Useless election (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

However lurid the phrases used to describe how the Democratic and Republican parties select, and advise the American people to vote for, their presidential candidates, it is clear that they are inadequate to the event itself. This applies even to 1988, when the fact that both parties knew in advance who they were going to nominate deprived the conventions of much of the tension and what might be called their interest. Of course master self-publicist Jesse Jackson made a show of contesting the Democratic nomination but his attention is actually on presidential elections of the future; what he did at the Democratic convention was no more than a gesture. a threat to be mildly disruptive unless he was accepted into the party leadership — a tactic sometimes adopted by some of Thatcher's sacked ministers.

So this time there were none of the traditional smoke-filled rooms crammed with wheedling, bullying, bargaining political pros while out on the convention floor the party faithful were taking their regular fixes of blind hysteria which motivates them to go out and campaign for policies which only a deranged myopic could see any merit in. There were, as usual, plenty of distractions. The Democrats' keynote speaker's scornful tirade against George Bush went down so well that she felt emboldened to produce her baby granddaughter to give the audience something else to cheer about. Continuing with the theme of the political message of the close-knit family, a senator dragged out his nephews and nieces and Jesse Jackson always had his wife and kids at the ready to stage ecstatic, congratulatory embraces at the end of his speeches. And of course there was the inevitable Kennedy offspring, without whom no Democratic convention can feel that its hunger for emotional guzzling has been satisfied.

The Republicans, whose 100,000 gathering was a record for the New Orleans Superdome (bigger than the Rolling Stones, bigger than the Pope) kept releasing great clouds of balloons from the ceiling, which may have diverted too close attention from the gaseous rubbish coming from the podium below. One victim of assault by descending balloon was Ronald Reagan, bringing the curtain down on his greatest, longest-running role yet. His was — as Reagan may well have intended — a hard act to follow but George Bush managed it with surprising success, proving that he has little to learn in the matter of delivering those sly deceptions which are known as politicians' speeches. Bush is said to be a nice, quiet family man. ever loyal to his country, his party, his president (“I’m for Mr Reagan — blindly") has never found any inconsistency between being devoted to his family and taking decisions which will have appallingly destructive consequences for human beings — for other families. If he wins the election, he will sit easily, guiltlessly, in the hot seat in the White House.

The style and flavour of the campaign could be sampled from some of the convention speeches:

— keep America strong, make America better, red and yellow, brown black and white.

everyone is precious in god's sight;

— we're going to win because we are the party that believes in the American dream;

— I believe that god put this land between the two great oceans to be found by special people from every comer of the world who had an extra love for freedom;

—we're on a new journey into a new country . . .

Those were the words of (although since they are basically the same kind of interchangeable rubbish the identity of the speaker does not matter) Jackson, Dukakis. Reagan and Bush in that order. We can gauge the relevance of those speeches by the case of Reagan, who has cheerfully accepted his reputation as a president with a sharply restricted understanding of what is going on around him but who has survived and prospered through his talents as a communicator — or, to be more accurate, an actor. He spoke his lines perfectly in a speech fashioned on the well-tested theory that in organisations like the Republican party delusions are more comfortable than reality. Reagan provoked roars of laughter, swells of emotion and geysers of tears, yet what he said meant exactly nothing.

On one issue both parties were agreed: their candidates would be extremely rich. The ethnic roots of which Dukakis said he is so proud (in politics it always seems to mean a lot if your ancestors were poor — unless, that is, they were rich which also seems to mean a lot) have sprouted a multi-million dollar fortune; his running-mate. Lloyd Bentsen, comes from a family who amassed considerable wealth through farming and land deals. George Bush's father made it big on Wall Street as an investment banker and let George have enough of the proceeds to enable him to make his millions in the oil business (no wonder he loves his family); his vice-presidential candidate. Dan Quayle, was cushioned from the sort of rigours of life which workers know only too well — not just being in the firing line in Vietnam — by his family's investments in the newspaper business (before this unfortunate matter of his joining the Indiana National Guard was brought up. Quayle rejoiced in a reputation as a hawk — someone who is keen about other people going to war). Bush has a cousin who is a psychoanalyst, who has asked:

Does anyone from the family understand what it is to be poor? No. And the bigger question is: Do they understand their own ignorance?

Bush might respond that a rich president is not something unknown in America: consider Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Johnson, Reagan . . He might also (although he probably won't) go on to point to the many examples of leaders who have come from a background of extreme poverty and that there is no evidence that they have run capitalism any differently from those who come to power with their mouths crammed with silver cutlery. The capitalist class — people like Reagan. Bush and Bentsen — hold political power because the majority — the working class — allows them to and from that standpoint we can approach the real issues of the American election and the actual consequences of it for the American workers.

For a while, the bitter struggle within the parties has subsided into a spurious unity behind their chosen candidates. Robert Dole has forgotten how he called George Bush a liar, the Democrats are forgetting the hatchet jobs done on the likes of Gary Hart and Joe Biden. Both presidential candidates have chosen running-mates whose ideas they are in theory opposed to; when votes are at stake political principles are of little importance. Conservative Lloyd Bentsen is on the Democratic ticket of "liberal" Michael Dukakis because it is hoped that he will ensure the electoral college votes of his home state of Texas (no Democrat has ever won without Texas' votes) as well, perhaps, as Oklahoma. Louisiana and even part of the Old South. where it is no longer true that they would vote for a lamp post provided it wore a Democratic label. Bush chose Quayle for similar reasons, he seems to have overlooked or ignored the many inconvenient aspects of Quayle's past which provided such a sumptuous feat for the media vultures The 1988 vice presidential candidates were chosen, then, for the customary cynical reasons — to cobble up a "balanced" ticket, which means one which will encourage people who are opposed to the presidential candidate nevertheless to vote for him because they support his running-mate. This is known as political democracy in a free country.

Since they have been in government for the past eight years, the Republicans have to assert that these were great times, when Reagan wrought a miraculous recovery from Jimmy Carter's undermining of all that is best in America. But Bush, apparently, is not satisfied; he has spoken about his "dreams" for America's future. Every self-respecting politician must modestly confess to dreaming dreams about a glorious future which, by a strange coincidence, can be assured by voting them into power. It is another way of glossing over the endless, and endlessly futile, efforts to do something with this social system so that it makes sense in terms of human interests. The Democrats' case is summarised in the title of their — unusually hesitant — manifesto — The Restoration of Competence and the Revival of Hope. They must argue that Reagan was an incompetent president, who bungled the American economy into chaos and who condoned scandals like Irangate. It is commonplace for political parties to accuse their opponents of causing economic chaos and to assert that they have a simple remedy which will restore order. This often proves an appealing propaganda line among voters who have forgotten, or who don't care, that the party making the accusation has itself presided over a fair amount of chaos in its time. This is known as the cut-and-thrust of open political debate.

Whoever wins, their election will be greeted as one of the most significant events in human history and we shall hear, in numerous speeches, about the dawn of a new era when the problems of the past and the present will be no more. Plenty of people, especially those who voted for the winner and who are reluctant to think that they have been duped or have wasted their vote, will believe in these golden prospects. But history is not on their side, for there have been numerous examples of presidents who have come to power on just such a surge of enthusiasm and who began their term of office with high hopes and promises but who have been exposed and discredited by the inexorable nature of capitalism as an uncontrollable, problem-producing social system.

The most recent example of this was Lyndon Johnson. In 1964 the Democrats were carried along to victory by. among other things, a popular surge of emotion originating in the myths nurtured by the assassination of John Kennedy. As Kennedy's vice president. Johnson, could claim to have had experience of the top job at an unusually difficult time while also associating himself with the more attractive bits of the Kennedy mythology. Johnson had. over many years, honed his skills as a political fixer to a razor edge (which had not. however, prevented him misjudging the situation badly when he was contesting the nomination with Kennedy). And, as if all that were not enough the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater. whose ideas were so out of tune with the times (although this would not be true were he to be a candidate today) that the mere mention of his name would provoke contemptuous laughter. Goldwater campaigned like a political dinosaur and all over America the votes poured in for the man they liked to call Elbeejay. Johnson received a record total of over 43 million [votes] and his electoral college votes — 485 — were the highest since the sweep of his idol Roosevelt. Only the South, where his switch from a supporter of segregation to an opponent was not forgotten by the racist whites, held out against the tide. “It seems to me tonight". said Johnson on election eve. waiting for this triumph to be formally acknowledged, "that 1 have spent my whole life getting ready for this moment".

Following on Kennedy's clutch of reforms which went under the grandiose name of the New Frontier, Johnson launched his programme. with the even more confident title of the Great Society. Conditions in the early sixties were such as to allow politicians to base their appeal on the false argument that comprehensive schemes of social welfare could be financed through a big surge in productivity. In this country. Harold Wilson was thriving on more or less the same propaganda. Those who read the omens for Johnson, considering all the advantages which he apparently had, could foresee only unbroken, unqualified success for him followed by a grateful nation triumphantly reelecting him with an even bigger majority.

Well of course it did not turn out that way, for Johnson was exposed and, as opinion turned against him, it was focused in particular on the increasingly cruel and senseless bloodshed in Vietnam. It was said by those who knew him well that Johnson, in spite of his overbearing manners, desperately wanted to be loved by the American people — if possible all 200-odd million of them. In November 1964 he could expect that this would happen but by 1968. when it was time to consider his re-nomination, millions of American workers hated him. At the end of the White House lawn the demonstrators persistently chanted "Hey, hey, LBJ. how many kids have you killed today?" in protest at the ruthless, indiscriminate bombing and other attacks on the North Vietnamese people. Johnson confided to one of his aides:

I felt that I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions. On one side, the American people were stampeding me to do something about Vietnam. On another side, the inflationary economy was booming out of control. Up ahead were dozens of danger signs pointing to another summit of riots in the cities. (Doris Kearns. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream)

It did not seem to occur to Johnson that he was complaining about people expecting him to solve problems which he had claimed to be able to solve — and that, therefore, it was not unreasonable of them to "stampede'' when he was exposed as a failure. A mental wreck, he was unable to face another election and the end came when his successor was nominated and outside the convention the demonstrators were being dispersed with terrible violence by the Chicago police.

Unsurprisingly, the Democrats did not win the next election. Richard Nixon came back from the electorally dead to such effect that his re-election in 1972 was greeted with ecstatic chants of “Four More Years" but of course he disappointed his supporters by failing to last that long. Then came Jimmy Carter, the religious peanut farmer from the South, who marked his first Christmas as president by inviting a lot of people to a reception at which neither food nor drink was provided and where neither the president nor his wife put in an appearance. This was a foretaste of the administrative chaos for which the Carter presidency became notorious — which gave the commentators the excuse to blame his impotence in face of some typical capitalist crises on to the way he ran the White House office. Proving that time heals everything. Nixon and Carter are now respected elder statesmen, handing down to their parties advice and analyses, as if neither of them is thoroughly discredited.

The institution of the American president then, does not inspire or deserve any respect or admiration. The entire edifice is kept in place, not through any merit but by a massive scaffolding of working-class self-delusion. For example. Reagan hands over the White House after being re-elected in 1984 with a crushing majority and in the glow of a successful president who claims to have personally ensured that America is a better, more secure country. What that really means has recently been spelled out by some American doctors, who see Reagan's country through the health of its people. The Physician Task Force on Hunger in America found in a recent study that, using the official definition, 14 per cent of the population are classifiable as poor. In the golden state of California — homeland of Nixon and Reagan — there are 3.6 million who come into that category, half of them children, one out of ten rely on monthly food hand-outs from charities. For the first time in 20 years infant morality in California is on the increase, which is probably not unconnected with the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are too poor to see a doctor when they are ill. Apart from the doctors, the US Census Bureau reported in early September that "overall" poverty is experienced by 32.4 million Americans and — as another indicator of how blissful it is to be alive in that country now — in Los Angeles the murder rate has gone up some 40 per cent over last year.

That kind of bitter reality is not confined to America. It is found all over the world, regardless of who is in power or of any superficial differences in their methods of running capitalism. Any rational view of what is about to happen in America must reach the conclusion that whichever party wins it will make no real difference to the lives of the majority of people there. So what is it all about? Why all the hype, the ballyhoo, the razzmataz? Well a Republican strategist blurted out at their convention, when he was discussing campaign tactics. “Beside, we like being in power" and for the American workers the implications of that bald statement should be a good place to begin their understanding.

Ivan

Running Commentary: Wish we weren't here (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wish we weren't here

Of course it may have been a trick by the more miserly elements in the Confederation of British Industries but some recent research has thrown doubt on the benefits, hitherto taken for granted, of a holiday. Casting a cold eye on what actually happens to people who are trying to convince themselves that they are having a marvellous time, getting away from it all, has revealed that, such are the stresses involved, they might have been better to stay at home.

In this year of delays in air transport, which condemned thousands of bored, weary, sweaty package tourists to pass hours, even days, of their holiday in airport lounges, nobody will argue about the strains of getting yourself from rain-soaked Britain to a sunbaked paradise across the sea. Those who stayed at home could also face transport difficulties. For them there were many huge, fuming motorway tailbacks, in each vehicle a driver praying that the engine would not overheat in the inch-by-inch crawl towards their holiday idyll.

Before the journey there is the stress of organisation — booking the holiday, buying the tickets, insuring yourself, making sure that things are up to date at work before you go. worrying about whether you can afford it. And many holidays, under an unrelenting pressure to enjoy yourself according to the writ of the organisers, are little better than exercises in self-abuse — excessive drinking, eating, sun-bathing. . . This behaviour is regarded by many holiday-makers as a release, because it is in direct contrast to what they are allowed to do in the everyday routine of wage-slavery. Two weeks with the 18-30 Club Ibiza is a world away from the factory bench, the supermarket checkout, the typing pool stools. It is a fortnight of unrelieved fantasy with an unpleasant reality waiting at the end.

But perhaps even more damaging is the stress which can be observed on many a crowded beach or cafe or coach. One result of a holiday is to take people, who for the other fifty weeks of the year are kept in only distant contact through being at work or school and forces them to spend a lot more time close together for days on end. It starts out being a happy change but then minor irritations become focussed into major provocations; differences in tastes which usually don't matter because lack of contact allows everyone to do their own thing become impassable obstacles. What usually operates as a manageable tolerance for each other changes into active dislike. It is a relief for everyone to go back home, where they don't have to see as much of each other.

Only one social group, however, experiences stresses. People who have to work for their living cannot employ a load of secretaries. maids and valets to smooth their way onto a holiday. The tensions they are under during their brief spell at what is called leisure reflect those which dominate their working lives. It says a lot about working class life, that many of them might well be better off not taking a holiday. Getting Away From It All is. for them, impossible.

Living on tick

One of the iron principles said to have been drilled into the young Margaret Thatcher by her legendary father was never, ever to get into debt.

Like most of Thatcher s professed standards of behaviour, that one has little relevance to what actually happens in the world. To begin with, a great deal of capitalism's commerce would need to be drastically remodelled if every company adopted the principle of never owing any money to any other firm.

That is besides the working class, whose access to things like furniture, household equipment and houses relies on their being able to borrow money. Of course in the long run it is cheaper to buy, say. a house out of your own pocket rather than go cap-in-hand to a building society. But to save that sort of money would need such stringently miserly living standards over so many years that by the time you moved into your newly-purchased home you would be an emaciated, nervous wreck.

In this time of so-called boom (Thatcher says it's a boom. Lawson says so. . .) workers widely use the quick-loan facilities of credit cards or the "personal" loans which are so enticingly offered by the banks. Running up a bill with Access can work reasonably well for a worker who wants some of the more expensive bits of wealth produced by their class provided there is no tendency to have nightmares about descending bailiffs, but not so well for those suffering from doubt- wracked insomnia. Then what about the sense of guilt induced by our being told that our high living on all this credit is bringing the British economy to its knees. While before a "weak" pound and high interest rates were crippling problems which all true English folk should do their utmost to solve, with the help of a clever Chancellor of the Exchequer like Nigel Lawson, now the threat comes from a "strong" pound and low interest rates. Law- son's apparent solution to this is to say that he will implement the measures which were so recently themselves the main problem. . .

The most cursory acquaintance with these affairs — these blunders, these U-turns, these false assurances — points to the conclusion that all the Chancellors and all their experts really don't have the slightest idea of what is going on in the world. What is obvious is that none of them have the exact, delicate control over the economy and the market which they claim to have. Any confidence they may display in their proposals for juggling endlessly with the symptoms of capitalism's real sickness springs from the very few occasions when their luck has been in — when events which are out of their control have changed in such a way and at such a time as to suggest that they control them. It is on that kind of luck that Lawson's reputation has so far been based; what will happen to him. now that his luck seems to have run out?

Workers who are struggling to survive under capitalism should pay no heed to the superficial aspects of the system. Every time they pay the mortgage, every time they sign a credit sales slip, they are attesting to the fact that this is a society which denies them access to almost everything except pompous harangues from politicians.

Hunting Quayle

If Senator Dan Quayle s prudent membership of the National Guard rather than take his chances on being conscripted to fight in Vietnam was hypocrisy. how do we describe the exultant indignation which it provoked in the media?

Quayle is a member of the capitalist class — born into that minority who live off the labour of the rest of us and so do not need to be employed for a living. Their income — a lot more substantial than that of the majority — comes from their investment in the exploitation of the other class — the working class. This class — the majority in society — do all the useful work. They conceive, design, produce, transport all the wealth and services. They do the clean work like sitting behind a desk and the dirty work like fighting in a war. Society could not operate without them. In contrast, there is no social need for the capitalist class; in terms of producing and distributing useful things they are redundant.

So it is perfectly reasonable for Quayle to expect that other people — from the other class — should fight in the wars in the same way as he expects them to cook his food, clean his floors, write and print his newspapers which his family own. It is also perfectly reasonable for him to use his class privileges, which confer so many advantages on him. to avoid unpleasant experiences — and what could be more unpleasant than a spell in battle in Vietnam?

Many rich youngsters took refuge from Vietnam in the National Guard, pulling the strings of privileges as they did so. The sons of George Bush and Lloyd Bentsen were among them. In the rush to escape Vietnam the National Guard became over-subscribed.

So Quayle and all those other cosseted young capitalists were only doing what come naturally in a class divided society. They were behaving in accordance with the wealth of their class and with the advantages which that wealth brings. It went with their sumptuous homes, their servants, their private aeroplanes and yachts, their ability always to choose how they spend their lives.

The media stand foursquare in favour of this social system. They eulogise the ruling class as people of unusual abilities, the most trivial of whose life must be lovingly related to us. However they may complain about some of the system's symptoms they never question capitalism in its essentials — the division into classes, the existence of rich and poor, the need of one class to be employed by the other, the principle of political leadership. . .

What Dan Quayle did. as another example of what it means to have access to class privileges, was utterly predictable and. from his point of view, utterly sensible. Of course he is a hypocrite — a hawk who wants other people to do the fighting for him. which makes him especially despicable. But the only people who can fairly condemn him for this are those who oppose the system in which his privilege and hypocrisy are rooted.

Between the Lines: I'll take the Whitehouse (1988)

The Between the Lines Column from the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’ll take the Whitehouse

ITV opened its autumn season with a blockbuster (for which read: expensive, short-run soap opera) called I’ll Take Manhattan. It was the usual story of highly suntanned men making love to dollar signs and women who failed the audition for Dynasty or Dan Quayle's past. In between endless bouts of what the Sun calls bonking, these blokes compete over who can be the richest swine and own most of New York.

As unbelievable and tasteless tedium, such soap bubbles fade into insignificance when compared with that bigger-budgeted soap opera which has been dominating the US media in recent times. The great battle for the right to preside over American capitalism, between the Democrat with the permanent grin and the Vice President who has spent the last eight years as the chief assistant to Washington DC s village idiot.

The media dominates the US election. It dominates it in a manner that turns conventions into variety shows, speeches into prolonged smiles peppered with cliches and ideas into temporary interferences in the struggle to say least and win most support. The media campaigns of both parties in the US election are such that no socialist opposition, even if it was numerically big enough to mount a campaign against them (which at the moment the World Socialist Party of the United States is not) would be in a financial position to even begin to compete equally in an attempt to persuade the US workers of the case for the socialist alternative.

Instead of any serious attempt at presenting society as it is or offering solutions to its manifold problems, of which the wage slaves of the USA are far from free, the election advertising which is put out concentrates almost entirely on fascistic leader imagery. As in the implausible soap operas, the audience is urged to suspend disbelief and devote their minds entirely to superficial issues of personality. Thus it was that while Congress voted millions of dollars to arm the Contra terrorists, supported by both Bush and the Republican and Bentsen, Dukakis’s running-mate, the media "news" was about whether Bush's partner, Quayle. had once slept with a Playboy model when she was working as a hired "political lobbyist".

Instead of there being any debate about why one in four US children are now living below the official poverty line, the men with the media agenda were more interested in finding out how it was that Quayle. the super-patriot, managed to do the sensible thing and, like many other rich young kids of his class, dodge the Vietnam war where workers were sent to be mutilated and murdered.

Nobody elects the owners or controllers of NBC. CBS or ABC. Yet it is widely acknowledged in the USA that if they want to destroy a Presidential candidate they can. With them lies the power to tell the millions of American workers what "the real issues" are. Approximately half of the American workers will respond by not voting. It is bad enough having to watch tripe like I'll take Manhattan. without being told that you have to appear as an unpaid extra in it.

I’ll take Downing Street

While Hollywood beefcakes were pretending to take Manhattan and political half-wits were trying to take the Whitehouse. poor old Neil is still trying to storm Ten Downing Street. Panorama (BBC1. 9.30pm, 5 September) was all about the Labour Party’s current policy review exercise. Who ever said that good old tragedy was dead?

The programme exemplified much that is the pathetic tragedy of the reformist Labour Party. There was Tony Benn addressing a small rally of believers who had come to hear the rhetoric of radical change. The noises he made were good ones; some of it sounded like selected paragraphs from the Socialist Standard. It was, of course, the unselected passages which let him down and make him essentially no more than a useful frontman to be used by Kinnock and the rest in order to appropriate the hope of workers who should be using their energies destroying capitalism, not trying to run it. There was John Prescott who believes that Labour Party policy is fine and the world would be a much happier place if only the Labour Party had an extremely opportunist Deputy leader who comes from Hull and has no particular ideas about anything and is called John Prescott. Roy Hattersley. looking more than ever like a sad parody of himself, dribbled on about the importance of developing the Labour Party's ideas, by which he meant that more people should read his extremely dull book about why individuals would be more free under a "mixed economy".

There was even a two-second shot of a couple of Socialist Worker sellers standing outside a Labour Party meeting telling the Labourites how they have betrayed the workers once again. Of course. Socialist Worker urged workers to vote for these Labour betrayers in 1987, as they did in 1983, 1979, 1974 . . . The tragedy of the Panorama programme was that it showed the consequences which the Labour Party has brought on itself by 80 years of promising to reform away the inherent problems of the capitalist system without seeking to abolish the system itself. The simplicity of the socialist alternative — the need for a voice to be heard urging workers to abandon all illusions in reformism was not heard on the programme. The fact is that there are those seeking to change society and there are those seeking to change the seating arrangements in the Palace of Westminster and Kinnock's party has become so absorbed in the latter process that it no longer even occurs to them that whoever wins, the workers will lose under capitalism.

Your chance to be critics?

Right to Reply (C4. 6pm, 3 September) came from the Edinburgh TV Festival where four ’ordinary viewers" were invited to have their say about what's wrong with TV. In a half-hour programme, which included a five-minute introduction and several minutes of media controllers patting the "ordinaries" on the head, this big chance for the workers to have their say amounted to about five minutes each.

Of course, Channel Four chose who was to be invited to come along and criticise them and — surprise surprise — the Socialist Party member from Glasgow, who was told by Right to Reply that they would probably want him to come along, was eventually dropped from the programme. In the event, the four "ordinaries raised some pretty ordinary criticisms which, even if acted on. would not change the fundamentally undemocratic, pro-capitalist. life-distorting. minority-controlled nature of British TV output.

This column will continue to expose TVs crucial role as an agency for capitalist propaganda and manipulation of news, ideas and images. We shall praise them when, as occasionally happens, they tell the truth and offer some enlightening material for the consumption of our class. (In that respect, we can only be pleased to see the repeat showing of the excellent documentary, Fourteen Days in May and the follow-up documentary shown last month.) But we shall not desist from demonstrating that between the lines of most of what is not shown on TV is a poisonous intellectual diet which workers absorb at their peril.

Steve Coleman

Bird’s Eye View: Quayle, Reagan, Carlin, Debs, Sade, Bukowski and Sanders (2023)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the January 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

’I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy, but that could change’ – Dan Quayle

Andy Borowitz’s new book Profiles in Ignorance divides America’s recent history into three phases. In the first, “ridicule”, ignorant politicians do their best to pretend they are smart. This is the age of Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle. A fellow California politician said: “You could walk through Ronald Reagan’s deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet”. Of Quayle — who, as George HW Bush’s vice-president, was most famous for having told school children to spell “potato” with an “e” at the end — one professor observed: “When I looked into his eyes I could see to the back of his head.” In an effort to appear smart, Reagan once tried to quote America’s second president, John Adams, on facts being stubborn things. Instead, he said: “Facts are stupid things”….’ (Financial Times, 3 November).

The sad fact is, before these jokers were born let alone elected by our class, socialists were already asking ‘In the light of experience, why should you vote for either the Republican or Democratic parties?’ (Eugene Debs, Quotations from Speeches Made on the 1908 Campaign Trail, bit.ly/3zMOyj3).

Today, the vast majority of the working class blindly support capitalism. None of them can escape responsibility for the consequences. For the power wielded by the rulers of world capitalism is a reflection of the political ignorance of the working class everywhere. Some dictators are homegrown and elected. They include the likes of King & Queen Ortega, Turkey’s ever power-hungry president Erdoğan, Rodrigo Kill ’em All Duterte of the Philippines and his replacement Marcos Jnr. Other odious examples include Hitler, the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front, Meloni, Orbán and Trump. Former Democrat Debs was clear: ‘I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands’ (1908).

’It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it ’ – George Carlin

‘President Biden on Saturday said people holding signs calling him a socialist were idiots…’ (The Hill, 5 November, ).

Correct. Do his Republican opponents really believe that Joe understands and accepts that capitalism is based on the legalised exploitation of the wealth producers by those who own and control the means of wealth production and distribution, that the state only exists to protect the power and privilege of the exploiting class and that he urges workers to abolish the wages system and establish a classless, moneyless society? Is Joe nothing less than a social revolutionary who wants to destroy civilisation as we know it where war and want are endemic and billions are compelled to accept wage slavery? Of course not.

Actually, the Marquis de Sade, a contemporary of the Founding Fathers, who died over 200 years ago in an insane asylum, has better claim to the label socialist. He championed democracy, was opposed to every form of punishment (‘it is far simpler to hang men than to find out why we condemn them’), saw the class-divided nature of society and sided with ‘those who can only get a living by their labour and sweat.’ Indeed, Geoffrey Gorer in The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis De Sade (1964) points out that Sade stood in opposition to contemporary philosophers for both his ‘complete and continual denial of the right to property,’ and for viewing the struggle in late 18th century French society as being not between ‘the Crown, the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy or the clergy, or sectional interests of any of these against one another’, but rather all of these ‘more or less united against the proletariat.’ Gorer thus argued, ‘he can with some justice be called the first reasoned socialist.’

’Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors’ – Charles Bukowski

‘”at a time when half of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions of people earn starvation wages and struggle to put food on the table, the wealthy and powerful have never had it so good,’ wrote Bernie Sanders (Common Dreams, 4 November).

Fine sounding, but let us not be deceived. He went on in an email: ’What we are seeing all across the country and in every sector of our economy is that working people are standing up in the face of corporate greed, demanding fairer wages, better working conditions, and the dignity and respect on the job that they deserve’.

De Sade again: ‘you can only govern men by deceiving them; one must be hypocritical to deceive them; the enlightened man will never let himself be led, therefore it is necessary to deprive him of enlightenment to lead him as we want…’ Sanders’ occasional use of revolutionary rhetoric should not obscure the fact that he has voted with the Democrats 98 percent of the time. Let us put his qualified support for $18/hour into context:

1865: ‘Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system’ (Marx, Value, Price, and Profit).

1928: ‘Earning a wage is a prison occupation’ (Wages, DH Lawrence).

1965: Workers still ‘don’t realise that they can abolish the wages system’ (Socialist Standard).

2009: Current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour introduced.

2022: ‘Bernie Sanders Backs Historic $18 Minimum Wage’ (Common Dreams).

They Said It . . . (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

• I believe large wealth in private hands is only morally sustainable if it used to benefit people—The Duke of Westminster.
• We might execute a 12-year old. It depends on the case—US District Attorney John Holmes.
• The government deserves every sympathy in its present situation—Daily Telegraph leader on the sterling crisis. 
• We do not attribute emotions to Her Majesty—Buckingham Palace aide, on the Queen and the Fergie photos.
• The Quayle family believes in the power of prayer—Dan Quayle, to a Christian Coalition rally.
• A presidential campaign is not a democracy—Lyn Nofziger, Reagans political director, on the Bush campaign.
• I'm not an expert on the economy— Norman Lamont.

Between the Lines: Parsons, Baker & Quayle (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Culture and Chips

"The trouble with the working class today is that they're such peasants."

So began Tony Parsons's thirty-minute moan about lager louts, football stadiums and dogs called Tyson. (The Tattooed Jungle, C4, Monday, 5 October, 9.30pm). The same night, before watching this poor man's Matthew Arnold vent his frustration against the karaoke culture which he lacked the intelligence to connect with the cash-and-flog-it standards of capitalism, I watched Noel Edmonds present that hateful half-hour of working class self-abasement, Telly Addicts (BBC1, 7pm).

In this quiz for couch potatoes, families with scholarships in TV drivel compete to prove who can remember the most inanities, banalities and famous names. It is knowledge diluted to the purest spectacle: you don't need to have been anywhere or read anything to win Telly Addicts, but you need to have a fine-tuned memory for what imaginary one-dimensional TV stars have done, said or hummed as their theme tunes. The proles as peasants? A case could be made.

Tony Parsons makes the case very poorly. Parsons is the essential Essex Man. He romanticizes "the good old working class" who loved Churchill, went in for (k)nobbly knees contests in holiday camps and passed away the time scrubbing doorsteps and working diligently. Parsons bemoans the rise of the lager-lout patriots and the boneheads with tattoos who never read books. He is too stupid to realize that nationalism thrives upon the irrational callousness which he deplores; the two go together. And perhaps the lack of book reading is a result of half the libraries being shut and schools having only one book between five pupils.

In fact, in Britain today far more workers visit museums every year than go to football matches - and the vast majority of football spectators are neither drunk nor violent. Modern Britain is not filled with workers who never read: despite the overwhelming financial advantage of the film and video industry, it is still the case that millions of workers regularly read books, journals and newspapers which are not tabloids; only a minority of wage slaves read the Sun and get off on Rambo movies.  

Could it just be possible that, like the vicars whose bleak view of human life is derived from the nasty circles they mix in, Parsons's conception of the proletarian peasant is derived from spending too much time staring angrily into the mirror and seeing what Basildon has done to him? Like a black lackey supporting slavery, Parsons the Conservative called in Auberon Waugh (the voice of the modern slave owners) to add his sneers to Parsons's vitriol.

Waugh hates the working class for not knowing their place. Our place, in case anyone wants to know, is trembling in fear at the innate superiority of the inherited privilege of Waugh and his indolent, mind-stunted class of legalized thieves, but at least Waugh's hatred is against a class which is a real potential threat to him. (Stated plainly, a socialist majority will have no time to entertain the snobbery of old Auberon - we shall undoubtedly declare war on Waugh).

Tony Parsons's nostalgia for 1950s' conservatism is not only without taste or sense, but is the moronic cry of a slave for his chains to be tightened. And when he stated of workers that "If you treat them like animals they act like animals, if you treat them like humans they still act like animals" what is that but an inelegant chant of the stale old human nature myth? Danny Baker, who earns a fortune pretending to be a good old cockney lad, explained violence on the football terraces as coming from the same source that causes wars; healthy young hetero males like a good old punch-up, don't they John? Tony Parsons has reason to feel anguish, for when he looks to the future the prospect of a TV peasantry with Danny Boy Baker as the Pearly King and himself as the proley court jester-cum-philosopher is a nightmare worse than being in an Indian restaurant in Basildon on a Friday night after closing time.

THE POLITICIAN WHO WAS DEFEATED BY A FICTITIOUS CHARACTER

By the time that you read this you will know whether Dan Quayle has been re-elected as American Vice-President, White House dope and speller-in-chief of very short words. If he is defeated it will have no small relationship to the attack made on him on the networked US sit-com, Murphy Brown. To be precise, the first attack was made by Quayle when he made a speech appealing to the Christian loonies calling for imaginary TV characters to act more responsibly and set the nation a better moral example. The example he gave was Murphy Brown who decided to go ahead with a pregnancy even though she was not married. Quayle's attack backfired when the show's makers broadcast an episode in which the fictitious character, watched on TV the Quayle speech attacking her conduct and them proceeded to tear to pieces his moral self-righteousness.

The episode of the show drew the biggest audience on US TV since the episode of Dallas in which J.R. was shot. So now elections are won and lost in America by TV-style politicians debating with non-existent TV characters - and the invisible debaters win! All they need  to do now is to have a fictitious TV audience (paid extras to fill a vast Oprah Winfrey studio, perhaps?) and the whole election could be run on TV without real life having to intervene at all.

Steve Coleman