Democracy and the Silicon Chip (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx once said that the hand mill gives you feudalism and the steam mill gives you capitalism.  Had he lived for another hundred years, he might have added with a wry smile that the computer gives you Socialism.  The ways in which human society can be organised, is organised and ought to be organised depend on the techniques and resources which can be used in its running.  The idea of a society where no one goes hungry and all co-operate to control the conditions of their existence is no more than a pipe dream unless there is the wherewithal to translate idea into reality.

It is the case of the SPGB that the wherewithal is there.  The potential for providing for everyone’s needs has been created by capitalism.  Thanks to the development of machinery and automation, wealth can be produced in quantities which would have been unthinkable in earlier phases of human society.  However, one of our greatest difficulties in getting anyone to accept our view is to convince them on just this point.  For its truth is masked in capitalism.  The potential for plenty is there, but it cannot be made actual.  A profit system can only work with a labour force compelled to sell its energies.  If an abundance of the necessaries of life were freely available, the system would grind to a halt.  (Who would work at the kinds of jobs on offer in our society if they did not have to?)

We do not ask anyone to take our word for it that the problem of producing enough wealth has been solved.  Rather, we refer them whenever possible to the facts unearthed by non-Socialists who are particularly concerned with such issues. (See, for example, in our pamphlet Questions of the Day, the chapter on the myth of overpopulation, and our Canadian companion party’s pamphlet A World of Abundance).  In this way we hope to show that hackneyed prejudices about human greed are irrelevant and that, far from being a pipe-dream, a society based on common ownership is a practical necessity.

But this is only one aspect of our case.  Our aim is not just common ownership; it is democracy.  For us, democracy is not an optional extra or simply a means to an end.  It is part of our end, as anyone can discover by reading our Object on the inside back cover of this journal.  We define Socialism as “. . . common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth . . .”

What do we mean by democracy? Amongst other things, a world in which people are not bossed around by a government or told what to do by their “superiors”.  More positively, a world where everyone takes an equal and responsible part in making decisions which affect society, without the strife which is inevitable in a class-divided society.  That is one reason why we say there will be no socialist society until a majority desire it.  As long as most people are content to be told what to do by elected representatives there will be no democracy in the sense defined.  (Not that an electoral system is completely worthless.  More of that later).

At first sight, this suggestion of literally everyone taking part in social decisions may seem as unrealistic as the earlier one of common ownership.  Surely, it might be said, these matters have to be left to the experts, and surely modern populations are far too large for active participation by everyone?

Objections like these are meat and drink to political theorists and political philosophers.  They think the point so obvious that they state them far more often than actually arguing for them.  Yet they are not obvious.  In view of the demonstrated failure of legions of experts and government advisers to solve any of the major problems of civilisation, the less said about expertise the better.  On the other hand, numbers may seem a genuine problem.  How can millions of people all have a say in running society?

The answer, once again is that this would be a mere “good idea” unless the means were available to make it a reality.  And the means are available.  Here, too, it is a matter of pointing to existing resources and developments within capitalism.  It would be futile for us to offer a blueprint, of course.  The exact form the future democratic society takes will depend on the historical circumstances prevailing when it is established.  But there are aspects of the technology already available which show how large numbers of people could be drawn into the decision process.

Communication is the lifeblood of capitalism.  This is reflected in the facts that by 1975 over 95 per cent of households in Britain had TV sets, 53 per cent had telephones, and world traffic in telecommunications has continued to grow at a rate of 12-15 per cent per year (much higher than the rest of world trade).  If no vested interests were involved, and if there were a desire for it, imagine how much useful information could be disseminated and how far the ordinary citizen could participate in decisions, just by replacing one old American film every week with an information-and-decision programme.  People listen to proposals for some project (say, the building of a new playground or power station), discuss the issues by phone-in, and then ring in to some central point with their vote for or against.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.  Developments are now taking place which will put phones and TVs in the museum along with the stone-age axe.  The device which will be responsible is the microelectronic silicon circuit.  It is about one centimetre square and is made, incredibly, of grains of sand.  In effect, this “silicon chip” is a tiny computer, enormously efficient and dirt-cheap to produce, which has been responsible for bringing together computer and telecommunications technology in one all-embracing “information technology”.

The first fruits of the marriage will be available next year when the Viewdata system goes into public service.  This will make available to its select customers 100,000 pages of information, any part of which can be called up on a screen literally at the touch of a button.  Not only that, but the system will be fully “interactive”—which  means that as well as it giving you information, you can give it information, which it will then store.  Even the feeblest imagination should be able to grasp the implication for democracy.  Such technology gives the opportunity for the population to keep themselves better informed and to take a more active role in decisions than at any time since the small city-states of ancient Greece.

But back to reality.  Viewdata is being developed in capitalism, which means it is first and foremost a commercial venture.  It will be used not for the sake of participatory democracy but to store information for its customers—advertising agencies, financial institutions, mail order firms and the like.  Moreover, systems of this kind have already begun to cause headaches in America, producing the telephone equivalent of junk mail and the hard sell.  The micro-computer works its way methodically through a list of victims, automatically ringing them up to relay its recorded message to buy someone’s goods.  You may not want to buy them, but it’s no use putting the receiver down because the computer will automatically continue to ring you back until you have heard it out.

And that is the least of it.  This potential boon to mankind is not just proving to be a nuisance:  it threatens to produce a crisis.  Microelectronic technology is so flexible it will be throwing people out of skilled jobs such as making precision watches and cash registers.  In the UK telephone equipment industry alone the number of jobs is expected to fall by 30 per cent between 1976 and 1979.  How far the capitalist system can cope with these far-reaching consequences is a problem for those who continue to support it.

Not to labour the point, here as elsewhere capitalism is double-edged.  The system has itself called forth instruments which could, in a different framework, be of untold benefit.  But under capitalism their use is perverted and only means further trouble.  Once again, therefore, the implication is clear that we must change the framework.

The development of information technology is double-edged in a further way.  At the turn of the century most political organisations depended largely on outdoor meetings for getting their message across.  With the widespread introduction of radio and TV this ceased to be true for the larger and richer parties.  But the gap which thus opened up has begun to close again.  The SPGB has managed to snatch the odd few minutes of broadcasting, and no doubt if capitalism lasts long enough we shall also, like our companion party in America, come to have our own programmes.  For the technology developed by capitalism for its own needs eventually becomes available for those who wish to replace capitalism.  The computer will make the dissemination of Socialist propaganda an easier and more efficient affair.

That it is something for the future.  For the present all we can do is make the best use of our limited resources in what is at least a relatively open political climate.  In Britain we can publish a journal and make tapes of our meetings without the threat of immediate persecution.  In a one‑party state like Russia we could not.  We do not exaggerate the extent of this freedom: it costs a lot of money to exercise it fully, and we know that such political freedoms as we have now can be withdrawn.  But equally we do not underestimate its importance. (Only a person who had never imagined living under a totalitarian regime would do that).  A climate of tolerance is useful to Socialists.  It is also fragile, and constantly endangered by our opponents of left and right.  Their policies of confrontation and smashing this, that and the other serve only to make it easier to place further curbs on political activity.  We received tangible proof of this recently, when one of our London branches lost the use of its meeting room in a pub as a result of threats between other organisations which use the room.  The SPGB will have no part in such tactics, and the only force we shall continue to use is the force of rational argument.

A number of points have been made in this article to show that out aim of a democratic society is a practical possibility.  There is also another kind of evidence—that of example.  The structure of the SPGB is democratic, foreshadowing the future society we advocate.  We have no leaders or ruling groups.  Though we cannot afford a computer or even to become a customer of Viewdata, our affairs are run according to the decisions of the entire membership through instructed delegates at Annual Conference, and all our officials are elected annually, again by the entire membership.  Any organisation can claim to be in favour of democracy.  We ask to be judged not on what we claim but on what we do.  Having nothing to fear from the presence of non‑members (welcoming them, in fact), we have never held a closed meeting in our entire history.  That is completely in keeping with our conviction that the revolution to establish the Socialist democracy will not be ours; it will be a revolution itself decided upon by a majority of humanity.

Bill Valinas

Sources

The General Household Survey 1975

The Times 1st March 1978

The Times (Supplement) 4th April 1978

Letters: Is there a short cut? (1976)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is there a short cut?

I have become a consistent and grateful reader of your journal. However I do believe that the establishment of an all-sharing, all-caring society cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future by wholly democratic means.

The SPGB has been established over fifty years yet its voice is still insignificant. The unrest of the ’twenties and ’thirties were not to my knowledge effectively taken advantage of by you. Instead a so-called “socialist” government was born heralding a new land of nationalization, social welfare etc. Today in 1976 the same flimsy worthless promises are bellowed by Ministers who keep their so-called “socialist” Cabinet seats warm. There are 1.4 million officially unemployed and beggingly accepting the crumbs from the capitalist table. (You quite rightly state that the real figure is nearer 3 million.)

Does the SPGB now assume to let another fifty years slip by? How do I convince my friends that I am not a starry-eyed dreamer but someone equipped with sensible, concrete and democratic proposals for organizing and establishing a Socialist Britain? You wish to take the democratic road to Socialism — how successful have your candidates been in local by-elections? “Man makes his own history but not according to his will.”

Shaun McCarthy

London SW1

Reply:

Many people feel frustrated, as you do, at having to endure the continuation of capitalism while seeking mass understanding for Socialism. However, the alternative you seem to be implying, minority action, would not change things. Without a mandate from a conscious Socialist electorate, the minority could only be another government.

We suggest you look on the establishing of Socialism as we do, as an urgent matter, and convince your friends of the same. Best of all, join the SPGB (when you have got rid of that misunderstanding about “a Socialist Britain”) and throw your effort into bringing about Socialism. Every new member is a nail in the coffin of capitalism.

Spiritual Matters

It would appear that religion can bar membership to the Party for sympathizers. Perhaps you would be good enough to clarify my position, since I have considered applying for membership.

Under no circumstances could I be regarded as religious, in the accepted sense. I follow no creed, nor accept any religious dogma. I do, however, look around me and wonder at the miracle and mystery of life. Perhaps some day Man will have sufficient knowledge to explain “How” the miracle occurs, but I think the question “Why” will still remain. I can see a sunset and be moved by its grandeur; I can watch a horse move and be excited by its beauty; I can look at a cathedral and marvel at its form and craftsmanship. These things can be explained, but mere explanations do not account for Man’s spiritual reaction. If I choose to wonder at the life-force behind life itself and if I choose to call it God, is this incompatible with Socialism?

That people should understand that the root cause of most of our problems lies in the fact that we produce for sale and profit instead of for the needs of mankind — seems to me to be Socialism’s fundamental message. While I agree with most of your argument about religion I can’t see why so much fuss should be made about it in regard to membership of the SPGB.

George Pearson

London S.W.20

Reply:

The explanations of phenomena are not “mere” ones. At the beginning of his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe J. W. Draper wrote:

In the month of March the sun crosses the equator, dispensing his rays more abundantly over our northern hemisphere. Following in his train, a wave of verdure expands towards the pole. The luxuriance is in proportion to the local brilliancy. The animal world is also affected. Pressed forward or solicited onward by the warmth, the birds of passage commence their annual migration, keeping pace with the developing vegetation beneath. As autumn comes on, this orderly advance of light and life is followed by an orderly retreat, and in its turn the southern hemisphere presents the same glorious phenomenon. Once every year does the life of the earth pulsate; now there is an abounding vitality, now a desolation. But what is the cause of all this? It is only mechanical. The earth’s axis of rotation is inclined to the place of her orbit of revolution round the sun.

Let that wonderful phenomenon and its explanation be a lesson to us; let it profoundly impress us with the importance of physical agents and physical laws.

There is nothing wrong with experiencing emotional pleasure. What you apparently have not considered is that it is variable according to different social conditioning. A conception of beauty which deeply moves people in one time and place is distasteful in others.

Examples are to be found in all the fields you mention. The idea of beauty in nature arose chiefly from the Industrial Revolution. In architecture, as in all the arts, what is strongly appreciated in one culture is unacceptable in another. That some qualities appear to transcend time and place is due to the comprehensiveness of capitalism. However, other keenly-felt reactions are quite temporary. For instance, concepts of female beauty — alleged to have “launched a thousand ships” — differ widely and are ultimately functional.

There is, therefore, no ground for calling these phenomena "spiritual” and attributing them to a force “behind life itself”. People have a sense of mystery about emotional pleasures because they are denied access to them — many of the “beautiful” things and experiences are simply manifestations of wealth. As Dr. Johnson said: “Rid your mind of cant, sir.”

Rates and Things 

In your view, taxation is not a matter of any consequence to the working class. Could you explain how this applies to the rates levied on private and council housing, and to motor vehicle and television licences?

Do Socialists participate in the election of trade union officials? Presumably this presents some difficulty as most of the candidates hold an allegiance to other political parties.

If political parties can be classified as being in favour of private capitalism, state capitalism or Socialism, how would anarchist and syndicalist groups fit into this?

Do you have the information on the Socialist Labour league, etc., that I asked for?

You might be interested to know that in Lord Chalfont’s programme “It could never happen here” the is spokesman advocating a re-run of Russia 1917 was a certain Duncan Hallas.

R. Richardson

Reply:

Rates are a tax on property, and the greater part of them comes from industry and commerce. So far as housing is concerned, before the decline of private landlords, rates were paid like taxes out of income. Since they are levied on each item of property, it became landlords’ practice in some cases to separate rates from rent, making the tenant responsible for paying them (“exclusive” and “inclusive” rents). Obviously it is a book-keeping difference — the tenant pays the same gross amount. Local authorities adopted the “exclusive” system for council housing so that, instead of deducting tax to pay to themselves, separate rates and rent funds were contributed to.

The dispersal of former estates of let-out houses, largely into owner-occupation which now forms about half the housing stock in this country, has led to the landlords’ rates being levied as countless relatively small amounts on individuals whose house-purchase makes them technically “property-owners”. The system is widely considered to be anomalous as a tax rooted in pre-war conditions, and alternatives to it are being sought. Motor tax and television licences are not taxes but special funds raised from users of facilities. The former was known until recently as the “road fund licence”, and the income was intended for the provision and upkeep of roads by highway authorities.

Socialists in trade unions make their own choices as to voting for officials. They may take political affiliations into account, but the function of trade unions is the limited one of seeking better wages and conditions; a candidate for office will be judged for his likely effectiveness as a negotiator above anything else. Socialist Party members in unions do not pay the political levy for the support of the Labour Party.

Political groups and parties which advocate the abolition of capitalism have to be viewed for the validity of their claims. If their policies are not realistic ones they will not achieve the aim they talk about, and capitalism will continue. While not avowedly in favour of it, they do their bit for it. Anarchists and syndicalists generally support reforms, and have supported governments or political parties which appeared helpful to them; and this sort of compromise means taking the side of capitalist class interests.

On your last question, we don’t think it is our function to supply information about other political parties.

Worsening Conditions

In conversation with a friend on the economic cutback I said that Marx had prophesied that the more advanced and technological capitalism becomes the worse will become the lot of the common people. She replied that Marx said no such thing.

Is it not the situation today, with millions starving and out of work and other millions merely subsisting amidst a technology capable of producing abundance for all? If Marx did not say it, should he have done?

And would it be a truism, or is the lot of the people better but merely suffering a temporary setback until more advanced technology produces another glut that cannot be consumed by the producers?

Would you please explain Mr. Healey’s words that higher prices would cost the user more but be a lighter burden on the taxpayer, and we must not kill the will to work (when a couple of millions can’t get work?)

Ruth Bolster

London S.E.15

Reply:

The passage you are thinking of is probably the one in Capital Vol. I, Chapter 25, “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation” pages 660-1, Allen & Unwin edn.):

We saw in Part IV, when analysing the production of relative surplus-value: within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange him from the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital.

However, you (and your friend) should read the entire chapter. Marx did not argue that the working class must continuously slide into more abysmal conditions. On the contrary, he pointed out that under some circumstances:

A larger part of their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption-fund of clothes, furniture, etc., and can lay by small reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage-worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. (Page 631).

The governing factor is the needs of capitalism:

The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalist system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. (Page 634.)

What is the standard of judgement for “worse”? It can only be, as you point out, the potentialities of society. In the same chapter Marx reviews a Budget speech of 1863 in which it was claimed that “the poor have been growing less poor”. He says:

How lame an anti-climax! If the working-class has remained “poor”, only “less poor” in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class “an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power”, then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. (Page 668.)

We do not know the speech by Healey that you refer to. Presumably he was referring to the effects of subsidies on prices. Two things to keep in mind are: (1) that the price of labour-power also is subsidized, i.e. kept in check by family allowances, rent and rate rebates, welfare benefits, etc.; (2) that the burden of taxation is not on the working class but on the capitalists, for whom it is better to contribute to subsidies on selected commodities than be faced with demands for wage increases all round.

As for “the will to work”, see the review of The Right to be Lazy in our last issue.

New Definitions?

It will be agreed by SPGB members that they have to spend as much time with enquirers telling them what Socialism is not as with telling them what it is. The greatest coup of the capitalist propagandists was when they succeeded in misrepresenting Socialism to the masses. Their allies are those organizations which claim to be Socialist or Communist, though they are nothing of the sort.

It seems to me that the Socialist parties have done little research into the nature of language. If not, why not? Such research could help to solve the problem of propaganda. According to Marxian analysis, ideas are a reflection of the mode of production. It follows that language is likewise engendered. Therefore it should be possible to evolve the language to correspond to the actual processes of production instead of being a reflection of a class ideology as at present. A vast number of words and usages exist which presuppose such things as scarcity, division of interests, competition, attack, exploitation, leadership, etc., and which do not truthfully reflect the process of production.

Science extended mathematics to bypass “ordinary”, inaccurate language in order to deal with physical realities. Marx used prose to say what modern economists tend to say with mathematical formulae. There is a great increase of people trying to be “scientific” by using jargon, endeavouring to escape emotional connotations and vagueness in expression, though they often fail in this.

I am not advocating a complete new mathematical language, such as Leibniz imagined. I do advocate an effort to educate the working class in an analytic response to words, in order to clarify ideas, and to emancipate them from the cheap propaganda which at present bamboozles them.

For example: I think it would be a good start if, instead of accepting definitions as expressions of opinion, we demand (and teach others to demand) that a definition be a description of the way the thing is produced, including a reference to its function. I don’t think Marx would frown on that practice.

F. Sliwinski

Newcastle-on-Tyne

Sorry, Earth

I was interested to read of the latest exploits of Friends of the Earth in the April SS, and I wondered if you could make any use of the following story. A while ago I received a letter from a comrade which was contained in a used envelope made good for re-use by a stick-on label issued by Friends of the Earth. Since I believe in doing all I can to counter the wastefulness of capitalist society I sent off a postal order for a bundle of these economy labels. Back it came, with a note from our Friends saying Sorry, we’ve stopped selling economy labels because they’re no longer economical. So I wrote again, asking by what criteria it could be no longer economical to use less paper than that contained in a new envelope. And the answer? "Those of our Accountant”. One of their directors gave a lengthy explanation and gave a breakdown of figures to show that the sale of economy labels did not make a profit for Friends of the Earth. And then I remembered: it’s Friends of the Earth Limited (Registered in London. Company No. 1012357). The letter even spoke of what was necessary "to stay in business”.

So there you are. You can’t serve two masters, and you can’t be committed to "the rational use of the Ecosphere” and to the continuation of a profit-motivated society. Otherwise, you end up wasting more paper by having to send out slips saying silly things like "Sorry, we no longer do economy labels because they’re no longer economical”. Further evidence, if any were needed, that the most effective way of countering the wastefulness of capitalism is to propagate the establishment of socialism.

Bill Valinas

Notice.

As we go to press with this issue, we have learned of the death of our comrade Gilbert McClatchie — "Gilmac", who was a contributor to the Socialist Standard for over sixty years. An appreciation will appear in the June issue.

Mason’s ‘Marxists’ (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

13th March 1979

Dear Mr. Mason,

My attention has been drawn to the fact that in the Panorama programme on 12th February 1979 you made the statement that the Provisional IRA are ‘Marxist based’.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to all other political organisations, including the IRA, and would claim to be Marxist based. However, we are also opposed to violence as a political means, and take the view that a transformation to a socialist system of society can be made only by democratic means, when a majority sees the need for it and is prepared to run such a society. We are prepared to defend this position in public debate, and find it regrettable that you should have made the erroneous statement which you did, at a time when our comrades in our Irish companion party are doing all they can to dissociate themselves from the terrorism and senseless violence which are the stock-in-trade of the IRA.

I am therefore writing to challenge you to a public debate on these issues with a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, at a time and place to be agreed. I am sure you would not wish to evade the responsibility you incur in making statements of the kind you did in the programme in question.

Bill Valinas 

(General Secretary)

Reply:

29 March 1979

Dear Mr. Valinas,

Thank you for your letter of 13 March to the Secretary of State (your reference 76/10/2.4). Mr. Mason has asked me to reply on his behalf.

Mr. Mason notes that you object to a remark made in a recent Panorama programme to the effect that the Provisional IRA was ‘Marxist based'. He is sorry that you are concerned about this but he would not agree that this description is either inaccurate or other than fair comment. The Provisional Movement’s own newspapers frequently attempt to describe the violent campaign in Northern Ireland in terms of a Marxist class struggle. And remarks in a sense similar to his own have also appeared in print in England. To take only one example, Mr. Jeremy Paxman, writing in The Listener of 15 December 1977, said:

  “Although the Provisionals were founded by military-minded veterans of previous IRA campaigns they now include in their ranks a growing corps of battle-hardened young men who owe their allegiance as much to Marx as to the traditional concept of a united Ireland. Tensions between the two groups are strong, but they are united in a belief in the legitimacy of violence.”

I have also been asked to say that Mr. Mason entirely accepts the statement in your letter that both the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion party in Ireland are committed to the democratic transformation of society to a socialist system; and that both parties have been outspoken in their condemnation of terrorism such as that perpetrated by the Provisional IRA. In describing the Provisionals as ‘Marxist based’ it was never his intention to suggest that other Marxist based parties necessarily supported their aims or methods, and he does not believe that his remark would have been generally understood in that sense.

J G Pilling

Reply:

If an organisation calling itself the Society for the Elimination of Suffering consistently advanced a policy of genocide, no doubt Mr. Mason would feel justified in describing it as humanitarian. Where is his evidence that the IRA adheres to the theoretical system of Karl Marx? Apparently, it is that ‘if the Provisionals and the BBC says so, it must be true'. So much for political argument.

Editorial Committee

Blogger's Note:

See also April 1979 Socialist Standard, Belfast Diary: Mason's 'Marxists' .

Universities today (1980)

From the September 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Universities today are not what they were. But then what would you expect of institutions which have existed in Europe for six or seven centuries?

Originally, universities were scholastic guilds, similar to trade guilds in protecting the interests of their members. These were often foreigners who had come together to study in a particular place and were in need of protection from the extortion of the townspeople. Towards the end of the fourteenth century the guilds came to be recognised by civil and church authorities and to receive licences to teach. Today, universities are huge institutions, often employing several thousand workers, which take millions of pounds to run, find their place in a whole network of other social institutions, and ultimately serve the interests of the ruling class in capitalist society.

The extent to which universities are bound up with the wider capitalist society (in contradiction to the ivory tower image so firmly set in popular imagination) can be gauged by the statements of influential members of the ruling class. Stuart Sexton, political adviser to the Secretary of State for Education, recently said that over the next decade there would be a reassertion of the obligation of higher education to meet national needs. But these are hard times, and the chairman of IBM (UK), said more bluntly (and more threateningly) that unless the relation between education and industry improved, industry would not be successful and there would be no money to fund education. While the need to make things and to sell them has become the cornerstone of survival, he complained, incense had been burned at the altar of scholarship.

He obviously knows a thing or two about what makes capitalism tick. But the present Prime Minister is not noted for soft-heartedness and she does profess to have a zeal for cutting public expenditure. Readers may judge for themselves, therefore, whether it is likely that she would sanction the spending of £987m (the total grant to universities for the current year) to make a nice smell at the altar.

The government expect a return on this money and they will get it. First, in the shape of the production of skilled manpower—doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and others whose mental training will have made them adaptable to the needs of capitalist society in a variety of roles such as civil servant, personnel officer, social worker. In this regard the universities of British capitalism are (for the moment) among the most cost-effective in the world, since they produce qualified graduates in a shorter time than most (usually three years) and with a lower failure and drop-out rate. Most of these graduates (over 60 per cent) go directly into industry and commerce.

The second return on government money comes from the fact that universities exist not only to teach but also to engage in research. It is here that there is a slim connection with the origin of universities and a grain of truth in the ivory tower image. “Research” covers many different types of activity in widely varying areas, from ancient history to nuclear physics. Some research will be merely scholarly, and if it has any worth it will have it simply as an addition to the culture in which we live. Some will involve work to find a definite solution to a definite problem. And some may or may not have any practical application, but it will not be possible to tell in advance.

This last point is important. There is research currently going on at Glasgow University into hepatitis and cirrhosis, and at Hull into liquid crystal displays which may replace cathode ray tubes in televisions. Much other research may turn out to be useful in these ways or it may be “useless”. But one never knows which. Florey and Chain investigated penicillin out of curiosity, not expecting to find a systemic antibiotic, and Rutherford was criticised for bothering about neutrons only fourteen years before the first atomic bombs were exploded. Now any businessman knows that a certain amount of speculative investment of resources is inevitable, and consequently funds are made available not only for research on some definite problem but also for speculative and possibly “useless” research. That is, it pays to have work going on in an environment where people are not asked at every turn “Does it pay?” (It has been estimated that the immediate financial profit produced by universities is of the order of £500m.) This in its turn makes for a climate where, by the standards of capitalism, there is relatively free discussion.

As one would expect with institutions closely bound up with society in this way, their recent history has broadly followed the fortunes of British capitalism. In the boom years of the 1960s, when demand for skilled manpower was very high, the number of universities increased from 23 to 44, with a particular increase in those chiefly concerned with technological subjects. The Robbins Report proclaimed that higher education should be available to anyone qualified to pursue it, and student numbers rose rapidly. Along with this went a change in the undergraduate image, from a pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed “chap” to a long-haired, jean-wearing hippy. The majority of students were probably never either.

But booms are followed by slumps, and this era of rapid expansion has come to an end with a vengeance. The CBI has given notice that the proportion of national resources for higher education in the last 20 years cannot be sustained in the 1980s. The government has responded to the piper’s calling of the tune by cutting £17½m off the universities’ recurrent grant for 1979/80, which was itself based on the laughable underestimate of an inflation rate of 8½ per cent. The number of qualified 18-year-olds continues to rise, but universities have been ordered no longer to increase their intake. A discussion paper prepared under the chairmanship of the Vice-Chancellor of Sussex University has spoken of the possibility of losing 60 staff posts in two years and needing to find £lm- £2m from somewhere. These are bare facts and figures which have to be translated into human experience. All universities over the last few years have been affected by frozen posts and the policy of leaving vacancies unfilled. This means that at all levels-teaching, secretarial, maintenance, technicians and kitchen staff-workers have had to do more work and, given inflation, for a smaller real wage or salary. This is, quite simply, increased exploitation, increased extraction of surplus-value from a section of the working class.

Effects on students are more varied, since not all students are members of the working class. The ruling class have to educate their offspring somewhere, and the more prestigious universities are one of the places they choose. Sons and daughters of industrialists and cabinet ministers and the like, can be found quite easily at Oxford and Cambridge (though not, say, at Strathclyde or Essex). Perhaps this is what led one academic to refer to Oxford as at once a centre of high-powered thought and a finishing school. Which role it has for any particular student becomes apparent when the time comes to leave. At Bristol University (one of the more prestigious) 3 per cent of graduates from one faculty declared themselves “not available for employment’’. For them, the garden parties held to celebrate their obtaining a degree can go on for the rest of the summer and the rest of their lives. For the rest, it will be the basic, inescapable condition of being a worker: they will have to find someone prepared to buy their labour power, and their fear is likely to be the opposite one of employment not being available for them. Being a highly educated worker is no proof against the dole queue, and this was illustrated by a recent report in The Times. Five hundred young people turned up for eight jobs in a clothes shop in Sheffield at £32.50 per week, and they included several with degrees.

In 1968 the year of phoney revolutions, universities in Britain and elsewhere were headline news. Though some thought the end of capitalism was at hand, the upheavals in them amounted only to civil disturbances, since they involved questioning only some aspects of capitalist society. They also fed the pernicious belief to be found in some left-wing circles that an intellectual elite is needed to produce a socialist revolution. Intellectuals, and especially left-wing intellectuals, should never be encouraged in their vice of exaggerating their own importance in that way. High intelligence and a brilliant mind can and do coexist with pathetic ignorance of the true nature of our political and social system. The workers by brain have no special insight, but they have no special immunity from social conditions either, and they will join forces with other workers when all finally realise where their class interest lies.

Bill Valinas

Marx of a Philosopher (1979)

Book Review from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx’s Theory of History by G. A. Cohen. Oxford University Press, 1978, £10.50

The basis of life under capitalism is the workers' sale of labour power to the employers, although this is not generally accepted as a true description of the world we live in. This is so for a number of reasons. On that basis there arise other relations and institutions which serve it and are subordinate to it, and may be very different in kind. Someone may work in a large organisation which obscures class relations, and their own conception of the nature of society and their place in it may leave no room for a recognition of the basic and unpalatable truth. No doubt this plays an important role in the present acceptance of capitalism.

One kind of institution which masks the basic relation and may seem a long way from it is the department of philosophy, a place where young men and women (nearly all workers, as in the population at large) go to gain degrees and diplomas. They may appear to go there to pursue knowledge for its own sake. In fact they are receiving a mental training which equips them for their subsequent tasks as computer workers, managers, civil servants, teachers and so on, in the service of the capitalist class. We can be sure that governments would not spend large sums of money on such places were it otherwise. Nor would provision have been made for an increasing number of students to study the subject. (At Oxford University, one in four take it as some part of their course.)

But what goes on in these places? Don't people just sit around uttering vague, pompous waffle about the Meaning of Life? The answer is that, to some extent, it depends where you are. In the English-speaking world nothing could be further from the truth. Arguments are subjected to the most rigorous and detailed scrutiny, all terms must be defined, all claims supported. It would be truer, indeed to say that here people sit around talking about the meaning of words. (This is a reflection of a line of approach which has been present in philosophy since Socrates. He argued, for example, that he could not decide whether virtue could be taught until it had been stated what virtue meant.)

In itself an insistence on clarity and definition of terms should be welcomed. But in philosophy it has often come to predominate at the expense of the substance of arguments; it has become sterile nit-picking about words. That is one reason why linguistic philosophy in the English-speaking world has hitherto found no place for the study of Karl Marx, who on the whole is not a nitpicker but makes large claims about the nature of society.

In contrast, there is another tradition of thought on some parts of the continent, notably France, where grand thoughts prevail, precision is not highly regarded and Marx gets a look in. Unfortunately, his thought is often so distorted that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a different Marx altogether who was being talked about. Take these choice examples of garbage from the French Stalinist philosopher Louis Althusser:

"... a philosophical reading of Capital is quite the opposite of an innocent reading. It is a guilty reading, but not one that absolves its crime on confessing it. On the contrary, it takes the responsibility for its crime as a 'justified crime' and defends it by providing its necessity. It is therefore a special reading which exculpates itself as a reading by posing every guilty reading the very question that unmasks its innocence, the mere question of its innocence: what is it to read?
However, Marx's Dialectics would have been very relevant to us today, since it would have been the Theory of Marx's theoretical practice, that is, exactly a determinant theoretical form of the solution (that exists in the practical state) to the problem we are dealing with: the problem of the specificity of the Marxist dialectic."

Small wonder that Marx exclaimed, concerning French Marxists of his own day, that he himself was no Marxist. Impenetrable rubbish like this contributes nothing to a clear understanding of the nature of capitalism and gives people a perfect excuse for ignoring Marx's theories.

In the context of such murk G A Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History comes like a hard beam of light on a foggy night. He rejects Althusser's approach and states his twin aim of respecting what Marx wrote and also the standards of rigour in the first philosophical tradition mentioned above. On the whole he is highly successful in both respects, and if that tradition goes on ignoring Marx it is no longer for want of a first-rate philosophical text.

In the main part of the book Cohen explains and defends the idea that growth in productive power is the basis of human history, so that different forms of society, different sets of relations between human beings, different class conflicts, come and go depending on how appropriate they are for the continuation of such growth. There is elaborate and painstaking discussion of all the terms implicit in this idea – productive forces, productive relations, the difference between raw materials and instruments of production, what it means to say that other features of society are explained by the development of its productive power, what counts as an example of each of these things, and so on. There are many interesting and enlightening discussions along the way (for instance on the fetishism of commodities), and later in the book Cohen shows that the thirst for profits under capitalism works to prevent an easing of the burden of toil for the worker. Attributions of any view to Marx are supported by detailed reference to his works.

But the question arises whether Cohen does not succeed too well in his stated aims. He is prepared to spend several pages teasing out the meaning of two (admittedly important) sentences from Marx's Preface; he pauses and considers too politely the quibble that workers can own means of production because a garment cutter may own a pair of scissors; he deliberates whether empty space is a productive force. Precision, indeed, but it leaves the book with a certain imbalance. For such attention to marginal questions of detail inevitably leaves fewer pages for the very wide and substantial questions which Cohen also expresses views on. It reinforces the impression that this is philosophy book first and a book about Marx second, and suggests that Cohen's view of the wood is impaired by his love for the trees, and indeed the twigs.

For example, he says little or nothing to back up his claims that there are industrial societies which are not capitalist (he seems to think Russia is one such), that there are doubts about the adequacy of the earth's resources, that there exist "the broad middle classes" and that "Marxist tradition expects revolution only in crisis". All of these views we should reject, and we should certainly challenge anyone who expresses them merely in passing.

Yet there is much in the book which is correct and ought to have saved Cohen from these errors. He recognises that socialism will be a moneyless, democratically planned system of common ownership, that it requires a superabundance to be feasible as well as working class unity, and also that class is a matter of one's relation to the means of production.

Why then does he not get it right? Perhaps only because his main concern with a meticulous statement and defence of the material preconditions of socialism. It is almost as if he thought the human precondition – a united and politically conscious working class – will take care of itself. But it will not. The very idea of taking hold of the means of wealth and creating a moneyless world hardly present at all in the minds of workers and is easily dismissed as cranky. That is why it is so vital to establish it as a serious political possibility. It would be sad indeed to think that Cohen is prepared to advance this idea between the covers of a philosophy book but not in his own political activity.

Again, his statement that "All classes are receptive to whatever ideas are likely benefit them" will bring a wry smile to the face of any socialist who has endured abuse from fellow workers. This will not be true until a class sees itself as a class, and the so-called Marxists of the left wing have created as much confusion here as any defender of capitalism, with their talk of "workers and intellectuals" (as though someone paid to think was not a worker) and the perennial "middle class". Cohen had all the materials to hand to dispel this pernicious confusion and make plain that all those who are dependent on the sale of their labour power are workers. He does not do so, and in that respect (though not in others) his book is a missed opportunity.

The conclusion is therefore irresistible that it is as important for Cohen to read the Socialist Standard as it is for readers of the Socialist Standard to read this unusual and impressive book.

Bill Valinas

Related Reading

George Orwell: “Politics and the English Language” in Collected Essays.

Keith Graham: J. L. Austin. A Critique of Ordinary Language Philosophy.

SPGB: Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse (1932).

Socialist Party of Canada: A World of Abundance.

Susan George: How the Other Half Dies.

E. P. Thompson: The Poverty of Theory.