SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

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

Party News: South Wales and West of England Tour (1985)

Party News from the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

With a few exceptions, I don't usually post details of old SPGB meetings on the blog, but I thought this set of meetings was interesting because the SPGB had obviously made the effort to organize meetings in parts of world where they didn't usually hold meetings. Llantrisant, Glynneath and Llanelli were untested territory for the SPGB.

A mini write up of this propaganda tour appeared in the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard.

More than just a dream (1983)

From the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

When one gives a description of socialism, that is, of a moneyless society where the means of production belong to everyone and where each person works on a voluntary basis to produce goods for the satisfaction of human needs and not for profit, one is often greeted with the objection “That’s just a dream. You’re nothing but dreamers, you socialists." This is a serious accusation because it implies that socialists are pursuing an impossible goal and that our activities are therefore a waste of time.

But there are in fact two kinds of dreams and two kinds of dreamers. Some dreams are no more than fleeting daydreams while others are so sharp and vivid in the mind of the dreamer as to prod them into action with a view to turning the dream into reality. This kind of dream has motivated humanity to some of its greatest achievements, with human labour and ingenuity doing the rest.

Try to imagine, in some far distant past, two human beings peacefully lying by the riverside and watching the birds fly overhead. One of them suddenly exclaims “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to fly, like that, high up in the sky and sec the world from above?" The other replies, “What's the point in even thinking about it? The way you’re made, you’re not likely ever to fly, are you? Forget about it." But in the mind of the one with the stronger imagination the dream has already taken root and on his lips you can read these silent words: “How could it be done?" This dream, like so many others, will come to other minds and be passed on to other people, and even if, back in the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci’s ingenious flying machines were no more than drawings, he was not for all that wasting his time because today human beings can fly higher, faster and further than any of the winged creatures. Although this does not seem to tie in with “human nature".

But “human nature" is not a constant. Human beings seem terribly limited by it, and yet their physical and intellectual work creates, at each moment in their history, new conditions which open the way to new ideas, which in turn lead to new possibilities and new dreams. Natural forces, once all powerful, now only play a secondary part in human destiny, replaced, particularly in the most developed countries, by social and economic forces. But these are created by human activity and should therefore be within human control.

If men and women today consider themselves competitive, aggressive, lazy, selfish and therefore incapable of living in a social system such as socialism, it is simply because the social system in which they are now living brings out these qualities in people: selfishness, in as much as the essence of capital is to add to itself; competition, because what goes to one owner of capital does not go to the other; aggression when rival capitalists, compelled to expand, come to clash with one another; laziness, since not having to work makes us, even if only momentarily, like one of the ruling class. What stands in the way of a radical transformation of the social system is not in fact our so-called human nature, but a realisation on the part of all workers, men and women alike, that their values and their lives are bound to be greatly influenced by the system they live in and that since they themselves, by their joint productive work, create that system, they can also change it if they so wish.

Why is it, then, that this realisation is not taking place massively, at least in all the developed countries of the world? Why don’t people choose to put an end to their material and psychological difficulties by creating conditions which will from then on have the interest and happiness of humanity as their aim? There is a simple explanation. The present system is of material benefit to a section of our society and this section, though very small (about ten per cent) has the power, thanks particularly to its control of the media and of the education system, to impose certain ideas and to stop the spread of others. And so it does its utmost to preserve the status quo. This can well be considered shortsighted because even for this minority of rich people, a social system which they cannot keep under control and which could lead, at any minute, to the extinction of the whole human race including themselves, is not without its drawbacks for them.

Once this is understood, it becomes clear that the people who insist on visualising the possibility of a different world and who try to capture the imagination of those who remain trapped in their everyday reality — these people who do not just cling to their dream, but work at it wholeheartedly, fighting against ideas forced on them and for the ones they believe in — these people are not just dreamers but active, determined members of society who are doing all they can to change their dream into reality.

The idea of socialism is, like the idea of flying, one of those dreams that seem as old as humanity itself and which has, perhaps, its roots in the social reality of long pre-history. The fact that this dream has not yet come true does not indicate that it is impossible but simply that men and women have not started seriously thinking about it and working to achieve it.

Christine Moss

Uncommon at Greenham (1984)

From the January 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In August 1981 a group of women, children and men left Cardiff to march over a hundred miles to Greenham Common to protest against the planned siting of American Cruise missiles there. Some women decided to stay on and set up a peace camp from which men were excluded but which attracted the support of many other women from all over the country as well as abroad. The mere existence of the camp was not enough to wake people up to the horrific reality of nuclear weapons and a number of demonstrations were organised to get attention from the media and the public. In one of these the base was blockaded and completely encircled by hundreds of women linking arms; in another, women climbed over the barbed wire fencing, got inside the base and climbed on top of a missile silo where they remained singing and dancing until the police dragged them away. They also decorated the fence with pictures of children and loved ones and went to London where they lay down in the streets to symbolise the fate of those who would die in a nuclear attack.

Although these actions were undertaken in the name of “peace and life", and more particularly in the name of children's lives, it is difficult to accept that the women involved had fully thought through the implications of such words. If so, why demonstrate just at Greenham Common and not in front of the Israeli embassy, or the Lebanese one, or indeed almost any other to draw attention to all the people being killed in wars waged or supported by governments; why not decorate Asian and African embassies with pictures of the little children starving to death in those countries at the rate of about 30 every minute of every day? Indeed, if peace and life are the prime concern, why oppose just nuclear weapons and not all weapons? In fact, the word “peace" has been used by the Greenham women in a vague, undefined manner which has enabled thousands of people to identify with the movement while making purely personal interpretations of the word, ranging from the withdrawal of Cruise missiles from Britain to an unconditional rejection of all wars. The unifying principle that has spurred these women into action and kept them going in the face of all kinds of difficulties has not therefore been identity of aim. but rather identity of emotion. What we have here is strong emotion — shared, controlled and organised.

Nuclear weapons release strong emotions in people, and particularly in women, partly because the possibility of total annihilation is an entirely new concept. Schools and history books have taught us that wars and massacres are a normal, acceptable part of “civilised” life and children are kept too busy learning by heart the dates of the great battles to have time to ask questions. But the idea of a nuclear holocaust is new and has shock value.

In the book Greenham Women Everywhere, by Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk, a whole chapter is devoted to letters and personal statements by women describing how they are haunted by nightmares and frightening visions of destruction. desolation and loss. Fear, as well as a discovery that many others shared their fears, was the spur that led woman after woman to join a group, to go on a march, to support the peace camp at Greenham. Once together they found they shared feelings of anger and confusion and that none of them was ashamed to weep or express emotion. They were put off by the local CND meetings, with the dry, impersonal atmosphere of the committees and the formal, unemotional approach which, to them, was typical of the way men organise things. The women found that when they got together, when they marched, sang or danced, held hands or linked arms, something quite different happened. Their negative feelings of anxiety, fear and helplessness were magically turned into "feelings of strength", "feelings of calm and centredness”. On one occasion, standing together in silence after a demonstration, they were "ecstatic, overtaken by the brilliant feeling that we’d actually done it”.

Emotion is also the key factor when the Greenham women attempt to communicate with the rest of the world, as they try to get others not so much to understand their ideas but to share their feelings. This is particularly hard work with the people with whom they have most contact, the police, but it is also hard work with most of the rest of us who have been brought up to resist and suppress our emotions or at least to regard them as the weakest, most unreliable part of ourselves.

This applies particularly to men and is indeed the reason why they were excluded from Greenham. It was not, as some people believe, because the majority of women there felt that men were biologically violent and aggressive and therefore incapable of wanting peace. They did not think this. They did, however, think that men. because of their social conditioning, would find it difficult to join in the kind of activity they had chosen for themselves and to really accept non-violence as a strategy even in the face of police brutality. And from the women’s point of view the exclusion of men worked. From acting on their own and in their own way, the women there have derived tremendous feelings of strength as well as a new sense of identity as women. From the point of view of getting practical results, the emotional approach has not been more successful than the more formal one of organisations dominated by men: the first Cruise missiles were flown in just over a month ago, right on schedule. Men have achieved a form of personal satisfaction in fighting for lost causes, a sense of solidarity with other men. feelings of importance and possibly careers in politics. Now women have created their own version of solidarity, their own feelings of strength, their own niche in the continuing social struggle.

If feelings of strength are to be of any use, however, they must surely have some real impact on the world or else they are little more than self-indulgence. So the Greenham women may feel strong, but the nature of their actions shows that they are not. They protest and they demand their "rights", but in doing so they are recognising the power of a superior authority to whom their protests and demands are addressed. Indeed they are saying to this authority that it need have no fears, that it is not in any way being threatened, only pleaded with. The Greenham women do not have the sort of strength that says "I have had enough of the way things have been run, I shall now take matters into my own hands". No. They are still not much different from the beggar who relies on the rich, powerful person to treat him with pity. Beggars have never been choosers, nor will they ever be. As long as workers beg, as they do when they protest or make demands, nothing will change. Only when we take things into our own hands will they go the way we want.

Is this to say that emotion is to be rejected as futile and irrational? Not in the least. Emotion is an essential part of human experience: it is thanks to our emotions that we can empathise with others and support one another when we unite to achieve a common goal. The experiences of the Greenham Common women clearly testify to this, it would be foolish, however, to imagine that a simple venting of our emotions will achieve any more than does a more impersonal approach. The reason formal organisations never seem to get anywhere is not because they lack emotion. but because they lack understanding. If your car does not start in the morning, you do not beg it tearfully to understand your plight, nor do you present it with a formal letter giving all the logical reasons why it should work. Both approaches, in this case, would appear equally irrational as a car is obviously not capable of taking an interest in you, your motives or your feelings. It has its own laws and unless you understand them, you will not get it to start. A social system, although made up of human beings, is in fact more like a car, or any other machine, than it is like a human being. Many of the human beings caught up in this machine become themselves, at times, mere automatons: "The police, the armies and the courts are all ‘only obeying orders’", writes Gwyn Kirk. They cannot respond to individual people or specific situations, and nor can the system itself. It is a huge, complex machine with its own laws and unless you understand them neither emotional action nor activity through formal organisations will make it do what you want.

What we want to change is immense. It’s not just getting rid of nuclear weapons, it’s getting rid of the whole structure that created the possibility of nuclear weapons in the first place. If we don’t use imagination nothing will change. Without change we will destroy the planet. It’s as simple as that.

(Lesley Boulton, June 1982)

The way things are organised is neither natural nor inevitable, but created by people. People have a wealth of skill, intelligence. creativity and wisdom. We could be devising ways of using and distributing the earth’s vast resources so that no one starves or lives in abject poverty, making socially useful things that people need — a society which is life-affirming in all its aspects.

With these words Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk conclude their book on the Greenham women. What they say here they want is also what socialists want; and when enough of us want it we will be able to combine those two remarkable human capacities, the emotional and the rational, in order to take things into our own hands and run our own society, our own world, in the interest of all mankind. Only then will "peace and life” be possible.

Christine Moss

Who will do the dirty work? (1981)

From the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a familiar scene. You’ve been pointing out the absurdity of a system in which the people who produce all the goods and services have access only to what their wages can buy while the Tiny Rowlands of this world, good at inheriting and making money but nothing else, possess and enjoy enough wealth to buy anything that takes their fancy. You’ve suggested that it’s time to get rid of the wages system, money and the negative employer-employee relationship; time for people to produce goods not for their employer to make a profit but so that these goods can be freely and directly available to all who need them. But what about the dirty work? You answer this objection by pointing out that advanced technology, when used for the benefit of all, will leave hardly any ‘dirty work’ at all to be done. But your objector is still shaking his head, unconvinced: “You can’t mechanise everything. What I want to know is who’ll sweep the streets and collect the rubbish?”

It’s true that the mechanisation argument isn’t entirely convincing. It’s hard to imagine a world without any unpleasant work and anyway it’s not for socialists to try and predict the exact details of how socialism will be organised. Better to answer the objection by looking at what people mean, and assume, when they talk about ‘dirty work’.

Work that is messy, that gets your hands dirty, is usually considered dirty work. But not always. Doctors and nurses, for example, have close contact with human functions that are normally regarded as dirty yet few people would consider that they did dirty work. For most people dirty work doesn’t just mean dirt but dirt plus heavy monotonous activity requiring little skill or creativity. This sort of work couldn’t, most people believe, be done voluntarily. The only way to motivate people to do it, we’re told, is by offering them money.

Yet if we look around we find that even in today’s society most dirty work isn’t done for money. Who sweeps and scrubs the floors, dusts and polishes, does the washing and the washing up, changes the nappies and worse? Women usually do it, but whether women or men, they do it for nothing. If something like half the human race spends most of its time doing dirty work without getting a wage for it, can it possibly be argued that money is the only motivation that will get people to do this kind of work? In fact the opposite appears to be true, namely that people do any kind of work better when motivated by social need — in the case of most women the needs of their family.

But is dirty work as objectionable anyway as most people believe it to be? Behind the belief that it is, lie two main assumptions. The first is that people don’t like dirt. Is this true? Children certainly do, in spite of strict training to dislike it. And in later life many still enjoy such ‘dirty’ activities as messing with bike or car engines, playing rugby on a muddy pitch, digging the garden . . . The second assumption is that people will naturally steer clear of activities that are strenuous or boring. But this again isn’t entirely true. When people are after a given result, they’re quite capable of going for activities of just this kind: they’ll jog around the park or swim up and down the pool for the sake of health and fitness, they’ll dig a patch to grow vegetables in, they’ll sand down woodwork before painting it to get a smooth finish. Jogging, digging and sandpapering aren’t the most exciting, creative ways of passing the time, but many people will do them if it’s a means to a desired end.

After all this, you think you’ve convinced your objector that dirty work is no real barrier to socialism. But he’s still shaking his head: “No matter what you say, nobody would want to be a dustbin man ”. And he’s right; of course: nobody would want to spend their entire working life collecting dustbins. But that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t mind collecting dustbins occasionally, when it was socially necessary.

Unfortunately though, in the society we live in at present, work isn’t done on the basis of people cooperating to do what’s socially necessary. Work is done within the system of employment. People have to sell their physical and mental energies to an employer in order to earn the money that will buy them the necessities of life. Once they have contracted to sell their energies as, say, dustbin collectors or teachers or bank workers, they will have to carry it out for most of their waking hours, perhaps for the rest of their active lives. They do not see the desired goal that would give them the incentive to work willingly and enjoy ably (a pay packet is no substitute). The imposed daily stretch of work and the lack of variety make all jobs boring and unsatisfying. In these unattractive conditions any type of work becomes objectionable and dirty work becomes positively offensive.

In socialism people will no longer work for an employer or for a wage or salary but simply to achieve a desired result. All the completely negative work that has to be done today — such as the production of armaments and the killing and destruction (the real 'dirty' work) — will disappear. So will all the useless non-productive work associated with money and production for profit — such as insurance, banking, sales promotion . . . All work will be equally useful and necessary to society and no stigma will be attached to any of it. People will be free to create conditions that will make any task pleasant and interesting, and in the process they will be able to put technology — now ensnared by the profit motive — to its best use.

People don't mind getting their hands dirty nor their bodies tired. What they do mind is having to work under conditions that have taken all the pleasure out of work. Change the conditions (get rid of capitalism and establish socialism) and then the very concept of 'dirty work' will disappear.

Christine Moss

Women's movement (1983)

Book Review from the July 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is to be done about the family? edited by Lynne Segal (Penguin Books)

This collection of essays by seven women looks at the family from different points of view while always keeping the oppression of women at the centre of the analysis. The first essay describes the protest movements of the 60s which rejected all traditional family values. These were short lived and led to nothing but another protest movement: the new feminism of the 70s. The next essay shows how feminists moved away from trying to live out their ideals in alternative households towards a theoretical critique of the family and finally came to concentrate on reforms, often within the Labour Party. This is followed by an attempted Marxist analysis of the particular oppression of women in capitalism, but comes to the disappointing conclusion that the problem simply lies in the social division between productive and reproductive labour. The next essays concentrate respectively on childcare, sex as a product of the family as we know it, communes as alternative families, and the Welfare State in relation to women's economic dependence on their husbands and their need for some form of independent income. The concluding essay takes stock and tries to answer the question posed in the title of the book, but in doing so it has to admit that things have not improved very much at all and that there is no sign that they are going to. 

In this book we find all the typical questions that feminists ask: Why is housework not recognised by society? How can one find security and warmth in association with other people without the pressures of family life? Can the needs of children and women be reconciled? How did women become pure providers? Why can't housework be shared? Who is responsible for the oppression of women, capitalism or men? There do not appear, however, to be any answers to these questions nor any solutions to the problems they raise. In fact one has to feel some respect for the intellectual honesty with which these women look at their involvement as feminists and clearly see the contradictions within the movement and their failure to achieve their aims. But at the same time one cannot help wondering why, if feminists can see the drawbacks and limitations of most reforms and admit to a "depressing failure to improve women's lot generally" (p.221) they do not turn to other solutions and start asking different questions. If they can wonder why "women who form 40 per cent of the population only get 25% of the pay" (p.221) they might consider why the working class, who form 90 per cent of the population and produce all the wealth, only own about 38 per cent of the wealth.

It seems almost as if these writers did not want to find the real solutions outside their movement. Denise Riley, in the face of all the evidence, writes:

But there is no automatic opposite [to the present system] — a  socialism of abundance which would pay full and imaginative attention to the needs of women with children; plenty does not spontaneously flow from a new socialist order, any more than refusing public welfare provision is a timeless characteristic of capitalism (p.129);

and Lynne Segal includes the following comment on her concluding remarks: "But whether we like it or we don't, family life will continue to change" (p.230). Their attitude is one of passive resignation (how ironical in committed feminists!) which leads them to fear that the system will not treat them well, or hope that it might if they plead with it as they all do at the end of each essay, giving long lists of "we want this, and we want that . . . and is it too much to ask?" The mistake they make is precisely to "ask". If we want things to be a certain way, then we must run society ourselves instead of allowing it to be run in the interests of a tiny minority.

The word socialism is used a lot in this book, but mainly as a label that says something about the person wearing it (that she is a good sort of person who wants to improve the lot of people generally), not as a definition of a form of society. Pity. Because that form of society, run by the majority of the people in their own interests, without distinction of race or sex, without wages or money and therefore without property or economic dependence of any kind, would be a good place for a woman to live.

Christine Moss