Correction (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article, "Cuban Background",  which we published in the Socialist Standard in January 1961, we stated that Batista first came to power in Cuba in October 1940.

This is incorrect. Batista first became President of Cuba in 1933. after leading an armed revolt.

We apologise for this mistake, and for our tardiness in correcting it.

Editorial Committee.

Cuban Background (1961)

From the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

To anyone who follows the Latin American scene, so many aspects of Cuban politics seem familiar that there is a danger of failing to see just what distinguishes the Cuban question from the traditional turmoil in that part of the world.

When Spain’s colonies in the New World fought for independence a hundred and fifty years ago, their main source of inspiration was revolutionary France and the young United States. However, in one fundamentally important respect they fell short of the requirements of real social change; a unified and coherent class demanding the overthrow of the outmoded system on the strength of its mastery of the new productive and social forces.

As the present situation in the Congo shows, not all independence movements are the expression of a powerful embryo bourgeoisie, ready to effectively take the place of the former Imperialists on the backs of the local working-class and peasantry. The ousting of Spain from the Americas was due more to the weakness of Spain than to the strength of its colonies. The social vacuum, the rapid collapse into anarchy could not, in those days, become the concern of a United Nations Organisation acting as a broker and a policeman of international capital. The high-flown language of the constitutions drawn up by the South American disciples of Washington, Jefferson and even Tom Paine was not matched by the level of economic and class development in their respective regions. From Mexico in the north to Argentina in the south, the whole continent was to relapse into a state of autocracy where power rested with decadent, constantly feuding landowning interests.

At the turn of this century, the needs of European Industrialism led to the “Scramble for Africa”. Perhaps less spectacularly, and certainly without the formal annexation of territory as was the case in Africa, a similar process began in the Americas. The outcome of this process has, to a remarkable degree, run parallel to Afro-Asian developments. Britain, France, the USA and then Italy, Germany and Japan have, over the years, poured capital in and drained profits out. Vast rail networks were established. Soon hides and grain, meat and coffee, sugar and bananas, were flowing onto the world market.

The precious metals that had provided the funds for Spain’s “siglo de oro”, its century of supreme power and culture, were no longer of prime importance. Not silver from the mines of Potosí, but tin from neighbouring parts of Bolivia, was to become the source of immense wealth for the mighty foreign Corporations who were equally busy in their exploitation of copper and nitrates from Chile, petroleum from Venezuela, quebracho from Paraguay, and so on. Countries, most of them larger than any in Europe, were to become utterly dependent upon a single crop; here coffee, there bananas or sugar.

Guatemala, which in its time played the rôle of David to the American Goliath, is known as a banana republic. In Cuba, on whom the mantle has fallen, it is sugar that dominates. True, tobacco from these parts is justly famous throughout the world. In view of Cuba’s increasingly intimate relationship with the Russian Capitalist bloc we may yet witness the paradox of the Havana cigar as a status symbol of the Russian ruling class. We shall see bloated Commissars yet! Nevertheless, it is sugar that is Cuba’s economic life. As goes sugar so goes Cuba—boom or slump; it is the basis of its foreign trade which in this context means, overwhelmingly, trade with the USA. Fidel Castro now challenges the status quo.

As a “middle-class” Robin Hood, Fidel readily appealed to an American public weaned on the exploits of Davy Crocket. At the point where it became evident that in serving the needs of aspiring Cuban Capitalism the existing order of things would be upset, Castro fell from his pedestal. He was unmasked as the harbinger of “Communism” (read, Russian influence) in the Western Hemisphere. The bearded warrior of the mountains was romantic no longer.

The modern history of Cuba could be written around its relations with the United States. Of all the former Spanish colonies it was the last to break from the grip of the old country. It did so only to find itself a virtual colony of its erstwhile ally; to such an extent that there was an American governor at first, and US troops were not withdrawn from the island until eleven years after the signing of the peace treaty with Spain in 1898. US marines returned “to restore law and order” in 1920. The United States census of 1947 revealed that their industrial investments alone were only slightly less in Cuba than in Brazil; $64,000,000 as against $65,000,000 (Germán Arciniegas, The State of Latin America, p. 302). This figure later increased.

Trade Unions

Through this century, Cuban government has been a succession of “strongmen,” as Time magazine likes to call them, who have depended upon American patronage. Fractional alterations in US sugar tariffs in line with the protectionist demands of Hawaii or Porto Rico have had overnight repercussions on the Cuban economy. Laws passed by the US Senate actually reducing Cuba’s sugar quota, as in 1951, when the quota was varied in favour of Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, Peru and Porto Rico could mean and often did lead to gross economic instability. In working-class terms this means unemployment, destitution.

Out of bitter experience there grew in the 1930’s a significant labour movement. In a limited sphere, in the cigarette and cigar factories and the Havana docks, Spanish immigrants of the Anarcho-Syndicalist school had introduced the principles of trade-unionism at the turn of the century. In more recent times a far wider range of trades has become involved although at the price of Stalinist influence out-weighing that of the old Anarcho-Syndicalists who, for all their faults, did not compromise their class interests with the state requirements of a world power as do the so-called Communists. In fact, the Communists’ record in Cuba puts them in a rather curious position in relation to the current “togetherness” of their home and “mother” countries.

Batista, murderous and corrupt, Farouk to Castro’s Nasser, had been given Communist support in his early years of power (M. Poblete,  El movimiento obrero latinoamericano, p. 196). It was he who gave the Party legal recognition. Batista came to power first in October, 1940. In December of that year the second congress of the Communist-slanted Workers Federation of Cuba, T.U.C. of sorts, drew up a statement with which a Socialist could scarcely disagree.

“Cuban workers …. resolve to struggle against the Imperialist war, to expose its Imperialist character and the war-aims of both belligerents and to develop a nation-wide movement to ensure that our country keeps out of this criminal conflict“.

When “you know what” happened, new instructions were given out. The first resolution to be carried at the third: congress of the C.T.C. went as follows:

“The supreme task of the labour movement at the present time is to concentrate all its efforts and to use all its might towards the defeat of the Axis. Workers organised under the C.T.C. are willing to collaborate with all those in favour or national unity, that is to say, willing to subordinate any grievances that may arise within the country in their over-riding interest in destroying the foreign enemy. For the duration of the war, Cuban workers wish to avoid strikes and disputes likely to interfere with production.”

The congress called upon working-class youth to volunteer for service at the war-front.

C.P. just in time

Communist support for Castro’s guerrilla struggle came late but, like Russia’s entry into the war against Japan, in time. At this stage, however, it would be a mistake to regard Castro as a Caribbean Kadar, a mere puppet of the Eastern bloc. Like many a Nationalist before him he is attempting to play off one great power against another in the hope that advantages will accrue to the would-be elite he represents. It is the universal demand of the Latin American bourgeoisie to free their respective national economies from the preponderance of Anglo-American capital.

As early as 1926, in a polemic with Lozowsky, chief of the Profintern, Haya de la Torre, of Peru, pioneer student of the development processes of backward countries within the Imperialist orbit, denied the accusation by the Communists that he favoured unconditional support of Japan in the event of a war between that country and the U.S.A. Nevertheless, he considered it would be a valuable opportunity to take advantage of their rivalry (Haya de la Torre, El antimperialismo y el APRA, p. 101). A mightier rival appears on the scene and, one by one, the Latin American rulers see how to use their bargaining position to diversify their means of production and to intensify or quite often to initiate industrial development. Back in Havana from Prague just recently, a Castro man announced he had secured promises to establish thirty new industries by East European concerns. Of course, for a small power to attempt playing off the great powers involves considerable risks. It is sometimes swallowed up in the process.

The overthrow of the Batista clique with its record of gangsterism in the Chicago tradition, has been followed by a vigorous and forward-looking regime under a new dictator; what in Spanish is wryly called a “dictablanda” rather than a “dictadura”, a mild dictatorship whose authority is used towards social reorganisation rather than to feather the generalissimo’s private nest. Be that as it may, the massive programme of nationalising most Western owned utilities, agrarian reform meaning the breakup and redistribution amongst the rural population of the great estates (a retrograde step from the long term point of view), the attack upon widespread illiteracy add up to a really serious attempt on the part of Cuba to enter the Capitalist arena on a more equal footing.

“In Europe, Imperialism is the culmination of a series of developments within Capitalism and is characterised by the export of capital and the capturing of markets and sources of raw materials in the economically backward countries. However, what in Europe is (according to Haya de la Torre whom we are quoting) ‘the last phase of Capitalism’ is in Latin America the first. For us Indo-Americans, imported capital marks our first step in modern capitalist society” (Haya de la Torre, El antimperialismo y el APRA, p. 51).

Pending a dramatic awakening of working-class consciousness within the metropolitan powers, the repetition elsewhere of our own bitter experience seems inevitable, though tragically so. But this much, at least, we can say: that the Socialist, on the strength of his Marxian analysis, cannot be deluded into believing that this latter-day development of Capitalism, the most inhuman of all social systems, whether of the state-owned variety or not, is the first stage of our revolution; the beginnings of a society built democratically by a conscious, international working-class to serve human needs on the basis of common ownership of the means of living— Socialism. Would that it were!

Eddie Grant

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of momentous historical changes, the fundamental patterns of inequality reemerge across the centuries with remarkable consistency, the patterns of extreme wealth concentration, class immobility, surplus value extraction, special privilege, and ideological systems capable of masking the contradictions. This suite of social traits seems almost constant. 

(CounterPunch)

Write, but do not offend. Speak and comment, but do not divide. Observe cruelties, barbarities and murder, yet refrain from having an opinion. This is the constipating, stifling regime being put in place via suggested codes of conduct for organisers of writer events in Australia. The object of this intellectual veiling: discussing the exterminating war in Gaza. Across the country, the straitjacket of forced social harmony is being applied. 

(Dissident Voice)

Vietnam raises over $13 million for Cuba in historic charity drive. 

(Vietnam Net)

Asked whether Gazans would be allowed to leave, Al-Hayek was unequivocal. “The Palestinian people do not want to leave Gaza,” he told The Media Line. “We repeat each time: We will remain in Gaza until Judgment Day. Here we were born, and here we shall die.” 

(The Media Line)

Hotel accommodation benefits large contractors like Clearsprings, Serco and Mears, while Britannia Hotels made over £150 million in profit since it started to accommodate asylum seekers in 2014. Such contracts even brought the founder of Clearsprings to the Sunday Times Rich List. This company provides housing services to the Home Office that were associated with the highest mortality rate among resident asylum seekers between 2020 and 2023. 

(Counterfire)

Ah, those pro-lifers. Walking, talking, shooting oxymorons. You can tell the pro-life extremists. They’re the ones who want their enemies – the women and men who support a woman’s sovereignty over her own body – dead by any means at their command. Hard to get more pro-life than that. Mike Lee, the brilliant Republican US Senator from Utah, went on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, and posted about the fatal shooting of Democratic politicians in Minnesota, that, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way”. 

(CounterPunch)

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday that the United States has seized nearly US$700 million in assets connected to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Confiscated property includes multiple luxury homes in Florida, a mansion in the Dominican Republic, two private jets, a horse farm, nine vehicles, luxury yachts, jewelry, watches, and cash. 

(Dominican Today)

This is the humanist vision of Alien: Earth, which recognizes our distinctiveness is not in the power of our minds or the machines that we produce. Rather, it is found in humanity’s ability to transform itself, to create and recreate its own internal nature for new conditions, including those yet to come. In doing so, the show goes beyond mere anti-corporate sentiment and instead asks if we can create a new purpose for ourselves, unburdened by the demons of our past and the demons that our future might hold.

(Jacobin)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The latest Oxfam report which was released at 4th UN Financing for Development meet in Seville, Spain, shows that since 2015 the top 1% people in the world have amassed US$ 33.9 trillion in new wealth which is enough to end annual poverty 22 times over. 

(Scoop Independent News)

In some cases, health professionals perform FGM [Female Genital Mutilation] secretly in exchange for payment, turning the practice into a commercial enterprise, 

(People Daily)

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world. People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes — a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately $50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72 percent of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimized. 

(Consortium News)

The entire political and intellectual machinery of the French ruling class is now moving in this direction. That includes the miserable little left, led by the Socialist Party, who bark at us from morning to night. They don’t realize that they’re participating in a broader establishment strategy: acting as the left-wing auxiliary of the right. They live in a dreamworld, wanting France to be like Germany, with a grand coalition of the centre: Social Democrats who are indistinguishable from liberals, Greens who are always clamouring for war. These people are doing the work of dividing us every day while pretending to be for unity.

(Portside)

One recent survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives. That figure alone tells us that we have a major economic crisis on our hands. The cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have been, and most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month. Anyone that attempts to deny this is simply not living in reality. 

(Zero Hedge)

Donald Trump styled himself as a populist, ‘anti-establishment’ president. But look at what he has actually done in office, and you see he’s a status-quo politician with nothing to offer working Americans.

(Jacobin)

Will voters finally stop both blaming politicians for their troubles and depending on them to end them? Will voters—and non-voters—transform themselves into people who act for themselves, in their own interests, instead of allowing others to act for them? That would be what social change looks like. The survival of the human race may well depend upon it. 

(The Brooklyn Rail)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Capitalism in the Caribbean - Part 2 (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The economy of the West Indies underwent a transformation following the abolition of slavery—from a primitive form of capitalism with many feudal features to full capitalism based on wage labour.

With the loss of its tied labour force, the plantation system of agriculture broke down, and the sugar owners faced quick ruin. It was to prevent this sudden loss of their labourers that the sugar plantocracy in many islands introduced a transitory state between slavery and wage-labour—“apprenticeship”. Under slavery, of course, no wages were paid, the slave being kept by his owner and encouraged to grow his own food. Until the sugar owners could buy the labour-power of the “free'’ workers the ex-slaves were “apprenticed” to the estates. They had to work for their former owners for about three-quarters of the week without pay, and from their earnings for the remaining quarter they were able to buy their “freedom" when their apprenticeship ended.

In their efforts to reduce the cost of producing the sugar the owners were forced to introduce labour-saving machines; this became even more necessary in face of competition from sugar planters in other parts of the world, notably the East Indies and the U.S.A., and the introduction of beet-sugar farming in Europe and the U.S.A. To make matters worse for the West Indian sugar owners the British Government drastically cut the subsidy which it had long paid for West Indian sugar when it became apparent that cheaper sources of sugar were available elsewhere. In addition, West Indian cotton and tobacco were virtually eliminated from the world's markets during the middle of the nineteenth century by improved farming in the southern states of America and Eli Whitney's cotton saw-gin.

To combat the twin capitalist problems of the rising cost of labour-power and the falling price of sugar, the West Indian sugar owners were forced to re-organise their industry; apart from introducing mechanisation, absentee ownership was discouraged, immigration (especially of European skilled artisans) encouraged, and serious attempts were made to build up an adequate, dependable, labour force.

In the islands with a long history of slavery, like Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts, there was an adequate supply of labour-power but in fast developing countries with little history of slavery (especially Trinidad and British Guiana) the shortage of labourers was acute. To these two countries, therefore, came regular shiploads of peasants from Madeira and India—indentured labourers who signed contracts or bonds to work on the estates as “free" workers. The workers from Madeira did not measure up to the exacting working conditions on the sugar estates in the tropics, but the Indians were quite at home. These “East Indians" were largely responsible for the agricultural wealth of Trinidad and British Guiana, and now number about half the population of Trinidad.

Although sugar-cane farming is the “monoculture" of the West Indies, other agricultural crops in different islands are important sources of profit for sections of the owning class. The (American) United Fruit Co., of which Elders and Fyffes are a subsidiary company, usually lakes about half of Jamaica's large banana crop. Citrus fruit, coffee, and cocoa are also grown on a considerable scale in certain islands. Grenadian planters enjoy a virtual monopoly of the spice trade in the West Indies.

Timber was, and is, the main industry in British Honduras. Timber, including hard woods, is also grown in Jamaica. Trinidad and British Guiana. The tourist industry, catering mainly for vacationing Americans, has developed considerably especially in Jamaica and is now a major source of profit for hotel and shop keepers; on the Jamaican north coast prices are quoted first in U.S. dollars. Trinidad is unique among the West Indian territories in having two important mineral deposits. The famous Pitch Lake, discovered in Raleigh's day, is the only source of natural asphalt in the world; despite competition from synthetic pitches produced during the refinery of oil. profits of the Trinidad Lake Asphalt Co. still assure a comfortable income for its shareholders.

In addition, oil was found in Trinidad towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although production has increased phenomenally since then, Trinidad's contribution towards the world's total oil production is less than half of one per cent; and because of the unsatisfactory geological formation of the oil-bearing layers, the cost of producing oil in Trinidad is among the highest in the world. However, its geographical position plus its stable government gives its oil industry a special importance in the eyes of British and American capitalists. After the second world war, American capitalism entered the Trinidad oil industry by acquiring a large field and the largest refinery. To prevent further American economic invasion, British Petroleum (half-owned by the British Government on behalf of the British capitalist class) recently took over three “independent" oilfields.

The bauxite industry (in Jamaica and British Guiana) is an important recent addition to West Indian capitalism.

As capitalism improved its methods of production in the Caribbean, so also it improved its methods of administration, to control the growing working class and to assure profits for the owners. In British territories, Crown Colony government superseded the inefficient and self-interested rule of the sugar plantocracy. Crown Colony government which has lasted, with few modifications, until the present time of the “wind of change", was largely responsible for the introduction of organised health services, thereby virtually eliminating the two killing diseases cholera and yellow fever and providing a reasonably fit working class. It also built a greatly improved transport system, the British mode of law-making and enforcement and a rudimentary educational system.

The French islands had always been closely tied to France, the colonial assemblies (which were instituted in 1787) being only advisory in character. Following emancipation, attempts to decentralise the islands' administration were abandoned, and Martinique and Guadeloupe became departments of metropolitan France, which they are today.

The development of capitalism in the larger islands of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico is inextricably bound up with the interests of United States capitalism: capital investment, trading rights, and military bases for the defence of the Panama Canal.

After abolition in the British islands, the British Government pressed for the end of slavery in Cuba, whose sugar was underselling Jamaican sugar. The United States opposed British intervention, and later took the opportunity to gain firm control of Cuban affairs by a decisive and speedy military victory. The excuse for this was the loss of American property in the Cuban civil war of 1895 and the sinking of the American warship Maine in Havana harbour. Although American forces withdrew in 1902, American governors had effectively made Cuba a "friendly" country, and the establishment of the naval base at Guantanamo left no doubts about United States interest in the island.

Despite the oft-stated “principle" of the American State Department in the "self-determination and self-government of small nations”, Cuba has never been free of the intervention of American capitalism, political and military. U.S. naval forces were sent to Cuba in 1912 to protect American property during a Negro revolt, and the U.S. marines were sent in 1917 by President Wilson, also “to protect American lives and property". This touching concern for Cuban affairs apparently paid off. because as a result of the boom in sugar after the first world war a greatly increased concentration of wealth fell into the hands of American capitalists.

The growth of Cuban nationalism brought, first, the dictatorial regime of Machado, then in 1933-4 the left-wing government of Batista. With a history of strong left-wing parties (Cuba is the only country in the Caribbean with a Communist Party of any influence, thought to be a result of Spanish immigration during the 1920's), Cuba was the natural birthplace of Fidel Castro and his followers who seized power in 1958 and have ruled the island since then with all the trappings of a police state.

The Dominican Republic and Haiti have been of minor importance to the United States, both as markets and sources of capital, and any American interference there has been largely because of the islands strategic value. Both states of the island of Hispaniola have developed with dictatorial governments, and are at an uneasy peace with each other. Haiti is economically poor: the country is governed by a mulatto élite and the rest of the population are illiterate Negro peasants. The Dominican Republic, which is largely populated by descendants of Spanish settlers, is richer by virtue of sugar farming and the modest influx of American capital. The dictatorial regime of General Trujillo, which had ruled the country with no pretences of democracy for almost thirty years recently lost its iron control and the Trujillos were deposed. It is still loo early to say whether more democratic institutions for ruling the working-class will emerge; in the meantime the country has been "de-Trujillo-ised ” to the extent of the capital of Ciudad Trujillo being renamed Santo Domingo, the name given it by Columbus.

After centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898 by the Treaty of Paris. America wished to gain control of the island (especially the fort of San Juan), not so much for her own use, but to prevent this strategic outpost failing into the hands of rival imperialist gangs. The sugar industry in Puerto Rico attracted American capital, and within a few years three or four American Corporations gained control of the industry and acquired more than half of the land suitable for cane growing. Although nominally American citizens. Puerto Rican workers soon discovered that, despite housing schemes, improved medical services, etc., they extracted little benefit from possessing American passports. It has been estimated that the average per capita income in Puerto Rico is less than one-fourth of that in the United States. In an attempt to relieve unemployment, the Puerto Rican government has encouraged emigration to the U.S.A., where, especially in New York, Puerto Rican immigrants meet similar problems that West Indian immigrants encounter in Great Britain.

No account of American capitalism's interference in the Caribbean would be complete without reference to the military bases in various West Indian islands granted to the United States during the early stages of World War Two by the British Government in return for fifty-odd old destroyers. The destroyers have all gone (some were reported to have sunk on their first Atlantic crossing), but the bases remain. They are a constant source of annoyance to West Indian politicians. especially Dr. Eric Williams. Premier of Trinidad and Tobago, who has apparently dedicated himself to the task of wresting the naval base of Chaguaramas in north-west Trinidad from the American Government.

Michael La Touche

(To be concluded)

Not socialism (2006)

Book Review from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crisis of Socialism by Randhir Singh. Amit Atwal. 2006. 1087 pages. £29.99.

In Europe most Leninists are probably Trotskyists. In Asia they would seem to be Maoists. Randhir Singh falls into this category, arguing that although Stalin made mistakes and what he called socialism wasn’t socialism, Russia finally became a fully-fledged new class society ruled by a state bourgeoisie only in 1964, when Brezhnev took over from Khrushchev. Russia went capitalist in 1991. Since then China has gone that way too. Only Cuba and North Korea have not yet gone capitalist, and only Cuba is on the road to socialism. That’s what this book argues but we doubt that many people will have the patience to read through 1000 pages portraying Lenin, as like Marx, an advocate of the democratic self-emancipation of the working class, interspersed with favourable comments on Mao and Stalin.

Adam Buick

Fidel Castro (2006)

Book Review from the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fidel Castro, A biography by Volker Skierka. (Polity. ISBN 0-7456-4081-8)

This is the second English edition brought out on the occasion of Castro’s 80th birthday in August. Written in German, it originally appeared in 2000 and contains some fascinating material from the East German archives as to what its diplomats in Havana thought of Castro and his policies (not always favourable).

Castro was the leader of a guerrilla war and popular uprising that led to the overthrow, on 1 January 1959, of the corrupt Batista dictatorship. The revolution was originally carried out under the banner of Cuban nationalism, but within a few years proclaimed itself to have been a “socialist” revolution, with Castro famously declaring in December 1961: “I am a Marxist-Leninist and will remain so until the end of my days”.

By which he meant that he was committed to the idea of arriving at a society in which there would be no classes, no state, no money and no wages (which he called “communism” and which we more usually call “socialism”) via a period of national state capitalism (which he, but not us, called “socialism”). The theory (which is still held by Castro) is that a revolutionary vanguard committed ultimately to socialism/communism can seize power without a conscious majority desire for socialism and then, afterwards, create such a socialist desire through education.

The argument against this is that it doesn’t and can’t work. The revolutionary minority can seize power but, without a socialist majority, can’t establish socialism and so has no alternative but to oversee the operation and development of capitalism, even if in a statised form. Although they can take some measures to protect workers (and Cuba has by all accounts done this in the fields of education and health care) economically they are forced to pump surplus value out of them so as to accumulate capital and develop industry. Cuba, as a small island with limited resources, can only survive in the surrounding capitalist world through importing a whole range of essential supplies but these have to be paid for by income from exports, an income which must exceed the cost of producing them. Cuba’s main export has been sugar but, to compete with other sugar-producing countries, it has to keep its production costs, including labour costs, down.

On top of that, there has been the vicious and relentless US blockade. When the Russian state-capitalist bloc and then the USSR collapsed at the beginning of the nineties, Cuba suffered dire economic consequences. The revolutionary vanguard under Castro has seen its role as to protect the people of Cuba from the worst effects of the operation of world capitalism. But it has not been easy, with the vanguard finding itself at times forced to impose drastic cuts in living standards. The most it can claim is to have done this in a more equal way than in other “Third World” countries, though at the same time it has sought to protect the people not just from capitalist propaganda but also from any criticism of its own regime.

Will the state capitalist regime in Cuba survive the death of Castro? Skierka thinks that the regime is more solid than the Cuban exiles in Miami (and the CIA) imagine. But already the vanguard has been forced to develop tourism – which has taken over from sugar as the main generator of foreign currencies – but, with this, have come some of the very things that the revolution wanted to remove such as servility and money-seeking.

Unfortunately, there literally is no hope for the people of the “Third World” within the world market system that is capitalism. It must go before anything constructive can be achieved.

Adam Buick

Life and Times: Romance and Reality (2023)

The Life and Times column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have a friend who rarely misses the opportunity to tell those around him that he would like to bring his children up in ‘a socialist country’. He makes it clear that the country he has in mind is Cuba. And he’s not alone in regarding Cuba as ‘socialist’. We see this in some of the people who apply online to join the Socialist Party and fill in our short questionnaire. The idea of the questionnaire isn’t to catch people out but rather to make sure they understand and are in agreement with what the Party stands for. So to the question ‘Has socialism been established in any part of the world?’, most applicants answer ‘no’. These already know enough about the organisation to understand that we see socialism as a world society without money and wages, without buying and selling and based on economic equality and free access for all to all goods and services. But a few answer in the affirmative and then give examples – perhaps Norway or Sweden (the Scandinavian so-called ‘social-democratic’ countries), or Venezuela (especially under Chavez), or one-party states like China, Vietnam and, most often, Cuba, the country that my aforementioned friend holds in the highest possible esteem and, more generally, seems to be an endless source of fascination for what might be called the ‘left-wing mind’. Why should this be?

Fidel

When Fidel Castro led an armed uprising in 1958 against the repressive US-backed dictatorial regime of Fulgensio Batista and then gained the support and backing of the Soviet Union, it was hailed by many in the West as a successful ‘socialist’ revolution. But it soon became clear that, rhetoric aside, what had happened was that one dictator had been replaced by another, the only difference being that the new one was supported and sustained by the Soviet Union rather than the US. Not that this prevented the romance that attached itself to Cuba throughout the left-wing world from continuing. That romance has, it’s true, become somewhat tarnished since the death of Castro and the accession to power initially of his brother Raul, but for many the country still somehow remains a living example of socialism in action.

In reality, of course, the widespread poverty for the majority alongside massive privilege for a tiny ruling clique that existed both before Castro and under him still exists, as does a one-party state, suppression of independent thought and harsh punishment for dissent, including the death sentence. As recently as 2021 Human Rights Watch ranked Cuba as 19th out of all nations by the number of imprisoned journalists and the 2020 World Press Freedom Index placed it 171st out of 180.

Elections without choice

As for elections, despite being an authoritarian one-party state, Cuba does hold them, the most recent one being in March this year. But these are elections only in a manner of speaking, more of a ritual than a genuine vehicle for the democratic choosing of representatives. Though the regime tries to present itself as a superior form of democracy, with people summoned to vote to appoint members of the ‘National Assembly of People’s Power’, those people do not choose who those members shall be but are simply asked to ratify those selected to stand by the single legally authorised party, the Communist Party. So the country and its people are in effect simply going through empty motions, a process referred to by one commentator as ‘elections without choices’.

State capitalism

Despite this, Cuba continues to call itself a ‘socialist’ country, But what it means by this is adherence to a largely state-controlled economy with most of the means of production owned and run by the government and most of the workforce employed by the state. This is not of course socialism in our terms but just another form of capitalism – state capitalism – even if it is, unfortunately as I see it, what many people, including both my friend who would like to live in Cuba and some of those who fill in our joining questionnaire, mean when they talk about ‘socialism’. And what’s certain is that, whatever they choose to call it, it’s a million miles away from the cooperative stateless society of free access and democratic organisation that we call socialism.

So, given what’s known about Cuba and the way people live there, why does my friend like the idea that it would be good for his children to be brought up there? And why do some applicants for membership of the Socialist Party see Cuba as some form of socialism in action? The only answer I can think of is that myths die hard. Long after irrefutable evidence shows a political system not to be what it purports to be or what people thought it was, some of those people still find it too hard to look that evidence in the face. Instead they just carry on believing what they’ve always believed. In the case of Cuba, as in other cases, romance trumps reality.

Howard Moss

News in Review: Mr. Robens (1960)

The News in Review column from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Robens

The Labour Party rank and file and the Mineworkers’ leaders have received with mixed feelings the news that Mr. Robens, a Labour Party leader, is to be elected Chairman of the National Coal Board. The majority of the Mine Workers’ leaders at their Conference at Llandudno were vociferous in their attack on the proposed decentralization that is now being discussed by the Management side of the industry. Mr. Sam Watson however suggested that Robens' name should be kept out of the discussion as the Conference should have confidence in a man who has spent his life in the working class movement, and he should be preferred to a retired General, Admiral or a Tory.

Putting aside all the discussions on the rights or wrongs of the appointment, one should view the set-up in its true perspective. After all, the retiring Chairman, Sir James Bowman, ex-Mineworkers’ leader, has been a party to the closing of uneconomic pits for at least the last two years. In fact, the East Fife coalfields of Scotland have become almost a depressed area, and this year it is proposed to close another 40 pits. And he also spent his life in the “working class movement.” With all the changes that will have to take place in the industry, it is important that the Chairman should have some understanding of the running of it and also some understanding of the best approach to the union.

Mr. Robens is undoubtedly a good choice from the Board’s point of view. Firstly, he has the association with trade unions as an ex-official of a union and Labour M.P. and also as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power in the Labour Government. He clearly has a knowledge of the administrative side of the industry. So, to sum it up, Mr. Macmillian has appointed himself a good chairman, and Mr. Robens has got £10,000 a year. What, of course is not mentioned by the Press is that nationalisation is just another form of capitalism and whoever is chairman of the N.C.B., his job is to run the coalmines and make them pay.

Cuba

Until recently, America has been paying inflated prices for Cuban sugar for the privilege of refining and marketing oil in Cuba. The current fracas was touched off by the American proposal to limit imports of Cuban sugar. As to be expected, the old imperialist game of fishing in troubled waters is being played with great gusto by the Soviet Union. Their agreement to supply crude oil to Cuba will serve the dual purpose of getting rid of some of the surplus oil that is steadily accumulating in the Caucasus and getting one foot firmly stamped down on America's doorstep. Undoubtedly, having the “enemy” so close to the American mainland will upset the U.S. defence system. The Cuban dictator, Dr. Castro, is taking full advantage of the situation and whether America will tolerate this remains for the moment a matter of conjecture. Only one thing is certain, Whatever the outcome, the poverty stricken peasants and workers of Cuba will remain the poverty stricken peasants and workers of Cuba.

Japan in Turmoil

From recent events in Japan it would appear that the more help one gets the less grateful one becomes. When it is considered that Japan’s economic recovery was primarily due to U.S. assistance and America’s need for overseas military bases, one would have thought Uncle Sam’s representative, Mr. Eisenhower, would have had no difficulty in a courtesy call to a “ great sister democracy.” The visit was to have been marked by the signing of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty which would extend the Japanese agreement to U.S. military bases. Despite the precautions taken (which included the President’s “ bullet-proof bubble-top car,” 25,000 police, 2,000 firemen, 38 fire engines, 15 ambulances and four radio cars), the trip was called off.

We are not particularly concerned with the reasons for the cancellation of the visit. It is certain that considering the nature of the mass demonstrations, many of the Japanese have memories of the consequences of military alliances, particularly since it is the only country which has had experience of nuclear warfare and its effects. The point must be made, however, that mere demonstrations against the effects will not solve the problems facing the Japanese people. The history of capitalism is littered with broken treaties and alliances. The Japanese capitalist class whom Prime Minister Kishi represents, and who have benefited greatly by their close relations with America and its enormous post-war loans, have every interest in establishing and developing once again their so-called “defensive forces.” These armed forces and the fact that Japan is the most highly industrialised power in Asia with a dearth of natural resources and an increasing population, will ensure more success in their demands for greater “freedom of action” and the usual demand for a more independent “foreign policy” which in capitalist terms means the rat-race for a share of the world’s markets. To the Japanese working class we suggest that treaty or no treaty, they have still got capitalism and the constant threat of another holocaust, nuclear or otherwise.

The Labour Party

The decline of the Labour Party since its 1945 election success has now reached a level that has caused some speculation in the Press as to whether the Party is finished as a political force In their articles on the subject, the writers usually attribute the troubles of the Labour Party to the lack of unity within its ranks. In capitalist political circles, unity is an expedient for winning elections and not a factor brought about by an understanding and acceptance of basic principles. How often in the past has the SPGB been urged by critics to unite with the various capitalist left-wing parties as a means to further the cause of Socialism? This despite the fact that the political outlook of the parties are in direct opposition.

The present dilemma of the Labour Party arises out of the apathy of the working class towards policies which sufficed to lure the workers into returning a Labour Government in 1945, but failed to deliver the goods. The arguments ranging round Clause 4 show that the main plank in the Labour Party’s policy—nationalisation—has been tried and found wanting as a solution to the workers’ problems.

Homes—at a price

Are you desperately searching for a flat? Are you dissatisfied with your present housing conditions? Do you feel perhaps that you would like to improve upon your existing living quarters? Do not delay, but instantly get in touch with Ralph Pay & Taylor, agents for builders Rush & Tompkins (absolutely no connection with Slapiton & Leavitt of Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist fame), who are just about to start building a block of 12 luxury flats and a penthouse in Hyde Park Gardens with splendid views across Hyde Park Evening Standard (30/6/60). The flats will sell for about £40,000. However, if you’re interested in the penthouse, which will cost more, you’d better put your skates on, because Mr. Whitney Straight, deputy Chairman of Rolls-Royce, is understood to have first refusal.

Nationalisation and Profits

A little simple arithmetic gives the game away. Last year, the British Transport Commission piled up what they call a working deficit of £12.6 millions. But this deficit was declared after taking account of the fixed interest which the Commission must pay on its stock. This stock, of course, replaced private shares many of which had not paid a dividend for some time before the nationalisation of the railways and other transport undertakings by the Labour Government. The fixed interest charges, with other central expenses, came to £42 millions. Now £12.6 millions away from £42 millions leaves £29.4 millions. And that is the profit which the Transport Commission actually made last year. It is fairly safe to assume that no privately owned railway—or any other company—which made £29 millions, would deliberately land themselves in the red by paying £42 millions out in interest. But that is precisely what British Transport Commission—like many other nationalised industries—have done. Which is an indication that, whatever nationalisation may be, it is not a kick in the teeth for the shareholders.

Clean Sweep

Hoovers have something of a reputation for American business ruthlessness. This was a popular explanation for their recent declaration that 800 of their workers were to be sacked as redundant. It was certainly common among the two and a half thousand Hoover workers who struck in protest at the proposed sackings. Hoovers blamed the redundancy on to the hire-purchase restrictions which the government had just imposed. But that is only part of the story. In fact, orders for products like washing machines had been falling for some time before the restrictions came on; production had started to decline well before the last Budget. In addition, foreign competition has been strong, as a glance in the window of any electrical goods shop will reveal. Hoovers estimate that 10 per cent of the washing machines and 8 per cent, of the vacuum cleaners sold in this country in 1959 were imported.

This could mean that last year’s boom in what are called the durable consumer goods industries has blown out—and Hoovers, who benefited so extraordinarily from it, have been the first to suffer. There is one other point worth noticing. Hoovers employ some expensive brains so that they can be forewarned against slumps. The company’s last Annual Report said that 1960 would be “. . . another satisfactory year although not at the same level as 1959." This is not the first economists’ forecast to be upset by . the inherent anarchies of capitalist society.

Inside Prison

Recently, the Home Office announced the Government’s plan to spend £12m. over the next three years on a new prison building programme. It is hoped that the new prisons and other penal-institutions will ease the present need to incarcerate thousands of prisoners three to a cell.

One feature of the new buildings that has been claimed as a step forward is the proposal to build lower perimeter walls.. In future these will be concrete walls only 6 ft. in height though just within these walls will be an inner 12 ft. chain fence surmounted by barbed wire. But for the most part, prisoners will continue to be confined within punishment houses, such as Wandsworth, Brixton, Reading, Strangeways and Dartmoor, all jails many years old.

A great deal has been made of these proposals and they have been taken as the policy of an enlightened administration, but in fact they are further evidence of the Government’s commitment to dealing with offenders against propertied society with repressive punishments. In perspective, prisons are a horrible scar across the face of modern society filled with the worst failures of our cruelly competitive social system, persons who in the main start out with enormous handicaps of ignorance and poverty. At best prisoners are robbed of all dignity and locked up in degrading circumstances. At worst they are starved on a diet of bread and water, sometimes flogged and occasionally have their necks broken on the scaffold.

A basic hypocrisy of capitalism is that it legalises the exploitation of the mass of mankind and supports the social privilege of the propertied class. The individual is usually held responsible for crime and very few suggest as the cause the failure of our own society. When all men are elevated to the dignity of an equal relationship in regard to wealth, the rebellious act of crime and the irrational institutions of punishment will not exist.

Voice From The Back: After apartheid (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard  

After apartheid

About 20,000 people were murdered in South Africa last year. Nearly 50,000 women were raped. There were close to 250,000 burglaries and 12,000 car hijackings . . . Last year Nelson Mandela derided those who leave South Africa because of crime, and identified crime as a white problem. But Antoinette Louw of ISS [Institute for Security Systems] said: “Mandela’s message was that the government doesn’t recognise the ‘fear of crime’ as a problem. That’s a grave mistake. It’s not just a white problem. Black people do feel very unsafe” Guardian, 18 February.

Agony Aunt advises

Would that the tough world of employment were different, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that personal hard-luck stories are a bad call when asking for a pay increase. As an approach, it turns an applicant into a supplicant and weakens the ground on which they stand. What is recommended is a more positive attitude: base your case on your value to your paymaster. You magazine, 21 February.

South Africa’s crisis

Terry Bell writes for the Business Report of the Johannesburg Star. He has obviously had more than a passing acquaintance with Marx’s writings because his column, “Inside Labour”, on the economic scene in South Africa is invariably perceptive and sceptical. On 30 October, 1998, he wrote: “The police are part of the armed wing of the state, a section of that monopoly of force exercised by the powers-that-be for the maintenance of law and order and the status quo . . . In fact, the claim that the police are the mere tools of ‘the bosses’ was reinforced over the recent strike wave. More work days were lost in the first nine months of this year than at any time since 1992. The strikes saw numerous clashes between strikers and police, and hundreds of complaints from striking workers about police brutality. Tales of sjambokkings, tear-gassings and the firing of rubber bullets and birdshot flooded in.”

On 6 November, 1998, he wrote: “Yet within the broader trade union movement, at all levels, there is a clear explanation for the cause of the present crisis. It is summed up by June Dube, president of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. ‘Overproduction,’ he said. ‘The world is suffering a crisis of overproduction.’ Calls for greater productivity (more products produced by the same or fewer workers) and greater competitiveness (more products produced by the same or fewer workers) and greater competitiveness (more products being produced more cheaply) therefore amounted to ‘pouring oil onto a raging fire’.”

Cuba’s crime wave

This week the national assembly passed draconian laws against a rising crime wave on the island, which impose the death penalty and life imprisonment for violent crimes and drug smuggling. They also lay down stiffer sentences for prostitution, pimping, robbery and theft . . . Dr Castro said that crime had increased because the government was forced to open the country to tourism and foreign investment, creating inequalities on the island. Guardian, 18 February.

It is political economics

“The real wages of low-wage male workers have shown increases in the past few years.” Trumpeted a recent report from President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, “in contrast to the period from 1979 to 1993, when they declined by 14.7 percent.” The real story is that low-wage earners are still significantly worse off than they were 20 years ago, at least if you only count their paychecks. But government programs like the earned-income tax credit mean that wages don’t tell the whole story. For economists the prolonged stall in wages remains the great contemporary conundrum. For politicians it is an opportunity to argue for new legislation. In his State of the Union message President Clinton proposed to increase the minimum wage by $1 to $6.15. [In 1979 it was $6.75] Forbes, 22 February.

Pleasure wicked

Children are suffering mental health problems in increasing numbers and at a younger age because of the pressures of the national curriculum, according to a three-year £1 million report [called Bright Futures] . . . The inquiry, by the Mental Health Foundation, claims that schools need to teach “emotional literacy” in addition to academic knowledge to combat the rise in the number of children who are withdrawn, isolated and depressive or disruptive. Sunday Telegraph, 31 January.

Into the future?

If you have a job to do, find someone to share the work and you get the job done in half the time. That’s the idea behind Distributed.net, a group that co-ordinates spare computer processor power from across the Internet to solve huge mathematical tasks which otherwise would take days, weeks, and in some cases years. The tasks range from research projects to find large prime numbers, to cracking code messages, to analysing radio waves emanating from space in the hope of finding signals from alien civilisations. Guardian, 28 January.

Rear View: Rashford’s missed penalty (2020)

The Rear View Column from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rashford’s missed penalty

Oliver Twist asked for more in 1838. Many more did in 1904: ‘We are told that over 100,000 school children in London alone go breakfastless to school. For them there is little hope for a sturdy manhood. Arrest the progress of physical deterioration amongst the children through the provision of meals by the State to all school children and you will do much to strengthen the physique and stamina of the race’ (Socialist Standard, September 1904). Fast forward 116 years: ‘… UK lawmakers voted against a motion that would have extended free school meals to children over school vacations, helping to offset a growing hunger crisis in the country that has left as many as a fifth of children in households regularly beset by hunger. The vote was a disappointment for Marcus Rashford, one of England’s brightest young soccer stars…’ (time.com, 23 October). We have been used to reformists scoring own goals for two centuries. Any reforms we could win for ourselves on the basis of the capitalist system will always be circumscribed by the need to keep the capitalist system functioning. Mendacious parasites will tell you otherwise. Blair, for example, stated in 1999: ‘Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a twenty-year mission, but I believe it can be done.’ Twenty years later, the Daily Mirror ran this headline: ‘DWP child poverty figures a ‘national scandal’ as 4.1 million kids are hit’ (mirror.co.uk, 28 March, 2019). ‘The Socialist objective is not a society where everything comes right in the end, because kind old gentlemen give away turkeys. What are we aiming at, if not a society in which ‘charity’ would be unnecessary? We want a world where Scrooge, with his dividends, and Tiny Tim, with his tuberculous leg, would both be unthinkable’ (George Orwell, Tribune, 20 December 1943, published under the name ‘John Freeman’).

Che? No way!

‘Twenty left publishers from around the world release a joint edition including two essential texts by Che Guevara on the fifty-third anniversary of his assassination by the CIA in Bolivia. These texts, with insight from Aijaz Ahmad and María del Carmen Ariet García, provide us with a clear and resolute summation of Che’s spirit of conviction, scientific insights, human compassion, and unrelenting will to achieve the victory of the oppressed over the oppressors’ (thetricobtinental.org, 8 October). Compassion? ‘These people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names … they would feel completely happy and fulfilled…. ’ (part of Che’s address to the First Latin American Youth Congress in July 1959, three years before the Cuban missile crisis). ‘What I wanted to stress is that the working class is not putting forth its full effort’ (televised speech, 1961). ‘By working on the proletariat’s sense of responsibility, we hope to greatly improve the quality as well as the presentation of industrial products’ (article in Cuba Socialista, 1962). ‘The perfect revolutionary, the member of the ruling party, must work every hour and every minute of his life, during these years of very hard struggle that lie ahead of us’ (speech to textile workers, 1963). In fact, for each of Guevara’s references to the future communist society, he made at least a dozen pleas urging the Cuban workers to increase production.

Leaders get lost!

‘Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel highlighted the imprint left on the Latin American progressive forces by the victory of the Popular Unity of Chile, which brought socialist Salvador Allende to power in 1970…. The revolutionary process of the 1970s remained in Latin American history with its painful but unavoidable lessons for future revolutionary processes in our region, he assured. He also said that during his visit to the Palacio de La Moneda during his stay in Santiago de Chile, in 2013, the historical leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, told him that there was a spirit in that place and invited him to find it. That invitation, coming from a Marxist like Fidel Castro, was totally devoid of mysticism. He was, without a doubt, calling us to review a history that still has much to teach us’ (cadenagramonte.cu, 16 October). Yes, we should learn the lessons of history. Regarding Chile, in her book Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today, D. L. Raby writes ‘with a president voted in by only 36 per cent of the electorate and a coalition which only briefly achieved a little more than 50 per cent (in April 1971), there was no real mandate for revolutionary change.’ And this is what Fidel said when urging Mexican businesspeople to invest in Cuba, in 1988:’We are capitalists, but state capitalists. We are not private capitalists’ (Walter Daum, 1990, The Life and Death of Stalinism). The job of revolutionary socialists, wherever they are, is to make the world socialist revolution and this boils down now to the immediate task everywhere of spreading socialist ideas among the working class.

Nuclear winter or a socialist summer?

‘The weapons, known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, are intended as part of a near-total replacement of the American nuclear force over the next few decades at a total cost of more than $1.2 trillion…. The nuclear modernization program was launched by the Obama administration and has been continued by President Donald Trump’ (apnews.com, 20 October).

Sting in the Tail: The spying game (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The spying game

The outraged howls coining from America because Aldrich Ames, a top CIA official, had been recruited by the KGB to spy for the USSR, were sheer hypocrisy.

After all, Ames had in the past been busy recruiting Soviet officials and KGB agents to spy against their own country, but what had the howls rising to crescendo was that after the collapse of the USSR Ames had then carried on spying for Boris Yeltsin’s Russia which is supposed to be an ally of America.

So what? William Webster, the CIA’s director, said in 1989 that following the demise of the USSR the CIA would now step-up spying on "our political and military allies" in order to gain technological and economic advantage for American capitalism.

As one newspaper editorial put it:

  "Does anyone seriously imagine that the CIA’s long-serving agents in the Kremlin have all traded in their false moustaches and invisible ink?’

No escape for Cuba

Economic reforms in Cuba mean that joint ventures with foreign capital and a growing tourist trade are exposing the island to market forces:

  "Dollars, illegal for thirty years before being legalised last July now circulate freely. A chain of state-owned hard-currency stores is flourishing, with people usually queueing up." (Guardian, 9 February)

The Castro regime has also legalised 140 categories of self-employment and, in a bid to boost agriculture, most of the state-owned farms are now semi-autonomous co-ops which can "lay-off surplus labour".

These changes are the result of Cuba losing its main trading partners, the so-called "communist countries", which had provided food, hard currency and oil in exchange for sugar. Now Cuba must buy what it needs at world market prices, hence the desire for dollars.

So Cuba follows the USSR and its European satellites along with China and Vietnam in learning that no country, whatever its political system, can distance itself from the global market economy that is capitalism.

Tell it like it is

Parliament was in a turmoil. TV reporters were buttonholing any MP they could find to put in front of a camera. We were told "MPs were infuriated".

What was all the fuss about?

William Waldegrave the minister responsible for "more open government" had been telling the truth to the Treasury and Civil Service Committee. He had stated:

  "in exceptional cases, it is necessary to say something that is untrue in the House of Commons.. . The House of Commons understands that and accepts that".

It seems that such candour has alarmed MPs. One Tory is reported as saying "it is a terrible blunder". Giles Radice, the Labour MP chairing the select committee said, "I was amazed. I don’t think it is right that ministers should deceive or mislead the House".

This is of course the most awful hypocrisy. All professional politicians lie. It is their stock-in-trade. In order to get to Parliament they must tell the lie that capitalism can be made to work in the interest of the working class.

Farcical goings-on

Can certain nosh and booze actually be the body and blood of a long-dead Israelite? Did his virgin mother really float up to heaven along with him when she wasn’t even dead? Does an old Polish geezer living in Rome never make a mistake?

These and similar burning questions of the day were mulled over by a motley bunch of religious nit-pickers, paid and unpaid, when the Environment Secretary John Gummer changed his brand of superstition by dumping the C of E because he opposed women priests, and joined the Roman Catholic church.

The Anglican bishop of Sheffield called this a "kick in the teeth" and, with true Christian forgiveness, lambasted Gummer for his "ignorant silliness".

Meanwhile an Anglican group which shares Gummer’s views on women priests rubbished their own church for 'thinking it knows better than God", and so on.

Isn’t it pathetic when otherwise sane adults can debate in all seriousness these absurdities and fabrications as if they had any relevance to humanity today?

Age no barrier

  "At a reception for Britain's oldest workers in London, the Employment Minister, Ann Widdecombe MP, welcomed men and women in their eighties and nineties who labour at daily jobs."(Guardian, 15 February)

This stunt was part of the government’s campaign to cut social security costs as men and women of pensionable age who keep working would not be drawing state pensions and benefits.

However, the idea that people should be able to work for as long as they wish is one we heartily endorse, but this can really only happen in socialist society because in capitalism employers don’t want older workers. Indeed, Widdecombe said she wanted "to shame those employers who won’t take on workers in their forties and fifties".

And people who wish to stop working, for whatever reason, should also be able to do so, but that too is something that will have to wait until socialism.

One law for them

If parliament had voted to reduce the age of consent for homosexuals to sixteen it would not have applied to Northern Ireland. One argument given for this is that the age of consent for heterosexuals there is seventeen and it would never do if the age for gays was lower than for non-gays.

This wouldn’t have been the first time gays in Northern Ireland had been denied changes made in the law for the rest of Britain. When the last Labour government was trying to hang onto office at any price, it even sunk to bribing Ulster Unionist MPs with the promise that homosexual acts in the province would remain illegal:

  "Homosexual law reform for Northern Ireland appears to have been delayed once again, as a sop to the seven official Unionist MPs who could he the Government's only allies in the Commons next week." (Guardian, 3 March 1979)

When freedom comes

An item on ITN on the 17th February concerned plans for the takeover of the West Bank by the Palestinians when (or if?) that area is evacuated by the Israelis. Apparently a senior cop from the Nottinghamshire force has been given a nice little earner training Palestinian recruits for a new police force.

The item closed with a close-up of the recruits lifting long clubs from a pile while the voice-over told us that these men would have an important role in helping to establish the new Palestinian democracy.

Seems the Palestinian freedom fighters, like those in many other countries, are going to learn what they have been fighting for. No doubt they will be filled with patriotic pride at the thought of being attacked by a club-wielding Palestinian cop rather than an Israeli thug.

Finance and Industry: Making Money from Armaments (1960)

The Finance and Industry Column from the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Making Money from Armaments

A generation or more ago, when most of the world's armaments were made by private companies, it seemed plausible to many people that if the armament-making came under government control and private profit was taken away there would be no deliberate encouragement of armament competition and the risk of war would be less. It was always a mistaken hope because the economic rivalries that make for war come from all the profit-seeking interests in all the countries, not just some sections or some countries. And in our own day armaments moving openly or secretly across the world are mostly despatched by governments not by private companies. These in any event could not operate without the consent of their own government.

The popular way of looking at the armament trade has changed too, and “merchants of death” has gone out of fashion as a term of abuse. This is not surprising, because the governments supplying the arms now present themselves as public benefactors, only concerned to help “good causes.” Anyway, all the governments are in the business—from the last Labour Government in Britain, which sold military aircraft abroad, to America, Israel and Russia.

Russia's latest business deal in its growing invasion of world markets is the reported sale to India of £11 million worth of equipment, including heavy transport aircraft, helicopters and road building machinery. (Guardian, 7/10/60). The India Government wanted to buy in America but the Russians offered the stuff at lower prices. The significant aspect is that the purpose of the purchase is to enable India “to defend its border with China.”

Of course, China may or may not continue to be Russia's ally, but business is business, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and who can object if Russia helps both sides.

It recalls the attitude of the Russian Government (and of the Communist Party) during the war, before Russia became involved. The Russian Government was selling oil and other materials to Germany and some simple-minded people here complained about it. Which brought from the Secretary of the Russia Today Society a letter to the Manchester Guardian assuring its readers that the Russian Government was quite willing to sell to both sides.

The "Alternative" Society

The people who refer to present-day capitalism as the affluent society make much of the greater variety of articles that are available to be bought by the mass of the population. They quote aggregate figures of washing machines, motor cars, refrigerators, etc., and the figures look impressive. But Mr. Mark Abrams, writing in the Observer (23/10/60) provides an analysis which puts the matter in better perspective. He divides families into two groups, those in “which the chief earner is in a white-collar post and earning at least £800 a year,” and those not in this group. About a third of families fall into the first group, and two-thirds into the second group, which he calls “working-class.”

He includes receivers of property incomes in this group as well as wage and salary earners. He shows that “only one item—the television set—is to be found in the majority of British homes.’' The rest are the possessions of minorities.

His list showing the percentage who own various items, among his “working-class” group is as follows:—

Television set            79 per cent.
Lawn mower             34 „ „
Washing machine ...  37 „ „
Car                            22 „ „
Refrigerator              13 „ „
House                         29 „ „

He does not make the important point that the percentage who own all of these items is, on his figures, at most 13 per cent. He does not include a telephone in this list; had he done so the percentage owning the lot would probably be under 10 per cent.

And he does not stress the point that “own” is an ambiguous term since millions of the houses and the rest are only “owned” by the user in the sense that he has them while paying off the mortgage or hire purchase instalments. And “car” includes all the barely roadworthy crocks.

Another enquiry (also referred to in the Observer) brings out that “many families when furnishing a home, prefer to leave some rooms bare rather than incur a small millstone of debt.” For the majority of workers it is not a question of moving all the things on the list but of owning one or two because they cannot afford them all—the alternative society. You can have full choice as long as you can afford what you buy.

A description of life in Stepney by Godfrey Hodgson (Observer, 21/8/60.) had the following which should further dampen the optimists.

  The Rev. Joseph Williamson, of St. Paul's, Dock Street, said that the best living quarters in his parish were the Peabody Buildings. They had no baths. The lavatories and sinks were outside the flats themselves, and were shared. “In illness, in winter especially, this is bad.” But all the other blocks of old flats were far worse.
  “Apart from the flats,” Father Williamson went on, “we have squalor beyond belief. Let me say in all seriousness that on a modern farm the accommodation provided for pigs is far superior.”

Canada’s Unemployment

The myth still receives wide acceptance that all the countries have for a decade had the low level of unemployment ruling in Britain. This ignores the years of massive unemployment that afflicted the workers in Germany and Italy until comparatively recently. And it ignores Canada. The Financial Times (28/10/60) printed a graph of unemployment in the past four years since January, 1957. It shows unemployment in Canada reaching 9 per cent. and 10 per cent. in each winter and never falling below 4 per cent. except early in 1957 and for a short period in 1959.

The Canadian Government has been calling special conferences to deal with the situation and admits that it threatens to get worse. Many British immigrants are coming back. The Canadian motor industry has been asking for tariff protection against the import of British cars.

Canadian workers out of a job or threatened with dismissal because of falling sales can derive what comfort they can from their Prime Minister’s remark that “the situation would get worse if action were not taken, and he promised that it would be taken before Parliament met.” Times (24th September, 1960.)

Russian Trade Policy

The oil industry has been worried by big Russian sales of oil at below the prices ruling in the rest of the world, but the Times (11/10/60) hopefully interprets some remarks made by Krushchev at a lunch in New York when he was asked: —

  Whether Russia would extend to other commodities the same sort of agreement on quotas that it had accepted already for tin, aluminium and diamonds.” According to Pravda “Mr. Krushchev replied that there was no reason why this principle should not be extended to other goods.”

The Times interprets this as meaning that “Russia is willing to join international commodity agreements provided that Western countries are prepared to allow the U.S.S.R. what it regards as a fair share of the market.” In the diamond industry it will be remembered that Russia now sells all its diamonds through the South African Diamond Group. A correspondent writing in Reynolds News (16/10/60) went further and suggested that Western oil interests are trying to do a deal with Russia.

   The leading capitalists in the world, the mammoth international oil companies, are planning to break through the Cold War barriers that have throttled top-level political contact between East and West since the Paris Summit fiasco. They are determined to make a vast oil deal with the Russians. In effect, they want to set up a cartel agreement that would span all the world's oil supplies . . . though the first news leaks, planned to test the temperature, refer to the scheme as a “ live and let live arrangement.”
   The Plan: Russia should be allowed to move immediately and extensively into the huge European oil market. With a one-fifth increase in consumption in 1959, this is still the world’s biggest market despite mounting African and Asian demands.
   In return, the Russians would offer the big international companies no oil challenge in the rest of the Western Zone and among the neutral nations.

Business Morality

Children may still be taught that honesty is the best policy and crime does not pay, but once they enter the adult world of business these notions fade away, not by “brainwashing” but simply by disuse; to be replaced by the practical rule that what is profitable is right, but when in doubt you should consult a good lawyer. In a successful take-over bid those who lose may set up an outcry about “shady methods,” but the business world really sees nothing wrong in taking over a concern at a fraction of its value, throwing out or buying out sitting directors, and getting rid of redundant workers. And when the takeover assumes the form of a government seizing foreign investments at dictated rates of compensation or none at all, the rest of the world sheds no tears over the “business immorality” of it but hurries in to trade with the new owners.

Cuba is a case in point. Fidel Castro’s government seized American-owned sugar plantations and factories and went on handling and selling the sugar on its own account. From the standout of capitalist morality these are "stolen goods.” So the American ex-owners started action to obstruct the sale of Cuban sugar by Castro’s government. At this point we turn to the Daily Telegraph (22/10/60), a correspondent of which had been making enquiries about the Americans’ chances.

The one thing entirely missing from the article was a nice upstanding declaration that of course they would not touch stolen goods, because that would be dishonest. The attitude rather was the purely legalistic one that the American companies do not stand a chance of proving their case. Not a denial that the Sugar is “stolen” but a near certainty that no American company can prove that a particular lot of unmarked Cuban sugar came from a particular factory which used to belong to the company.

The article quoted “a spokesman of a City firm” who said: “It is impossible to make any forecast. But if you have a cargo of, say 9,000 tons of sugar it would be very difficult for a person on the other side of the Atlantic to say: ‘These grains came from our factory'. "

Tate and Lyle’s are going on buying Cuban sugar and told the Daily Telegraph “We have not allowed our buying policy to change as a result of the dispute between the Cubans and the Americans.”

Edgar Hardcastle