Poverty Anonymous (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

If it would be wrong to say that poverty is an old friend of the working class, it is certainly a companion from the womb onward.

It is an ignorant delusion to believe that poverty is abolished during booms and times of so-called full employment, and only returns from banishment when there is a slump and unemployment. All the conditions of hardship, misery and deprivation, which are currently receiving so much media coverage, are there all the time. A slump simply makes them more widespread and sharpens the degree of suffering.

Poverty is an inherent part of class society. Under capitalism, the means of wealth production are concentrated into the hands of a minority class, or their state machine (which comes to the same thing). Wealth, the goods and services of society, is produced for sale with a view to profit. The vast majority are employees. By definition, they are propertyless. They must sell their working abilities for wages in order to live. They spend their lives as appendages to the factories, offices, mines and machinery owned by those who employ them. They are hired and fired at the dictate of the world market and the profit margin. They are alienated from life in any meaningful sense of the word. The wealth they are able to obtain, either through wages (if employed) or so-called Social Security (if unemployed or sick) is generally enough to keep them in working order and maintain themselves and families between pay-days.

That there are many workers in “better” paid jobs, who think of themselves as middle-class, in no way changes the basic situation. In fact it often accentuates it.

Poverty leaves a terrible imprint upon all who suffer it. Not only in the physical struggle to get by, but even worse are its mutilating effects on the personality and the mind. There is nothing so brutally pathetic, as a worker with a job who counts his “prosperity” in terms of hard work and rails against other workers who live on social security, without working. Poverty of the mind can be seen in the acceptance by most workers of the perverse ideology of their capitalist masters. It is this which anchors them to capitalism so that the whole ridiculous set-up keeps going.

It is not uncommon to hear workers in this country argue that if places like India, and other starving areas in the world, were brought up to the standard of living in Western Europe “we” would have to make sacrifices. This reflects the capitalist ideology, in that it glibly looks to solutions within capitalism. Whilst it is true that poverty is a relative thing and that the degree of poverty among workers in most of western Europe is not so extreme as that of many people in India, this becomes a convenient argument in favour of workers here being content with their lot.

The real perspective in which to see the issue, is in terms of the technological capacity for world abundance, as against the inhuman, profit-motivated performance of capitalism with its vast wastefulness and destruction (no less so in India). Capitalism subjects modern technology to the strait-jacket of the market. Over-population is one of the absurd myths that help to make capitalism seem plausible. It is sheer humbug to talk of over-population in a system which destroys vast amounts of food each year, or simply does not produce it. As we write, the Daily Mail (20th October 1975) carries a story of nearly a quarter of a million tons of apples destined for destruction, because

 . . . the cost of shipping them to the hungry millions in Asia would be far more than their value.

Nowhere in the world are there any wealthy people starving. But even in the wealthiest countries there are poor people who go hungry.

John Pilger, the well-known and widely-travelled journalist, has seen poverty in many parts of the world. On 28th February 1975 the Daily Mirror carried a report he sent from Detroit. After a brief reference to the American Dream and Henry Ford’s promise to make the workers rich, the report gets down to the ugly realities of capitalism.

At the time of the report there were more than 8,000,000 Americans unemployed. In Detroit, the car industry was at a standstill with 26 per cent, (officially) unemployed. A young unemployed worker who was interviewed said:

  Guys who thought they had it made are now getting a taste of what the poor and the blacks have always had. I’ll say this; when the supplement runs out it won’t be only the blacks who’ll be picking up a brick to get some food.

Government food stamps are regarded as “the badge of poverty”. There are 37 million Americans who qualify. Pilger details a picture of abject poverty. He says:

  In the last three months since the lay-offs began in earnest, the Detroit Health Department has reported 150,000 cases of malnutrition, mostly among women and children.

And further:

  The same food which Washington sends to the starving of India is being sent to the heartland of American industrial wealth: and incredibly, people get this food with a medical prescription marked, in large type, MALNUTRITION.

Six months later, Pilger was in Liverpool and another report appeared in the Daily Mirror (14th August 1975). He interviewed a family who live in a three-year-old block of council “barracks”, where damp has destroyed lino, bedding and clothing. The rent for this unhealthy hole was £9.45 weekly. The breadwinner was unemployed. They were £50 in arrears of rent and had been threatened with eviction. The father, who is up at first light every day following up job ads, said: “Watching my kids pushing down bread and marge just to stop hunger pains is the greatest humiliation.” They were told by those champions of the needy, the so-called Social Security: “You should be more thrifty, you should be less wasteful.”

Pilger goes on to cite a report by the Child Poverty Action Group, showing that 5,000,000 people (in Britain) were spending as little as £1.60 per head each week on food, and this was diminishing. This was at a time when the average amount was £3.46. The penalty for two people being unemployed or sick in July 1974 was to be condemned by the Welfare-State to live on a pittance of 29 per cent. of average earnings. By November this year, it is expected to fall to 27 per cent.

Pilger slates Wilson and Healey, and calls them “jugglers and manipulators”. He says they “have lost all grasp of what is happening to millions of people in this country”. People who buy above-average amounts of baked beans and margarine and less than half the average amounts of butter, meat and fish. People who under a Labour government suffer hunger and among whose children rickets is returning.

Pilger, like the Daily Mirror and the media as a whole, comes to no conclusion. He lamely poses the question: "Where have all the radicals gone?” The “radicals” are those do-gooder reformists who built that supreme political irrelevance the Labour Party. Which, with the support of the Daily Mirror, is currently running British capitalism. The radicals, who were going to “tax the rich out of existence” a generation ago, seem resigned to the “compromise” of starving the poor out of existence. The Labour Party has long been stripped of any pretence of being other than a capitalist party.

Capitalism mocks all who try to tame it. The very morning the Daily Mirror announced 1,000,000 unemployed (25th July 1975) it carried a front page story about the Kleenex tycoon’s wife Roberta Kimberley, who filed a claim for expenses in her divorce case, which included £1,000 per month for food and £300 per month for flowers. Meanwhile, back on the other side of the class jungle, the nationalized (state-capitalist) gas and electricity authorities, with the aid of energy-man Benn, were making various ludicrous suggestions as to how the poor might be enabled to pay their ever-rising gas and electricity bills.

Determined as ever not to learn from history, the “Communist” party, IS, the WRP, the “bad boys” in the Labour party and the trade unions, are busily drumming up the schemes of the moment and proffering useless advice to the government on how to run capitalism — without crises. Poverty, despite all the schemes of the “left” and generations of reform legislation, is as virulent as ever. Socialists have never been deluded that it would be otherwise.

Harry Baldwin

Letters: Is this right needed? (1975)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is this right needed?

I have received various publicity pamphlets and a few copies of the Socialist Standard. I am, after reading them, very impressed with the ideals and motives for your work and for the fresh insight into social problems which you have. I am however dubious as to your views on religion. I agree that the church can be a voice for middle-and upper-class moderation and as such a threat to the cause of Socialism, but I feel that many people, like myself, do not believe everything they are told by the priests. As such I think that it is the Socialist Party which is wrong on this issue, and I feel that the workers should have the right to worship as they wish.

However, be that as it may, I am, except for that point, a confirmed Socialist and will, through discussion and debate spread the Principles and Object among the philosophical groups which I cultivate. And anyone willing to listen. Keep up the good work, the goal is ahead!

M. Shaw

Carlisle.

Reply

Our correspondent thinks that “it is the Socialist Party which is wrong on this issue” yet he does not offer us a reason why we are wrong. The whole idea of workers worshipping, or even needing “the right to worship”, shows considerable confusion about our position. As materialists (in the philosophical sense) we see the establishment of Socialism being brought about by a majority of men and women who understand and want it, and who realize that no-one else will bring it about for them. In short, they will be prepared to work for this end.

We argue that ideas of God and religion arose basically because men could not explain natural phenomena. They invented a “mirror image” of themselves and endowed it with supernatural powers. The fact is that all gods and religions have reflected the society from which they sprang.

Religious ideas today have become a hangover from the past and are not compatible with science or knowledge. Religion is not an individual thing, but a social phenomenon used by the ruling class in maintaining the status quo, and it should be recognized as such. It is inconceivable that an enlightened Socialist majority will have the slightest need for any kind of religious ideas. Once men understand the material basis of society, then the mysteries of religion start to unravel themselves and the need for a “God” is rendered unnecessary.

One point to note is that Socialists do not “worship” either God or anything else. All our ideas are subject to intense thought and debate which must be based on reality. We do not have “faith” in the sense that Socialism is something we accept without thinking about it, nor do we encourage this approach from members of the working class. Quite the contrary: it is because we think about it and debate that we are Socialists. When the majority of workers also examine the material conditions in the world and how they operate, Socialism will be introduced.

For further reading, see the October 1975 Socialist Standard: “Can Science Benefit Mankind?”

Editors

Misconduct at the wake

I suppose i should thank your correspondent for his remarks about the ILP in the October Socialist Standard (“Ring the Bell, Verger”). In comparison to the treatment meted out to miners’ leader Arthur Scargill, we come off rather lightly. On the other hand, the ILP is delivered a belated obituary notice I would like, however, to point out that in straining the metaphor about the ILP’s demise, R. B. may well have created confusion in readers’ minds as to what actually has happened to the ILP.

Put briefly, the Independent Labour Party underwent a fundamental transformation at its Easter Conference following upon several years of deliberation It emerged from conference as Independent Labour Publications, and in its new  rôle pledged its support for the Labour Party and for socialism. In July the ILP re-launched the Labour Leader, and we received greetings from a wide section of the labour movement welcoming these developments.

The ILP, unlike the SPGB perhaps, has come to recognize the futility of sectarianism and believes that if we really wish to change society then it is necessary to be with the working class, and not expect them to seek you out in the political wilderness. R. B. is wrong if he considers that the ILP sees that there are short cuts to socialism. But nor do we believe that by standing outside the political mainstream anything can be achieved.

Barry Winter

Secretary, Independent Labour Publications.

Reply

Your letter is a cameo of the equivocation and muddle- headedness which have always characterized the ILP. You say it “underwent a fundamental transformation”. Yes: it ceased to be a political party, which is what we were saying.

“Support for the Labour Party and for socialism” is simply incomprehensible and is not elucidated by saying it is necessary to be with the working class in “the political mainstream”. The majority of the working class, including those who vote for the Labour Party, do not understand or want Socialism at present. “The futility of sectarianism” apparently means that you believe in supporting organizations one is opposed to or that are going in the opposite direction; well, everyone to his own idea of futility.

We expect in the near future to publish an article reviewing in detail the lifetime and policies of the ILP. However, there is an embarras de richesses in replying to your rebuttal of our statement that it believed in short cuts to Socialism. Here are three or four to be going on with:

  The Labour Party at the elections of 1922 and 1923 put forward a programme of constructive Social Transformation, which would lay the foundations of the Socialist Commonwealth.

(Six Months of Labour Government, ILP, 1924)  

  Let us rather begin by demanding the fairer division of wealth: let us insist, first of all, on the elementary claim to a living wage, and then enforce the wide and economic changes by which alone it can be realised and secured. The fixing, whether by combined Trade Union action, or by a Royal Commission, of any adequate figure, would drive us at once into big political changes. The demand is a battering-ram levelled at the present system.

(H. N. Brailsford, Socialism for Today, ILP, 1925)  

  But the failure of capitalism can be made a great opportunity to apply socialist principles, and to begin the transition to socialism. That is the spirit in which the problem should be approached.

(Maxton, 1931; quoted in James Maxton — the Beloved Rebel by John McNair, 1955)  

    Immediate Programme:—1. Take the Profit out of War. 2. Introduce Social Equality. 3. Establish Social Ownership. 4. Grant Democracy to the Empire. 5. Make Britain Socialist.

(ILP Election Special, Bristol Central, January 1943)

Questions on principles

I have been reading some literature that contained the SPGB’s Declaration of Principles; and while I would never condemn socialism out of hand, there are several points which I would like to raise.

The first point you make is “. . . and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced”. The working men must actually produce the goods, but a means of organization is vitally essential. As soon as someone steps out of the  rôle of actually producing, you appear to put them in a different class. Do you deny that the job of organization is essential to the efficient production of goods, and that this job of organization needs a capable person with initiative? Therefore I disagree with the words “by whose labour alone”.

Second, the class struggle "between those who possess but do not produce, and those who produce but do not possess”. Are you trying to tell me that all those who work to produce a car, never own a car? Those who work on making ships that may carry bananas, they eat bananas surely. I don’t deny that there is a class struggle, but I challenge you on “those who produce but do not possess”.

The sixth principle declares that the armed forces of the nation “exist only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers”. In what way do the British armed forces act directly against the workers? A standing army is kept for the defence of the country as a whole, and in times of war the rich are not exempt from military service. It is a great exaggeration to say the armed forces only act against the interests of the working class.

If socialism means equality without discrimination and freedom then I, and many, would wish for it. But while I see what I consider to be inaccurate statements of principles by the Socialist Party I cannot give them my support.

Beverley Browne

Lancaster.

Reply

1. As you say, the job of organization is essential to the efficient production of goods, and "by whose labour alone” refers to all aspects of production and distribution and their organization.

2. The second clause in our Declaration of Principles proceeds from the first: “possess” refers to the means of living, not personal requirements. Under capitalism the means of production and distribution are class-owned. The great majority, having no share in that ownership, are forced to sell their labour-power to live: they do not possess but have to produce.

However, their ability to acquire motor-cars and bananas — and houses, clothing and hot dinners — is governed by that situation. The products are not theirs; the wealth they produce is owned by the class which owns the means of production. Members of the working class can have only what they can buy, and that is determined not by their ability to manage but by their wages (and whether they are in employment at all). Socialism means that there will be unrestricted free access by all to whatever is produced, because the means of production will be owned by all.

3. It is “the machinery of government, including the armed forces” that “exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers”. The state exists to give sanction to class ownership and protect it: by law, but ultimately by force. Against whom? The answer is, whoever assails or threatens the capitalist class in each country. The threat most commonly assumed is from another country’s capitalists pursuing their interests in the world’s markets and so threatening “ours” — and you may note that if conflict breaks out it is workers (who have no country) who are killed in huge numbers. However, armed force has frequently been used against strikes and civil unrest.

This is the reason why Socialists aim at control of the powers of government. Ideas of confrontation, advocated by many “militants”, cannot win. The need is to take possession of the state’s coercive machine so that it cannot be used to prevent Socialism.

4. Socialism does mean equality and freedom. It is the only condition on which they can be obtained.

"Stupid" Workers

Quite by chance, I obtained a copy of the SS and was impressed by the contents. An article by RAB on ‘Britain’s Political Crisis’ attracted my attention. I agree with the writer that the working class are politically ignorant. However, I can find no evidence to support the writers optimism concerning the prospects for Socialism.

I have travelled extensively for many years and my job has necessitated mixing with literally hundreds of people.

I have argued with friends and acquaintances in pubs, clubs and homes on the theft, by capitalists, on the working class. Needless to say I am regarded as a crank or lunatic. I was once sacked from a good job because I told my employer that what he said about the working class being dependent upon his class was utter bilge and that the reverse was the case.

At the age of 45 I have come to the conclusion that whilst your ideals are uplifting, your remedy is nonsense.

A friend of mine has suggested that the main reason for your failure to propagate your ideas has been one of communication. Whilst I am cognizant of this difficulty I do not see it as of paramount importance.

The ruling class of this and other countries will continue to manipulate the masses for ever. The form of society may change but never the substance. Whether the dominant class is English, Russian or American does not alter the picture.

You will never free the working class of its shackles simply because they are not aware of their chains. Intellectual freedom can always be extended to those without intellect.

The ruling class govern because they make the rules and can alter or adjust these rules as they see fit. That is why you will never capture Parliament for the working class. You may say that as I understand so may everybody. Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile. I can’t.

The sad fact is the working class can never be saved. The uncharitable thought occurs to me that perhaps it doesn’t deserve to be.

R. B. Butler

Reply

it is true that many keen runners will not achieve a four minute mile but since Roger Bannister it has become a commonplace in athletics. Workers can safely ignore athletics but they cannot hide from the effects of capitalism. It is capitalism itself which makes the Socialist revolution both necessary and possible.

Human society passed through various stages until about 200 years ago capitalism took over from feudalism as the dominant social system. There is no reason to suppose that human progress must now be at an end. On this point we refer you to an article in the August Socialist Standard—Ideas and Understanding— and also to a reply to another correspondent in the November Socialist Standard, headed—Class Consciousness.

On the question of communication, the spread of Socialist knowledge has been hindered by the widespread mis-use of the term Socialism. When it is used to describe everything from state-capitalism to Labour Government it is hardly surprising that workers have only attempted to solve their problems through reforms. For with the exception of a small minority they are unaware that there is an alternative to capitalism. We have every confidence in the ability of the working class to understand the simple and sound proposition that is Socialism. It is after all the working class which runs capitalism.

Our impatience is with those fellow workers who profess sympathy with our case but will not join us because they think others are not capable of doing the same. The point is do YOU understand the meaning of Socialism and are YOU prepared to work with us in The SPGB in order to accelerate the spread of this understanding.

Editors

The Socialist Future

Do you categorically abhor violence in any form in the accomplishment of Socialism? It seems to me that violent revolution has achieved nothing but misery for working people whenever it has occurred. If people want Socialism we have the machinery through the ballot. The absence of candidates is more than a slight problem but only indicates that enough people do not want Socialism yet.

Maybe one reason why people don’t want Socialism yet is that they don’t know what would happen. Your excellent article "The Social Revolution” in the September issue might have been written as a biography of me. But it stops at “only the details are missing”. I stop there too. I imagine the General Election at which Socialism is "returned”. Overnight the exploitation and inequalities of centuries stop. How? by what organization? System? by which people? Surely this is a fair question. What about the day after the Socialist election?

J

Greater Manchester

Reply

You have probably by now seen the November Fifty Years Ago extract on “Revolution and Violence”. The position stated there has been and is still the one held by us: “those who seek to replace capitalism by Socialism do not play the capitalist game of advocating violence”.

We are often asked why we do not supply details of economic and social organization in Socialism. From time to time articles have indicated lines on which affairs might be conducted. We can say there will be no money; everyone will have free access to everything produced; the problems of capitalism — crises, wars, inequality and poverty and their consequences — will be entirely absent. There are two important reasons why we cannot go further. The first is that we do not know. There are a few hundred of us now, and we are working for a society which will be wholly democratic; how then can we anticipate the ideas and preferences of millions in the future? Many of us have our own speculations, but (and this is the second reason) to try making a policy of them would do no-one any good. Haven’t you heard the old joke: “Come the Revolution, you’ll have strawberries and cream whether you like it or not”?

Editors

Various Questions

In a previous issue of the Socialist Standard you stated that people with religious belief are not admitted to membership of the Socialist Party. What is your attitude towards agnostics? I take the view that to deny the existence of God and metaphysical reality is as untenable as blind acceptance of God’s existence. Surely the only rational viewpoint is to realize that one cannot know the unknowable.

It appears that apart from Austria (and perhaps Sweden) your movement is confined to English-speaking areas of the world. Could you give an explanation of this, and also why a predominantly rural, Catholic country such as Austria has a Socialist party while highly industrialized urban countries such as Japan and West Germany do not?

If Socialism involves abolishing the law courts and the police force, how would Socialist society deal with crimes against the individual — murder, rape, g.b.h., etc.? What is your attitude towards drug addiction?

Has the Socialist Standard ever reviewed the following books: Karl Marx by E. H. Carr, 1934; The Marxists, by C. Wright Mills, 1963; The Next Step by Richard Acland, 1974?

Finally, how would you refute E. H. Carr’s allegation that modern economics (circa 1930) had disproved Marx’s theories, especially the labour theory of value?

R. Richardson

Bridport

Reply

1. You say that there is a kind of reality which is "unknowable”, and to recognize this is “the only rational viewpoint”. It isn’t: it is a religious viewpoint under another name. The difference between ourselves and agnostics as well as religionists is that between materialism and idealism. Idealism is the belief that ideas have an existence independent of natural and social courses. Materialism holds that they arise from the interplay of those causes. The choice between these positions is not “unknowable”.

2. Socialists are a minority in all countries at present. If our companion party in Austria were a large one, we should be concerned about there being none in the other countries you mention. As it is, all we can say is that the small number of Socialists there are organized, and there are individual Socialists in other non-English-speaking countries; the counting of heads is not significant.

3. See the article “Is Crime Hereditary?” in this issue. Drugs generally are administered or taken to numb pain or misery, and when the latter is social the effective answer is to change society. Insofar as some drugs are used for reputedly “expanding consciousness”, our concern is to wake up normal consciousness to its proper application.

4. A lengthy review of E. H. Carr’s Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism appeared in the Socialist Standard for July 1934. It pointed out numerous errors, misquotations and mistranslations, without reply from Carr. The other books you mention have not been reviewed by us.

5. Carr claimed that Marx’s theories had been disproved by E. Bohm-Bawerk in Karl Marx and the Close of his System, published in 1896 — without, apparently, being aware of the reply to Bohm-Bawerk by Rudolf Hilferding. There have been various publications of Hilferding’s reply; it was published with Bohm-Bawerk’s essay in a single volume by A. M. Kelley (New York), 1949. Theories allegedly superior to Marx’s have been applied, including that of Keynes, who called Capital "scientifically erroneous”; and look at the results.

Editors

#    #    #    #

A. Buick (Brussels): See page 225, in this issue. D. G. Featherston, D. Clark and others: We hope to publish replies to you in the next issue.

So They Say: Slow Learner No. 1 (1975)

The So They Say column from the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slow Learner No. 1

It is said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. The self-inflated Conservative No. 2, Sir Keith Joseph, seems to have taken the maxim at face value and decided that he for one need learn nothing at all. In a paper delivered to the Foundation for Business Responsibilities on 11th November, he urged “the need for a greater public understanding of the wealth-creating process”. However, there existed, he felt, an unsympathetic attitude in Britain towards the whole concept of profit making and this attitude had to be changed if the entrepreneurs were “to be able to get on with their function”.

It seems fortunate that this particular good shepherd has decided it necessary to guide us from the “swarm of mini-myths” which have, he thinks, brought on such an unsympathetic attitude. Few, apart from Keith Joseph himself, appears to have escaped their influence—for in the course of his remarks he managed to accuse almost everyone of this failing, including trade unions, (other) politicians, successive governments, companies, the bulk of the workers within the education system, and the population at large. But in his view, one man more than any other was really to blame—Karl Marx. Joseph accused him of being “one of the greatest myth-makers in history”, pointing in particular to the greatest myth which Marx is supposed to have propounded as being:

  That private capitalism is exploitation, but state capitalism is freedom.

Guardian, 12th November 75

Although we can only speculate on the extent of Marx’s works which Joseph must have read to draw such a conclusion, we do know that when he debated with the SPGB in April of this year he was informed by our speaker:

  The SPGB never supported nationalization, which is state capitalism. Private or state makes no difference. We are Marxist. Marx’s conception of Socialism is a society where you do not have a wages system. There would be no prices or profits.
(Reported in Socialist Standard, June 75)

Considering the clarity of this position, and the mental muddle of Sir Keith Joseph, it would have been reasonable to expect him to learn something over the past months.

Perhaps Not

The New York Times published an interview with Sir Keith on 10th November in which he stated that Britain was sliding into a “Socialist Slumdom”. He wanted to know where the “Great” had gone from Great Britain.

  Are we to be destroyed by ideas, mischievous, wrongheaded, debilitating yet seductive, because they are fashionable and promise so much on the cheap?

Quite, Sir Keith. How long will it be before you stop informing workers that the British Government is made up of Socialists, and that your own particular brand of capitalism will run in the interests of workers any better than the Labour Party variety?

Stop Press

The royal commission on the Press is examining a proposal that a state-run printing corporation he set up, and has called for the opinions of various interested parties before deciding on the issue. On 10th November, the Communist Party of Great Britain put on what they considered to be an exceptionally respectable mask. Their head of publicity, Mr. George Matthews, expressed the view that the facilities of such a corporation should be available to a “wide range of democratic organisations, particularly in the labour movement”—but specifically opposed their use by the National Front.

The CPGB felt that facilities should not be available to those who produced material which incited racial hatred. Perhaps recalling that its parent body the CPSU stands accused of exactly this practice, he added the following qualification:

  We think that there would have to be criteria. There would have to be, first of all, justification by the body concerned that it was in the public interest.

Guardian, 11th November 75.

Which immediately raises the point—what is in the public interest? Both the ruling class in Russia and in this country have an answer—the continuation of capitalism. Having accepted this general premise, all that is left for the anti-working class parties such as the Communist Party or the National Front is for them to squabble over whose discrimination is more desireable. The CPGB seems to feel that workers are incapable of recognizing the dangerous futility of National Front propaganda—so much so that they are to be "protected” from their views. There is a reason, that of obscuring the issue. Workers who adopt a class attitude and recognize the real issues facing them as a class, soon see through the dangerous futility of other reactionary political parties including the CPGB.

Slow Learner No. 2

On the 5th November while others let off Catherine wheels, rockets and roman candles, Denis Healey attempted to ignite something which looked like a damp squib, but which he assured us was in fact the Government’s plan for the rejuvenation of British Industry. The proposals aim vaguely for an extension of state control in industry and are the outcome of consultations between the government, the trade unions and the Confederation of British Industry. They are aimed, equally vaguely, at preventing a plunge in British living standards “to the level of the Mediterranean countries”. The measure of success which the “rejuvenation” will have can only be assessed later, but one thing is clear, the position of the majority of men and women will be unaltered. They will remain members of the working class, dependent on a wage or salary in order to live. That is a simple fact which capitalism teaches the working class. Mr. Healey said regarding current economic problems and the projected solutions:

  We learn slow, but we learn good.

Guardian, 6th November 75

Workers should not be dispirited at his apparent inability to learn anything at all. We live under a social system in which working-class poverty is the norm; the history of capitalism has always shown this to be so. If Mr. Healey says he learns slowly, we can believe him, but the sooner that workers put their own interests first by working for Socialism and leave the tardy scholar to catch up later, the sooner the social revolution will take place.

Alan D'Arcy

Africa's Black Hitlers (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 11 The Guardian printed a full-page article by one of their African “specialists” called John Hatch. The sub-heading is illuminating: “Tanzania is the model for a participatory democracy that is based on one political party but avoids dictatorship.”

So we can start with a forthright statement. The Guardian are lying hypocrites. Not only are they hypocrites in that they profess to be upholders of freedom and democracy which they clearly are not. They also are inverted racialists too because, despite all their constant preaching about the poor blacks in South Africa (and the blacks there are vilely treated, right enough), they know full well that they could not possibly defend the dictatorships in Tanzania and the other wretched countries described in the article if the victims were white Englishmen or Germans. What they are saying (whether the idiots know this or not) is that it is perfectly all right if a black dictator stamps his rule on an African country and fills his prisons with his political opponents. Real democracy is not for them. They are only ignorant blacks.

At the top of the page are pictures of smiling democratic dictators: “Nkrumah (his party failed him): Nyerere (no dictator); Kaunda (seeking social equality); Stevens (unity through agriculture).” Well, they have all got good reasons to smile except Nkrumah, (who is dead and was probably the worst of them all). They are sitting on the pile of suffering black humanity, and it must make them smile even more to know that the Hatches and the Guardians of the western press are so obliging in apologizing for their regimes and seeing that there are no Orwells around to demonstrate the Newspeak and Doublethink which can tell intelligent readers of the Guardian (all lively minds, they tell us) that dictatorship is democracy if it is black. And the dictators get their propaganda on the cheap. Just a spot of red-carpet treatment for all the “progressives” of the west will fill the leftist press with everything except the one thing that should infringe their much-vaunted principles: How many political prisoners are rotting in the gaols of black “independent” Africa? How long have they been there? Are they ever going to get out? In all the thousands of words in the Hatch page, not a word about these poor devils.

Hatch starts his article with a flourish by giving a quotation from a speech by Nyerere, the darling of them all. “I am now going to suggest that where there is one party, and that party is identified with the nation as a whole, the foundations of democracy are firmer than they can ever be where you have two or more parties . . .” Hatch gives his seal of approval to this: “This virile commendation of the one-party state was given by Nyerere in 1963.” This expert in virility realizes, of course, that the above is the same as spewed out by Hitler, Musso and Co, and goes on to admit that people might well ponder the resemblance between white fascist swine and the black fascist swine whom these lively minds must now worship. All he is doing is the political equivalent of “find the lady”: he is referring to Hitler & Co. to bemuse the lively minds into thinking that this objection to the African Hitlers had been dealt with. It just isn’t.

Why not allow the Africans a multi-party system, which is what we understand as one of the fundamentals of democracy in normal parlance as distinct from Guardianese? Hatch deals with that one too. He gives a number of reasons, all fraudulent to a degree, and too tedious to demolish in full detail here. Hatch opens on this one: “Tanzania offered unique advantages for the establishment of a healthy, democratic, one-party state”. No explanation how this can be healthy for those who wish to oppose the alleged non-dictatorship of Nyerere. Perhaps Hatch would like to spend a few weeks in one of his hero’s healthy gaols (what’s a few weeks among friends?). And what would happen to the health of any black worker who ventured to suggest that the wealth they produced should not be stolen by the Nyerere thugs on top of the heap? Another reason is that “Nyerere has always been a convinced democrat”. Now isn’t that just ducky? It must be so comforting for the political prisoners — and to the others outside who would like to say boo to a Hatch goose but daren’t because they know that a democratic gaol is waiting for them — to know that Nyerere calls himself a democrat. Marvellous what you can do with words. Another choice example comes immediately afterwards: “Moreover, Nyerere does not refer to the State, but only to the Nation.” So, the non-dictator uses the powers of oppression of the state — and what a state! — but it’s all right, O lively minds! He doesn’t call it a state. He calls it a nation. And that makes everyone feel better, doesn’t it? But the punch line is still to come: Nyerere tells us that his one-party “will be a mass party through which anyone who accepts TANU’s basic principles can participate in the process of government”. This is the sort of trash that presumably satisfies Hatch and The Guardian.

It is worth while mentioning that only a few days ago (i.e. long after the date of the Hatchpiece) the paper ran a leading article in which they actually stated that the regimes of Nyerere, Kaunda and, ye gods, Mobutu, were based on justice. Now the first two have been darlings of the left for years and it is as useless to expect the truth in relation to them as it was to get the truth about Stalin accepted by The Guardian and New Statesman in the ’thirties and ’forties. But the admission of Mobutu to the ranks is something new. I have no private information and the news I get is derived from The Guardian itself. So it would be in that very paper that I read a little story about Mobutu’s justice. A ceremony took place on the lawn of the Presidential palace in Zaire (it may then have still been called the Congo). Certain black politicians were brought before President Mobutu (who elected him President by the way? You must be joking) — trussed like chickens. As part of the act of justice, they were then beaten up before Mobutu’s very eyes. And after they had learned whatever lesson that part of the act was meant to convey, they were then strung up in public. Justice, Act III, I suppose. And our own dear old lady of Gray’s Inn Road, which would probably be voted the greatest newspaper in the world (if you want to get into university and they ask you what you read, tell the Prof. The Guardian and you’re halfway home), is happy with this justice. But, presumably, only for blacks; we couldn’t really have editors strung up at a Buckingham Palace garden party.

It is pertinent to mention an item of news reported in the same old Guardian date-lined Nairobi, June 12. This independent black state of Kenya is run by another darling of the left, who built up a great following of “progressives” like Lord Fenner Brockway (from a base in Manchester, of all places), Jomo Kenyatta. He too runs a one-party state, an empire of graft and corruption which makes Chicago seem like the New Jerusalem. But it seems from the report that within the governing circles there is the occasional silly fellow who objects to some of the things going on. One such MP, who had become rather a nuisance in his criticism, was simply murdered by Kenyatta’s police. Mau Mau, where are you now?

Where does all this point to? The usual way. If the workers of the world, black, white and any other colour, want a world worth living in, it is there for the taking. But they must form their own opinions about the system they live under; and the system they can have when they have thought about it and want it. Meanwhile, they must learn to see the grotesque fraud which is perpetrated at their expense by the ruling classes of all countries and their jackals in the press. Till they can see that, batten down all Hatches.

L. E. Weidberg

Surplus and Exports: An explanation (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is said that accidents will happen in the best-regulated homes; and it can occasionally happen that a writer and the Editorial Committee have both sat up too late and a mis-statement appears in the Socialist Standard.

In the October issue, in the article “The Crisis: Wilson’s Lame Explanation”, the following appeared (page 184, para. 3):

  It follows therefore that the working class as a whole are not paid enough to buy back the goods they have produced. The “export drives” typical of all industrialized countries are evidence of this need to sell abroad the surplus which workers in the country of origin cannot afford to purchase . . . But, like taking in each other’s washing, it is a futile endeavour when all countries are trying to do the same thing.

This, we are afraid, is thoroughly incorrect. It resembles a theory held at the beginning of this century, that capitalism would eventually collapse because all countries had unsaleable surpluses on their hands. (This is the economic argument of Jack London’s The Iron Heel, published in 1907.) The SPGB never subscribed to that theory, and we hasten now to put matters straight.

It is true that the workers cannot buy back all they produce, but this does not explain economic crises; if it did, there would be no such thing as a boom, and crisis would be continuous. The surplus is used largely by the capitalists themselves for reinvestment in industry, when conditions are favourable.
When (as now) the conditions are unfavourable, workers are laid off — not because the surplus is an embarrassment but because goods produced cannot be sold.

As the article said, British manufacturers have to compete in foreign markets. However, this reflects not the need to dispose of a surplus but the normal working of capitalism in which all production takes place for sale at a profit: indeed, under-cutting of prices is sometimes achieved by investment in new machinery. The reason why trade often has the anomalous appearance of “taking in each other’s washing” is that commodities are produced more cheaply in some countries than in others. In a period of trade depression this is observed and commented on — e.g. that foreign cars are widely sold in Britain — but it goes on all the time.

50 Years Ago: Why Socialists Oppose Leadership (1975)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a group of people who propagate the view that the working class are an ignorant lot, incapable of deciding what form of society is best for them, or, in the event of a new form of society coming into existence, running such a society in a proper businesslike manner. This group of people proclaim that it is necessary for a few intellectuals to apply their cultured brains to social problems, tell the workers what must be done, prepare the framework of a new society, and occupy all the important posts under any new arrangement of social affairs. To such people leadership is an essential idea, as democracy is supposed to be incapable of managing its own affairs.

#    #    #    #

The weakness of the intellectuals’ position is apparent once we look at the matter with a little attention. Let us take the case of a man we are entrusting with the carrying out of certain work. How can we judge of the capabilities of such a man unless we ourselves have a fair knowledge of the work he is to do and the results he is to achieve?

Knowledge is the only safeguard for the workers against trickery and false advocates, and it is also the only doorway through which society can pass to a society based upon common ownership. If the mass of those who seek a new arrangement of social affairs do not possess knowledge of what they want and how it is to be attained, then a new society can only be a new chaos, be the leaders of the people as cultured as they may.

(From an unsigned editorial in the Socialist Standard, December 1925.)

End of Report (1975)

A Short Story from the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Ordinaire aged 31, was a news reporter on the Averageton Daily Post, an important provincial newspaper. On July 10th he was in the office by 8 a.m as usual expecting to be sent off to cover a nearby agricultural show. But when he put his head round the assistant editor’s door, he was told that he would not be going. Instead there was a long report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary for the year 1974 (House of Commons Paper 406) waiting on his desk. The editor wanted his piece on it by 3 p.m. sharp.

John went to his desk and picked up the weighty report with a certain feeling of regret. He liked the agricultural show, and was interested in the new tractors, machines etc. that were always on display. Still, he prided himself on being a professional journalist, (he hoped he would make it to Fleet Street one day) and started to wade through the report of Sir John Hill.

The paper had a regular crime feature page, and in general spent quite a lot of space on big crime, and the successes of the police force. The editor was a firm believer in the values of law and order (some years ago he had spent 6 months writing leaders for The Times) and John knew he would have to slant his report to show the good work the police were doing. He began to look for the statistics to back up the editor’s view that a good police force, decent citizens and a strong education system were the best means to deal with crime.

Instead, he found the following. There had been a record rise in crime of 21 per cent. over the year. Senseless vandalism had also increased and the report suggested that the figures given (cases actually referred to the police) were only the tip of the iceberg. The proportion of crimes actually “cleared up” was reduced to a mere 44%. Then the report also spoke of the increase in drug addiction, the growing menace of politically motivated terrorism, and the thousands of vehicles registered as stolen (120,000 of them on the computer record).

He decided to go into the library, and see what The Times had to say about the report, hoping that they would find some ray of sunshine he could use. He was disappointed. On the 10th July The Times called the report “a gloomy document”. Later it said it is not possible to look forward to the year when the “apparently inexorable increase in the number of crimes is permanently restrained”. The Times considered the sharp rise in the number of juvenile crimes as the most serious aspect of the whole review, and suggested that this “is a gloomy augury of the level of crimes in the future”.

John went back to his desk, and tapped out his report. He referred to the promises to deal with the growing crime rate that the local police chief had made when appointed. He also mentioned that American presidents always included in their programmes the law and order ticket and that The Times had suggested the increasing crime rate in America threatened their whole social fabric. But he couldn’t find anything cheerful to say. He ended his report in this way: “It seems strange that after all the progress that has been made in the twentieth century, the startling leaps in productive possibilities, and the technological wizardry that was available, society could find itself beset by muggings, shoplifting, petty theft, burglary and car thieves. Surely man could arrange a better way of organizing society than having a substantial proportion reduced to finding increasingly ingenious ways to beat it, and another section (police, judges, prison wardens etc.) devising more ingenious ways to beat them.

The copy was on the editor’s desk at five to three. At 5 o’clock John was in the car on his way home. He switched on the news. The items concerned the hotting up of the middle east war, Kissinger promising to bring peace, a local strike, rising unemployment, the fighting in Angola, and the Test Match. He got home, kissed his wife, and went to see his 9-month old son, sleeping quietly. “Couldn’t we leave him a better world?” he thought.

The next morning he got to the office and idly glanced at his article. The editor had cut his last two sentences.

Ronnie Warrington

Facing the Facts in Russia (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Facing the Facts in Russia 
There's an old saying that “the daughter of Time is Truth”. In Russia at last we have indications that people are beginning to discover the truth that capitalism exists in that country as much as in the rest of the world.

Granted it’s a rather different form of capitalism, without Stock Exchanges. State capitalism is the term often used for the type of capitalism existing in Russia and in most other “developing nations”. In the Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist we have recorded in recent years several instances of Russian dissenters whose conclusion is that Russia is a state-capitalist country.

"Our system is state capitalism . . ."
Two underground leaflets from Moscow were reproduced in the Socialist Standard in January and March 1973.

Both said that not Socialism but state capitalism was the system in Russia (though the solution was said to be the establishment of a “social democratic” party). The present ruling class in Russia maintains dictatorial control of the State apparatus and thus the struggle for democratic “rights” is bound to be the form which protests take. What should be understood is that the appearance of a reform or opposition party, failing to have Socialism as its objective, would only further the interests of some new or rising capitalist group.

We are hardly surprised to find that Solzhenitsyn, the darling of the Liberal establishment, takes the Kremlin line (Western Socialist, No. 5, 1974). That is to say, he takes the line that Russia is a socialist country. An awful abuse of what Socialism really means. By labelling Russia’s tyrants “socialists”, he joins the Tories and their like who see the whole world as a Wild-West all-action movie, goodies versus baddies, with “socialism” cast in the role of villain.

After Solzhenitsyn’s superficial prejudice, it is refreshing to read Sakharov’s view (Time, Aug. 4, ’75). Sakharov is active as a champion of the civil rights movement and a liberal, not a revolutionary. He describes himself as “a confirmed evolutionist and a reformist”, from which we may infer that he sees the struggle for Socialism as not important at the present time. In the meantime there are lots of things to put right, like putting Sellotape on the ceiling when the problem is caused by slates falling off the roof and letting the weather in.

But he does start out with something which is worth noting:

 Contemporary Soviet society is based on state capitalism, a total party-government monopoly over economy, culture, ideology and the other basic spheres of life. In periods of crisis, such a system engenders rule by terror; in quieter periods, it engenders the dominance of bungling bureaucracy, mediocrity, apathy and dissipation among the people, and the permanent militarization of our economy . . . Much of our financial resources provide a high standard of living for the privileged strata of society that Djilas called the “new class”. Every day radio loudspeakers tell the ordinary Soviet citizen that he is the master of his country, but he knows perfectly well that the real masters are “the bosses” who, morning and evening, are whisked along quiet, closed-off streets in their armoured limousines.

The Dog-Meat Society
For decades now Socialists have been declaring that Russia is a capitalist (or “state”-capitalist) country, with wage-workers exploited just as much as those in this country. Indeed, if the evidence of my own eyes is anything to go by, the Russian workers are worse off than those here. A view which Sakharov appears to share:

  You (in the West) do not have your backs to the wall; even if you reduced your standard of living to one-fifth of what it is, you would still be better off than people in the world’s wealthiest socialist country. Workers in the Soviet Union have the right neither to strike nor to appeal to higher authorities.
  The average apartment building in this country resembles a low-income housing project in America, though ours has fewer conveniences and is more crowded. In most parts of the country one has to stand in line for hours to get meat, and even then it is sometimes not fit for a dog.

I seem to have heard that bit about dog-meat somewhere else. A Roman Catholic Community Services worker in Los Angeles was quoted in the Western Socialist (No. 3, 1975) as saying: “Our people have so little, they don’t have the money to buy dog-food. Dog-food would be a luxury.”

So the dictators of the Kremlin cause workers to queue for offal, and the world’s wealthiest and best- fed state, a so-called democracy, reduces some of its workers to the degraded and half-starved state where even dog-food would be a luxury. And they actually expect these same workers to rise up patriotically to defend their way of life. To fight a war to defend dog-meat — ye gods!

At last we have evidence lasting over a period of years that some people in Russia have begun to realize that they are not in a socialist society, only in a state capitalist one, and at the same time they are realizing increasingly the very real drawbacks to state capitalism. Some of these are mentioned by Sakharov, such as corruption and inefficiency among managers, indifference, apathy and appalling conditions for workers, and wasteful military expenditure. He did not mention, although others have done so, the lack of flexibility in responding to market demands.

The Need for Change
Increasingly the Russian government has had to allow foreign trade to take a key rôle in the economy. Russia exports and imports on a very large scale now, and not only wheat. The result is that the Russian economy must become adapted to the ups and downs of world trade cycles. The Iron Curtain is in tatters: détente has taken over.

With economic change there will have to be political change. Mostly the dissenters see this in terms of progressing forward to private enterprise capitalism: after all, if Western free enterprise is so good at turning out cars, freezers and the tellypop, it can’t be as bad as Lenin thought, can it? There have been indications and rumours of demands for a multi-party system, for more press freedom, the right to strike, shorter hours, the right to demonstrate, and many other civil rights, all of which indicate the development of resentment against the regime.

At present most of the demands seem to be for reform as an end in itself. In time we are confident that Socialist understanding will develop, as it has done elsewhere. Why are we so confident, you ask? After all, the Socialist movement even in Britain and America is still very small and many workers reject our message.

Our answer is that socialist understanding derives from the experienced, known facts of capitalist life; from the fact that you are living in that certain sort of society where everything you make belongs to “them”, where all the housing is controlled by “them”, where food and all other necessities can only be bought from “them”, where you struggle to hold down your jobs — tedious, mindless, monotonous, maddening, boring chores, but at least still receive your meal-tickets — where you see the youngsters drift to the cities — who wants to hoe turnips on Cold Comfort Kolkhoz anyway?, where you queue wearily while you know that “they” live comfortably and what’s more are regarded with awe and respect, or perhaps fear, by all their subordinates.

“They” are the surplus-value eaters. Although they have no legal title to ownership of factories, farms or mines, nevertheless they control everything produced by you and your like.

Worm's Eye View

For the worker the state-capitalist system works very like private-enterprise capitalism. The working class are “free”: we own no land and no tools, so we are free to sell our labour-power or put it another way, we absolutely have to sell our labour-power if we want to go on living. Those who control the factories also control what we produce while working at the boss-class’s machinery with the boss-class’s raw materials. In modern conditions, with the high productivity achieved by having large numbers of people working together and by the use of power-driven machinery, we are capable of producing the value of our pay-packets many times over in the course of the week. The difference between what we produce and what we get paid (surplus-value) is used by the boss-class for their own purposes — more capital, profits including puffed-up directors’ salaries, distribution costs including advertizing and market research, limousines, law ’n' order and defence estimates, to name but a few

This system operates all over the world. It is nothing but exploitation. The quest for profits has turned the world into such a dreadful place that the very word civilization stinks. “Where there’s muck there’s brass” can be turned on its head to make better sense: "where there’s brass there’s muck”. In other words, profits pollute. We say this system only lasts because most people are contented with it and continue to go on voting for the likes of “them” to run our lives.

We say democracy can be used in our interests, to get rid of the whole profits and prices system, West or East. We say, the dog-meat system stinks and the only way out is the Socialist way.

Charmian Skelton

The International Socialists and Parliamentary Action (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “International Socialists” and their journal Socialist Worker declare that “There is . . . no parliamentary road to Socialism”. (See “What We Stand For” in any issue of Socialist Worker.) They use several different arguments to support their position. One of them was put in an article by Paul Foot published in The Times of 14th August 1975.

Mr. Foot’s theme was that “the parliamentary road to Socialism has turned into another blind alley”. To support this argument all that he had to do was to give us his example of a socialist working class having tried to use the parliamentary road to achieve Socialism and having failed. But Mr. Foot and I.S. do not know of any such example. What he did give was the British Labour Government, that is to say a party which rejects Socialism and tries to run capitalism. In his typically confused way Mr. Foot is half aware of this, because his description of Labour ministers and their supporters is that they are people “who have imagined that capitalism could be reformed by the periodical election of Labour governments”. But what has reforming capitalism got to do with Socialism?

In another muddled passage Mr. Foot wrote that these are dreadful times “for socialists who put their trust in Labour governments”; but Socialists did not and do not put their trust in Labour governments. It isn’t Socialists who have been led “down another blind alley” but the unfortunate workers who are bamboozled by Foot and is into voting for the Labour Party at each General Election.

But I.S. has another case against the parliamentary road. It was set out in Socialist Worker (21st July 1973) in an attack on another organization which, like I.S., urges the workers to vote for the Labour Party — the Communist Party of Great Britain. There it was argued that the working class cannot gain control through parliamentary elections because the working class is only a minority.

A majority of workers may want a complete transformation of society . . . but in parliamentary elections, with the middle class and ruling class voting against them, they would lose.

This is of course a nonsensical statement. The working class consists of all who get their living by selling their mental and physical energies, their labour-power, for a wage or salary. With dependents and working-class pensioners they constitute at least 85 per cent. (34 million) out of the 40 million electors on the parliamentary register; and on the same percentage basis they constituted about 25 million out of the 29 million who used their votes at the last General Election. (The remaining 4 million voters consisted of capitalists, the “self-employed”, and their dependents.)

So how did 4 million outvote 25 million? Even if we assumed that all of the 11½  million electors who voted Labour were working-class (and that is certainly not true) it would mean that more working-class voters (over 13 million) voted Tory, or Liberal or for the Welsh, Scottish and Irish Nationalist parties, than voted for the Labour Party. (To avoid possible misunderstanding, all of these 29 million supported private capitalism or state capitalism.)

Ruling out the possibility that I.S. cannot count, the basis for their peculiar conclusion appears to be the probability that for them “working-class” means only those workers actually producing goods, to the exclusion of the big majority of workers not so employed. (On this basis of course Mr. Foot and many of the members of I.S. would not be working-class.)

However, what is of most importance is the conclusion that follows from the I.S. view of “working class”. It is that is I.S. consciously basing its case on minority action, the forcible imposition of the will of the minority on the majority. This is carried a stage further in the I.S. declaration “What We Stand For”, where it is stated that the achievement of Socialism is to be by the organization in a revolutionary socialist party of “the most militant sections of the working class” — in other words, a minority of a minority. It is significant that “What We Stand For” never once uses the words “democracy” or “democratic”.

I.S. has in fact largely taken over from the Communist Party what was that party’s position half a century ago. Like the Communist Party then and now, the objective of I.S. is not Socialism but a variety of state capitalism. It differs from traditional Labour Party ideas on state capitalism, the nationalized boards, in that I.S. lays emphasis on workers’ councils — capitalism run by shop stewards.

Edgar Hardcastle

Karl Marx and Iceland (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to radio and press reports, a remarkable development has occurred in Scandinavia. Hot water from the springs in Iceland is being shipped to Sweden and used to heat buildings and wash up in Sweden.

The water is drawn off at around boiling point and can be maintained at about 70 degrees Centigrade in insulated ships. What a splendid application of the Marxian labour theory of value. Like virgin land or wild fruit, hot water in Iceland has no exchange-value until human labour is applied to it. It is like the Sahara, valueless until then: when it becomes a commodity, with a price, its value determined by the amount of socially necessary labour-time required to deliver it to the consumers.

Italy 1920 (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

For nearly a month in September 1920 over 400,000 Italian metalworkers occupied the factories, particularly in the industrial centres of the north, Turin, Milan and Genoa.

Like many other events in working-class history this has become something of a myth, and generations of left-wingers have been convinced that this was a “revolutionary situation” in which the workers were on the brink of overthrowing capitalism but were “betrayed” by their leaders. An examination of the facts shows that this certainly was not the case.

In August 1920 the Italian metalworkers union (FIOM), faced with a rising cost of living, put in a claim for a wage increase. The employers, badly hit by the slackened demand for iron and steel caused by the end of the war, categorically refused. The union then declared a go-slow. The employers responded with a lock-out and the workers, backed by the union, occupied the factories.

There they stayed for three weeks until the government and others brought pressure to bear on the employers to give in. The workers got their wage increase (plus a vague and useless promise of “union control”) and voted at a conference—later confirmed in a referendum—to resume normal working.

In other words, this was a simple—and successful— trade-union action aimed at getting a wage increase. It was not an attempt to overthrow capitalism. If it had been, then the government would not have maintained the neutrality it did and certainly would not have brought pressure on the employers to settle.

The fact that the government did not intervene or behalf of the employers is to be explained by a conflict of sectional interests within the Italian capitalist class. Before the war, Italy had been ruled by politicians representing the bourgeoisie in the strict sense of the term: the “middle class” (merchants, small traders, etc.) of the towns. They tended to be liberal and anti-clerical in their politics, and were led on the political field by Giovanni Giolitti.

Around the turn of the century, however, in the northern cities of Turin, Milan and Genoa a more modern type of capitalist appeared: the big industrialists, who tended to favour expansionist nationalism This conflict came to a head over the attitude Italy should adopt during the first world war. The traditional bourgeoisie favoured keeping out, and even tended to be pro the Central Powers, Germany and Austro-Hungary. Indeed their bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, was partly financed by German capital. Their view did not prevail. Italy entered the war on the British and French side, and Giolitti resigned as prime minister. During the war the northern industrialists made huge profits which they used to try to take over the Banca Commerciale. The attempt failed but it showed that the conflict existed.

It was Giolitti who was again prime minister in September 1920, and it is because the interests of the section of the Italian capitalist class he represented were not the same as those of the northern engineering employers and steel magnates, that the State was neutral during the factory occupation. It was even alleged that the Banca Commerciale helped to finance the metalworkers in this struggle and had threatened to withdraw credit to the employers if they didn’t submit to the union’s conditions.

All this was known at the time. For instance, the article “Socialism and the Fascisti” in the Socialist Standard for April 1923 dealt with the subject and quoted from other sources, the Nation (New York) and the Western Clarion (Vancouver), and these supported the conclusion that the Italian metalworkers won their economic struggle because of a conflict of interests within the Italian capitalist class.

So there was no revolutionary situation. Of course there was such loud and empty talk of “revolution” and the executive of the reformist Italian Socialist Party (PSI) even met to consider whether or not to launch the revolution (as if it were up to them!) but finally decided, under pressure from its trade-union wing (CGL), not to.

This decision was attacked by various leftists of the day as a “sell-out”, but the evidence shows that it was the only sane thing to do. Any attempt by the workers to transform the economic struggle into an insurrection, even if they had wanted to, would have been easily crushed. After all, workers armed mainly with revolvers, muskets and pikes (yes, pikes!) could stand no chance against the forces of the State.

Indeed when the CGL met to consider the possibility of armed insurrection they were told by the Turin delegation that

Fiat-Centro which seems to be one of the best supplied (with arms) has only 5,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition . . .

(Quoted in The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920 by Paolo Spriano, page 86).

and although Antonio Gramsci, later leader of the Italian Communist Party, repeatedly denounced the leaders of the PSI and CGL he admitted privately that

. . . with a working class which mostly saw everything rosy and loved bands and ballads more than sacrifice, a counter-revolution would have inexorably swept us away. (Spriano, page 134.)

Mere working-class discontent or mass action does not constitute a revolutionary situation. The social and political situation will only become revolutionary when the immense majority of the working class, having come to understand and want Socialism, become revolutionary-minded. That was not the case in Italy in 1920 and unfortunately has never yet been the case anywhere else.

Vic Vanni

Is Crime Hereditary? (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nearest thing in contemporary newspapers to Beachcomber’s “Dr. Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht” is Professor Eysenck. Dr. Strabismus produced useless masterpieces such as artificial wigs and dummy glass eyes; Professor Eysenck produces statistics which are supposed to have Profound Implications. The difference is that Dr. Strabismus was a parody created by a well-known humorist. Eysenck, unfortunately, is real and is therefore taken seriously.

During October Eysenck made two announcements of statistical discoveries. The first, and farther-reaching, one was the existence of hereditary criminal tendencies. The evidence presented was from a number of adopted children. Those whose natural parents had criminal records showed a higher propensity for getting in trouble themselves, even though they had been brought up in different surroundings by law-abiding foster-parents: heredity triumphing over environment. The second announcement, made in a television discussion, was that Eysenck had found statistics to support the claims of astrology. What was not explained was whether the stars cancel out heredity, and if the impulse from Aquarius make up for an embezzling father.

The danger in this kind of thing is that Eysenck is a “popular” investigator, in both senses of the word. He is responsible for superficially instructive books such as Know Your Own IQ and Know Your Own Personality, designed for mass readership; and his conclusions tend to affirm common prejudices and therefore to be readily received and referred to as authoritative. The man in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists who said “Go in any chemists’ shop and ask the bloke” is now likely to say “Professor Eysenck says it’s true”. There are large numbers of people, who through ignorance, believe that some are born good and some are born bad; they are approximately the same people who believe, for the same reason, that black men are inferior to white ones; and Eysenck enables them to say “Told you so”.

Circumstances and Cases

In dealing with crime the fundamental question is not the make-up of the individual but the make-up of society. What is crime? When a law is passed, those who offend against it are criminals; when it is annulled, a criminal section becomes a law-abiding one. During the last war a number of laws were enacted and very strictly enforced. A person found with food he had not given rationing coupons for, or who left his job without permission, was liable to a heavy fine or imprisonment. The fact that the war is now thirty years distant makes that seem rather astonishing, but many people were convicted for those breaches of the law. At other times and places the holding of wrong political or religious opinions has been a crime.

An up-to-date example, shown in various newspapers on 2nd November, is that of a couple convicted for incest. The case was followed by correspondence and discussion, much of it remarking that the existing law is archaic; one newspaper, the Sunday People, suggested that the couple appeal against the order for them to separate and thereby make a test case In the recent past the offence was regarded as intolerable, and they would without doubt have been given heavy sentences. If, as seems feasible, a change in the law is made in the not-distant future, it will mean that a class of criminals will automatically become respectable citizens. What then becomes of the hereditary propensity to that crime?

The question can be taken further. The most widespread of all crimes is stealing, in one form or another: robbery, embezzlement, fraud. All of them are obviously connected with the desire for money or what money is seen as providing in possessions, comfort and display. It is not suggested by Eysenck or anyone else that the desire for these things is a reprehensible inborn tendency. On the contrary, it is usually praised as “ambition”; and so far from being hereditary, it is taught as an essential to personal and social well-being — children are urged to be “first” and “top”, and shown examples of people who have succeeded. The criminal’s motive is learned from society; his error is choosing the wrong way.

No doubt it would be said that this is the point, that there is a section who persistently make that choice in the face of prohibitions. One important answer is that a high percentage of crime is due to nothing of the kind, as the court reports in local newspapers show: people steal when they are in need or in debt. But underlying this is the property foundation of the society we live in. The law is a social apparatus for its preservation. Its basic concern is protection of the class ownership of the means of production and distribution, and of necessity the products too; so that in practice it centres on property at all levels. If, as Socialists advocate, private ownership were abolished and there were free access to all the wealth of society, the effect would be the same as the limited one now produced by the dropping of an irrelevant law. That class of crime — the largest one — would immediately disappear. Will Professor Eysenck communicate this to the genes of adopted children?

Class and Heredity

Prejudices are ideas, of a sort. The saloon-bar oracles who find Eysenck’s proposition to their taste are voicing the kind of idea the ruling class likes. It means that the capitalist system is not to be blamed for a social problem: how can it be, when the cause of crime is individually organic?

The same gift to capitalist thought was made at the beginning of this century by Cesare Lombroso. He held that crime arose from physical and mental anomalies, due to degeneration or heredity or even reversion to a primitive evolutionary stage; criminals could be identified by definite physical characteristics. Lombroso’s concern in fact was reform, to obtain more humane treatment for criminals by destroying the supposition that they were responsible for their acts or could be cured by punishment. His theory was accepted, however, for its usefulness in substituting hereditary and psychological causes for social ones.

If the records of forebears govern people’s conduct, few of us would escape the taints Eysenck claims to discern. The genealogical fact is that over only three or four centuries we are descended from a relatively small number of ancestors. Because of the high rate of early death in the past, a single survivor in the seventeenth century can and does stand as the progenitor of several hundreds in this century. It is fairly well known that most people can, if they like, trace some “blue blood’’ in their ancestry; for the same reason, and probably with less difficulty, there are less honorific elements to be found by all. It can also be added that most nations have in their fairly recent history some huge act of barbarism in which large numbers of the population took part. Do genes then pass a moral judgement to avoid the repetition of such behaviour? Such a conclusion being obviously silly, the advocates of the “hereditary evil” idea have no choice but to say it was the need or the standards of the time, i.e. a social phenomenon. Quite right; but they should then explain why this explanation is abandoned over crime.

One other aspect which should be mentioned is that material presented in a statistical form is often taken to be undeniable fact. It should be appreciated that Eysenck’s findings are of “statistical relationships”: that is, sets of figures which are pointed out to be similar and therefore possibly linked as cause and effect. These are — as he admitted in the discussion of astrology — anything but conclusive and often thoroughly misleading. A light-hearted example given some years ago concerned the observation that the audiences at strip clubs had a high proportion of bald-headed men; a “statistical relationship” would suggest that watching such performances caused baldness, despite other and likelier explanations.

There is no question of anything having been proved; the area for proof is non-existent. The fault, dear Eysenck, is not in our stars or our heredity but in our social system. The point is to change it.

Robert Barltrop