Vague and Vacuous (2024)

Book Review from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Values, Voice and Virtue: the New British Politics. By Matthew Goodwin. Penguin £10.99.

Goodwin was co-author of National Populism, reviewed in the March 2019 Socialist Standard, which was largely an unconvincing and unpleasant defence of a xenophobic form of nationalism. His latest book is no better.

The basic argument is that, since the 1970s, there has been a revolution or re-alignment in British society and politics. Thatcher supposedly emphasised family values and individual responsibility, but also ‘ushered in the new era of hyper-globalization’, as if this was government policy rather than part of the way that capitalism works; this involved, for instance, selling off ‘many of Britain’s assets’. The former ruling class of industrialists and landowners was replaced by ‘a new middle-class graduate elite’. The latter attended top universities, and were not just journalists, politicians and broadcasters, but also academics, doctors and architects. They have allegedly made it much harder for white boys from a manual working-class background to get into university. They control Britain’s main institutions, and a third of MPs have postgraduate degrees. Many of the elite are radical ‘woke’ progressives, a group that apparently constitutes about one in six of the population.

It is noted that Britain has become more unequal, and there are some passing references to very wealthy people, such as the ‘international jet-setting elites’ who have homes in London but also in New York and so on. Yet overall the author has not the slightest idea of how capitalism operates, of the division between a tiny minority who own and control the planet’s resources, and the rest, who have to work for them. The decline in manual jobs is noted, and much is made of the geographical divide between London and the rest of the country. But in London a quarter of the population live in poverty and one in fifty are homeless, though the reader would not gather this from Goodwin’s treatment.

It is correct to say that choice was reduced in politics as Tories and Labour grew closer together. However, the book’s focus is very much on England, with no discussion of parties such as Plaid Cymru or the SNP. The claimed counter-revolution against the new rulers involved three revolts: populism, Brexit and Boris Johnson. Brexit, we are told, was intended to reduce immigration and ‘restore Britain’s national sovereignty’ (whatever that is). Despite his privileged background, Johnson was ‘a renegade member of the elite’ and became leader of the non-graduate majority who supported the counter-revolution. But Partygate derailed this, and Truss’s ‘small-state, low-tax’ vision of Brexit failed as it had little popular support (nothing to do with market reactions, then).

The whole book is a fantasy, with no arguments to show how the supposed former ruling class have been replaced by the graduate elite, and no understanding of how politics under capitalism is driven by economic interests and the need for profit.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Nothing to offer (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“People in general have lost faith in the free-market, Western, democratic order,” lamented Daily Telegraph columnist Charles Moore (22 July). “They have not yet, thank God, transferred their faith, as they did in the 1930s, to totalitarianism. They merely feel gloomy and suspicious. But they ask the simple question, ‘What’s in it for me?’, and they do not hear a good answer.”

They certainly don’t. The mad-marketeers who ruled the roost at the time of Thatcher and Reagan didn’t have anything to offer, but at the time many people thought they did. Thatcher openly proclaimed that she intended to destroy “socialism”, by which she meant everything associated with the post-war Labour government (nationalisations, NHS, council housing) and her government went a long way towards doing so, even if she was only doing what the economic circumstances of British capitalism required her to do.

Then, in 1991, the USSR collapsed. The partisans of “the free-market, Western, democratic order” were elated. They proclaimed the “end of history” and that “socialism is dead”. But what had died was state-monopoly capitalism not socialism (which had never existed in Russia). A “peace dividend” was promised. It never materialised. Instead, there was the First Gulf War, to be followed by the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the Western capitalist countries. In 2007 the biggest slump since the 1930s broke out. We’re still in it.

Wars, slumps, capitalism as usual. No wonder the likes of Charles Moore are disoriented and disillusioned. He even entitled his column “I’m starting to think that the Left might actually be right”, explaining:

“One of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls ‘the free market’ is actually a set-up. The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.”

What Moore was lamenting was that the Right (to accept his term) has no answer to this criticism (only slightly caricatural) of the private corporation capitalism they uphold and promote. And they haven’t. Capitalism is now more intellectually bankrupt than ever. It has no inspiring vision to rally people, not even “freeing” people from state capitalism. As a result of the way it inevitably works, capitalism has become a dirty word again.

But what is the answer? By “the Left” Moore probably means the supporters of state capitalism (he explicitly states that “the Right” includes “the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown”), but the above is a criticism of capitalism which we in the Socialist Party could broadly share, even though we don’t consider ourselves a part of the Left precisely because they stand for state capitalism.

We are opposed to private corporate capitalism and to state capitalism, both of which have failed. The answer is a classless society without rich or poor where productive resources have become the common heritage of all so that the production and distribution of the things we need to live and enjoy life can be carried out in accordance with the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. It’s the original meaning of socialism before the experience of Russia and Labour governments made it a dirty word. It’s high time it became respectable again.

Correspondence: Does this mean Tory Gold? (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Dear Sir,— Will you kindly insert the following in your next issue, for the information of your members, and Socialists generally.

A. Jacobs.

The attitude of Socialists to Conservatism. 

To the Editor of the Saturday Review

25th October, 1906.

Sir,- In your interesting article on the attitude of Conservatives to Socialism you remark that “Conservatives have no need to be frightened from their own principles by the name of Socialism. If Liberalism has had to desert individualism, and come round to the conception of State action operative in any and every sphere of social and industrial activity, Toryism has not had to execute any such volte-face.”

This is not the only right-about turn the Liberals have executed. After a prolonged and fruitless effort to cajole us into an alliance with them they now threaten us with a crusade against Socialism—a threat which we deride as we derided their proffered alliance. With characteristic confusion of ideas they have mistaken Anarchism—the logical issue of their own political faith, though they are not courageous enough to face that fact—for Socialism, and it is a significant circumstance that representative Anarchists like my friend Kropotkin, are constantly rebuking Socialists for their hostility to the Liberal Party.

Antipathies are more irreconciliable than hatreds. The Socialist opposes both Liberal and Tory because they are prepared to defend in common a position of economic vantage which which they occupy jointly and from which the organised workers will have to oust them before they can enjoy the social freedom which is the field of conquest of democracy. To the extent that Tory and Liberal alike are determined to preserve private property in the means of life, there is, from the Socialist point of view, no difference between them, though a distinction is not difficult to discover between our irreconcilable antipathy to Liberalism and the sneaking regard we preserve for a party that never embraced the doctrine of “everyone for himself and the Devil catch the hindmost.” The Socialist attitude to Liberalism is one of unrelenting hostility; to Conservatism it is one of watchfulness. When the Tory Party is prepared to fight us we shall not decline the combat, and—God defend the right! In the meantime we are waiting to see how far you are prepared to go in such matters as the nationalisation of the railways or of mines. We share the opinion of your reviewer that “there are at least as many if not more Conservatives than there are Liberals who would be prepared to go with the Socialists” so far. As a member of the Executive of the oldest Socialist organisation in this country I cannot pledge myself that it will call upon its members to vote Tory if your party adopts in its program those two planks, but I am perfectly certain in which box Socialist voting paper would be dropped in constituencies where no candidate of our own are in the field. Liberal promises to support the same proposals would fail to catch Socialist votes because we know from experience the value of their election promises.

The difficulty about Socialism to which your reviewer refers—”that it has so many different meanings”—is more apparent than real. The root of the word indicates its meaning, but companionship can never exist between master and slave. Socialism seeks therefore to extinguish every form of servitude to which man has subjected his fellow-man. Wagedom is in some respects the worst form of slavery and we believe it will prove to be the last. We deny the title “Socialist” to anyone who refuses to assist the workers in their effort to emancipate themselves from wagedom, and we refuse it to the workers who hug their chains. Mr. Chiozza Money has been inviting us to drop the title and to be satisfied with that of Collectivist, which only proves that Mr. Money has not yet completed his education in Socialism. Socialists are Collectivists merely because we can discover no other economic basis on which to rear the Socialist superstructure.

The Labor Party in the House of Commons includes in its ranks a handful of Socialists but it is unkind to saddle us with any responsibility for the Radicalism and Liberalism of the majority, and by so doing your reviewer wounds our keenest susceptibilities. It took twenty years’ active propaganda among the trade unionists before we could induce them to abandon their motto “No Politics” ! and we cannot expect them to complete their education more rapidly than Mr. Chiozza Money is perfecting his knowledge of Socialism. They prelude the advent in the House of Commons of a social-democratic party whose influence will soon rival that exercised by our colleagues in the German Reichstag and in the French Chamber of Deputies. When we have pushed aside the Liberals we shall be ready to cross swords with the Conservatives. In the meantime we may continue to preserve mutual respect. Yours faithfully,

J. Hunter Watts.

P.S.— The above letter appeared in the Saturday Review, 27th Oct., 1906.

The italics are our own.—[ED.]

The Battle of the Isms. (1927)

A Short Story from the August 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Hyam Eezi was much younger, he used to wonder what all this talk of Liberalism and Conservatism and other ‘isms was about. He was puzzled. You would not have called him a deep thinker at all. He just wondered and pondered, and occasionally asked questions. “What is the difference, the real difference, between Liberalism and Conservatism?” he would ask. He was told that one believed in Chinese slavery and the other was opposed to it. The arguments both for and against Chinese slavery were then flung at him, and in the heat of discussion he was not at once aware that his original question remained unanswered. So that, like so many of us, he unconsciously shelved it until a more convenient season. A few years later, in one of his pondering moods he became dimly aware that he had never really got at the heart of this mystery, and he again pursued enquiries into the essential difference between the two creeds. He was surprised to learn that Chinese slavery was no longer a touchstone, but that now one was strongly advocating Tariff Reform; the other what they called Free Trade. He found himself in the midst of a deluge of technical jargon, in which imports, exports, taxation, revenue, invisible exports, and what not, battered him into mild bewilderment.“But what is Liberalism in itself,” he would ask? “What is the essential Conservatism?” he would enquire.

No one could tell him. Liberal newspapers or Liberal orators would say they stood for Land Reform, or Rating Reform, or House of Lords Reform, or something of the sort. They were reformers, anyway. And then he would read Conservative newspapers, or hear Tory speakers, and be assured that Conservatism stood for taxing the foreigner, for a big navy, for Imperial expansion, for Imperial preference, for restoring the Lords’ veto, and for a number of other higfh-sounding things. Hyam’s difficulty was that neither seemed to stand for the same thing long, and that when one tried to get behind their high-sounding slogans, one was soon lost in a bewildering maze of detail. When, he thought, a man is described as an electrician, or as a dentist, or as a navvy, I know what he will do, although I may not know how he does it. Furthermore, I know that, although methods alter, there is a certain measure of consistency between what a dentist, an electrician or a navvy did twenty years ago and what he is doing to-day and what he will do twenty years hence. But when I try to analyse what is meant by Liberalism or Conservatism, in the light of what they said or did forty years ago, twenty years ago, ten years ago, and to-day, I feel there is something missing.

Someone suggested to him that he was wrong in judging a political party as he would an individual or an occupation. But he reflected, Is it not as individuals they are presented to me? Does not the candidate at an election placard the constituency with photographs of himself and deliver shoals of leaflets telling of his outstanding personal qualities, his reputation, his residence in the constituency, his devotion to his leaders, and so on. And then his leaders ; is it not as persons they are presented to me ? How this one smokes a pipe and is fond of gazing at pigs; and that one covers one eye with a monocle and has a most dignified bearing; another wears strange hats; another fuzzy hair; or has a silvery, witty tongue. No ! I think I do right to judge them in the way they are presented to me ; for I seem as far off as ever from finding the essential difference between Liberalism and Conservatism.

And then, quite accidentally, he saw a definition of Conservatism quoted in a journal. It was attributed to a rich man named Lord Hugh Cecil, and ran as follows :

1) Distrust of the unknown and love of the familiar;

2) The defence of Church and King, the reverence for religion and authority.

3) A feeling for the greatness of the country and for that unity which makes for its greatness.

If the truth must be told, Hyam Eezi was not profoundly impressed by this definition. He felt that, if the first was true, he was a Conservative; the second seemed to apply equally to all the Liberals he knew; the third did not seem to fit in with his own conception of bodily comfort.

It was about this time he caught sight in a periodical of a cartoon portraying a Liberal omnibus labelled to go to a place called Westbury. The side of the ‘bus was placarded with a large notice : Peace, Retrenchment and Reform. One of his Liberal friends told him that was as good a definition of Liberalism as he would get; had done duty for years in fact. Peace, thought Hyam, yes, I’m in favour of Peace. One-third a Liberal. Retrenchment ! He had to look that word up in a dictionary, and found it meant either cutting down or part of a fortification. He gathered that a Peace party could hardly be in favour of fortifications, and deduced therefore the Liberal Party were for cutting things down. Involuntarily Hyam’s thoughts flew to wages, in his experience the thing’s most often in process of being cut down. In this he was nearer to fact than he knew, but let that pass. Reform ! Yes, he understood what that meant. Reform meant putting things right. And plenty of room for it too, thought Hyam. But then, in talking things over with his acquaintances, he found Conservatives in favour of Peace and Retrenchment and Reform. So he appeared to have discovered after all that, as the Irishman is alleged to have said, the only difference between them was that they were both alike, only one more so than the other.

But his great discovery followed a casual meeting with a fellow in a workman’s train. Their conversation had drifted from the weather to work, from work to no work, or unemployment, from that to the Government, and then to politics generally. He confided the result of his ponderous thinking to his fellow traveller, who listened attentively, and then said : “Will you listen to me for a quarter-of-an-hour?” Hyam agreed; whereupon the stranger began :

” If you were a slave on a sugar plantation, what would for ever be uppermost in your mind? ”

” Getting free,” replied Hyam.

” But supposing you had been born a slave, the son and grandson of slaves; if your chains did not gall you too much ; if your slavery were explained to you as perfectly natural, quite normal ; the best system, in fact, that man had yet discovered; would your freedom be quite so insistent a question?”

On reflection, Hyam admitted it would not.

“Then I hope you can conceive of a time when, in order to obtain their willing’ consent to their slavery, the slaves are allowed to elect their own masters, and to agree on the conditions of their slavery.”

Hyam could see this.

“Now, not to push the analogy too far—for these things never took place under chattel slavery—if, before the desire for liberty had been stifled or lulled to sleep, the slaves were invited to vote for their masters on some such question as Taxation of Land Values or Reform of the Upper House, what would have been their probable reply?”

“To hell with your catch-phrases. Give us our liberty,” said Hyam.

“You are right,” said the stranger. “And it is only because our fellows nowadays are unconscious of their slavery that they are caught so easily with these tags. The difference between Liberalism and Conservatism is very slight, and may be compared to two friends have have different views on methods of gardening. The Liberals have one theory of taxation, the Conservatives another. The one believes in the desirability of reforms as much as the other; but they differ a little as to the most urgent reforms. The essential difference you have been looking for does not exist. They have one ‘ism in which they both believe—Capitalism. And it is in Capitalism you should interest yourself. You were telling me how at one time you found their differences to reside in varying views of Chinese slavery; at another in Free Trade versus Protection, and at another in the Lords’ Veto. May I call your attention to one thing that was constant—your own condition. You were a workman all the time. All through the many elections that you have seen in your lifetime, all through the terms of office of Liberal Governments, Conservative Governments or Labour Governments, you have remained a workman. These various questions that have been dangled before you only assumed any prominence in your eyes because you were not conscious of your slave condition. Not once throughout all these years have you demanded your liberty. Not that you would have got it; for those who want liberty will have to fight for it. But that you have not demanded it shows you are unconscious of your slave position. That is the first thing to realise then, that you are one of a vast class in society that is held in subjection by another and smaller class. How are you held in subjection? By one simple feature. You are a human being and must eat in order to live, clothe yourself in order to defy the elements, shelter yourself that you may not perish. Under capitalism you can obtain them in but one way apart from stealing. You must find a master who wishes to hire human labour-power, for you must remember human labour-power is the most wonderful thing you have heard of. Your master will bargain with you and hire your wonderful labour-power for such a sum as will enable you to buy food, clothes and shelter. With your labour-power you and your fellows will proceed to build him houses, ships, bridges, palaces, parks, railways, motor cars, hotels, roads, and a thousand things, all infinitely more valuable than the price of your labour-power. But you will not be permitted to touch them. You have been paid for the hire of your energy. And when you have filled the world so full of wealth that no more is needed, the price of your hire is discontinued, and you are given the sack. This process is believed to be the best possible by both Liberals and Conservatives. Anyone who dares to criticise it is ignored as long as possible, called unpleasant names and lied about when he can no longer be ignored; hunted and imprisoned if he appears to endanger the continuance of the system. Liberals and Conservatives would each have differing views on the best way to allay the miseries attending on the state of being- without a master, unemployment, as it is called. In this sense both are reformers. But neither would abolish it.

“So that, in brief, Hyam, Liberalism and Conservatism are slightly different viewpoints in the administration of Capitalism. In the defence of that system, Liberals are as conservative as the Conservatives. In dealing out reforms to keep the workers contented with things as they are, the Conservatives are as liberal as the Liberals. To judge of the value of reforms to the workers, you cannot do better than read the leading article in the Daily News of May 27. I’ll read the commencement of it to you.

” ‘The National Liberal Federation on its fiftieth anniversary can congratulate itself that, with the exception of land reform, every one of the reforms that year by year used to litter the agenda paper is now on the Statute Book. But the reformer is always in the position of a mountaineer. He reaches what he conceives to be the goal of his journey, only to find that there are more precipitous rocks ahead. The agenda of this year’s conference is just as packed with subjects requiring urgent legislation.’”

“There, Hyam, how’s that for half a century of progress? Perhaps in another half-century or so the reforms will come so thick and fast you will actually be conscious of improvement. But, again, as the perspicacious leader-writer says, the reformer’s life is one long surprise packet. Every rock he scales only gives him a view of more rocks. Do not follow this geological party, Hyam, or, as they plainly tell you, fifty years of that sort of progress only lands you on the rocks, and there is no finish.

“When the Socialist Party gains sufficient adherents their contribution to the Statute Book will be brief, but you will notice it. It will enact that on and after a certain date private property in the means whereby we all live shall cease, and they will be taken over in the name of the people to be democratically owned and controlled for the benefit of the whole community. And that’s all for to-day, Hyam.”

W. T. Hopley

Modern Times (2020)

Book Review from the June 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Matthew McManus ed: What is Post-Modern Conservatism? Essays on Our Hugely Tremendous Times. Zero Books £14.99.

This is probably not a question most people have asked, and in any case it is not clear that the answers given here will be all that satisfying. The book consists of a large number of shortish pieces, mostly written by the editor but some written or co-written by others, so it is rather repetitive and there is little sense of a sustained argument being built up.

McManus describes post-modernism as an epoch in human history, a culture defined by globalisation and massive technological changes. Traditional conservatism is mutating into post-modern conservatism, exemplified by such as Trump and Farage. It is ‘ascendant across the Anglo-Saxon world’ and is supposedly characterised by a number of features, including: indifference to the distinction between truth and falsehood, affiliation with a powerful identity seen as under attack, use of modern media, and cracking down on other identity groups when in power. ‘Post-modern conservatives largely come from the most privileged groups in history’, it is stated, but this appears to mean white people in Western countries, not the truly privileged, the one percent, the capitalist class. At one point, post-modern conservatism is equated with right-wing populism, but this is not argued properly, nor is there any discussion of populist ideas in general. No suggestion is made that post-modern conservatism claims to be opposed to an elite, which is usually seen as a main tenet of populism.

The last section of the book is a criticism of the ideas of Jordan Peterson, such as his views on ‘post-modern neo-Marxism’, which illustrates the kind of jargon found not just in these pages but in many of the writers discussed here. One good point is made: that Lenin and Mao launched their revolutions in poor developing countries, in contrast to Marx’s view that communism required the means of production to be highly advanced. The final article, by Borna Radnik, refers to the abolition of private property but notes that the Left have failed to propose an alternative to capitalism. To which we can only say, never mind the Left, look at the publications of the World Socialist Movement.

And as for what is meant by the hugely tremendous times mentioned in the subtitle, the book is silent.

Paul Bennett

Is Britain being abolished? (2000)

Book Review from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Abolition of Britain’. By Peter Hitchens. (Quarter Books)

It certainly is according to rabid right-wing Daily Express columnist Peter Hitchens. Hitchens, who is critical of Mrs Thatcher and regards Michael Portillo as being too liberal, has set out his stall in a book which argues that the post-war period (especially since the 60s) has seen the gradual erosion of everything that once characterised Britain as a great independent Empire nation.

According to Hitchens, Britain’s political, economic and social institutions have been taken over by “cultural revolutionaries” whose clear aim has been the abolition of Britain by stealth. This has resulted in some of the following: the decline of religion, morality and family life; the ruination of a perfectly good education system with comprehensive schooling; the legalisation of homosexuality and the rise of permissive sexual practice, and the abolition of corporal and capital punishment. Underpinning all of the above has been the general decline in respect for authority and patriotism. For Hitchens, this has led to a Britain which is no longer at ease with itself and one which has closed its eyes to its own history which is held in contempt.

Needless to say, with the arrival of Tony Blair and New Labour on 1 May 1997 the final nail in Britain’s coffin was hammered home:

  “1st May 1997 really was the start of a new era. The new Prime Minister’s triumphal progress to Buckingham palace and Downing Street was filmed from the air by sycophantic broadcasters as if a dull cortege of motor cars were a rebel army finally emerging from the sierras to occupy a conquered city.”

And we are all aware of what has subsequently followed. Devolution for Wales and Scotland, House of Lords reform and of course plans to join the single European currency and merge Britain into a federal European super-state. For Hitchens, all this is tantamount to treachery.

For socialists, Hitchens’s entire concept of “Britain” is wrong. All capitalist societies are divided along class lines—capitalist and worker—therefore any talk of “nation” or patriotism is palpable nonsense. Capitalists and workers do not share a common identity nor do they share any interests in common.

Given this, it would be easy to dismiss Hitchens’s views as the ramblings of a mad reactionary “golden-age” theorist who presupposes that the 1950s represented the last bastions of a perfect society. Hitchens, however, has identified certain negative trends in society but has drawn the wrong, reactionary conclusions.

The real materialist backdrop to Hitchens’s entire argument is Britain’s comparative economic decline as a world power and the profound social and political changes that this has undoubtedly brought about. However, Britain’s decline started way before the second world war (as far back as at least the latter part of the 19th century) so there is a historical qualification to Hitchens’s argument. His basic error lies in his uncritical support for Britain’s imperial past whilst at the same time condemning Britain’s rivals for having similar ambitions. His understanding of the nature of capitalism is clearly inadequate.

Clearly there is much wrong with modern society but it is not the result of the so-called “Liberal Revolution” of the 1960s. It is due to the decline of capitalism and the subsequent social havoc which has been created. Of course, Hitchens is really on a Christian/moral crusade against homosexuality and the rise of sexual freedoms which has threatened the sanctity of the traditional nuclear family as society’s cornerstone.

It may be argued that Hitchens’s obsession with morality is a cover for the increasing gap between rich and poor with the obvious social consequences: poverty, frustration, alienation, family breakdown and violence. However, Hitchens is slightly more sophisticated than this. He decries not only both main political parties for presiding over Britain’s moral downfall but also the legacy of Thatcher:

  “The apparent rebirth of Conservatism in 1979 was a false dawn because the Thatcherite movement was not interested in morals or culture. It believed mainly in the cleansing power of the market, which has much to be said for it but which has no answers to many fundamental questions—and which cannot operate properly unless honesty and stability are enforced through both ethics and law. Worse, the Thatcher government unwittingly helped to destroy many of the things Conservatism once stood for. In eighteen years of power, an immense time, the Thatcher-Major government was unable to reverse a single part of the cultural revolution, not least because it barely tried, and did not understand it.”

There is always a certain irony when a staunch defender of capitalism starts to invoke a moral code for human behaviour but in a way it is quite refreshing. At the very least, Hitchens believes that humans are capable of behaving decently (although some of Hitchens’s views can hardly be described as decent). However, he is likely to be disappointed because a social system based upon production-for-profit instead of production-for-need is almost by definition anti-social and amoral.

Dave Flynn