Editorial: Democracy? Insert cash . . . (2026)

Editorial from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What many considered laughable in all the recent outrage at Reform UK getting twin donations of £36m from crypto-billionaires (one of them convicted for money laundering offences), was Farage’s claim that the money would ‘help to level the playing field’. As opposed to ‘buy it outright’, presumably.

Actually, Farage wasn’t far wrong on that score. Electioneering doesn’t come cheap. Labour’s pre-election fundraising in 2024 has been estimated at £64m, while Conservatives raised £54m (2026 Autonomy Institute report PDF). So Reform’s £72 mill doesn’t look wildly out of place. The problem, as pundits have pointed out, is that it all comes from just two dodgy geezers. Reform UK may not be buying the next election, but Messrs Harborne and Delo are pretty much buying Reform UK, and will doubtless expect a Reform government to be super-cuddly when it comes to crypto regulations.

Also slightly peculiar was the high moral tone struck by some newspapers, in congratulating themselves on how Britain has a robust and venerable democracy that can’t be bought. Well, maybe not bought exactly. But when you think about the expenses scams, the grifts, the grace and favour junkets, the lobby groups, the revolving doors and the side hustles, rented by the hour would be more like it.

Still, that’s nothing compared to US politics, where ‘mega-donors’ are pouring hundreds of millions into the Republican mid-term electoral war chest even as they trail the Democrats in the polls. ‘Other mega-donors have funnelled cash to candidates pushing deregulation of cryptocurrency and gambling or to promote AI’ (Financial Times, 16 September).

Why, if capitalism is genuinely democratic, do the rich feel the need to pile so much money into political campaigns? If you can’t already guess, a clue is offered by a well-known 2014 US study that looked at 1,779 policy issues between 1981 and 2002, and compared what people wanted versus what decisions were actually taken. It concluded that the preferences of the poor and middle-income majority had a ‘miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy’, while the views of the top 10 percent virtually dominated (Princeton PDF).

That this feels intuitively true is probably why so many people don’t bother to vote in elections. They may also consider that any system where your total say consists of writing one ‘X’ every five years is not really a democracy in the first place. But a flawed electoral system is better than no system at all – just ask people in China or North Korea. We continue to contest elections because they are a legitimate way for workers to express their opinions, and because no amount of mega-donor moolah is going to stop the landslide that will swallow capitalism once the world’s majority finally decide they’ve had enough of the 1 percent and their bullshit.

50 Years Ago: Down Your Way (2004)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s happening down your way? What are you talking about in the office? Football Pools? T.V.? The cost of living? Marilyn Monroe? Probably. Workers are apathetic about most social questions; and the political parties are finding it increasingly difficult to attract audiences to their meetings.

   

But are the workers really satisfied with present-day conditions? Are you satisfied? Surely not. You’re fed-up with hydrogen bombs, the talk of war, the cost of living, the Labour Party – and the Tories. They both promised to solve your housing problems, rising prices. They promised you peace – whilst preparing for war. Is it surprising that you are cynical and apathetic? That you are fed-up with “politics?” Most people think there can be no solution to all these evils that beset us; and that the present order – or “disorder” of society will always be with us.

   

Yes, you are quite right. “Politics,” that is the politics of running this present system, is a “dirty game.” And we, as Socialists are not interested in playing the game. We know that the various political parties that promise to solve your problems for you are incapable of doing so. We know that the present system of society – capitalism – cannot be run in your interest. That is why we propose that you change it. That is why we want to get you interested, not so much in “politics,” but in society as it is; and in society as it could be, as it must be, in the future. We want you to desire and work for an entirely new way of life (. . .)

   

We socialists are ordinary people. We have studied our society and have come to the conclusion that whilst the present profit-making system remains we will never get rid of the evils of war, insecurity and the rest. We think that only by changing the whole structure of society will we get rid of these problems. Only by making the means of life – the factories, offices, railways, etc. – the common possession of all people, and producing the things necessary to satisfy people’s needs and desires solely for use and not for profit will we eradicate these evils.

   

This, briefly, is our alternative to “politics,” football pools, the “dogs” – and apathy.

   

Think it over.

[From an article, Down Your Way, by Peter E. Newell, December 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard.]

Sting in the Tail: Plain speaking (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plain speaking

There has been an outbreak of plain speaking from politicians recently. That nice Mr Major has been calling some of his Cabinet colleagues "bastards". Now Mr Thorbjoern Bernsten has called Britain’s Environment Minister Mr John Gummer "a shitbag".

All this foul language is nothing however compared to Mr Gummer’s plain speaking in reply to Mr Bernsten:

"I don't think the comments of people in an election campaign . . . are worth making much about" The Herald (18 August).

Now that is plain speaking. Mr Gummer reckons you shouldn’t pay much attention to what politicians say at election campaigns. Well done, Honest John!

We certainly don’t put much store by what the professional liars say at election times; either in Norway, Britain or anywhere else for that matter.

Ghost riders

A plague of ’ghost riders’ has been fleecing public transport companies in America. There are people who climb onto buses which have been involved in accidents in order to claim compensation for non-existent injuries.

To counter this, some bus companies have staged fake accidents which they filmed. In one case:

"Video cameras inside the bus and outside filmed 17 people scrambling on to the bus before the police arrived. All later claimed to be injured in the accident". (Guardian, 19 August).

Doctors and lawyers also get in on the act by having "runners" who arrive quickly on the scene to hand out leaflets with phone numbers and and advice to passengers to claim for neck and back injuries which are hard to disprove.

All of this "enterprise" doesn’t meet with the approval of the bus companies and their insurers, but it shows that America is still "the land of opportunity"!

UN corruption

Allegations that United Nations soldiers in Sarajevo are involved in widespread corruption have provided the press with plenty of "shock-horror" headlines.

The idea that anyone connected with the UN should be above such things is ludicrous when it is seen to be comprised of nations all of which are part of the world-system called capitalism. For all of these soldiers to be unaffected by the corruption which is part of capitalism’s culture is impossible.

This episode also produced an illuminating example of the morality of capitalism. Sylvana Foa, the UN spokeswoman, commented:

"I don t think anybody should be too surprised that out of 14,000 pimply 18-year olds a bunch of them should get up to naughty tricks. It happens in every war — it's just sad they were wearing blue berets" (Guardian, 27 August).

Apparently it didn’t strike her as sad that "pimply 18-year olds" should be part of killing-machines called armies.

Sink or swim

The battle to dominate the package-holiday market is hotting up once more. The cutthroat pricing of recent years caused by falling bookings was replaced last year by a truce during which operators rebuilt profit margins by increasing prices.

At last the market is growing again: Thomson, Britain’s biggest operator, estimates that bookings are up 14 percent on last year and the industry expects 1994 to be even better.

Now the industry’s heavyweights have announced price-cuts for 1994 and Patricia Yates, editor of Holiday Which explains why. They are:

"clearly looking for a killer blow which will knock out some of their smaller competitors, at the same time carving out a bigger market share among major competitors" (Guardian, 17 August).

Is this sort of predatory behaviour simply down to greed? It is what every company in capitalism must do, if it is able, to ensure that the day doesn’t come when it will be swallowed up or forced out of business.

Satisfaction

What gives people most satisfaction in life? Supporters of the market economy say it is more and more money because it buys the goodies and the leisure which compensate for the pain of having to work.

Along comes Professor Lane of Yale University to challenge this view. He cites recent studies in America which show that what gives people most satisfaction are good human relationships, job satisfaction, and (something despised by marketeers) security.

This is what socialists have been saying all along, but we don't think these things can be universally available within the market economy. Prof Lane does and argues that "governments must intervene’ with policies that will ’convert markets to that purpose’.

The Prof is yet another one of those who criticise some aspect or other of capitalism but would never dream of getting rid of it.

Negative thinking

Why do people continue to place their trust in politicians when it’s obvious they’ve no answer to world problems?

Who really believes that crime, pollution, unemployment, the health service etc, would be worse if politicians weren’t in charge?

Most people know that politicians are “economical with the truth", and that many are careerists — yet continue to vote for one party against another on the basis that they are the ‘lesser evil". No wonder society is in such a state with this negative thinking!

The problem has now become so entrenched that anyone who challenges this apathetic status quo is immediately branded a crank. With this last thought in mind, therefore, the Socialist Party asks you not to believe a word we say! Rather we would ask you to consider what we say, and then make up you own mind. Fair enough?

Editorial: None of the above (2025)

Editorial from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the next general election most voters in England are likely to have a choice between candidates representing six different parties: Labour, Tory, LibDem, Green, Reform UK, and the new Corbyn party. In Scotland and Wales, with the nationalists, it will be seven. This appears to extend democracy by offering voters a wider choice. But does it?

What, on paper, is on offer? Labour is in office nationally and has pledged to bring about economic growth and to improve education, housing and social amenities funded by the increased tax income that will be a by-product. The Tories are also promising growth but by being even more in favour than Labour of giving private capitalist enterprises free rein. The LibDems advocate something. The Greens promise to pursue reforms to benefit the environment. Reform UK says that cutting back on immigration will improve things for the rest of us. The new Corbyn party wants to return to what Labour promised in the 1970s by redistributing wealth and income more evenly.

Labour and the Tories — the Ins and Outs of British politics — have had many chances to implement their policies and have both consistently failed. It is tempting to conclude that it’s because their leading members are bungling incompetents, corrupt or nasty people, or, in the case of Labour, sell-outs. Some of them undoubtedly will be but that’s not why they fail. Even if they were all competent, well-meaning and honest it wouldn’t have made any difference. Replacing them in office by the members of some third party such as the LibDems or some new protest party such as Farage’s wouldn’t make any difference either.

The reason Labour and the Tories fail, and why the others would too, is because they all accept capitalism and believe that the government can make its economy work for everyone. But it can’t. Capitalism is based on the resources needed to produce wealth being in the hands of a minority and used to produce goods and services for sale with a view to making a profit. This is what drives the economy and is what all governments have to respect and implement. Governments don’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s the other way round. The coercive economic laws of capitalism impose on governments what they can — and can’t — do. Governments can’t conjure up growth, can’t give priority to the environment, and can’t redistribute wealth and power.

In this way conventional politics is based on an illusion. Governments are assumed to be able to do what those elected to office say they will. And so elections are seen as being about voters choosing what policies they would like to see pursued or what reforms they would like to see enacted by voting for the candidates of one or other political party that they consider would best do this.

There is a choice at elections but it is a choice of which grouping of politicians is to carry out what the workings of the capitalist economy demand. It’s a choice as to which of them is to preside over capitalism’s operation and implement its priorities.

Faced with this limited choice, socialists, opposed as we are to capitalism and all of its works, say ‘we are not voting for any of you’. What is needed is a change of system not a change of politicians in office.

Letter: Doom and gloom (1998)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doom and gloom

Dear Editors,

You have high ideals and good ideas and if these stood a chance of success I would willingly carry on supporting you. However I have come to the conclusion that the human race is a self-destructive organism and incapable of redemption.

It is all right talking about a moneyless, classless society, but try preaching your ideas to the Taliban eroding the freedoms of the people of Afghanistan; tell it to the Jews and Palestinians battling in the Holy-lands; tell it to the Muslim and Christian extremists and government forces butchering the peasants of Africa; tell it to the Christian bigots in Ireland murdering their neighbours; tell it to the ruling juntas in Burma and Nigeria slaughtering and jailing their political opponents; tell it to the thugs in Britain who murdered Stephen Lawrence and tell it to the racist police who could not be bothered to investigate the murder of a young black . . . is there any need to go on?

I’m afraid, my friends, the writing is on the walls of the war-torn villages of Yugoslavia and the Middle East; in the polluted fields and forests of our decaying planet, in the infertile deserts of once productive areas; in the over-fished and unsanitary oceans of the world. Sell your socialist ideas to the corporations and governments plundering the riches of the world, to the logging companies devastating our forests; to the oil and chemical companies spilling irreversible contamination into the atmosphere, soil, and oceans of a fragile ecosystem.

What other species over-breeds, fouIs its nest and slaughters its own and every other species around it? What other species is on an out of control spiral of self-destructive violence and wanton destruction? I see no way of halting this suicidal self-flagellation of our doomed species.

To my mind, your preaching of socialism to the world is in the same category as a doctor dabbing tea tree oil on a casualty who has just had a one-to-one with a combine harvester.

Call me a doom-dealer if you like, but if I were you I would substitute ego for idealism and call upon everyone to enjoy what they had today and forget about the future. Establish a definite scepticism – savour life today, for tomorrow is a dubious dimension.

Philip McCormac,

Hinckley, Leics

 

Reply: 

No, if that’s what you really believe, you tell women in Afghanistan yourself that they should enjoy what they have today and forget the future. You tell that as well to the Palestinians being shot at by Jewish settlers, innocent Israelis being bombed by Palestinian terrorists, those oppressed by the governments of Burma and Nigeria, the victims of racist violence in Britain, etc.

Having said this, we would agree that capitalism does appear to be descending into barbarism, at least outside those areas where your philosophy of “eat and be merry for tomorrow we die” has a superficial plausibility. But this is an argument for socialism not against it, making it even more urgent.

We should point out that, although concern for what capitalism is doing to our fellow human beings is partly what motivates us to want socialism, so does “ego”. We want socialism because it will improve our lives. We are not idealist do-gooders but have made the hard-nosed assessment that only through co-operation with other fellow humans can a better world be built.

We reject your suggestion because it wouldn’t improve our lives nor, we suspect, yours.

Editors.

Proper Gander: Anti-social media (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

ITVX’s recent drama serial Douglas Is Cancelled draws on several of society’s current trends to produce an unsettling description of how status impacts on people. Its writer, Steven Moffat, is known particularly for his contributions to more fantastical fare such as Doctor Who and Sherlock. His best scripts carefully guide how much information the viewers and characters have as the story progresses, often by playing around with story structure. Douglas Is Cancelled uses techniques (and actors) familiar from Moffat’s other work, with its subject matter being the television industry itself. Potential viewers are warned that ‘spoilers’ about how the plot is resolved are mentioned below.

The Douglas of the title, portrayed by Hugh Bonneville, is a longstanding TV journalist, co-hosting a popular news programme with the younger Madeline, played by Karen Gillan. A social media post accusing Douglas of telling a sexist joke at a wedding goes viral, leading to concerns among Douglas, his agent, and his producer Toby (Ben Miles), that enough of a negative reaction and suspicions of chauvinism will get him ‘cancelled’. The backdrop of social media being crucial in how we perceive people is a given. Anyone with a profile on X, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok knows they’ve put themselves in an arena where their words are scrutinised and judged publicly, with the stakes being higher for those already in the public eye, such as trusted television news presenters. Even a hint of scandal creates interest, and each repost, comment or like lucratively promotes the social media platform itself as well as whatever’s trending. The combative nature of online discourse is represented in the drama by Douglas’s teenage daughter, sensitive to any kind of perceived offence.

The focus of Douglas Is Cancelled isn’t ‘cancel culture’ though, but the culture of the news media industry. The script contains many cynical swipes at journalism, such as Toby saying of journalists, ‘having opinions about things we didn’t witness is the entire point of our existence’, and Madeline using ‘every dirty trick’ interviewers employ to get to their subject. Key to the plot is when Douglas angrily says ‘the truth needs a little help now and then… our audience wouldn’t understand the truth even if we had the guts to tell it or knew what it was in the first place’. In the context of the story, these lines lead to Douglas’s downfall because of how they dismiss both his audience and his profession, even though he’s right to recognise that journalism isn’t as objective as it pretends. The bias of a mainstream media outlet reflects the prerogatives of its owners, with their ‘truth’ being a stance which both reinforces their own position, however subtly, and less subtly, also attracts viewers and therefore income.

The media’s attitude to the truth isn’t really the focus of Douglas Is Cancelled, though. Its target turns out to be how the industry has mistreated women. Much of episode three is a flashback to just before Madeline secured the job as co-presenter, set in a hotel room where Toby is trying to manipulate her into having sex with him, using psychological tricks to confuse and control her. This thread of the story reminds us of the accusations of sexual harassment and rape made against American film mogul Harvey Weinstein and others, which revealed the extent of abuse in the industry. In the drama, Toby uses the influence he has as an established producer over Madeline, who is made vulnerable by being at the start of her career. He has this influence because of the imbalance of power between his position and hers. Employment, and the hierarchies which it involves, inherently encourages us to objectify people and treat them according to their status in the organisation. Some people, such as Toby and his real-life counterparts, represent how this attitude can lead to the most dehumanising and damaging extremes. The drama doesn’t only highlight how abusers have operated, but also that people like Douglas, who ignored the situation Madeline was in and then made jokes about it, enable the perpetrators. Even though the ‘casting couch culture’ is being exposed and tackled in real life, the conditions which create it remain.

Despite being promoted as a ‘comedy drama’, Douglas Is Cancelled describes a grim, sordid news industry, with relationships shaped by rank within the profession and by the cut and thrust of social media beyond. The similarities to real life situations make the serial very much a product of, and reflection of our times. But behind the modern trappings of social media and anti-social media executives, an old story is being retold. When a workplace, an industry and, indeed a society is structured so that some individuals are in a position of power over others, then the resulting hierarchies allow some people to become abusers. Legislation, policies and procedures aim to prevent and ameliorate harm, but can’t address the structural causes which enable abuse. Employment itself is exploitative, even if when it doesn’t involve people as toxic as presented in Douglas Is Cancelled. The damage caused by and to the characters is expertly acted by the serial’s small cast, helped by a precisely-crafted and perceptive script.

Mike Foster

The morning after the night before (1987)

From the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

What will you be doing on the morning after? Will your life be radically changed? Will you wake up and detect a new freshness in the air, a new sense of hope oozing out of the environment? Or will you feel terrible, like a person who has just lost everything as a result of someone else's incompetence? Will it make any difference to you? Will life be just the same? Might it just as well have never happened?

No, we are not talking about a nuclear war. You will notice that alright. It will transform your life — probably in the most profound sense: by terminating it. And if it does not kill you. you will probably wish it had.

But the morning after the election will be another story. No mushroom clouds, cities reduced to rubble, panic in the shelters. The morning after the general election all that there will be is the fading enthusiasm of the TV pundits trying their hardest to stay awake until the final result and the isolated groups of party activists nursing hangovers induced either by success or failure combined with the cheap price of booze in the Town Hall bars next to where the ballot papers are counted.

For most people — workers who run society from top to bottom by sweeping the streets and driving the buses and operating the computers and looking after the sick — the morning after the general election will be very much like the day before it. It will be wage or salary slavery as usual.

For workers the same problems will exist the day after the election as the day before it. Most of us do not like working for bosses and paying the bills and living in a stressful and dangerous society and fearing the possibility of war. Not one of those problems will be gone the day after the election. Not one of the politicians in the election will have even promised to attend to those problems. That is working-class life and those are its problems. According to the politicians there must always be working-class life; capitalism in one form or another must always exist. And so it will, the morning after the election.

Of course, there will be some workers who will wake up the next morning (if their excitement ever allowed them to sleep) full of joy because their chosen party has won. Tory voters will be dancing all the way round the nearly-paid-for mock-antique furniture as they read in the Mail or the Express how Maggie swept home like a horse in the Derby. Five more years of good old Tory capitalism. Labour or Alliance voters might be doing equally pointless victory dances: ' Hooray, we've ousted Maggie". Now what? A deal between Labour and some or all of the Alliance? Roy Hattersley administering the capitalists' Treasury instead of Nigel Lawson?

But most workers will not be dancing or cheering or even smiling. Even most of those who voted (and millions will not have even done that) will have only done so in the knowledge that it will make little difference — or that it might at least keep the other lot out — or because of family tradition. Most voters in elections are far less stupid than they might be thought to be: they are not taken in by all the nonsense spewed out by politicians. Many workers know that capitalist elections will not change their lives.

The morning after the election try finding a politician to discuss your problems with. Of course, you might find the odd few sleeping in the streets after the booze-up the night before. In some cases there will even be an election office still open while the furniture is moved out and the posters ripped down. But let us imagine that you contact your prospective MP the morning after the election. You invite him or her around to discuss their ideas or examine your problems or just to meet the family. S/he will be nowhere to be seen. The day after the election the leaders who were so anxiously seeking your attention, who told you that you were the most important people in the world, will not be seen for dust. If you manage to approach them they will tell you to get lost — or, if they have won. to make an appointment to see them at their convenience. The morning after the election one thing will be crystal clear: you do not matter any more. You have spent your political power and that's it for five more years — four if you're lucky.

So, the morning after the election the homeless will still be unhoused and the unemployed still on the social scrapheap and the hungry still too poor to buy food and the millions who are being robbed daily by the wages system will still be having their lives stolen away from them. The day after the election will be a bloody miserable day. And for none will it be more miserable than for those who know how easy it would be to change the whole rotten set-up and establish a society fit to live in.

Steve Coleman

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.

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

While the world has been devouring reality television shows, many Argentines have been opting this Christmas for reality board games, such as Eternal Debt, involving the International Monetary Fund.

[Paywalled Link.]

For seven years, Jennipher was forced to breastfeed the puppies of her husband’s hunting dogs. After drinking and smoking heavily, Nathan Alowoi would appear at the marital bed, bind his young wife’s legs and hands together and force the mewling animals to her nipple. He had handed over two cows to his father-in-law as part of the “bride price” for his new wife. So, he reasoned, if the cows were no longer around to provide milk then his new purchase would have to provide for the pups. “I had to feed them all through the night; then in the morning he would untie me,” his wife, now 26, explains matter-of-factly.

[Link.]

Israel will begin distributing its entire population with gas masks in two months, though no reason has officially been given by the Israeli government.

[Dead Link.]

Most Britons have little confidence in official statistics and believe that they are distorted by politicians, according to a survey for the Financial Times. Only about 10 per cent of adults believe that official figures are accurate, while a similar proportion think that figures are produced without political interference, according to the survey conducted by Harris.

[Paywalled Link.]

That isn’t stopping some restaurants from putting together the usual intricate New Year’s dinner — and in some cases, charging astronomical prices. At New York’s Aureole, for example, diners will be getting a five-course meal including big-eye tuna sashimi, chestnut ravioli, Canadian lobster, and N.Y. strip loin. The price: a mind-boggling $650.

[Link.]

Cooking the Books: Does austerity breed extremism? (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article entitled ‘Austerity in Europe has huge consequences for its politics’ Mehreen Khan, Economics Editor of The Times, cited research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which suggested a link between the severity of austerity and votes for ‘extreme’ parties:

‘An MIT study covering more than 200 European elections between 1980-2015 found that deep fiscal consolidation ‘leads to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout and a rise in political fragmentation’. . . The researchers noted that centre-left governments paid the highest political price for their austerity drives’ (28 November).

This has a certain logic. The mainstream political parties, especially those of the ‘centre-left’, such as the Labour Party in this country, promise that, if elected, they will make things better. Voters believe them, and when these parties fail to deliver, seek an explanation. Few accept the socialist view that, however determined or competent or honest these governments might have been, they were doomed to fail because they set themselves the impossible task of making capitalism work to serve the interest of the majority. After turning from centre-right to centre-left and back again and seeing them both repeatedly fail, it would be surprising if there wasn’t an increase in the number of voters turning against both of them.

The end of the post-war boom in the mid-1970s brought about what has been called ‘the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state’. Governments found themselves unable to maintain the same level of spending on social reforms as before without undermining the accumulation of more capital out of profits that is the driving force of the capitalist economy. Since then, during the slump phase of the boom-slump economic cycle, they try to encourage investment for profit to resume by cutting back on their spending so as to reduce the burden of taxation on profits. This ‘deep fiscal consolidation’ (aka austerity) involves cutbacks in social benefits and in the provision of public services and amenities.

It is not as if centre-left governments want to impose austerity. They are compelled to by economic forces beyond their control which dictate that priority must be given to profits and conditions for profit-making on pain of making things worse as it is the pursuit of profits that drives the capitalist economy.

When governments, inevitably due to the nature of capitalism, fail to make things better some voters blame not capitalism but the politicians who have failed to make it work for them and even see politicians as a self-serving elite. Some give up bothering to vote, saying that ‘they are all the same’ (which, actually, is essentially true). Others turn to new political parties which denounce the conventional parties as rival gangs of professional politicians who are in it for themselves (as, again, many obviously are, not that it would make any difference if they weren’t).

Unlike in the 1930s these parties don’t blame political democracy, they blame the conventional reformist politicians who currently operate within it. They are ‘extreme’ in the sense that, being xenophobic and ultra-nationalist, they are at one end of the nationalist spectrum on which the conventional parties situate themselves too.

It goes without saying that, if ever they become the government, they will no more be able to make capitalism work for everybody than the mainstream reformist parties that they denounce. It is capitalism, not self-serving politicians, that is the cause of the problem.

Will Politics Do Good? (1932)

From the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

In discussing Socialism with one’s fellow workers, whilst agreeing that the present system of society is rotten and that something else will have to take its place, the statement is frequently made that “politics will do no good.” Another objection frequently raised is that the members of the working class are often such traitors to each other that it is impossible to conceive that they should work together in a co-operative spirit for the establishment of Socialism. In support of the latter statement, instances were given to the writer where, in a ‘bus and tram combine, a so-called “red-hot trade union socialist” had given away three of his fellow workers to the bosses, resulting in their dismissal; another case, where after an attempt to form a trade union, the leaders had been bought off and been given better jobs in the office, and also at the time of the shop stewards’ movement, where the shop stewards themselves had been bought off and given jobs as inspectors. Such instances as this are common throughout industry.

They are, however, merely illustrations of the principle, long ago put forward by Marx and Engels, that it is the economic conditions which determine morality or conduct. Under capitalism, whilst the interests of the workers as a class are identical, yet each individual worker is striving against the others to get into a job, to hold it, or to get a better job than his fellow worker, and some workers, in an effort to curry favour with the bosses, will betray their own fellow workers, or allow themselves to be bought off by their masters. It is the dependence of the workers upon the capitalist class for a living which causes the subservience and betrayals complained of. In a society where no man, through his ownership of the means of production, was in a position to control the lives of his fellow men, such betrayals could not occur, because there would be no boss to whom to run and tell the tale, or who could play off one worker against another by bribery.

Be it further noted that all the above instances occur in the industrial field as distinct from the political field. Is it to be inferred that, because the workers may sometimes betray one another on the industrial field, they would not do so upon the political held ? The answer depends to a certain extent upon the type of the political association. In the case of the Liberal and Tory parties, we know that very few workers are actually members of these parties, and are, hence, powerless to control the parliamentary member. The Labour members, at the elections, are financed largely by the trade unions, and they secure support from all sections of the electors by making various promises. Once a member is elected, there is no means of controlling his actions. In general, however, the member elected does act more or less in accordance with the wishes of his electors, who have voted for the continuance of the present system, and if, whilst he is a Member of Parliament, he changes some of his views or his policy, he often feels compelled to undergo another election to test the feeling of his electorate. A confusion of thought often arises because the Labour Party is supposed to represent the workers, and there have been so many instances where members of this party have gone over to the other capitalist parties. The programme of the Labour Party has often been examined in this paper and shown to be not essentially different from that of any other capitalist party. Various reforms are advocated, but none of them are likely to ameliorate in any essential degree the conditions of the workers; in fact, the general effect is to worsen their conditions and to facilitate the smoother running of the capitalist machine. Therefore, when the leaders of the Labour Party go over to some other capitalist party, they are simply carrying on their career without changing their principles.

We, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, claim to be the only political party genuinely representing the interests of workers. We are an association of workers democratically organised with the object of gaining political power from the capitalist class. No member is in a position to control any other and, therefore, none can betray any other. If a member of the Party were elected to Parliament, he would go as a delegate of the socialists who had elected him, and they would see that he carried out their instructions.

It is only through politics, by the capture of political power from the capitalist class, who, at present, are in a position to control the army, navy, and police force, that Socialism can be achieved. It is therefore the duty of all those who agree with us to join with us and work for the overthrow of the capitalist system.

R. M.

Beyond cynicism (1995)

From the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The battle against capitalism seems to me to be an impossible task. You say socialism can only be established by the majority wanting it—this is true but capitalism will never let that happen. They control television, media and education and they are experts in propaganda tactics. Leaflets, posters, talks, meetings, etc. are not powerful enough. The capitalists know this and that is why they let you operate.

If socialism did spread here in the capitalist western world and the capitalists saw it as a real threat they would stamp it out immediately, by any means necessary, remember they have everything to lose. But they wouldn't even need to take any drastic measures, it would only take a few propaganda programmes on TV and a few articles in the tabloids anyway. The majority are easily manipulated, conditioned and controlled.

The majority are not even concerned with politics or life on a global scale, most people are more concerned with materialism, wealth, sex and violence. I know I must sound like I lack faith in the human race but I must admit I do. When do you realistically think socialism on a global scale can come about? Are we talking decades or hundreds or thousands of years?”

This doleful missive of defeatist pessimism has been sent to us by a reader from Surrey. It is fair to assume that he is not consumed by high expectations for the future. In this he is not alone. Most people today are hopeless, in relative degrees of dejection about the future of society. They have come to expect the worst, and all too often experience worse than the worst that they expected. We who are socialists, filled with a passion fed by understanding that history does change and the future can be different and better, would be foolish to ignore the political sighs of such Jeremiahs as our correspondent. For hopelessness itself is the enemy of positive action and the anticipation of failure to build a decent society makes real such failure. The cynics should not be ignored or sneered at as fools. Negativity is not answered by the constructive intones of derision, but on the basis of scientific logic and historical vision; nothing less will do.

This has been a century of cruelly extinguished hopes. The embarrassed blushes of those who applauded the “justice” of the Stalinist purges and heaped praise upon the state-capitalist hell-holes which posed as “socialist states” will not conceal the false faith in the Religion of Leninism which pseudo-socialists promoted, so distorting everything that the real hope of socialism offers; the workers who rejoiced gullibly in 1945 as British industries were nationalised as “public utilities” have had to see how in half-a-century the profit motive, which was always built-in to state-managed capitalism, has crushed the hopes of the public who were tricked into thinking that industries belonged to them; those who believed that scientific reason would culminate in a rationalised capitalist system this century have had to watch in sheer horror as millions of humans were pushed into the gas chambers and the gulags, as bombs of unimaginable destructiveness wiped out whole cities and populations, as the gross inhumanity of the mass torture of millions through slow starvation has proceeded while food is destroyed lest profits fall. To cultivate boundless optimism amidst the ruins of hope and the realities of capitalism’s manifest evils is not a task for the faint-hearted.

False hope of piecemeal reform

What has been the most pernicious lie of this century? It is that hope for the future lay in the gradual, imperceptible, but certain amelioration of capitalism through the process of reform, The false hope of piecemeal improvement of an essentially cancerous system captured the imaginations of millions, exhausted their energies in the reformist struggle to humanise the profit system, and then left them dumbed by frustration. Whether the changes were to come through the division lobbies of Westminster or by gaining control of local councils or trade union committees or by humanitarian slogans or empty “green” appeals for a nicer, gentler world, the system which puts profit before need has persistently spat the hope of humane capitalism back in the face of its advocates. The progressive enthusiasm of millions has been stamped out in this way.

Dare we imagine how different it would have been if that energy—or even a half or a tenth of that energy—which has gone into reforming capitalism had gone into abolishing it? With a movement great in number, if still a minority, how much stronger would we be if our fellow workers had not experienced that bitter disillusionment of failed reformism and the indignity of abandoning principles for the sake of short-term gains? Should we who struck to undiluted socialist principles— the world for the workers with production solely for use, and nothing less—be the ones to bow our heads in defeat when the policy of Reform, not Revolution, has so miserably failed?

Yet how easy it is to step out of the shadow of reformist frustration and commit the two errors of our hopeless correspondent. First, deny that workers are intelligent enough to ever see through their own oppression and exploitation. Claim that they are suckers and suckers they will forever be. Second, attribute to the small class of parasites who now own and control the earth and its abundant resources huge powers of persuasion and coercion. Imagine that the capitalist will eternally have a confident smile on his face and you can be sure that he will. These are not verifiable observations, but the sigh of a battered wage-slave who begs to be persuaded that his miser)' for the future is unfounded.

Is it really true that workers will put up with this system forever? One percent of the population in Britain alone own a quarter of the marketable wealth and five percent own more than half. In several other countries the statistics of class inequality are more stark; in all modern nations do such figures of class division apply. Will the overwhelming majority of the world’s population forever consent to live and die for the profits of a small minority? We know that the workers of the world form the overwhelming majority of the population, and we know that it is the workers’ intelligence and hard work which keeps society going (from the building site to the operating theatre), and we know also that it is the nature of human intelligence to explore ever more and expand ever further.

Indeed, the propaganda of those who have a vested interest in workers’ political ignorance has been remarkably successful so far, but against what has it had to contend? The organised voice of principled socialists has been so small that the fraudulence of religion and the misinformation of education and the trickery of the tabloids have had an easy run. This will not be so when the considerable numbers of those discontented under capitalism move from self-defeating schemes to improve the system to a scientific movement to remove the system. The history of organised socialists is even shorter. It is a mistake to deduce from such limited experience that workers will never apply their intelligence to removing the cause of their problems. It is not a case of having “faith” in humans, but of learning from history that humans are characterised by a tremendous ability to adapt their social environment to fit in with their need to survive in greater contentment.

Seeing through the lies

Will the capitalists be able to stem the flood of working-class socialist consciousness by simply putting an article in the Sun or running a scare story about socialists on the TV? It is precisely when the socialist movement is growing that such tactics will be counter-productive. The more lies an intelligent human is told the more he or she will rebel against the liar. It is now, at a time of majority political ignorance, that such tactics may work, not when workers are getting up off their knees. Take the example of the Christian religion in Britain: for years it dominated the minds of peasants and workers because the victims were ignorant and therefore scared to criticise; once criticism began the efforts of the religionists to defend their mumbo-jumbo by accusing materialists of gross depravity and claiming that they had never stood for nonsensical beliefs (which they always had) led them into even greater discredit.

As for the claim that the capitalists might use violence to stop the establishment of socialism, well they might, but what chance would they stand against a conscious movement of well-organised workers? Killing its opponents is hardly likely to win converts to the cause of capitalism; on the contrary, it will create ever more dedicated enemies. What evidence is there that the armed forces and police, who are only wage slaves in uniform, would allow themselves to be used to murder their brothers, sisters, parents and friends whose sole crime would be to stand for a world in which nobody would be so degraded as to have to become a state killer or a cop? The suggestion that the simple alternative to such class war would be for the capitalists (many of whom may come to realise that they as humans have much to gain from a society of humane equality) to publish a few articles in the tabloids and thereby wipe out the political intelligence of the entire movement which has threatened them is an incredible scenario. Sure, those who are deluded can be made more deluded by the media of delusion-making; but can a whole movement which is so strong that the media needs to attack it be forced to regress intellectually as a result of the cunning efforts of the Murdoch press?

Evidence of history

The cynical loss of faith in humanity is not a matter upon which socialists can offer consolation to our dispirited correspondent. Our expectations are not based upon faith. Faith is a substitute for reason. The question of historical change is not a matter of optimistic or pessimistic moods, but of examining real material social relations. Are the relations of contemporary society in line with how we could live, given the development of the forces of production to a level where we could produce enough goods and services of a high quality for everyone— indeed, for several times the cuncnt population of the world? Clearly, these are outmoded social relationships. Wage labour and capital are obsolete obstacles to the realisation of decent and materially satisfied lives for all of us.

The evidence of history, as Marx so ably explained, is that when there is a conflict between the forces of production and the relations of production the latter fall in line with the former. Production for profit is out of date, it is harder and harder for defenders of this system to think of policies to make it sound attractive or even workable. That is why all political parties supporting capitalism now speak more than ever with one voice: the unconfident monotone of the ideologically bankrupt. Production solely for use is long overdue. Socialists do not believe that the pattern of historical development will be different in our own age from the long past when those with an interest in change have ultimately opted for change.

Of course, the socialist transformation of society is different from all previous ones. It must be the work of the majority acting for themselves by themselves. There has been no shortage of diversions along the way. Pitiful has been the wasted energies of workers who, instead of uniting uncompromisingly for the socialist alternative, have gone for reformist or statist or other futile options. But such is history: we socialists are made of stronger stuff than those who would give up on the entire human species just because the greatest change in human history' has taken a few decades being talked about but not yet enacted.

And how much longer must we wait? Our correspondent, thousand-year diary in hand, seeks to know the date of victory. He is already an expert on the dates of failure. No doubt he had counterparts in South Africa who told black workers that it would take decades—nay, centuries—before they would win the vote. And surely the bar-room dissident in Bucharest, Moscow or Prague who suggested that with force of numbers the workers could deny power to their state-capitalist dictators was regarded width more than the occasional cynical sneer. How easy it is to plot a prosperous future for this misery-causing system; to be sure, nobody will mind and nobody will care if such banal hopelessness proves prophetic. There are no prizes for predicting that the future under capitalism will be lousy. But the prize to be gained by transcending the rut of cynical inaction is the world and its abundant wealth which will be ours—the property of all—as soon and as long as the majority cease to be in mental bondage to the illusion of the impossibility of their own freedom.

Steve Coleman

Down your way (1954)

From the December 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s happening down your way? What are you talking about in the office? Football Pools? T.V.? The cost of living? Marilyn Monroe? Probably. Workers are apathetic about most social questions; and the political parties are finding it increasingly difficult to attract audiences to their meetings.

But are the workers really satisfied with present-day conditions? Are you satisfied? Surely not. You’re fed-up with hydrogen bombs, the talk of war, the cost of living, the Labour Party—and the Tories. They both promised to solve your housing problems, rising prices. They promised you peace—whilst preparing for war. Is it surprising that you are cynical and apathetic? That you are fed-up with “politics?” Most people think there can be no solution to all these evils that beset us; and that the present order—or “ disorder ” of society will always be with us.

Yes, you are quite right “Politics,” that is the politics of running this present system, is a “dirty game.” And we, as Socialists, are not interested in playing the game. We know that the various political parties that promise to solve your problems for you are incapable of doing so. We know that the present system of society—capitalism—cannot be run in your interest. That is why we propose that you change it. That is why we want to get you interested, not so much in “politics,” but in society as it is; and in society as it could be, as it must be, in the future. We want you to desire and work for an entirely new way of life.

In the world today the means of producing the things we need and desire do not belong to society as a whole: they are owned by quite a small section of the community—the capitalist class. Most of us own none of these things. All that we as workers possess is our ability to work. And our employers only employ us in order that 'they make a profit. After all, that is why they are in business. Such is the nature of capitalism. Now, without going into a great deal of detail at the moment, we can say that it is this state of affairs—the private ownership of the means of living and production for profit—that is the basic cause of most of present-day problems. That is why we want you to get interested in our ideas; why we want you to cease being cynical and apathetic. Instead of putting your trust in politicians and leaders—until you get fed-up with them!—we suggest you do a little thinking for yourselves.

We Socialists are ordinary people. We have studied our society and have come to the conclusion that whilst the present profit-making system remains we will never get rid of the evils of war, insecurity and the rest. We think that only by changing the whole structure of society will we get rid of these problems. Only by making the means of life—the factories, offices, railways, etc.—the common possession of all people, and producing the things necessary to satisfy people’s needs and desires solely for use and not for profit will we eradicate these evils.

This, briefly, is our alternative to “ politics,” football pools, the  "dogs’’—and apathy.

Think it over.

Peter E. Newell

Bored with politics? (2006)

From the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politics is not just about the antics of career politicians – or at least doesn’t have to be

If you ask people “what is a party?” they are likely to reply something along the lines of “a group of people who want to get elected”. If you then ask them why they think these people want to get elected, the reply, if they’re feeling charitable, will be “to do things for the country” or “to help other people”. If they’re not feeling charitable, they’ll say “to help themselves” or that “they’re just in for what they can get”.

The truth – both as to what people think and what politicians want – will be something in between. Since up to 70 percent of people turn out to vote at elections and vote for politicians and their parties, they can’t really think that all that politicians want to do is to line their own pockets or further their own careers. They must be giving them some credit for wanting to do more, otherwise they’d be exposing themselves as fools for voting for them. And some politicians can show that they genuinely want to help other people, while at the same time of course making a career and some money for themselves.

Being a politician is a sort of profession, like a lawyer or a doctor. A politician’s trade is to get into parliament or the local council to run the administrative side of capitalism. To do this, they must get elected and, to get elected, they must promise to do things for people; they must find out what’s worrying people and then promise to do something about it.

This is why parties don’t need principles. Or, put another way, they only need one principle (if it can be called that) and that’s “get elected”. In the past some parties, the Labour Party for instance, used to campaign to try to win people over to their point of view. Not any more. Today politicians just promise people what they want to hear.

Although Blair, Mandelson and New Labour earned themselves a reputation for cynicism by the way they raised this to a fine art, actually the best practitioners of this have been the Lib-Dems, who’ve long had “focus groups” to tell them what to promise people in some area they’ve targeted. Now the Tories under Cameron are practising this in a more serious way too.

This kind of politics – which is dominant today – rests on a number of assumptions and has a number of consequences.

1. It accepts the status quo. It accepts capitalism and seeks merely to work within it. Politics becomes a question of choosing the best capitalism-management team from amongst competing groups of politicians.
2. Politics becomes a profession. You vote for a politician to do something for you and you reward them for the service by voting for them.
3. Politics becomes an activity in which only a minority – the professional politicians – participate. Most people’s only involvement in politics is, literally, once every few years when they go and put an X on a ballot paper. Then they go home and let the person elected get on with the job.
4. Elections become more and more a sort of referendum, a plebiscite on the record of the outgoing government or council. People’s participation in politics becomes simply giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the outgoing administration. If they don’t mind what they’ve done, they vote them in again. If they’re not happy then they vote in some other lot.

Politics becomes a spectacle in which people are just passive spectators watching the goings-on of politicians. The media – especially TV – play to this, presenting politics in between elections as a soap. But it is not even a good spectacle. It’s boring and the actors are all second and third rate. It doesn’t work either. Nothing seems to change and nothing does change. The same old problems continue, with the professional politicians only being able to tinker about and patch things up a little.

The end result is that politics in seen as completely boring and that people don’t want to know about it, except in the few weeks before a general election. People know that voting doesn’t change anything and that the only power they have is to vote the Ins Out (or In again) or vote the Outs In; to change the management team, while their day-to-day lives are unaffected and unchanged.

No wonder people become apathetic, resigned and cynical.

A different politics

Can things change? Yes, they could but it’s not going to be through conventional politics, only through a quite different kind of politics. A politics which rejects and aims to change the status quo. A politics which involves people participating and not leaving things up to others to do something for them.

Besides involving people surrendering their power to act to others, conventional politics is based on the illusion that what happens depends on what the politicians in power do; that politicians really do control things; that politics is in the driving seat. But this isn’t the case. It is the way society is organised to produce things that is the main factor determining the way we live and what happens – and what doesn’t happen. In other words, what is important is the sort of social and economic system we live under, not which party of professional politicians controls the government. That’s why changing governments changes nothing.

The present system – capitalism, with its class privilege, production for profit and coercive state machine – is by nature incapable of being made to serve the common good; as a profit-making system it has to put making profits before meeting people’s needs. Before we can think about achieving a better world, it must go. What is needed, as a framework within which to solve the economic and social problems we now face, is a classless society where productive resources are held in common, where there’s production to satisfy people’s needs and not for profit and democratic administration not government over people. In a word, socialism (in its original sense).

When more and more people realise this they will begin organising for it, in the places where they work, in the neighbourhoods where they live, in the various clubs and associations they are members of, but, above all, they will need to organise politically. Who says “politically” also says “political party”. So we are talking about a “socialist party”.

Unfortunately so associated has the word “party” come to be with conventional politics that many people (including our anarchist critics) imagine that we, too, are proposing just another organisation of political leaders for people to follow; that we’re saying “vote for us and we’ll bring in socialism for you”. But we’re not. By “socialist party” we mean a party of people who want socialism, people organised democratically to win control of political power for socialism.

Obviously, a mass socialist party like this does not yet exist, but it is our view that, for socialism to be established, it should. Without having any delusions of grandeur, we try to organise ourselves today in our small party in the same way we think that a mass socialist party should organise itself: without leaders and with major decisions being made democratically either by a referendum of the whole membership or by a conference of mandated delegates and other decisions by elected committees. The “socialist party” would be a mass movement of people who wanted socialism, not a party of professional politicians or a party of professional revolutionaries or even of people who wanted to serve the people.

The same goes for participation in elections (since a mass socialist party would contest elections). Here too, we try to anticipate how we think a mass socialist party, when it emerges, should behave. Its candidates should not seek to be leaders, separate from those who vote for them, but should be standing as delegates to be mandated by those who want socialism. This is why when we stand in elections all we advocate is socialism. Not reforms of capitalism, not promises to do things for people, as the conventional parties do.

If you want a better world, you are going to have to bring it about yourselves. That’s our basic message. It’s no good following leaders, whether professional politicians or professional revolutionaries. In fact, following anybody (not even us) won’t get you anywhere. The only way is to carry out a do-it-yourself revolution on a completely democratic basis. Democratic in the sense that that’s what the majority want. And democratic in the sense that that majority, rather than following leaders, organises itself on the basis of mandated and recallable delegates carrying out decisions reached after a full and free discussion and vote.

That’s what politics can be, and should be. And has to be if things are ever to change.

Adam Buick

"Fiesta." — An essay in futility (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A King was once injured in the loins, and as he lay in his bed, he watched his kingdom decline. It is upon this mythological theme that Ernest Hemingway based his recently republished novel, “Fiesta.” His king is an American journalist, his kingdom, vividly portrayed with neither comment nor condemnation, is the degenerate world of the reckless twenties.

Much has already been written about the political and industrial conditions of this decade. Black Friday and the general strike have been analysed and discussed, and with them the miserable failure, so far as the working class were concerned, of the first two Labour Governments; but so far as the social relativity to economic conditions is concerned, another aspect has been largely neglected.

The first world war had resounding effects upon the social set up of capitalist society. By compromise, or in many cases, by complete surrender, many members of the landed aristocracy had managed to retain a great deal of their wealth and power. Still was it largely their prerogative to send their sons to the universities and thence into the diplomatic corps, the army or the church. Still the sons of the bourgeoisie were found a place in the family business. In both cases the daughters were taught to sing or play, “ finished,” “ brought out ” and used as “ pawns ” or even “ queens ” on the social chessboard.

But the war, which introduced many scientific discoveries, with all accompanying horrors, brought a great step up in production. Thousands of pounds were made overnight. New powers rose in the land. The little fish were swallowed by the sharks. And the war had to be paid for. Taxes rose. The landed aristocracy, living upon ground rents and family fortunes, suffered at the hands of the industrial capitalists. Many of them were uprooted.

The post war world revealed social changes. School, the army, the family estate or business was a sequence broken. The school, alright—the army, too true—but then what? The family estate was now the business of the “nouveau rich” or even the National Trust, and where was the place of the “master’s” son in a vast industrial organisation?

And the position of the daughters had changed as well. This war, dwarfing its predecessors in intensity, had called for the participation to some degree of every human being. The sea barrier, crumbling all the time under capitalism, broke down almost completely. So far as the women of the working class were concerned it merely meant that they became more competition for their jobless menfolk, but for the women of the capitalist class it made them as independent as their parasitic brothers.

This collapse of tradition made their world seem hopeless. Those things that had previously existed to occupy their minds had vanished. Pleasure became their sole pursuit. The social columns were filled with details of extravagant parties. Hostesses were judged by the lavishness and originality of their balls. One achieved passing fame by ordaining that all her guests turn up in baby clothes. The rag-time band, the bottle party, the night club, the stunt, Paris, the Riviera, Eastern tours, was the fad of the layabouts. Drug addiction and immorality reached their highest peak. They dabbled in Freudian psychology and psycho-analysis. Fantastic behaviour was excused as “ self-expression,” perversion as reflexes. “The colonel’s lady and Rosy O’Grady,” as Hemingway parodies icily, “are lesbians under the skin.”

Such conditions and ideas are bound to reflect themselves in the art of the generation. New schools in literature and art portrayed the expensive futility of this generation. The harsh sexuality of D. H. Lawrence, the infathomability of James Joyce, the fatuous writings of unmourned contemporaries, the cubist, surrealistic and futuristic schools of art are all evidence of these trends. “I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas ”—these stark horrible words of T. S. Eliot, the era’s major poet, are typical. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"—again Eliot.

Forever seeking something new their hungry eyes turned to Russia. What was taking place there? Bolshevik propagandists spoke glibly of the intellectual, of the intelligentsia, of the new culture. Did these words not apply to them? Many of them thought so, and from this womb of jargon emerged one of the most pernicious creations of our time—the left wing intellectual who was going to lead the suffering workers by their noses to what they vaguely referred to as “emancipation.” To further this aim they founded little magazines, not to propagate understanding but to dangle cultural carrots, and under the heading of “reviews” to flatter their own authors’ uselessness.

These were the 1920’s—for the working class a period of unemployment, industrial dispute and lockout; to the capitalist class, especially its younger members, a period of re-organisation and re-settlement. The slump of 1931 put a brake on their activities. So ignorant are they of their own system of society that they were severely shaken and many of them even believed that the system which kept them idle was on the verge of collapse. Many workers, by the way, thought so too. The Socialist Party of Great Britain was not so optimistic. We pointed out that the system would not just collapse, that a force was operating within it that would not only bring about its downfall, but be ready with a new system of society to replace it; that as that force was not ready yet the system would eventually right itself. Time has proved us correct.

But in retrospect we can draw useful lessons from this age. The working class are slated by the bishops and told by the Bible bashers that their licentious habits and immoral practices are the root cause of their poverty. These people do not, or at least do not want, to recognise that it is the working class who are most obedient to the morality of this system of society. After earning or seeking to earn a living they have in the main neither the time nor the energy to do otherwise. It is only when a class is completely divorced, as were they also in ancient Rome, from all useful work that their minds turns to these excesses.

And it is the working class who by their lack of political understanding keep these people idle. Contrast this sterile opulence with your poverty and usefulness. They are linked. Ask yourselves why? The Socialist Party of Great Britain can provide the answer. This is capitalism wherein a small class own the means whereby you live. They neither toil, nor do they spin. You do that! They reap the benefits. The solution? A new system of society wherein these things are the property of all mankind. Under such a system not only would your material needs be satisfied but your culture would be a reflection of happiness instead of misery. It can come just when the working class desire it. So read, learn, realise and band with us.

Overthrow this sterile curse!

Ronald.

The Cynicism of Capitalism: 2: Partners Wanted (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The company’s prospectus is a colourful document of orange, red, yellow and gold paper. Pages are perforated by cut-outs of hearts. If all this seems a bit unusual, the prospectus offering is more so, as The Guardian (17th January) revealed. It is an invitation to the West German public by Kohle Liengeschaften to purchase limited partnership in an operation currently consisting of brothels in Konstanz, a town on Germany’s Swiss border, and Kaiserslautern which is near Mannheim and a NATO base.

“The oldest profession in the world is also the solidest,” the Company says on the cover of the prospectus. And an accompanying letter to potential investors suggests that purchasing a partnership in the enterprise “is an investment worth while because Irma La Douce never has a recession.”

The profession may have been around for a long time but it is believed that the Kohle venture is the first time capital has been publicly — and legally — raised in West Germany for an enterprise of this kind. And the financial enticements are substantial since the company is guaranteeing a minimum annual return of 9 per cent. “This is a better investment than stock,” asserts Herr Kohle, founder and managing director.

In Germany prostitution is considered a social necessity. The administration generally approves the existence of bordellos on the ground that they keep prostitutes off the streets (brothel bedrooms are officially referred to as places of work). So accepted is the profession in fact that there is even a slickly-written travel guide to West German brothels and red-light districts that lists each house and its location on a city-by-city basis and rates the house according to parking facilities, prices, service and amenities.

Prostitution is not a new venture for Kohle Liengeschaften. The real estate operation currently derives its income from renting small apartments to prostitutes and from concessionaires such as the night-club operators at the Kaiserslautern facility. The company, Herr Kohle emphasises, receives no direct part of any prostitutes earnings. Herr Kohle says that there are currently forty-seven “lady tenants” at Kaiserslautern and thirty-five at Konstanz. Generally, he says, a girl stays for three or four years. How long she stays usually depends upon whether she is making money and whether she feels secure.

The brothels are advantageously situated. The Kaiserslautern operation is the only one of its kind near the NATO base, while the Konstanz operation is near a casino and just across the border from Switzerland, where prostitution is illegal. The brothels’ “lady tenants” are checked by the management for police records, among other things. "We don’t take all the girls who apply,” Herr Kohle says. “For example, we don’t want wild women.” The girls, he adds, come from all over Europe. In return, the girls sign rental contracts for an indefinite period. In addition to protection, Herr Kohle says the company also provides apartments at Kaiserslautern where the girls’ relatives can stay when they visit. He adds that the company is also considering construction of a separate facility next year at Kaiserslautern for children of the prostitutes. These features, Herr Kohle says, offer the girls some security and "take some of the harshness out of the profession”.

Herr Kohle’s “new style” operations have borne financial fruit. So far nearly £600,000 in limited partnerships has been purchased by 120 to 130 investors. The limited partnerships are sold in £5,500 units. However, to attract the small investor and to provide anonymity, several investors may each put up £550 and pool their investments to make the minimum for a partnership unit. According to its prospectus, Kohle Liengeschaften is currently offering equity capital equivalent to £1 million or about £150,000 less than the estimated market value of the two properties. By the end of 1973 the company hopes to have eight brothels in Germany and Austria. To reach this goal he says about £4.5 million will have to be raised.

The company is advertising in newspapers and is selling partnerships through investment consultants and through its own sales office, which includes some former IOS Mutual Fund salesmen. Herr Kohle is a 43-year- old entrepreneur who is also in the construction and investment business and says that he put together Kohle Liengeschaften because "there was still room for adventure” in his life. He says he is optimistic about the future of the venture. “Prostitution has weathered all the storms over the past 2,000 years without a crisis and I don’t see one now unless the human race changes,” he says.

Here we have an example of the mentality that views all things as commodities, including the female sexual capacity. The brothel in this case is the market place, the buyers desirous males. Herr Kohle need fear no change in the human race, but he has left out of his calculation the fact that a section of the human race — the working-class section — will change conditions and, as a consequence, will change the behaviour of the human race. This is a change that will remove the commodity status from society and thus eliminate all forms of prostitution — and prevent the likes of him from exploiting women.

R. Ambridge