security and law and order policies: in other words a continuation of the Tories’ policies of heightened regimentation, austerity and repression. Whatever they do though they will not be able to stop more and more people seeing how criminally unnecessary this system of exploitation, pressure and misery is in a world where a few voluntary hours a week enjoyable, useful activity is all anyone need contribute to supply what is needed for everyone to lead a comfortable, fulfilling life. Down with the work ethic—a tool with which capitalism has stolen our lives, our energy and our world.

Ben Malcolm

Land reformism (1999)

Book Review from the December 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scotland: Land and Power (The Agenda for Land Reform) by Andy Wightman, in association with Democratic Left Scotland. Luath Press Ltd, Edinburgh, 1999. 126pp

There is much of interest to be found in this book, not least the amazing statistic that 1252 landowners own two-thirds of the 16 million-plus acres of private rural land in Scotland. Scotland has a population of 5 million. This of course is a legacy of the universal process behind the rise of capitalism: the war on common ownership and the separation of people from land, by sword and by fraud. Once enough people were denied the autonomy that access to land provided, a class of exploitable wage workers was produced and the rest, as they say, is history.

What exists in rural Scotland, behind the aristocratic veneer, is not really feudalism. In the true sense this is a system in which all land is held by the monarch (ultimately from god) and parcelled out to “superiors” and “vassals” who control the land inhabited by the tenants. This is a dead system, as Scotland’s landowners (as elsewhere) own the land they hold in fact and in law. They are the “kings” of “their” patch. As the authors point out, the proposed abolition of one of the last vestiges of the feudal system, that of the theoretical status of the Crown as “paramount superior”, would actually benefit big landowners as this is also the last vestige of the idea that landownership was conditional and subject to the “public interest” represented by the Crown. Junking “feudalism” would also give the essentially capitalist system of landownership a ore up-to-date image of course, and perhaps further hide the fact that what we are talking about here is the dividing up of stolen goods.

The authors see a solution to Scotland’s unusually concentrated pattern of landownership in “land reform”—to break up large holdings to enable people to purchase property within a regulated framework which insists on residency and limits monopoly holdings” (p.79). Indeed a similar process was undertaken in Ireland between 1881 and 1903. Whether this will happen is questionable. What can’t be denied though is that any such move would have to take place within the confines of the same “market forces” that have brought hunger, clearance and destruction to both Scotland and Ireland (and England for that matter) and depopulated the land. The market system unfortunately doesn’t give a toss about “social justice”, sustainable rural development etc.

Globally, what are the implications for all this of the march of the fully industrialised agriculture system? As land is effectively changed into a system of huge factories, as agri-business corporations like Monsanto move to patent DNA and unleash the “terminator” gene, what does the immediate future hold for those living and working on the land? From India to the Vale of Evesham, things are not looking good.

Ben Malcolm

Letters: Just dealing with one of the effects (1996)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just dealing with one of the effects

Dear Editors,

In his recent article ("Class, Micropolitics and Solidarity", October Socialist Standard), Jonathan Clay talks about the action in which four of us disarmed a Hawk attack plane destined for Indonesia. He states that this action was "inspired, but ultimately doomed”, and says that no doubt we realised this all along. I object most strongly to what was one of the most successful anti-arms trade actions ever being dismissed as "doomed”. Nine months after we disarmed that particular plane, it is still in England. It was due to be sent months ago to a counter-insurgency squadron in Indonesia from where it would have been used against civilians in East Timor. The many East Timorese who have written to thank us for our action certainly don’t think it was doomed.

Jonathan Clay goes on to say that our action was undertaken to publicise the situation in East Timor, and that the jury ignored the law in acquitting us. Had he taken the slighted trouble to get his facts right, he would have found that we had a defence in law—that of using reasonable force to prevent crime, a defence under the Criminal Law Act 1967. We did not undertake this action as a publicity stunt—who would risk ten years in prison for publicity? The judge allowed our defence to be put to the jury, who acquitted us on that basis. To suggest that the jury ignored the law is insulting to them and does nothing to help people understand that this kind of action can in certain circumstances be legal. I wonder what actions Jonathan Clay has undertaken to uphold justice and international law—or is he just an armchair activist whose only contribution is to make ill-founded criticisms of other people’s actions?

Andrea Needham, 

Seeds of Hope—East Timor Ploughshares

Reply:

When we said that your action was “ultimately doomed" we meant that it would fail to prevent the Indonesian military getting their attack planes in the end (that's what ultimately means). The most that you could achieve was what you did achieve—to delay delivery and to gain publicity for your cause. We assumed you realised this but if you really expected to stop delivery altogether we misjudged your level of understanding of existing political realities.

Are you holier than us? Probably, but then we don’t share your belief in the efficacy of the law to improve things. In fact, for us, the law is a reflection of private property and profit-motivated society and exists to uphold it. But it is precisely this society—capitalism—with its built-in competitive struggle between states for sources of raw materials, investment outlets, trade routes, markets and strategic positions to control these, which is the root cause of situations like that in East Timor.

Such situations will go on occurring, in some part of the world, as long as capitalism continues to exist. What are you doing to speed the end of capitalism? Or are you just a single-issue activist concentrating exclusively on trying to deal with just one of its many nefarious effects?

Editors

A good thing

Dear Editors,

Jonathan Clay’s article. "Class, Micropolitics and Solidarity" in October’s Socialist Standard was a very welcome and timely one in that it warned against taking a dismissive attitude to defensive class struggle.

Only working class solidarity can get rid of capitalism and achieve world socialism and any expression of such solidarity is a good thing, whether at work, in communities fighting to protect their local environment, or in the various getting-togethers to resist the bosses' latest laws. At least it shows that people will never roll over and die, as the ruling class so dearly wants us to. Obviously none of the above will do much at present to bring about a free society because the required mass class consciousness isn’t there.

However, now more than ever, people involved in defensive struggles are likely to approach the only conclusion there is: that the money system as a whole is the problem. Attacks on the working class are getting more savage by the day, every way of running capitalism has been tried and discredited and there is widespread rejection of the parties of capitalism (including the lefties and their sorry antics). Life itself is an education and the Socialist Party exists to spread the socialist case as widely as possible.

Socialists are all for working class solidarity, but are "under no illusions" that it is mass solidarity for the abolition of capitalism that is so desperately needed.

Ben Malcolm, 

Cardiff

Socialism or Zombyism? (2000)

Front cover for the 2001 revised edition.

Book Review from the January 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two Hundred Pharaohs, Five Billion Slaves . . . Manifesto. Available from Box 100, 178 Whitechapel Road, London. E1 1BJ.

“In short the conditions already exist for us to build a world better than utopia.” This is an inspiring statement for any contribution to revolutionary thought to kick off with, and this manifesto continues in similar style; analysing capitalism’s current trends and the prospects for working class revolution and the achievement of the classless society we call world socialism. This is a thought-provoking publication, and one of scope and detail that a review of this length can’t deal with satisfactorily.

The title refers to the situation we are now faced with: that of the subjection of humanity’s billions to the class interests of a couple of hundred billionaires: the real bourgeoisie. The vast wealth and power of such a numerically tiny class has been accumulated through the process of turning the world population into an exploitable working class, eradicating the peasantry and locking us into the global factory of world capitalism. This class, as this manifesto points out, has waged war to proletarianise the world, making capitalist relations universal. In doing so though it has created its own gravediggers. That’s us: the five billion plus, united by class position and interest, capable of abolishing class society and beginning the beautiful adventure that will be the future human society.

Though we in the Socialist Party would wish some debate on the means by which the working class majority can achieve a transformation of society, there is much here we can agree with. The need, for instance, for revolutionaries to organise openly and democratically, and in complete opposition to the “vanguards” of the Left, who are always on hand to protect and serve the capitalist system. Also, socialists will disagree with the view of “socialism” as some sort of utopian capitalist business strategy rather than a description of a classless society. Nevertheless this is a publication that socialists will find very interesting.

Of great insight, for example, is the analysis of capitalism’s efforts to colonise every second of our lives, fully subsuming our “leisure” time as it has our working time:

  “A situation in which every waking moment of a worker’s life is an uninterrupted experience of either factory labour (the regimented labour of the office, factory, retail unit or commercial hotel etc.) or intensified shopping.”

Epitomising this process is the march of the Mega-Malls, which began with Canada’s West Edmonton Mall in 1984, and now includes developments such as the MetroCentre, Bluewater etc. in Britain. The Mega-Mall, an “awesome neon cathedral” of retail and “leisure” is the environment in which we are meant to wander, controlled and spellbound. This it seems is capitalism’s vision of the future in its “advanced” nations: a docile, profit producing working class who will revert to being Consumer Zombies when we are let out to play.

Which is all very reminiscent of George Romero’s film Day of the Dead, where the Living Dead converge on The Mall, as it is the only thing they remember from their human existence. But we are not zombies; we are human beings and we need better than this. We can choose life. We can choose revolution.

Ben Malcolm

Great Stuff (1998)

The TV Review column from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is so much crap on TV that deserves the severest criticism by socialists that when a rare, inspiring programme appears on the box, those of us who spend too much of our time in front of it are more than justified in celebrating the event.

Just such an occasion was the last series of the “The Mark Thomas Comedy Product” (Channel 4). If nothing else, this show achieved something absolutely vital: it was both meaningfully political and very, very funny. Scorching, bang-bang-bang studio stand-up was mixed in with film of Mark and his mates pulling situationist-style stunts at the expense of members of the establishment, the capitalist class, and their shabby hypocrisy.

Those who enjoyed the previous series–gas fat-cat Cedric Brown refusing to meet Thomas and receive a cheque for five grand “we’ve just proved that Cedric Brown is now so rich that he won’t even walk down a flight of stairs for £5000!”); Mark sticking ice cream cones on a tank and inquiring of William Waldegrave about sending it to a “mate in Iraq”–were not disappointed this time out.

In an unforgettable TV moment Mark drew out of a Church of England investment manager that the Church wouldn’t make money from companies concerned with drink or porn on “moral” grounds, but weaponry was fine. He then rolled up with a missile launcher of the type the Church profits from, decked out with the slogan “CHURCH OF ENGLAND–KILLING FOREIGNERS FOR PROFIT AND JESUS”, as a helpful suggestion of how the god squad should publicise their activities. In doing this Thomas was able to reveal “the great and the good” as the callous money-grubbing bastards they often are. And the reaction of the (mostly male) anti-abortion moral fascists he so accurately sent up really was unmissable.

As for the straightforward comedy routines, the anti-work song in the penultimate episode (more “fucks” than you could shake a boss at) had this socialist reaching for “rewind” time after time–a really funny, bitingly accurate ballad against wage slavery.

But any criticisms? Lack of a proposed social alternative, for instance? Not really, because it’s amazing just how much a man so obviously from a libertarian political background was actually able to get away with. In his own postscript to the series Thomas summed up by saying that if the show had been about anything, it was that there is no reason why we should have to put up with the sort of shit he had been tackling.

This wasn’t the political and social action needed to get rid of that shit certainly, and didn’t pretend to be, but the more or this sort of TV there is to combat the lies and dross our class is forever bombarded with the better. Great stuff!

Ben Malcolm

Some states good; some states bad (1996)

From the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Debate Between Socialist Party and Tories 'Is Britain Worth Dying for?'

Halloween was a suitably grim evening for a debate at Cardiff University between the Socialist Party and the prospective Tory candidate for Cardiff Central, David Melding, on the topic: “Is Britain Worth Dying For?”

As an exposition of how the economic conflicts of capitalism and the boss class are the true cause of war and death on an ever-increasing scale and of the socialist alternative to this sick system, even this was extremely useful. The fact that when the ruling class and governments of rival territories fall out over markets, raw materials, trade routes and the like and can’t or won’t compromise, it is the working class who are marched off to kill each other in their own oppressors’ interests was once again held up for all to see. This debate led to important related issues rising to the surface.

One was the idea put forward by our Conservative opponent that some states are worth dying for (today’s Britain, of course!) and some aren’t (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia). This “good state-bad state” argument missed the point that all states are more or less oppressive The state will always protect the interest of the ruling class who control it against working-class interests. States are as oppressive as their controllers feel they need to be. This can even be seen in “liberal” Britain, for example during the last great miners’ strike, when state violence was openly used to smash workers’ resistance. There are no “good” states because the state is a creation that is set up and maintained by the rulers, against the ruled. Needless to say, in socialism the state would not and could not exist in any form.

What was also brought out was the sheer human tragedy caused when states and the ruling class unleash their killing machines. That is, people from one part of the world are expected to kill people from another, whom they have never met. These people will be much like themselves, their families, and friends. That this sick idea is seen as normal and acceptable by all the parties of capitalism, “left” and “right”, shows just what a bloody and anti-human system we are slaving under.

No government, however, will admit that such institutionalised mass murder is carried out in the name of profit, but then who would expect anything like the truth from any politician? Wars always falsely dressed up as clashes of ideology or “good against evil”, which brings us back to the Cardiff Tory’s claim that some states are somehow “morally” superior to others and thus represent something it is worth dying (and killing) for.

This view of the world (faithfully upheld by the media) would have us believe that the Gulf War was about defending Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s fantastic “democracy” and “freedom” from the Forces of Evil (armed previously by Britain and the US, among others) rather than a punch-up over oil resources. It would also have us imagine the Second World Slaughter was a battle for liberty. That World War Two ended with the delivery of millions of East Europeans into the clutches of the red fascists of Soviet Russia shows just how interested the great powers really were in “freedom” and “democracy”.

Wars are always fought over the economic and strategic interests of the various sections of the world’s ruling class. Fighting our brothers and sisters from other “countries” is totally against our interests as members of the working class; our rulers’ quarrels are not worth one drop of blood.

As for the millions who have been pointlessly slaughtered in wars and the millions who are dying now, the best way we can remember them is to get rid of the capitalist system that killed them and will keep on killing and replace it with world socialism, where the nightmares of wars, states, money and oppression will, at long last, have disappeared forever.

Ben Malcolm

Globalization (2001)

Book Review from the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Globalization: Neoliberal Challenge, Radical Responses. By Robert Went, London/Sterling VA: Pluto Press, 2000.

Robert Went argues that though the world economy is nothing like as "globalised", nor corporations as "footloose" as many believe, there are far-reaching changes going on in the functioning of capitalism. It could be argued that while none of the factors which are seen to make up "globalisation" is new in itself the scale and ferocity of current economic restructuring and attacks on wages and conditions do make for a distinct epoch in the capitalist system. The effects, with which we are all too familiar, are spelled out by Went. These trends lead to:

"greater social inequality as the result of a dual polarisation process, both within countries and on a world scale among different countries; to progressive levelling down of wages, working conditions and social security; to extensive migratory flows; to life-threatening ecological deterioration and destruction; to a greater role for unaccountable international institutions and regional entities; and to further whittling-away of democracy."

This is all part and parcel of the profit system of course, but Went points to the relative world-wide intensification of these processes and the economic reasons for them.

"In the mid-1970s," he points out, "an end came to the expansive period throughout the capitalist world." Basically, around this time growth expressed as a percentage increase in Gross National Product slowed up and with this process the rate of profit also began to drop. The priority for the capitalist class was to salvage the rate of profit. First and foremost this meant attacking the working class and increasing exploitation—pushing down wages and curtailing working-class organisation. Accommodating our aspirations to a half-decent life was no longer a price they could pay. Went claims that since around the mid-1980s the rate of profit has been steadily rising so "perhaps for the first time in history, increasing profit rates do not lead to more economic growth". While growth falls, profits rise and this has only been possible through upping the tempo of class robbery—getting "leaner and meaner". In short then, "globalisation" has been a symptom of, and a response to, a period of crisis in the capitalist system. The boom in currency speculation and weird financial wheeler-dealing is another symptom of this depressive period.

It is probably too obvious to comment that capitalism has always been a globalising system, seeking out possibilities for profit in every nook and cranny on the planet. But it is this period of crisis that has compelled the system to attempt to fully extend its laws and relations into every aspect of human life and experience. As Went states:

"money can be made by turning more and more things into commodities; patents on animals, plants and human genes; leisure time (television, shopping expeditions, amusement parks for day trippers, casinos); culture (media commercialisation, corporate sponsorship of museums, exhibits and cultural events); sex (sex tourism, pornography, sex lines) and human organs".

Once again, none of this is entirely new, but the scope and ferocity of the never-ending pursuit of profit by the capitalist class grows by the day. Above all, this surely points to a system which is decadent, destructive and poisonous to humanity. That it continues in a world in which we have long been able to produce an abundance for all points to the only solution there can possibly be to the situation described and analysed in this book—capitalism as a world system must be ended by working-class socialist revolution.

Though it sort of hints at it, nowhere in this book is it stated explicitly that the root cause of poverty and exploitation is the minority class ownership and control of the means of production and distribution and production for the market. This is what we've got to sort out and it is therefore disappointing that the author issues a rallying call for the creation of a movement to achieve things such as "reregulation of the financial sector", "control over the labour process" and "redistribution of income", especially when elsewhere he accepts that such things will never again be possible. This is basically a call for renegotiating our conditions of exploitation under capitalism when the book itself is stuffed full of evidence of the need for the long overdue abolition of the system and its whole stinking edifice.

Ben Malcolm

Capitalism - Labouring In Vain (2003)

Book Review from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Krisis: Contributions To The Critique Of Commodity Society. (Chronos Publications, B.M. Chronos, London. WC1N, 3XX). 2002. 31 pages. £1.50p.

This pamphlet is a collection of essays from the German-based Krisis group, which has been developing its own take on Marx's critique of capitalism since the mid-1980s. Articles in various languages can be found at: www.krisis.org and may be of great interest to readers of the Socialist Standard.

In the essay Realists And Fundamentalists, Robert Kurz reminds us that:

“In 1992, the US economist Gary S. Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize for the theorem that even outside of the market, all human behaviour is aligned with cost-benefit viewpoints and can be mathematically depicted, even love” (P.15).

How have we come to a point where such unscientific and deeply alienated nonsense is given “intellectual” house-room; and what does this tell us about contemporary society? The answer of the authors of this pamphlet is one we would agree with: that this form of society (namely capitalism) is now historically bankrupt. But it is not dead, and in its ongoing, profit-hungry intrusion into every facet of human activity and experience it is dissolving everything, including human relationships, into something it calls “the economy”.

The big problem facing humanity, according to the Krisis group, is that capitalist society has effectively reduced all human activity to the category of “labour”. Or at least all activity that is “marketable”: that can be exploited to yield surplus value. However, with the technological productive powers humanity has produced under capitalism, much of this “labour” (what you and I have to do to make ends meet) is becoming more and more redundant. This creates a crisis for humanity, but only for so long as we continue to live in a society in which access to the means of subsistence is dependent on the sale of our minds and bodies to an employer for a wage. In a society based on a “to each according to their needs” basis, however, this abundance of productive power would be a positive benefit, freeing up human time and creativity in a way which may seem hard for us to imagine in these dark days.

A problem with this pamphlet is its acceptance of the bourgeois/leftist definition of “socialism” as a failed system of state planning. That said, Kurz is on our wavelength when he writes that the only way to stop the 21st-century turning into a bloodbath for humanity is to “formulate socialism anew and no longer in a state-run economic form. Only in this way is it possible that history will open itself again” (P.19).

The other big problem is Krisis's seeming rejection of class struggle, and of the working class as the agent for achieving the new society. They seem to see the class struggle as part of a process which has helped fetishise “labour”, and thus purely as an aspect of capitalist development, rather than the process which will transcend capitalism. We simply cannot accept this. We have to ask who, if not the working class as a conscious movement, is in a position to achieve the abolition of capitalism? If not the class struggle (which we all experience as part of the realities of our lives in a class society), then what process or motive force in the contradictory, conflict-ridden world of capitalism holds the seeds of humanity's emancipation? The authors seem to take a super-pessimist view of the working class, and it is perhaps this that causes them to dismiss our class as a revolutionary agent as much as any actual theory. In this they very much reflect the “death of the working class” spirit of the ideological age.

The workers, they argue, are largely enthusiastic participants in capitalism's fetishisation of wage labour:

“. . . in the crises of labour society, ordinary people (i.e. the subjects formed by capitalism) turn out to be the main obstacle for the abolishment of the prevailing fetish system. They do not want to stop working … The Titanic must not sink; the passengers want the music to keep playing” (P.5).

Oh, really?! We may prefer selling the best part of our days in return for a more or less crappy wage rather than exist on a pittance and see our dependents go without, but this hardly adds up to positive enthusiasm for wage slavery. Utter loathing of the “labour society” is familiar to anyone who has held down a job for any length of time. Even in countries like the UK, which were among the first to be colonised by the capitalist system, the state still has to go to extraordinary lengths to indoctrinate and discipline us into even a superficial acceptance of the capitalist “facts of life”. Alongside Work, School and Prison are still the other two parts of the bosses' holy trinity and always will be, as long as capitalism continues. True, working class resistance in itself is not going to be enough to change the world, as long as we don't consciously work for the revolutionary end of capitalism itself. But the fact that the working class has not at this point in time organised itself for this revolutionary end is no reason to reject “ordinary” people out of hand.

Where we do agree entirely is with the conclusion the Krisis group reaches about the only real solution to the barbarism humanity faces:

“The inescapable historical task is the negation of the negative mode of social reproduction itself, i.e. the liberation of the production of wealth from the restrictions of the modern commodity-producing system” (From article “Marx 2000” on).”

Or: wealth must be produced and distributed to meet our human needs, rather than to perpetuate an outdated capitalist mode of production which now offers nothing but misery and fear to the vast majority.

BM

The unions we deserve (2000)

Book Review from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

All Power to the Imagination!: Revolutionary Class Struggle In Trade Unions and the Petty Bourgeois Fetish of Organisational Purity by Dave Douglass. Class War Federation, P.O. Box 467, London E8 3QX.

This is really interesting and readable book, despite some horrendous comments on "national liberation", particularly relating to Ireland. The author is a life-long mineworker and NUM activist who is also a member of the IWW and the section of Class War which decided to continue with the CW paper and federation. The aim of this book is basically to attack the argument popular in some anarchist and left-communist circles that trade unions are inherently tools of the capitalist establishment that act to stifle workers' militancy and so on.

This position has led some revolutionaries to declare themselves "outside and against the unions"—though whether in practice they would choose not to join a union is another thing. The point about all this, as is brought home by Douglass, is that unions are essentially about workers uniting to defend themselves within capitalism. To criticise "the unions" for being reformist misses the point, as a union and its membership are one and the same. Workers are not "reformist" because "the unions" make them so; rather the level of political consciousness within a union will be a reflection of the general consciousness of the working class at the time. As Douglass points out, trade unions are not ideological monoliths—the processes of class struggle go on within unions.

If more militant members are losing the arguments then this reflects a wider passivity: something that is hardly surprising given the shattering defeats organised labour has suffered in Britain in recent decades. Trade unions can only be as militant and class conscious (and effective) as their memberships are, which must depend on the wider situation. Though this isn't to take away from the damage done by union bosses, whose frequent knighthoods and other "honours" are tawdry campaign medals minted by the real bosses, whose class interests they have served. However, to create a dichotomy between "the unions" and "the workers" can only lead to a distorted analysis of the uses and limitations of union struggle.

As a way of illustrating the dangers of this "against the unions" position Douglass points to the direct correlation between declines in union membership and the decrease in days lost (or won) in strikes. Hardly surprising—but if "the unions" were really responsible for holding back working-class combativity shouldn't the opposite be the case? In reality, non-union workers have not "broken free" from the unions—falls in membership are symptoms of the hammering the working class as a whole has taken. On the other hand, resistance to the attacks of capital is generally stronger in those sectors where there is still significant unionisation. There are some signs however that union membership and general combativity are rising. And let's not forget that this is vital if our class is to develop some of the solidarity and self-confidence essential for the final abolition of wage slavery.

Interestingly, one of the few sources quoted with any sort of approval by Douglass is the October 1994 edition of Spartacus, a publication put together by Socialist Party comrades in Norwich. He generally agrees with the case put in an article called "Socialism and Trade Unions":

"[T]he essence of the trade union is workers uniting to protect their interests in the workplace, and . . . ultimately the union and the workers are one and the same thing. If these workers have reformist outlook on life, i.e. believe that capitalism can be made to run in the interests of all, the unions must therefore have the same outlook; on the other hand if there were more revolutionary workers in the unions—and in society generally—then the unions would have a more revolutionary outlook, no longer harbouring any illusions about 'common national interests' or other such rubbish. That would not in any way alter the essential nature and role of the trade unions as the defensive organisations of the working class; but it would make them far more effective fulfilling that role" (p.10 - quoted from Spartacus).

Ben Malcolm