50 Years Ago: Second thoughts (2009)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Yesterday’s Enemy” is a recently-produced British film about the British army fighting the Japanese in Burma during the last war. A review in the Daily Herald (14.9.59) describes a sequence in it: —

“A British captain .   .   . has  captured an informer who, he believes, has vital knowledge of a forthcoming Japanese attack. He threatens the informer with death, but the informer thinks the captain is bluffing and refuses to talk. The captain picks two villagers at random and orders them to be shot. The informer still refuses to talk. The villagers are shot—and then the informer breaks down. The captain has his information.”

The captain follows up his murder of two innocent villagers by having the informer shot, as well.

Remembering the propaganda with which we were spoon-fed in the last war, about how we were fighting for decency and humanity against the brutality of the other side, you might think that nothing like this could ever have been done by anyone in the British army. But not a bit of it. Major-General A. J. H. Snelling, who was with the 14th Army in Burma said: “I believe incidents like this did happen during the grim retreat.” General Sir Douglas Gracey said: “I heard of similar incidents . . . These awkward situations did arise.” Major-General H. L. Davies said: “This film is absolutely real and authentic.” A fourth high-ranking officer, General Sir Robert Mansergh, was due to speak the film’s praises at its New York premiere.

Very honest of them, now, fourteen years after the war has ended. And no one alleges that war can be fought with clean hands. But why did the politicians and generals tell us throughout the war that all the brutality was on the other side?

(From “The Passing Show” by Alwyn Edgar, Socialist Standard, December 1959.)

Voice From The Back: Business as usual (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Business as usual

The International Monetary Fund calculates that up to £1,000 billion made from drugs, prostitution, fraud and extortion is sloshing around the world’s 15 offshore tax havens. The secret BND (German intelligence service) report, The Money Laundering Community in Liechtenstein, reveals that billions of pounds of assets have been placed in secret trust funds by the American Mafia, the notorious Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel and the Juarez drug cartel of Mexico . . . One secret service source said: “Liechtenstein is at the epicentre of money-laundering in the world. Tough news laws in Switzerland mean that the Swiss are moving all their dirty deals to Liechtenstein. They can pass all the laws they want there, but as long as the same bank experts and lawyers are in charge there will not be any change.” Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 July.

Cruel Britannia

One of the claims made by Blairite supporters is that we now live in “Cool Britannia”, a land where artists, film-makers and trendy “in” people thrive. A recent Unicef report paints a different picture: “The Observer (11 June) has obtained a report by Unicef, the children’s arm of the UN, which says that Britain has one of the worst records on childhood poverty in the industrialised world. Nearly 20 percent of young people live in families which are below the official poverty line—judged as a household income below half median earnings.” Behind the statistics lies real misery of almost Dickensian proportions: “Children are eating main meals which consist of little more than toast and beans, and rice pudding. Many live in terrible surroundings with damp running down the walls and inadequate heating. Parents often cannot afford to buy new clothes as the little money they have is spent on food. Some lone parents have less than £100 a week with which to bring up their children and pay the bills.”

Student letter

“I go to university all day, come home and do my projects and homework then work part time at the weekends. It’s exhausting. The final straw came when I applied for free prescriptions and was told that my wages (£30 per week) and my student loan, which is classed as earnings, is over the government threshold. According to ‘New Labour’, students can live on £46 a week. So I would like to ask our politicians: how can a loan be classed as earnings when it has to be repaid and how can a student live on less money than a pensioner?” Evening Mail, 29 July.

Greenpeace futility

The latest Greenpeace leaflet appealing for funds paints a gruesome picture of capitalist society in the future: “A flailing dolphin gasps madly for air. Where once there was living forest, now silence reigns. More and more of our children are choked by invisible poisons. Fields of genetically modified crops dominate the countryside, bereft of song and life . . . This is not science fiction. It is a realistic vision of a world without Greenpeace.”

So what do Greenpeace propose to do about pollution? They claim they have succeeded in getting Unilever to remove GM ingredients from their products; that they have forced the president of a G7 country to stop a nuclear test and have designed a “green” fudge. They hope to “keep the North Atlantic alive” and are striving to protect the Amazon rainforest from illegal logging”. All of these are doomed to failure because the cause of all environmental problems is the way wealth is produced. The whole purpose of production is to make a profit, and if it is necessary to pollute the planet in order to realise that profit then that is what capitalism will do. Persuading presidents and petitioning multi-nationals are pathetic operations. The need is for a new society based on production solely for use.

Profits first and last

A British company, Premier oil, went ahead with a £500m project to pipe gas through Burma despite warnings that its partner, the Burmese military, was using slave labour—including children—on the pipeline . . . Premier’s American partner, Texaco, has since pulled out of Burma. But despite the British government taking the unprecedented step in April of asking Premier to leave, the oil company has refused. Guardian, 27 July.

Marxism and Leninism in Myanmar (2022)

From the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sympathiser sets out the history of ‘socialism’ in Myanmar.

Myanmar is a ‘Global South’ country with long borders shared with India and China. Before its independence, it was ruled by the colonial British as a province of British India. It was also known as Burma.

The earliest record of Marxism in Myanmar is 1923, long after the death of Marx and Engels. The Second International had already been replaced by the Third International. Most of the writers who represented orthodox Marxism were no longer alive or active. It was a time when most of the most talented scholars of Marxism had lost their influence and Marxism was being dictated by Stalin under the name ‘Marxism-Leninism’. Leon Trotsky also started the left opposition to the Bolshevik government in that year.

The very first localised literature of Marxism in Myanmar was Das Kapital in a misleading translation inspired by nationalism. Since then, ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘communism’ were the kind of keywords that could be seen in some of the publicity released. In 1930, Dr Thein Maung brought back some left-wing books from London to Myanmar. Those were the first books the radical youths in Myanmar encountered about Western communism. They influenced Thakin Nu, who later became the Prime Minister of Burma, and Thakin Soe, who founded both the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and the Red Flag Communist Party; together they founded the ‘Nagani book club’ for distributing left-wing books and articles. Dagon Taya, later a renowned writer, was one of the chairmen of the Rangoon University Student Union and once wrote a slogan on a wall claiming ‘Long Live Soviet Myanmar’ while he was travelling in 1939.

In 1939, a new chapter was opened for ‘Communism’ (‘Marxism-Leninism’) in Myanmar. Aung San (the ‘father of the nation’), Thakin Soe, a handful of Chittagong radicals and some other leftists together founded the Communist Party of Burma. The CPB managed to link with the Third International as soon as it was founded because of the link between the Chittagonian Bengali founders such as H. N. Goshal and the Indian Communist Party. At that time in 1939, the Third International had already become a tool of Russian foreign policy, under the leadership of Stalin, and had successfully sabotaged strikes under the Popular Front government in France and the social struggles of the CNT-FAI in Spain. The CPB was thus also bound to adopt disastrous tactics, including a series of mistakes that even orthodox Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and Trotsky had described as ‘ultra-left’, ie, the CPB chose not to take part in elections, but instead to wage war against the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League which was the acting government at that time. Later, the CPB didn’t stop with Stalinism; it went further to Maoism which had rejected the class struggle and advocated the alliance of four nationalist classes. It ended up killing its own founders like H. N. Goshal in 1967 during the cultural revolution era.

One Party Rule

On 2 March 1962, a coup d’état took place which heralded the commencement of one-party rule in Myanmar and the army’s political supremacy. The military who attempted the coup called themselves the Union Revolutionary Council (URC) and introduced a programme called ‘The Burmese Way to Socialism’. The CPB denied the ‘socialist’ credentials of URC, however, the URC shared a lot of similar characteristics with Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Tito’s Yugoslavia. The first of these was one-party rule with strong state power and hostility towards opposition. As Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas mentioned in his The New Class, ‘modern Communism is a modern despotism which cannot help but aspire towards totalitarianism’. In terms of Marxism, such one-party totalitarianism has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote once, ‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only of the members of one party, however numerous they may be, is no freedom at all’. Equating one-party totalitarianism with the dictatorship of the proletariat shows a lack of understanding of Marxism. Marx and Engels identified the act of ‘raising the proletariat to a ruling class’ as ‘the conquest of democracy’.

The second characteristic was the act of strengthening the state, which confirms the claim of Milovan Djilas which states: ‘there is no doubt that a national communist bureaucracy aspires to more complete authority for itself’. Thirdly, Ne Win, chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was anti-union just like Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Tito. The BSPP faced much opposition from every side including student unions, workers’ unions, political armed groups, and the government-in-exile.

Student Uprising

The best example of this was the ‘7th July Student Uprising’ which was a series of marches, rallies, and protests against stricter campus regulations and the policies of General Ne Win’s BSPP regime. The BSPP responded to the uprising by violently attacking the students, shooting them with machine guns and using explosives to blow up the whole student union building in University of Yangon, resulting in the deaths of more than a hundred, and the arrest of more than 6,000 students. The BSPP accused the students of being counter-revolutionary and reactionary because they were protesting against the ‘socialist’ state in the BSPP’s view. After that incident, the BSPP attacked the very existence of the unions.

Furthermore, the BSPP implemented a programme like the ‘war-communism’ of Lenin’s time. The BSPP-led Socialist Economy Construction Committee introduced an economic policy aimed at nationalising all businesses across the board, similar to what Milovan Djilas had described the self-styled Communists (Marxist-Leninists) as doing. According to Djilas, the communists wanted to ban strikes because in their view the working class was already in power and owned the means of production via the state. So if there was a strike of workers or students, it meant workers were striking against themselves. Through this tyrannical self-delusion the BSPP, along with all the communist regimes who claimed to follow Marxism-Leninism, responded violently to workers’ strikes. A few international examples would include the Kronstadt rebellion against the Bolshevik government and the Georgian Mensheviks’ soviet rebellion against the Bolshevik government. The CPB argued that the BSPP didn’t represent the legacy of Marxism-Leninism, yet ironically the CPB claimed to follow Maoism while Mao Zedong himself was on excellent terms with Ne Win and his regime. The role of the CPB was ended by a series of battles with the military as well as internal coups resulting from their own inefficient revolutionary strategies and tactics.

Ultra-nationalism

After 1988, a lot of regimes had come and gone, and Myanmar was on the way back to globalisation from ‘socialism’. From 1988 to 2010, Myanmar was governed by purely repressive regimes with no ideological background. However, after the 2007 Saffron revolution, the military regime had to acknowledge the revolutionary potential of the Buddhist monks, students, workers, and the public. So they tried to create an ideological fantasy based on ultra-nationalism, Buddhist supremacy and crony capitalism. From 2010 to 2021 most of the public were under the illusion of living in a democratic nation while minority ethnic groups were being bombed and killed. The oligarchs managed to accumulate capital which was more than enough for three to five successive generations while working-class people struggled to make ends meet. That was when the public enjoyed the illusion of liberal democracy and was the least revolutionary period, until some students chose to protest with an agenda for educational reforms in 2014. During that decade, the military had successfully radicalised the majority of the Buddhist monks with their self-serving ultra-nationalism and Buddhist supremacy. As Myanmar has a unique culture of monks being important (too important) when it comes to social values, a fraction of the working class also chose to give support to the successors of the military regime, bolstered by irrational fear of minority groups and other religions. Such a political agenda recalls Daniel De Leon’s remark that ‘the capitalist class is interested in keeping the working men divided among themselves’.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) was founded by ex-communists, ex-military officers and left-leaning social democrats in 1988. Aung San Suu Kyi, the ‘democracy idol’ of Myanmar, forged a de facto alliance with the military to attain governmental status. Since then, not only did the NLD not achieve its goal of kicking the military out of politics but they also failed to protect minority ethnic groups like the Rohingya from genocide. Under the leadership of ‘the lady’ Suu Kyi, the NLD changed its political ideology from social democracy to liberalism. This was not apparent at first, but as soon as they were elected as an acting government, they failed to implement all the social democratic policies. The NLD lost their social democratic connections with the interests of the working class and with the national self-determinism of ethnic groups. Such reactionary behaviour resulted in some far-left and centre-left youths losing their trust in the NLD, and searching for a third alternative either in some social democratic reformist party or a revolutionary socialist party.

Another military coup

In February 2021, the military decided to stage another coup to restore their former golden days and to protect family members who had become oligarchs and cronies. The public at first was hesitant to react with strikes and protests. But the coup sparked enormous protests and dissent which were brutally suppressed by the military, with about 1,500 people dead, either shot in the streets, tortured and murdered in detention, or just disappeared. Even though the military managed to seize power and arrest some influential political leaders like Suu Kyi and Mya Aye, some of the NLD members escaped and formed a National Unity Government (NUG) in exile, in alliance with some ethnic leaders and other small political groups taking the role of consultative council. Even today, the NUG fails to grasp the opportunity to radicalise the public, even for reformist social democratic values. The NUG still acts like a parallel government. Yet third-party alternatives such as the Maoist CPB, Trotskyist organisations and social democratic reformists also failed to radicalise the public for a socialist revolution.

Theo Maung, who describes himself as a libertarian socialist and one of the founders of the Burmese Atheists Association, said that he was expecting a more progressive and secular society from the revolt against the coup. He was confident that people were turning away from authoritarianism and racial and religious discrimination as a result of their struggles against the junta. He pointed out that the CPB managed to recover again after the coup but that the new generation of leftists like him didn’t accept the authoritarian communists. He also said that if there was to be another communist party in Myanmar, he expected a more libertarian-leaning one with little influence from Marxism-Leninism and Maoism. Yoe Thit Aung, an anarchist, also had a view on the revolution: ‘I personally don’t see the revolution as a class struggle but rather a transformation of crony capitalism into corporate capitalism. Traditionally the NLD is a populist and conservative party. NUG is trying their best for more progressive reforms, but they will never go for radical ends’. He thinks that the old bourgeois crony class will be useful as a national bourgeois class in the post-revolutionary period.

To sum up, Myanmar has a lot of experience of Marxism-Leninism (so-called communism) and military dictatorships. It’s unfortunate that Myanmar was never influenced by the internationalist and revolutionary socialism (Marxist) tradition of Georgi Plekhanov, Julius Martov, Rosa Luxemburg and others, which represents the Marxism of Marx and Engels in seeking the democratic emancipation of the working class.

Hein Htet Kyaw

Voice From The Back: More Profit Means More Hunger (2008)

The Voice From The Back column from the June 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

More Profit Means More Hunger

“This year global production of biofuels will consume almost 100 million tons of grain – grain that could have been used to feed the starving. According to the UN, it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol – enough to feed a child for a year. The UN last week predicted ‘massacres’ unless the biofuel policy is halted. Jean Ziegler, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, said biofuels were ‘a crime against humanity’, and called for a five-year moratorium.” (Independent, 16 April) The UN can issue all sorts of pious resolutions, but if is more profitable to produce bio-fuels than food, then that is what capitalism will do.


The Name is Bond – Capitalist Bond 

Capitalism pervades everything in modern society. If you buy a football shirt it will advertise a beer or a soft drink. Formula 1 car racing would be impossible if advertising logos didn’t cover every space on the cars and the drivers. It is in the entertainment business though that this pervasive influence is growing at an astonishing speed. “The name is Bond, James Bond. And he likes his Martinis shaken, not stirred. That is, as long as they are Smirnoff. Product placement is playing an increasingly important role in Hollywood blockbusters. The last Bond film bore a string of high-end sponsors, such as Omega, Sony, Ford and Sony Ericsson. Television shows have also lured advertisers, often preferring product placement or sponsorship over traditional advertising. . . The expectation is that television advertising will become more about the 30-minute sponsored advertisement than the 30-second shot.” (Times, 21 April)


Dignity? No Way

“Eight out of 10 nurses say they have left work distressed because they have been unable to treat patients with the dignity they deserve, a poll suggests. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) poll of more than 2,000 UK nurses cited washing and privacy as key issues.” (BBC News, 27 April) The NHS is provided for members of the working class. They are the class that produce all the wealth of the world but being poor can ill afford the best of housing, food or even medical care. Dignity for the only worthwhile class in capitalist society is an impossibility.


The Killer System

Supporters of capitalism claim that it is the most efficient way to run society, but that is a claim that rings hollow to millions of hungry people today, as even one of capitalism’s stoutest supporters is forced to admit. “Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.” (4 May)


Primitive Accumulation

“In the semi-arid forests of the Chaco region of Paraguay, where summer temperatures top 40C (104F), the continent’s last uncontacted Indians outside of the Amazon basin are on the run, their traditional forest home increasingly encroached upon by ranchers. … These formerly nomadic tribes people struggle to maintain a semblance of their traditional way of life in camps on the edge of the agricultural colonies that invaded their territory.” (Times, 6 May) This process called by Karl Marx the so-called primitive accumulation of capital was dealt with him in his Das Kapital (1867) mirrors what had happened in Europe at the beginning of capitalism. “In actual history it is notorious that conquest, murder, briefly force, play the great part . . . As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.” A view echoed by one of the Indians in the Times: – “The whites are violent. They just want land. We are afraid of them, they are very aggressive.”


Business as Usual

“Burma is still exporting rice even as it tries to curb the influx of international donations of food bound for the starving survivors of the cyclone that killed up to 116,000 people. Sacks of rice destined for Bangladesh were being loaded on to a ship at the Thilawa container port at the mouth of the Yangon River at the end of last week, even though Burma’s ‘rice bowl’ region was devastated by the deadly storm a week ago. The Burmese regime, which has a monopoly on the country’s rice exports, said it planned to meet all its contractual commitments” (Observer, 11 May). Inside capitalism business is business, and the fact that millions of Burmese risk death by starvation is of no concern. That is how capitalism operates. During the Irish potato famines foodstuffs were still being exported from Ireland.

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Cameron called for openness and a lifting of trade bans on Burma after visiting the capital Nay Pyi Taw, where he met President Thein Sein.  Later he had a private dinner with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon. Speaking of his meeting with the great pro-democracy leader he said: ‘It was a privilege to sit down with Ms Suu Kyi and try to flog her tanks and rocket launchers.’

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A test rocket launched from North Korea which broke up after one minute was a resounding success, according to North Korean sources. The rocket exploded as a ‘birthday firework’ for the nation’s long-dead leader Kim Il-sung. A spokesman for the NK Space Agency said: ‘We have the technology to rain scrap metal upon any capitalist lickspittle within a twenty mile radius. Let our enemies tremble.’ In separate news, South Korea reacted nervously to reports of NK tunnelling for an underground nuclear test: ‘We want to know just how far they’re tunnelling’.

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The government is exploring new types of pension schemes that would give more security to retiring workers. In an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb said: ‘Firms would like to offer their employees a degree of certainty in these uncertain times. We can certainly help by offering workers cast-iron guarantees that they will get nothing out of us when they retire. We think people should shoulder the personal responsibility of disposing of themselves at retirement age in an ecologically-sustainable manner. Wheelie bins will be provided for this purpose at an affordable rate.’

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Hosepipe bans affecting about 20 million customers have been introduced by seven water authorities in parts of southern and eastern England.Thames Water said this week that the bans were unavoidable due to the unprecedented drought of money for fixing leaks. In a statement the regulator, Oftwat, said: ‘If we fixed all the leaks we would save 3.36bn litres per day in England and Wales, but then we’d make no profit at all so clearly sacrifices need to be made by the great unwashed by, um, not washing.’ Meanwhile the water minister Richard Benyon has hit out at claims he left his hosepipe running the day after the hosepipe ban came into effect: ‘It wasn’t a hosepipe. I was just teaching the kids how to water-cannon the local oiks’.

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Iran has blocked access to the official website for the London 2012 Olympic Games, after previously stating it might boycott the Olympics over claims that the official logo spells the word ‘Zion’. The logo designers reject this, saying instead that the logo represents an exploded diagram of the religious fundamentalist brain. It now seems likely that no information about the 2012 London Olympics will reach anyone in Iran. Bookings from Heathrow to Tehran are expected to increase by a factor of 9000 as a result.

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A London 2012 official has admitted Olympic events could be disrupted by ‘one idiot’ after the University Boat Race was halted by a swimmer. British Olympic Association chairman Watt Sallthe Fussabout said it would do all it could to protect athletes in the Games: ‘I can assure sports fans everywhere that Boris Johnson and Francis Maude will be kept indoors with a bottle of gin and a games console throughout the proceedings.’

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The Law Commission has proposed the abolition of 800 antiquated laws, although these do not include the many imaginary ‘laws’ such as the law against eating a mince pie on Christmas Day, or the right to shoot a Welsh person with a longbow on a Sunday in Chester. According to British urban legend, says the Law Commission, there is an ancient law which allows a single individual to wear a metal hat, wave a wand and own every strip of land in Britain. This mythical person would be known as a ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ and would be entitled to lord it over everyone as if they owned the place, which indeed they would. A legal spokeswoman said ‘I really don’t know how these myths get around. It’s on a par with the one about taxis having to keep a bale of hay in the boot. It’s amazing that people still fall for it.’

Passing Comments: Aggression (1952)

The Passing Comments Column from the March 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Aggression

While all capitalist powers are by their nature expansionist, this tendency is seen more obviously in the behaviour of those who came latest to the game of international grabbing; and many of these new powers are grouped together at present under the leadership of the Soviet Union. Thus one of the most telling weapons in the propaganda armoury of the Western Powers is that of “resistance to aggression." But, of course, neither bloc is unimpeachable on this count, and perhaps we should not hear quite so much about "defence against aggression” from the NATO powers if they were not in the majority in the United Nations. This majority enables the United States to get its own views as to what is and is not aggression endorsed by the United Nations. Endorsement of the American view is made all the more easy by the fact that "aggression” has never been legally defined: indeed, those who talk most loudly about resisting aggression are the most reluctant to define exactly what it is they wish to resist. It is as if there were no laws laying down what constitute burglary, merely a court which decided each time a dispute came up whether or not a burglary had been committed, and if it had been which party to the dispute was the burglar. This lack of definition is very useful to the NATO powers, for if aggression were defined it would be very difficult to explain why such open acts of aggression as that of India against Hyderabad were tacitly condoned.


Entirely justified

The Soviet Union has now taken the question up again in the legal committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris, and has submitted a long list of acts which in its opinion should be proclaimed aggressions by the United Nations. The Western Powers have of course voted against this move. The reasons for their doing so were given in The Times of January 19th with a frankness which must have been embarrassing to them. The Times said openly that a definition of aggression would mean that many acts of the Anglo-American powers would under such a definition be ruled as aggressive—

  “In fact, a detailed list of definitions would he endless and would certainly prejudge, as aggressive, many acts which when the time came could be entirely justified.... During the present tension in the world no power wishes to be committed to military action on the bask of arbitrary rules attempting to govern every eventuality.”

Burma

The wisdom of this stand from the point of view of the Western Powers was again demonstrated soon afterwards. On January 28th the American, British and French delegates on the political committee of UNO were making the usual threatening speeches about “resistance to Communist aggression” in S.E. Asia, when the Burmese delegate got up and drew the attention of the meeting to the fact that an army of Chinese Nationalist troops under General Li-Mi had invaded the Kengtung province of Burma after having been thrown out of China by Mao Tse-Tung’s forces. The Burmese army had given battle to these Chinese Nationalists, but had been unable to defeat them decisively. Two days later, in the plenary Assembly, the Burmese delegate again spoke of Kuomintang aggression, and pointed out the connection between the reluctance of the Western Powers to define aggression and their equal reluctance to act when the aggressor was one of their allies. He said:

  “Doubts were being expressed in some American quarters about the presence of any Chinese troops, in spite of confirmation by the United States embassy in Rangoon that the Formosan Government had been asked for its co-operation in getting them out. It could be seen from this example that, even when an act of aggression had taken place, people were disinclined to accept undenied facts. The Nationalist troops would get out fast enough if those states which had been against defining aggression but had favoured collective measures in the United Nations told the aggressor, accepted by many 'under another name.’ that all aid and recognition would be annulled unless the 'invaders’ were immediately withdrawn." (Times, 1-2-52.)

Home and away

It is not only those promises and pledges relating to home affairs which the Conservatives have had to discard since the election. The promises made by the Tories in international politics have also been thrown overboard. One of the main features of many Tory election speeches was a promise that if Churchill were returned to power Britain would recover her freedom and independence in world affairs, and would resume her natural position of leadership. The unspoken idea behind such promises is that a nation owes its position in the world not to its economic resources and military power, but to the “great men” which lead it. The worth of the idea can be seen in the rapidity with which the pledge has been abandoned. It was not long before the election that Churchill protested vigorously in the House of Commons against the appointment of an American admiral as Commander-in-Chief of the naval forces of the Western Powers in the Atlantic. But the realities of power—60 per cent. of the naval forces in the Atlantic are American and only 30 per cent. British —have now forced Churchill to agree to just that. In extenuation the Conservatives say that Churchill has obtained a million tons of American steel but has had to give up equally valuable tin and tungsten in return, besides paying the Americans double the present British price for their steel.


Second fiddle

The subsidiary position of British capitalism can also be seen in the attitude of America in those parts of the world where the British Empire is crumbling, and where Britain is being pushed out of strategically and economically valuable areas. In Persia, America stood by when the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. was given its marching orders by the Persians, and the American-led World Bank is now trying to arrange terms on which the Persian capitalists themselves can carry on the production of oil. In Egypt, America watches from the sidelines. On January 29th a State Department spokesman said that America had no intention of mediating between Egypt and Britain. “The Government was not at present contemplating any moves and it had advanced no proposals” (Times, 30-1-52). A recent report made by the Senate foreign relations committee to the Senate was even more definite:

  “The report also contains a specific assurance to the Senate from Mr. Acheson, the Secretary of State, that an attack on British forces in Egypt would not bring the North Atlantic Treaty into operation." (Times, 23-1-52).

Mr. Acheson here appears to have abandoned even the theory that aggression is only aggression when it is aimed against members of the N.A.T.O. alliance; now it seems that only attacks made on the areas where the United States has a direct influence are to be considered as aggressions. Clearly, as far as America is concerned. British capitalism’s chestnuts are to remain in the fire.


Fall in and follow—America

When Mr. Churchill addressed the American Congress on January 17th, he said plaintively “it would enormously aid us in our task if even token forces of other partners in the Four-Power proposal were stationed in the Canal Zone.” But even though, as the Times put it, such forces would be “considerably smaller than the token forces which they (the Americans) always talk of other United Nations countries having in Korea,” Congress has not even considered the idea. Later in the same speech Mr. Churchill reassured the Congress that there was no danger of British insubordination by saying “we must persevere in the tasks to which, under United States leadership, we have solemnly bound ourselves” He continued:

  “Britain and the United States were working together in the same high cause. Bismarck once said that the supreme fact of the nineteenth century was that Britain and the United States spoke the same language. 'Let us make sure,' said Mr. Churchill, 'that the supreme fact of the twentieth century is that they tread the same path.’ ” (Times, 18-1-52).

The concessions Mr. Churchill has already made, and the tone he took in this speech, make it certain that he realises how this will be done; by British capitalism following in America’s footsteps, not the other way round.


Figures

On January 20th the Sunday Express proposed that there should be a “two-tier meat system,” under which every citizen would have a small ration at a low price, plus the opportunity to buy more at world prices.

  "Socialists will argue that the mass of the nation cannot afford to pay the world price for meat. That is not true. Every family in Britain spends, on average, £1 a week on tobacco. As a nation we spend per head on drink, tobacco and gambling an average of 18s. I0d. a week. If meat were available, most sensible people would soon cut some of that spending and buy meat instead."

Here the Sunday Express employs, one can only assume deliberately, one of the oldest fallacies in numbers—the “average” fallacy—in order to put across a political point. “The average family,” we are told, “spends £1 a week on tobacco.” And “per head” we spend “on average” 18s. 10d. per week on drink, tobacco and gambling. If the Sunday Express's average citizen spends 18s. 10d. a week on these things, no doubt the Sunday Express's “average family” of 4 will spend £3 15s. 4d. per week on them. Perhaps the Sunday Express leader-writer doesn’t see his own fallacy. At any rate, if he is not being intentionally obtuse, he must be astoundingly ignorant of the living conditions among that great mass of the population of Britain which still lives on incomes of under £10 a week—some on incomes a good deal under it—if he can assume that “on average” a family of 4 will spend £3 15s. a week on smoking, drinking and gambling. The fallacy lies in the pretence that there is any real meaning in taking the average in cases where the numbers to be averaged vary greatly. For example, the leader-writer who wrote the above quotation would make a very bad recruiting officer: he might march off eight 10-year-old boys and their 80-year-old teacher to join the army on the ground that their average age was nearly eighteen.

Incidentally, if the Sunday Express's figures are correct (perhaps an unwise assumption) they indicate that the spending on luxuries among the upper class must be very high to bring up the average for the whole country to 18s. 10d. a week per head, since the workers cannot afford to spend anything like that much.

Sound Basis

Captain David Cammans, Assistant Postmaster General, perpetrated a similar fallacy when he said:

  “Mr. Bevan wants us to believe that a country which spends £778 million on tobacco, £488 million on beer. £650 million on gambling, and £107 million on going to the cinema every year cannot afford this charge of £10 million to put the national health service on a sound basis.” (Times, 4-2-52).

Captain Gammans' error here is to take for granted that there is a connection between the total figures of consumption in a country and the rate of consumption among particular groups and individuals within that country. But perhaps Captain Gammans, in spite of having been chairman of the Adamant Investment Corporation and director of five other companies before he became a minister, has been confused by the large sums involved. Let us therefore put a very simple case for the captain and any other readers who may happen to be as backward at statistics as he seems to be.

Elementary paragraph for Tory M.P.s

It is now common knowledge that there are 88,000 persons in this country who admit to having incomes of between £40 and £120 a week after tax, not taking into account income tax evasion and perquisites and expenses accounts, apart from those fortunate few who admit to having incomes even higher. Let us take a mythical figure in this income group, Sir Jasper Turnip-Head, who has an income of £120 a week after tax. In Sir Jasper’s village there are ten cottages, each occupied by a labourer and his family living on about £6 a week. Now Sir Jasper puts aside £20 a week towards extending his shareholdings, and he finds that his living expenses come to about £50 a week. Sir Jasper keeps a small yacht, and hunts regularly, and has an account with a wine and spirit merchant: altogether his luxuries and entertainments come to about £50 a week. The labourers find, though, that after the necessities of food and clothing have been paid for, and after the rent has been handed over, there is only 10s. a week for each family to spend on beer, tobacco and so on. Along comes the government investigator, and he discovers that all the inhabitants of the village. Sir Jasper included, spend a total of £55 a week in luxuries and entertainments. Sir Jasper is much moved by this news, since the country is passing through an economic crisis; so he calls the villagers together and tells them that since, on the average, each family is spending £5 a week on luxuries, they could all afford to go without quite a lot of things they now buy.

Alwyn Edgar

Material World: The Road From Burma (2017)

The Material World Column from the October 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The plight and persecution of the Rohingya have featured in the columns of Material World previously. Like so many problems thrown up by capitalism, the topic slips out of the headlines only to return later with greater tragedy.

Tens of thousands are fleeing Myanmar as best they can, driven from their homes by the violence of Myanmar government troops and accompanying vigilante Burmese mobs inflicting massacres and atrocities, in what now appears customary practice in ethnic cleansing operations. Yet the Rohingya in search of sanctuary find it thwarted by Bangladesh and India border guards,

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, the unofficial leader of Myanmar, congratulates her army and condemns the Rohingya for exaggerating their suffering. She accuses the international aid organisations of complicity in giving the Rohingya 'terrorists' support and succour. Fellow Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai has criticised Aung San Suu Kyi for turning a blind eye to the arson and murder. Myanmar has blocked humanitarian aid agencies from delivering vital supplies of food, water and medicine to the desperate civilians. Each day seems to bring new brutalities and expulsion of Rohingya families.

The violence has drastically escalated the sectarian strife. The Myanmar army, the Tatmadaw, who had never really yielded their power to the civilian government, engaged in the brutal repression of dissent, pushing some Rohingya to call for an armed uprising to stop the oppression.

The problem, therefore, became exacerbated by the arrival on the scene of armed groups such as the Arakan Rohingya Salv (ARSA) – who launched violent attacks against Burma's military. In October 2016, hundreds of fighters attacked border posts which prompted a massive army crackdown, with troops accused of rape and indiscriminate killings. In August 2017 attacks on police posts across the north of the state killed 12 members of the security forces and the fully to be expected backlash was swift. ARSA naturally style themselves as 'freedom fighters' yet some analysts such as the International Crisis Group describe them as jihadists financed, recruited and trained by private individuals in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who have campaigned to enhance ARSA’s religious legitimacy further by obtaining fatwas from senior clerics in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere. The stated aim of ARSA is to secure the rights of the Rohingya as citizens within Burma, however its choice of violent resistance may well have set back that cause. It has fuelled the regime's claims that the Rohingya are not peaceful, and that they are foreign interloper, not truly deserving of national recognition and must be expelled.

What is to be feared by authoritarian states most is non-violent protest. Non-violence is neither passive nor a way of avoiding conflict. A non-violent movement that challenges a well-entrenched dictatorship must be prepared for a long struggle and numerous casualties. After all, only one side is committed to non-violence. However, the alternative entails even larger casualties and holds fewer prospects of success. Peaceful resistance does not mean no resistance. It does not mean non-action. It may invite the other minorities such as the Christian Karen and Chinese Shan to support the Rohingya.

As soon as you choose to struggle with violence you're choosing to fight against opponents who are on their own terrain and in possession of the best weapons. The state's police and army are better trained in using those weapons. And they control the infrastructure that allows them to deploy their might. To fight dictators with violence is to cede to them the choice of battleground and tactics. Using violence against experts is the quickest way to defeat.

Socialists are always spontaneously on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors. As world socialists, we are repulsed by the needless and mindless violence going on in the Rakhine state. We sympathise with our fellow-workers, the Rohingya. We condemn and denounce the senseless killing. But let us be frank, as we presently stand, there is little that can be done by the world socialist movement except our constant campaigning for socialism – as the hope of humanity in ending just another one in a series of slaughters taking place within capitalism.

ALJO

Material World: Burma - More Rounds To Go (2015)

The Material World Column from the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Burmese generals throw in the towel’ was the headline in the Times (12 November). ‘President Thein Sein, the former Junta general, promised to hand over power to Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.’

Office maybe, but not power. The fact is that the military of Burma (these days also called Myanmar) have not yielded political power to the will of the people. 

On the Common Dreams website Mark Farmaner explains the constitutional reality (LINK.): to end economic sanctions and their pariah status, but having no wish to surrender control of the country and aware that they couldn't win an election, the solution for the military elite was a new constitution which has the appearance of democracy yet which still left them in control.

The democratically elected MPs will be joined in the new parliament by another 116 MPs, all appointed by the head of the army, 25 percent of the total, who will choose one of the two vice presidents, and like them, will be a soldier. The head of the Burmese army also gets to choose key government ministers. The Defence Minister, Home Affairs Minister and Border Affairs Minister who will all be serving soldiers. This puts the armed forces outside of the control of the new government. The new government will not have control over the police, justice system, security services or issues in ethnic states where the army, according to numerous human rights organisations, have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Without control of the police or being able to create a truly independent judiciary people will still be able to be jailed for their political beliefs or actions. A National League for Democracy (NLD) government won’t be able to use the military budget to try to rein in the army. The army sets its own budget. The government has to make do with the money left over. No surprise, then, that military spending is higher than health and education combined.

Just in case an NLD government should still try to implement policies the military doesn't like, above both parliament and government is a 'National Defense and Security Council'. Constitutionally, it is the most powerful body in Burma. It has eleven members, six of whom come from the military, so it has a built-in majority. It could overrule decisions made by an NLD government. If these checks on the power of the government were not enough, the military also inserted clauses in the constitution that give it the right to retake power for vague and unspecified ‘national security’ and ‘national unity’ reasons. In the special case of Aung San Suu Kyi, the military placed a specific clause in the constitution that a president can't have children who are citizens of foreign countries, which she does, just to prevent her ever becoming president.

Perhaps the constitution can now be amended? The generals foresaw the possibility and this is the importance of the 25 percent of seats quota for the military in parliament. To change the constitution, more than 75 percent of MPs have to vote for it so the military have a veto over constitutional reform. No change unless they agree to it.

This is not political democracy. The military dictatorship has tried to ensure that the state continues to be their ‘executive committee’ while offering the sop of token democracy. The military are fully integrated into the commerce of Burma, trading as capitalists in their own right, and to preserve their business interests they want to remain in control of the state. Mark Farmaner aptly describes it as ‘democracy on a leash’. Even so the NLD won enough seats to be able to appoint the president.  In Western democracies, a situation where the military are not under the control of the government and where the military appoint key government ministers, would be considered completely unacceptable.

The fact is the global capitalist system is willing to turn a convenient blind eye to reality if it provides access to Burma’s resources and markets. Aung Suu Kyi’s international reputation will help attract business and the multinationals are eager to see many more ‘Made in Myanmar’ labels. Despite what the Times claimed, there are a few more rounds to go before Burma attains political democracy.

ALJO

Burma and "democracy"

Latest post from the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back

Burma (or Myanmar as the present rulers want it to be called) is, and has been since 1962, a military dictatorship, one which even has had the cheek to claim to be socialist. Now, once again, sections of the population are demonstrating for there to be more elbow room for people to organise politically and to express critical political views.

Naturally as socialists we would welcome this as freedom of movement and expression, the freedom to organise in trade unions, to organise politically and to participate in elections are of great importance to all workers and are vital to the success of the socialist movement.

We must, however, warn workers in Burma against becoming the pawns of capitalist interests, both home-grown and external.

Burma is the largest country in South East Asia and is of strategic importance, especially for its north-eastern neighbour, China (which also has the cheek to claim to be socialist), as it provides Chinese capitalism with an outlet to the Indian Ocean. In April this year the Chinese authorities approved the construction of an oil pipeline from the Burmese port of Sitwe to China (see here). According to an article in Asia Times (27 September), other economic interests are involved too (see here).

The current regime in Burma is pro-China. The US, anticipating that its main rival for world hegemony this century is likely to be China, has been pursuing a policy of trying to encircle China with a ring of military bases. They are anxious for "regime-change" in Burma, to one favourable to them, so as to further hem in China. And to this end are encouraging, and no doubt financing, the Burmese opposition.

China, on the other hand, is anxious to maintain the present regime and is likely to use its position as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the power of veto, to prevent Burma being given anything more than a slap on the wrist for shooting down demonstrators.

Neither the US nor China care a fig about "democracy" in Burma. They are both concerned merely with their own strategic interests. So, workers in Burma should not be taken in by Bush when he says he wants to see Burma become a "democracy". What he means is that he wants to see a regime installed in Rangoon that will be pro-US and pro-market capitalism. And there is no reason whatsoever why workers should help him do this.

Nevertheless, workers should still try, independently of pro-capitalist groups, to take advantage of this rivalry between China and the US to gain a little more elbow room to pursue their own class interests.

ALB