"Nothing new" (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wealthy charity worker Elisabeth Symonds agrees with Prime Minister Bob Hawke that Australia is a two-class society.

Mrs Symonds, who lives in a multi-million dollar eastern suburbs home, said the rich had now established themselves on their own plateau.

“I don’t see how it can be otherwise”, she said.

“I don’t think Australia is unique. Anywhere you can think of in the world, it is like this.”

Her comments were echoed by Salvation Army spokesman, Major Neville Brooks.

“There have been two classes for a long, long time”, he said.

“It is a natural outcome of a democratic society to have this polarisation of wealth.

“The only thing is there are a lot more people struggling to survive.”

Major Brooks called for more relief for the “strugglers”, saying Australia had never had so many poor people since the Depression.

“Our experience is homelessness is increasing because of the rise in the cost of dirt and the battle with interest rates”, he said

Daily Mirror, Sydney, 20 March 1989

Sting in the Tail: Safety Last (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Safety Last

James Tyne, Director General of the British Safety Council since 1968 has no illusions about how the Health and Safety at Work Act operates in practice.

Writing in The Independent (7.10.89) under the heading "Safety sacrificed at the altar of profit", he states:

 Regrettably, too many inadequately trained, ignorant and uncaring managers in too many workplaces believe they can beat the cost of unsafe practices and systems and take a chance on the consequences. With a visit from a Government safety inspector likely only once in five years, the safety/cost conflict is all too easily sacrificing safety to the god of profit . . . Is safety being sacrificed for profit? Of course it is — at work, on the road, in the air, at recreation, in the home.

All those reformers who imagine that all that is needed to solve social problems is to pass legislation, should heed Mr. Tyne's expert analysis. As long as profit is the purpose of production safety will always come last.

Unholy Alliance

The coming elections in Nicaragua show just how topsy-turvy reformist politics can be.

An article in The Sunday Correspondent (12 November) tells us that the main opponent of the ruling Sandinistas will be Violet Chamorro, widow of one of Nicaragua's most famous martyrs who was murdered by supporters of the then dictator, Somoza.

She is supported by the US government as well as by God and her deceased husband, both of whom she claims to have consulted.

Meanwhile, the two main Sandinista newspapers are edited by a brother and a son, while a daughter denounces her mother for throwing in her lot with her father's killers.

Confused? The article continues:

  Nor does this exhaust the contradictions. Chamorro's United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) coalition enjoys the support of the Communist and Socialist parties, who accuse the Sandinistas of an addiction to one-party forms of rule. In any other Latin American country, such a line-up would send the United States Embassy dashing to endorse the other side.

The staggering hypocrisy of the Communists accusing anyone of an addiction to one-party rule should suprise no one. After all these so-called "Communist" and "Socialist" parties are in reality parties that support capitalism; and hypocrisy is their stock-in-trade.

In this ruthless struggle for power we can be sure of one thing — no matter who wins — the working class will lose.

A Poisonous System

The use of various chemicals in food for colouring and preservation has long been known as likely to be injurious to the consumer. Now we learn (The Observer 29 October) that the workers in the food industry are in an even more dangerous position.

The findings have been collected in a series of papers edited by Dr. Charles Clutterbuck, lecturer in trade union education at Blackburn College, who argues that food workers face "double jeopardy" of health risk at their place of work and as consumers.
  . . . About 200,000 tonnes of additives are consumed each year in the UK - 10 lbs. for each adult — and "the ill-health effects range from asthma and allergy, skin complaints and diarrheoa to perhaps cancer", the Clutterbuck papers say.
  . . . Yet more than nine tenths of the 3,700 chemical compounds employed in the food industry are used solely for cosmetic purposes — for instance, to make peas greener or meat redder.
 . . . Scientists were debating whether the small quantity of aspartame eaten by consumers were hazardous. Yet these GMB members were working every day in clouds of aspartame so thick that they could not see across the room.

So there we have it — in order to compete in the market the food manufacturers use dangerous chemicals to make the products look more attractive.

The poor unfortunates who have to work producing this poison are themselves poisoned in the clouds of chemicals.

Does this not provide food for thought? It's time we cleared away the poisonous cloud that is capitalism!

Poles Apart

Mrs. Piasecka Johnson, a Polish-born American multi-millionairess, has bought a controlling interest in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk for sixty million dollars.

She plans to double the yard's production and increase the workforce "but at a profit". The unions have been asked to sign a no-strike agreement.

Mrs. Johnson has also started Poland's first foreign-owned private bank. She aims to attract western European capital to invest in Poland and is urging EC countries to allow income and capital gains from foreign investment to be tax free.

Sounds great for investors, but what's in it for those shipyard workers? Well, they get the privilege of producing the profits for the investors and will even get paid for doing it! Private enterprise is SO different from state capitalism.

Beyond Our Ken

"Useless waffle" was how Ken Livingstone, Labour MP, described his party's new economic policies.

He stated in The Guardian (7 September) that:

 Unless a Labour Government is prepared to redirect overseas investment into our Industry and make far-reaching cuts in defence spending, It will be forced to raise taxes and alienate potential Labour voters.

Livingstone is yet another dreamer who thinks he knows how to run British capitalism in the interests of the workers. True enough, raising taxes will lose Labour votes, but his "far-reaching cuts in defence spending" will hardly thrill all those voters who are employed in the defence industry.

But that's the fate of "socialists" like Livingstone. No matter what way they re-arrange capitalism they will alienate a lot of voters.

Incidentally, if he is still a Labour candidate at the next election and he doesn't get the policy changes he wants, will he be telling his electors that the policy is "useless waffle"?

We'll be watching.

An Open Letter

The Scorpion's Nest 

1st. December 1989

Dear Arunbhai Patel,

Once you were hailed by the media as a model of Thatcherite enterprise.

A penniless refugee from Uganda in 1968, you eventually borrowed £20 million to buy Finlay's newsagent chain and were confident of building a global retailing empire.

Alas, Finlay's has collapsed due to sky-high interest on your borrowing and you will even have to sell your house to pay your debts. Now you tell us "But I'm still a capitalist through and through”.

Sorry, Mr Patel, but your state of mind doesn't make you a capitalist. For that you need a considerable amount of ownership, and getting it (and holding it) is not so easy, as you and many other would-be capitalists have discovered.

To New Readers (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

We believe that you share our concern for the well-being of people in our society, and perhaps, for the welfare of Earth itself and all its dependants. We write as members of a long-established independent democratic movement which seeks by persuasion and world-wide peaceful political organisation to transform our present society into one fit for humankind.

The problems of our world cannot be solved within the existing structures of production and government. Our world is divided into national areas dominated by class minorities in each country, which, either by private or corporate ownership or by state bureaucratic parties monopolize the means of production.

These ruling classes and their political representatives, by reason of a combination of historical circumstances, governmental, military and ideological control or influence, are able to keep the majority of the world's population in subjection. In the decisive areas of the world this domination takes the form of people being denied access to the means of living except on the basis of working for a wage or salary. In the major countries of the world, the people who, in the widest sense, produce what we need to live, are wage-slaves. 

Dominated by Capitalism 

Our access to food, clothing, shelter and other needs is rationed by money. Even professional persons and those running small businesses are dominated by the system under which we live: capitalism. It is a world-system based upon the class monopoly of the means of production where things are produced and services rendered as commodities for sale at a profit. Labour-power also is a commodity: its price is what we receive as a wage or salary.

Each enterprise or grouping of capitalism, in competition with others in the market, must strive to increase the profit surplus which it makes after the investment of capital. If it fails to achieve sufficient profit to re-invest in new machinery and techniques it will lose out to more powerful groupings or nations.

Russia, China, Yugoslavia. Cuba and all other mis-called “socialist" regimes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere are part of this competitive process over markets, trade-routes, raw materials, strategic points and exploitable populations. These regimes are more accurately described as being “state-capitalist": today, under internal and external pressures, some seek more efficient means of exploiting their wage-slaves. The Socialist Party right from the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 has been aware that what transpired was not the establishment of, nor a development of, a socialistic society. We have always made clear our opposition to Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism and all similar undemocratic vanguard movements.

Appalling Destruction

The class interests, values and drive for profit of the world-system have been the underlying reasons for the unprecedented destruction of life and resources throughout this century. This appalling process, made worse by new forms of pollution, including the spread of artificial radio-activity and the cutting-down of the rain forests, to say nothing of the possible effects of secret weapons, the existence of which it is reasonable to assume. This uncontrolled madness will continue unless we take the necessary democratic action to transform our way of life throughout the planet.

We believe that socialism can only be brought about by an overwhelming majority of the population, a majority which understands why capitalism must be replaced by socialism. If we are to bring into being production solely for use. where needs are self-determined, we must have a clear idea of how such a society could be established, organised and sustained. We must also ensure that the values and methods of the World Socialist Movement are fully consistent with its aims.

Socialism is a new world society where the means of production are commonly owned and where governments and systems of exchange, whether barter or money, have been replaced by democratic administration at local, regional and world levels: a society where there could be decentralized co-ordination of production with free access according to need. Information about how socialism could be organised is available in our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative.

Organise for a Better Life

Why have previous attempts to build a better world failed? In our view the terrible events of the twentieth century are in part a consequence of the fact that most of those who sought to ameliorate the lot of the majority had no clear alternative distinct from some form of the system of nations. of wage labour and capital, of money, prices, profits, of buying and selling. They had no clear understanding of the dynamics of capitalism. They had illusions about the politics of gradualism or insurrection or about revolutionary vanguards and state-capitalism. They clung to their illusions in the face of the facts of Labour administrations of capitalism or of the brutal dictatorships in the “East" over the workers. As a result of their unsound theories these "practical" men and women diverted the enthusiasm, unselfish devotion and energies of millions into political blind alleys. The advances that have been made are largely those made by workers themselves in producing in greater quantities and in organising to obtain more of the products. However, while capitalism is allowed to exist gains made are not necessarily permanent.

When confronted by the programme of socialism, “left-wing" reformists (apart from seldom being in favour of it) always pose the question: “What do we do in the meantime?" — never waking up to the fact that the appalling present is the "meantime" which their political activities, in opposition to the vigorous pursuit of socialism helped to bring into being. In any event, the attitude of genuine socialists is not one of passivity, awaiting a socialist millennium. it is one of active informed organisation for a better way of life.

Building a Strong Socialist Movement

The more reformists abandon their illusions and inadequate activities, seek to understand the nature of genuine socialism and play their part in building a strong World Socialist Movement, the more effective we can be against capitalism now, prior to an early transformation of society. Such a movement, with the clear objective of taking the means of production out of the hands of a minority and making them the common property of society, would become much more influential than the present parties of the “Left".

Today many aware of past political errors, propose different approaches to the problems of humankind. They put forward schemes which though rightly concerned with holistic, ecologically benign, locally democratic, “human scale" production are still seen as being within the framework of money, wages, prices and profit. These proposals are attractive to a new political generation, which, failing to identify correctly the process responsible for our major problems, are likely to become a new wave of reformists.

The above comments, of course, are large generalisations, needing further elucidation and discussion. We hope that we have been able to interest you in our ideas and look forward to hearing from you or seeing you at one of our meetings.

Thatcher's new clothes (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until very recently phrases like “Thatcherite revolution" and ‘‘economic miracle" were never far from the lips of most political commentators. They insisted that society had changed fundamentally and irreversibly, and that the economy in Britain had undergone a glorious transformation since the dark days of the 1970s.

The events of 1989 have clouded this analysis somewhat and opinion polls are now suggesting that faith in the Tory Party to administer capitalism is on the wane. But in the long run-up to the next General Election the Conservatives will no doubt trot out the old line that things have all been very different under them and that we've "never had it so good". For this reason alone it's worth comparing their claims and promises with reality.

A few years ago Mrs. Thatcher went on record as saying this:

  I came to office with one deliberate intent — to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society, from a "give it to me" to a "do it yourself nation"; a “get up and go" instead of a "sit back and wait for it" Britain.

In making this statement she was developing the ideas of Nineteenth Century self-help and laissez-faire, where the hardworking and thrifty succeed and the lazy and spendthrift are supposed to exist on the merest basic subsistence. A society based on these principles is intended to ensure that individuals work hard instead of expecting other people or the state to give them handouts of some kind. This view extols the virtues of what is now known as “entrepreneurship" while denigrating supposedly lazy workers, those who receive state benefits and others who don't find favour in the columns of the Daily Express.

So using Thatcher's statement of intent as a basis, the question which must be asked is whether, after years of her Conservative Governments, Britain is now a place in which the hard working have the wealth and where the lazy exist at subsistence level. Now if this were the case, there really would have been an economic miracle of sorts. For it is the hard working people, who perform all the useful functions in society, who are being paid at subsistence level (as they have been throughout the history of capitalism) and those who have most of the wealth who can afford to be lazy. Far from this situation being changed in any way, Mrs. Thatcher and her Governments have tried to ensure it continues as it is. Thatcher's pronouncement was intended to justify ideologically the present state of affairs, not encourage a change. In this sense. Thatcherism is fundamentally a defence of the status quo dressed up as social change.

The vast bulk of social wealth in Britain and the rest of the world is produced, distributed and administered by the wage and salary slaves who comprise the working class. But it is one of the great ideological achievements of Thatcherism that the reality of this situation continues to be inverted in a large number of peoples’s minds. Instead of the owning capitalist class being seen as a bunch of socially useless scroungers they are revered as the “real achievers" in society, possessing a mystical quality known as entrepreneurial skill.

Contrary to the Tory ideal, Britain has not been transformed from a "give it to me" society then — although this is not because so-called lazy workers still exist. It is because we, the working class, hand over the products of our labour to the capitalists who then sell them on the market with a view to making profit. We are living in a “give it to me" society but it is the working class that does the giving and the capitalist class that does the taking!

When Thatcher talks of "getting up and going for it” she is of course referring to budding members of the owning class, who do not need to get up at seven o'clock in the morning and go to work! The capitalists are really the “sit back and wait for it" class, as having invested their capital all they need do is sit back and wait for the profits to roll in. All governments, whether of the left or the right, have perpetuated the myth of capitalists as the achievers of society, and none has done so with more vigour than the three Thatcher administrations. The reality is that the capitalist class are not the achievers and creators of society but. to use Marx's term, the “functionaries of capital”. Achieving and creating is the lot of the workers.

Just in case the working class doesn't fall for the Government's nonsense about who creates the wealth in society, the Conservatives have one more trump card to play. This is the idea that there has been some sort of miracle in the performance of the British economy which has benefitted virtually everyone, irrespective of class. As you might expect, the entrepreneurs have been in the forefront of this "miracle" in their creation of the new “business culture". but they have apparently been ably assisted in the pursuit of their historic task by the far-sighted policies of successive Thatcher governments. Or so they like to tell us.

Indeed, Government Ministers have argued that unlike the bad old days of the 1960s and 70s, inflation has been falling since Thatcher came to office, that unemployment is falling after the deepest depression since the 1930s, that output and productivity have risen faster than in any other Western European country, and — momentary aberrations excepted — strikes are a thing of the past. We're also told that we've all been made richer and freer by the benefits of privatisation and so-called “popular capitalism". Even if these claims were shown to be true, it would be necessary to ascertain what benefit, any, there has been for the working class. However, most of them are patently false.

Inflation, the main policy concern of the Thatcher governments, is a strikingly obvious example of the hollowness of their claims. The Conservative Party election manifesto of 1979 stated that:

  Under Labour prices have risen faster than at any peacetime period in the three centuries in which records have been kept. The pound today is worth less than half of its 1974 value. On present form it would be halved in value yet again within eight years. Inflation on this scale has come near to destroying our political and social stability. To master inflation, proper monetary discipline is essential with publicly stated targets for the rate of growth of the money supply.

The Tory boast that they have been able to deal with inflation is entirely bogus as the value of the pound has been halved yet again since 1979. In fact within a year of the Conservatives gaining office the Retail Price Index was showing average price rises of 21.9 per cent and it has averaged over 7 per cent in the years since. This has been a higher increase in the general price level than occurred under any other post-war government, with the exception of the last Labour one.

All three Thatcher administrations have continued the post-war policy of issuing an excess of inconvertible paper currency. The Retail Price Index has actually seen a dual effect for much of the period since 1979. for while the Treasury has been instructing the Bank of England to issue even more notes and depreciate the value of the currency further, there has been a general downward trend in world commodity prices caused by the depression of the late 1970s and early 1980s. If the Government hadn't been issuing an excess of notes and coins it is likely that, instead of price increases at the 3 or 4 per cent mark they reached a few years ago. prices would actually have been falling — just as they did in capitalism's depressions before the Second World War.

The Conservatives under Thatcher have never stated, despite their anti-inflationary rhetoric, that they are after a situation where the value of the currency is appreciating instead of depreciating — leading to falling prices. This is partly because sections of the capitalist class (particularly borrowers) favour inflation, for although interest rates rise when other prices do they tend to do so to a lesser extent. The biggest borrowers are the industrial and agricultural sections of the capitalist class, who have significant clout both as pressure groups on the government of the day and supporters and financiers of the Conservative Party.

Especially important is the fact that falling prices put the capitalist class as a whole in a difficult position when it comes to wage bargaining. Putting the onus on trade unions to restore real wage levels in a time of inflation is much easier than pleading with them to take pay cuts when prices are falling.

Now that price rises have reached the 8 per cent mark again (the level they were at when Thatcher attained office) the Chancellor argues not that this is a blight on society which threatens social stability, but that it is a product of success. Using pre-1979 accounting methods, the total number of unemployed in Britain is still around the two and a half million mark, yet we are told the economy is 'overheating' and that this has had an adverse effect on the RPI. This is only true, of course, to the extent that commodity prices are rising again now that the economy is slowly coming out of the slump — and this has had nothing to do with government policy here or anywhere else.

In the depth of the last recession the Government argued (correctly for once) that high unemployment and slow rates of growth had little to do with them as capitalism was in the slump phase of its trade cycle. All they could do was let it take its course. But now that the unemployment total is gradually on its way down (aided and abetted by over twenty changes in the way the figures have been calculated) the Government claims that this has been a product of their economic policies. Indeed. Conservative politicians such as Lord Young and Norman Tebbit have often argued that the greatest success of the Thatcher governments has been the increases in output and productivity that have occurred in recent years. It is true that Britain, according to the Government's figures, has seen output rise at a higher rate during the last 3 or 4 years than other European countries, and this has led Tory spokesmen to hail their promotion of ‘entrepreneurial spirit' and their attacks on the trade unions as a great success. The actual situation, as you might imagine, is rather more modest; averaging increases of output in Britain over the last 10 years, the rise is really no greater than other ten-year periods from recent economic history (for example 1969-79).

What is more important from the working class point of view is that, even in phases of the capitalist trade cycle when output and productivity have been rising, all sectors of society do not automatically benefit. The working class is responsible for increased production of goods but has to struggle to obtain any benefit from this changing situation — and the owning class, needless to say, try to stop this from happening. For instance, most of the industrial and employment legislation of the Thatcher Government was designed to reduce the effectiveness of trade unions and therefore restrict workers' abilities to offset both the depreciation of real wages due to inflation, and attempts to obtain benefits from increased productivity. Thankfully, this industrial legislation hasn't been nearly as effective as the Tories hoped, and most members of the working class who have managed to hang on to their jobs have seen their real wages increase.

Indeed, ever aware of the potential power of an organised working class, the Conservatives have attempted to use aspects of their economic policy to diffuse the class struggle. The most notable of these has been the privatisation of state-owned sectors of the economy along with the promotion of “popular capitalism". The 1987 Conservative General Election Manifesto stated:

  Britain is now in the forefront of a world wide revolution in extending ownership. One in five British adults now own shares compared to one in ten Frenchmen and one in twenty Japanese. Owning a direct stake in industry not only enhances personal independence, it also gives a heightened sense of involvement and pride in British business. More realistic attitudes to profit and investment take root and the foundations of British economic achievement are further strengthened.

The hope is that workers swallow the crazy idea that anyone with a few hundred shares in British Telecom or the TSB is a member of the privileged owning class and therefore has profits as their main priority. Although it is often claimed that people have fallen for this propaganda of “popular capitalism", every time workers fight for improved pay and conditions they are still, of necessity, proving that their real interests are those of wage labour rather than capital. People with a few hundred shares are no more members of the capitalist class than those people who have interest bearing accounts with banks or building societies. They cannot live off the tiny amount of capital that accrues to them and are still forced to sell their abilities to an employer in order to live.

At the moment, "popular capitalism" and the "economic miracle" are both in trouble. In a recent letter to ex-Chancellor Lawson, the Chairman of the International Stock Exchange, Andrew Hugh Smith, stated:

  Even though the level of share ownership has grown enormously, the percentage of shares held by private investors continues to fall and is now around 20 per cent . . . this trend damages the Government policy on share ownership. (Guardian, 23 October).

What is more, in the light of the share price crashes of October 1987 and 1989, the notion of “popular capitalism” as one long gravy-train has been dented further. And with millions on or below the Government's official poverty line, with unemployment still really at slump levels and with house repossessions on the horizon for thousands struggling with their mortgage repayments, the working class has been confronted with an "economic miracle" that is a complete mirage.

Dave Perrin

Diary of a Capitalist: Sunday (1989)

The Diary of a Capitalist column from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sunday

We keep getting these sob-stories from organisations concerned with homelessness about how many people are forced to live in late-twentieth-century Britain without a roof over their heads. Shelter, for example, estimates that there are 150,000 young people (apart from the middle-aged and old) homeless in the country (Guardian, 26.10.89). Apparently the number living in squats (illicit accommodation, with eviction a daily possibility and virtually inevitable in the long run) had “almost trebled" since two years ago. One 20-year-old said "no employer would take anyone with no fixed address. To get a fixed address you need money, and to get money you'd need a job. So there's no way out." Except, of course, prostitution. To escape grinding poverty, not a few — both males and females — finally succumb. They don't have to go looking for chances, either. "One in three young people questioned by the researchers had been approached for prostitution."

In this most degrading of sales, as in all others, there are no sellers without buyers. Prostitution depends on the economic system of buying and selling. Without some people rich enough to buy sexual excitement. and others poor enough to have to sell it. prostitution would disappear tomorrow. (Why, I wonder, isn't Mrs Whitehouse a Socialist?) These buyers aren't going to shed tears at the steady recruitment to the prostitution industry which capitalism ensures.

It's an ill wind which blows nobody any good.

Monday

One of the Rothschild family in the last century is supposed to have become interested in landscape gardening after buying a country house. He went so far as to give a lecture on the subject, beginning with the immortal words: "No garden, however small, should have less than three acres of woodland.”

After such expert advice, no one now has any excuse for having too few trees in the garden.

Tuesday

I've always made sure of having enough trees at my country place, particularly fruit trees. I love apples, eaters or cookers. If you get hold of some Bramleys, for example, you have the main ingredient of an apple pie, or tasty fritters, or a succulent apple charlotte. So when I was glancing through the paper (Observer, 29.10.89). I was sad to see it’s been a bad year for apples. 1976, it said, was poor enough, "but this year it seems even worse". A Kent farmer said: "It has been a disaster for Bramleys".

I was just reconciling myself to the idea that there would be fewer apples to go round this year, when my eye fell on the photograph accompanying the text. It showed an enormous pile of apples dumped in a field, and the caption bemoaned "a too fruitful harvest". So that's the problem! Reading the whole story again. I found the disaster was simply that there are "too many" apples. Farmers are being paid £75 per tonne by the European Community "to plough the apples back into the ground": apples are "rotting in vast piles round the Kent countryside": near Maidstone “at least £25.000 worth" of Bramleys were being "crushed into an expensive fertiliser by tractor wheels". Research shows that the average person in Britain eats precisely five Bramleys per year — one every ten weeks. At the same time people eat well-advertised junk food, often almost valueless if not positively harmful — or even go hungry. The many thousands of homeless people living rough in Britain aren't exactly over-fed. And that ignores the multitudes round the world who starve to death each year.

Wednesday

How do they see it, these apple farmers trembling lest their efforts to produce quantities of food should be crowned with success? Do they come back to the farmhouse in the evening saying "all the trees are healthy — no sign of disease. I'm afraid"? Or “masses of blossom has set, not a single gale or pest to give us a decent chance"? Or "the branches are bending to the ground with perfect fruit this year — were ruined”?

We capitalists know, of course, however much we try to conceal it from everyone else, that farmers are not aiming to produce apples, but profit. The number of apples is immaterial: if the profits are high, it's a good year; if the profits are low, it's bad.

And so the journalists who depend on us for jobs have to write whole articles about what a "disaster" it is to have a good crop of Bramleys.

Thursday

Why do people keep saying mass unemployment is a bad thing? From the capitalists' point of view, it's a good thing to keep some workers unemployed "pour encourager les autres"; just as the wartime authorities shoot unenthusiastic soldiers to encourage the others (as Voltaire pointed out). Here's a piece from the Daily Mail (26.10.89)

  Profits in industry soared over the past year to their highest level for a decade, according to a survey. Productivity has leapt 43 per cent compared with six years ago and output per worker is still rising, says a review of the top 1000 companies in Business magazine. Each employee now turns out £57,400 worth of goods or services each year — £1000 more than last year. Average profitability — the amount of industry's total sales which is profit — climbed to a record 9.9 per cent compared to 9.1 per cent last year.

Mind you, the papers shouldn't make too much of a song and dance about it. Not all the readers of the Daily Mail can be stupid: some of them must begin to wonder why. if “each employee" produces £57000 worth of goods, he or she gets paid so mch less than that.

Friday

The release of the Guildford Four (convicted of the Guildford pub bombing on no evidence whatever except for "confessions” which conflicted with and contradicted each other, which contained impossibilities. and which, it is now accepted, the police had beaten and blackmailed out of them) has been hailed as a triumph of justice. Quite right, of course. In fact, if you've ever been convicted of a crime you didn't commit, in circumstances where there is no single piece of objective evidence at all connecting you with the crime, then all you need (if the Guildford Four case is anything to go by) is your innocence proclaimed by —

• Many writers and public figures who support capitalism, but cannot stomach its worst injustices;
• Two former eminent judges (in the Guildford case, Lord Devlin and Lord Scarman);
• The two leading churchmen in the country (Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Runcie);
• Two former Home Secretaries (Roy Jenkins and Merlyn Rees);
• A campaigning TV programme at peak viewing time (produced by Yorkshire TV);
• Two full-length books (one by Robert Kee, one by Grant McKee and Ros Franey);
• Radio and TV programmes, newspapers and periodicals in Ireland;
• Numbers of articles in England (for example in the New Statesman):
• The people who actually did what you were accused of (in this case, the IRA men whose confessions gave such detail as to prove they were genuine);
• And, finally, the Crown Prosecution Service (who refused to justify the convictions in the Court of Appeal).

If you’ve got all that going for you. then after only fifteen years in jail, being beaten up occasionally by other prisoners who loyally support the Establishment — you're free!

It makes me proud of our capitalist propaganda services to think they can still argue that this is a triumph for British justice.

Saturday

Members of Christian CND want to hold their own Remembrance Service on Armistice Day. They want "to draw attention to the appalling loss of life and human suffering" in war (Eastern Evening News, 31.10.89). ‘‘We want methods and ways to be found to prevent wars happening again."

Obviously these simple people, who are still looking for ‘‘methods and ways" of preventing war, haven’t heard of Socialism. So all is well. These peace-time pacifists will be no more effective than they were on the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when you had to jump out of the way to avoid being trampled to death by the rush of Christians, pacifists, Peace Pledge Unionists and so on into the recruiting offices.

Alwyn Edgar

50 Years Ago: Eight Million Undernourished (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of course the stock argument of such people is that war is for national aims and all should be prepared to make sacrifice. To which Mr. Greenwood, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, though he supports the war, is constrained to reply that: "There is too ready an assumption on his (Mr. Keynes ) part that the workers of this country were having a fair share of its wealth, anyway, before the war started." And the Manchester Guardian pertinently reminds its readers that: "Before the war. Sir William Crawford estimated, eight million people lacked wages sufficient for the bare minimum of food regarded as essential to health by the British Medical Association" (Manchester Guardian, November 3rd).

So, war or no war, we are back again at the basis of capitalism, the ceaseless struggle between the "haves" and the “have-nots". Not all the academic theorisings of Mr. Keynes and all the honeyed words of the politicians will prevent the struggle from proceeding, with its customary periodic outbursts of industrial strife.

Mr. Churchill may persuade himself that ours is one of the peaceful parliamentary countries "which aim at freedom for the individual and abundance for the mass" (broadcast reproduced in News Chronicle, November 13th). but he cannot dispute the unchallengeable facts of working-class poverty.

[From an edtorial "Wages and Wartime", Socialist Standard, December 1939.]

The Crumbling Empire (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you heard the cheers from East Berlin
Where the wage slaves think they're freed?
Yes, free’ to join NATO and the IMF
And go where accountants lead 

The Leninist fraud has been exposed
State capitalism's been a big flop
So out with food queues and in with dole queues
And let rouble millionaires rise to the top 

In starved and Polluted Poland
There's a new band but an old tune being played
Last year's prisoners are now the bosses
And ruthless so that debts can be paid 

The hypocrites sing of Liberty
At last, Communism's out for the count
But the Kremlin has as much to do with communism
As the Vatican with the Sermon on the Mount 

Yes, the workers have shown they can change things
Loud sighs come from Lenin’s tomb
A spectre is haunting state capitalism
Let it spread to all other markets soon 

So it’s bye-bye to the Bolshevik bootboys
The gulags are all up for sale
Hurrah for Big Mac and Burger King,
The Glasnost Building Society and the Daily Mail.

The Russian Empire is falling to pieces. The Berlin Wall has collapsed into the hated memory that all dividing borders deserve; in Poland the Communist Party has ignominiously lost power; in Hungary the Communists are so unpopular that they have had to change their name to disguise themselves; the Baltic states are seeking independence from centralised cultural dictatorship; the hated Bulgarian dictator, Zhivkov, has been forced to resign after thirty-five years in unelected control: even in Moscow crowds of workers have demonstrated outside the hated KGB headquarters. What once tried to sell itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat has been seen as a detested prison, enslaving the workers of Eastern Europe.

Socialists are pleased to see the demise of empires: not just the Russian one — there is an American Empire as well, as British foreign policy has all too clearly reflected in recent decades. We are told that what is happening in Eastern Europe is the death of socialism. What ignorant nonsense! Eastern Europe has never been socialist. (It has not even described itself as communist, claiming that it was leading up to such a future stage.) It has suited defenders of Western, mainly private capitalism, to label these police states as socialism. What better way of showing socialism as something to be avoided and resisted? There have been foolish Leftists and pseudo-communists who have made themselves ridiculous by trying to defend the East European states in the name of socialism. The Socialist Party rejected such nonsense from the start. Not once have we given credence to the claim that there are “socialist countries'' in Eastern Europe - or in China, Cuba, Tanzania or anywhere else. These are state-capitalist nations. Socialists oppose them.

Opposed as we are to these phoney "socialist states", we are not for even half a moment going to indulge in the mockery of logic which says that states which oppose these dictatorships are The Free World. There is no such thing as a free capitalist world. Capitalism is inherently unfree. Just as the Polish "Communists" used force to defeat the Silesian miners, so did the British Tories in their fight with the mine workers. In West Germany, where neo-Nazi politicians rise to power on the basis of widespread poverty and frustration, there is precious little freedom for the unemployed or homeless — less still if you are a Turkish "guest-worker'' or a citizenless gypsy. How dare those who preside over the profit system in the Western nations call themselves the defenders of freedom! If what they offer is freedom, then the workers need to become unfree. As the opening lines of this article suggest, freedom means more than the chance to eat fast-food and join the queue for the dole — just like the “liberated" Western wage slaves.

There will be no freedom until wage slavery has been abolished. There can be no cheering over breaches in the Berlin Wall until all national barriers are torn down. There is no future for the working class in a re-unified Germany, any more than there is in a divided one. If the rapid changes of recent weeks demonstrate one thing it is that what once seemed unlikely — impossible, utopian — can happen.

Steve Coleman

Crucified workers (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ruben Enaaje did not enjoy his Easter week-end. The 28- year-old sign painter was nailed to a cross on Good Friday to thank god for his sufvival after a fall from the third floor of a building. He also wanted to ask for an end to his family's poverty, and vowed to be crucified twelve years in a row. The nails were driven in by doctors and the volunteer sent to hospital after hanging for a few minutes.

For the first time this year, the Philippine Department of Tourism donated P20,000 for the crosses and costumes. The crucifixions are an annual tourist attraction which earn the government loads of money, which is used to pay workers to smash picket lines and kill shop stewards. This keeps wages down and ensures a supply of workers to be crucified next year.

(Source: Malaya and Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 March.)

Modern Technology and Socialism (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of its catastrophes and its social idiocies, industrial capitalism goes on from strength to strength. It establishes itself in new countries, turning more and more of the world’s population into members of the working class. It exploits increasing amounts of the Earth’s resources for commodity production. It turns out a growing mass and range of products to throw on to the market. It harnesses new discoveries, inventions, techniques and systems to expand and speed up production, distribution, travel, and communication. At the same time, of course, it pollutes and wastes and kills and oppresses on an ever-increasing scale.

Modifying Socialism

So far from casting doubt upon the socialist analysis of historical development, this accelerating and expanding progress provides daily confirmation of the inevitability of social change and the powerful impact of technology upon social structures and individual lives. The driver of a JCB is a different man from the navvy with his pick and shovel, not only in the way he does his job, but also in the way he views society and his place in it.

What is of particular interest to socialists is the way in which developments in capitalism modify ideas of socialism. Marx, and to a lesser extent Engels, was especially cautious about envisaging socialist society; and the wisdom of this is borne out by the fact that, in spite of their careful historical perspective, it is clear to us that even they could not help seeing the post-capitalist world broadly in terms of the conditions of their own times.

This applies just as surely to us today. We need to exercise the same caution when we allow ourselves to speculate upon the changes that the abolition of capitalism will bring about. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is illegitimate to do this. What we must do, however, is acknowledge the relativity of our views. If each generation of socialists, then, sees the new society in a slightly different way because of changes that have taken place in capitalism, we shall be able to sustain a dynamic, rather than a static, conception of the liberated world for which we are all working.

The Dynamic of Technology

The underlying dynamic of social development is that of technology. While the relations of production, the class structure, within a social system are fairly rigidly maintained by the ruling class, the means of production are in a process of continual development, undermining that social structure.

In capitalism the rate of change has been incomparably greater than anything before in human history. In the hundred years since Marx’s death, the technological developments have been, if anything, more far-reaching in their social implications than those of the previous hundred years. In Marx’s day there were no motor cars or lorries and no road system which could have supported today’s mass of high-speed traffic. There were no aeroplanes or helicopters. There were no farm tractors, combine harvesters, milking machines or tuberculosis-free cattle. There was little domestic gas and virtually no domestic electricity so that there were no household machines such as vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, or food mixers. Electronic engineering, with its wide range of applications from radio and television to computers, microwave ovens and automatic control systems, had not yet begun. There was no automation, no laser and fibre optics, no space engineering, no biological engineering, no atomic engineering, no man-made fibres or plastics, no stainless steel or even aluminium. It was a society of horse drawn vehicles, domestic servants, heavy manual work, cast iron and steam power.

Change in Perspective

The sort of socialist society which could have been erected upon such a technological base would, it has been argued, have had a relatively inflexible monolithic structure, with centralised units of mass production, centralised planning, limited consumption and ease of movement, and still a great deal of hard work. The changes that the working class of the world has developed since those days, under the whip of capital, have modified conditions of living and working, and particularly the prospects for future society, in a fundamental way. They have made the production of abundance a real and obvious social possibility. At the same time, of course, they have introduced the possibilities of obliterating all civilisation on Earth or making the planet itself uninhabitable. There is now very little that modern science and technology can not do, given sufficient resources and effort.

Small Dispersed Production

The technological progress that has been made in the last hundred years has, as is always the case, been the result of improvements, not only in devices or machines, but in materials, techniques and systems as well. One of the principal factors which made Victorian textile mills and engineering machine shops so large and noisy was their dependence upon single huge power sources such as steam engines or the early electric motors driving miles of overhead shafting and belting. Steady improvements in design, materials and precision engineering made the production of small electric motors easy and relatively cheap, so that every machine can now have its own—often a number of them—performing different functions.

Similar improvements in steel alloys, welded fabrication design and techniques have made massive cast iron frames for machines obsolete. Indeed, almost every process of production and distribution today uses less energy and a smaller quantity of materials than a comparable process did a hundred years ago, and, apart from the logistics of transporting materials to, and products from, a machine, it can now be sited almost anywhere within reach of a three-phase electricity supply.

Except for large products, such as ships or rolled steel girders, enormous manufacturing plants are no longer technically necessary. Capital may be able to obtain a few remaining economies in management and administration in large industrial agglomerations, although modern communications systems have overtaken most of these, but otherwise the trend is towards smaller and more dispersed factories. Capital resists this process at every step, striving to achieve economies of scale, but technology is pointing the way to a pattern of industry very different from the dark satanic mills of Victorian England.

Machinery and Profitability

One of the things that Marx draws attention to in Vol. III of Capital is that particular inefficiency of the capitalist mode of production which is caused by capitalists’ reluctance to install superior machinery. No surplus value is extracted from constant capital itself—this dead labour embodied in means of production. The fixed portion of it, represented by plant and machinery, is imparted to the commodities, little by little, as these items wear out. Even under the pressure of competition, therefore, the capitalist tries to extract the last penny of value out of his fixed capital before replacing it.

What improved machinery must do for the capitalist, if it is to justify its cost, is to increase the productivity of his workers (his rate of extraction of surplus value from them) to give a rate of profit equal to, or above, the average. The greater the outlay on fixed capital, however, the more dependent such profitability is upon the continuing buoyancy of the economy. But, of course, capitalism is incorrigibly cyclical and unpredictable. Expensive machinery lying idle in a slump represents growing losses for capital, to be set against the profits made in better times. In slumps, too, the real price of labour power is driven down—as we have seen in the first half of the 1980s. This makes more labour-intensive processes relatively cheaper and more profitable, offsetting the advantages of capital-intensive methods. Moreover, labour can be dismissed with a week’s notice. Machinery can not.

Automation

These considerations have made capital particularly slow to introduce automation, especially when wages are low, because automation is a highly capital-intensive way of using machinery. But this is only the distorted capitalist measure of its cost, in which, to survive, every individual company must extract its measure of surplus value from its workers. In social terms, as a means of using crystallised past labour to supplement and ease the toil of living labour, it is not much more expensive than other ways of using machinery. The potential of automation for post-capitalist, democratic society is enormous. When used in conjunction with computers it is virtually limitless in its possibilities.

The principle behind the wide range of devices and techniques used in automation is not a new one. Whereas tools, instruments and devices like wheels and levers may be said to supplement human limbs, and machines—themselves using tools—can be thought of as amplifying human energy and speed, automation represents an extension, an amplification, of the human nervous system and, with computers, the brain. Automation makes decisions and gives instructions for them to be carried out.

One of the famous examples of early industrial automation was James Watts’ steam engine governor. He used two iron balls attached to linkage to control the speed of his steam engines. Rotating with the engine shaft, the balls were spun outwards with centrifugal force. At a pre-set speed their outward movement, through the linkage, began to close the valve which fed steam to the engine and so reduced the power, and consequently the speed, again. The principle involved here is that of using error, and the extent of that error, to correct the error. Whether mechanical, electrical, electronic or optical devices are used, that underlying principle remains the same. The essential components are suitable sensing or measuring devices to monitor the behaviour of a particular aspect of the machine or process, communication links from those devices leading to servo mechanisms which control what is going on.

Computers used in situations like this add another dimension of sophistication. Instead of a number of monitoring devices feeding their quite independent instructions to the overall process—as, for example, in multiple domestic central heating thermostat—the computer receives these various inputs and makes a programmed decision based upon the information from all of them. Modern motor cars have computer fuel and ignition control systems like this.

Information

A point worth noticing about this sort of technological development is that the new element in the employment of machines is information. The information revolution, as it has been loosely called, is not just a matter of improved means of communication and recording systems amongst people. We now control an increasing number of machines purely by information. There is, for example, hardly a heavy lorry left on today’s roads in which the driver turns the front wheels for steering through direct gearing from the steering wheel. The size and weight involved is far too exhausting. Instead, his movements of the steering wheel are transmitted as instructions to the servomechanism which does the actual work. Of course, this is not an example of automation. Here, it is the driver who is sensing and making decisions upon the conditions of the road and his vehicle.

Guided missiles, on the other hand, do use automation principles of self-correction. By a process of constant checking they seek out the destination with which they, have been programmed and deliver their warhead to it. Bizarre as it might now seem, a socialist society, with no need for weapons, might well find this expensive method of transport appropriate for delivering some types of urgent supplies.

Remote Control

Operating machines by giving them information opens up other possibilities too. Information can be sent over almost any distance, as the control of the various exploratory space vehicles demonstrates. There are also a number of methods of ensuring that imperfect transmission systems do not allow garbled information to get through. Remote control of machines in dangerous or humanly inaccessible locations is now, therefore, becoming common practice—but only where capital finds it profitable to use it.

Remote control of more mundane machines, however, has a very low priority in capitalism. Except for control rooms in things like power stations or ships, capitalism tends to keep workers as close to their machines as possible so that they, themselves, can be under control. At the moment, the few applications of this facility involve peripheral uses such as telephone instructions to domestic machines at home by a few highly paid workers with not enough free time to get home themselves. The potentialities of remote control for the free society of the future are, in contrast, rich and liberating. A person who had taken on responsibility for a particular production process or service could monitor its progress and make adjustments from wherever he or she happened to be. With good satellite radio links, machines and equipment in isolated stations, performing a variety of environmental control or supply functions, could be supervised from almost any distance.

Memory

Immediate instructions to machines, however, become less and less necessary with the development of memory devices. From the punched card system of the Jacquard loom at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present generation of computers capable of recording and storing immensely complicated programmes of instructions, the development of information storage in a form suitable for controlling machines has turned a quantitative difference into a qualitative one. Even the common computer programmes which can play chess against a human opponent have so many thousands of possible moves and countermoves stored in their memories that playing against them can seem like playing against another human being. In the same way, immensely complicated and subtle programmes of instructions for machines—programmes which learn from experience—can be devised to do almost everything that human operators can do.

Robots

The microminiaturisation and mass production of computer circuits on tiny silicon chips has made it possible to incorporate millions of small computers into everyday machines, just as we now use millions of small electric motors. Now all the human working functions have been simulated in machines. The skills of craftsmen and the diagnostic knowledge of doctors and other experts can now be fed into computerised machines which then operate like craftsmen and experts. Even speaking and understanding speech is in the rudimentary stages of development.

While most people are hardly aware of it, therefore: they are living in a world containing a rapidly multiplying number of increasingly sophisticated robots. Of course, the robot of early science fiction, walking on legs, using fingers, and even looking like a human being is a rather pointless product. It has all the limitations of the human being and none of its advantages. Real robots are purpose designed and greatly exceed human capabilities for each particular purpose.

One way of looking at this trend is to consider the modern generations of machines as an evolving population of slaves. As far as the technology is concerned, there is now no reason why human beings should do any of the dull, dreary or dirty jobs that are necessary to provide the wealth and services of an advanced, affluent society. Machines can—could if they were under the control of a free democratic society—do all of these tasks for us.

The Social Structure

Even to speak in these terms, however, points up the enormous disparity between what is possible and what capitalism is actually doing with these technological advances. There are already, for example, many millions of small personal computers in the world. But the vast majority of them are dedicated to playing games, mostly of the “shoot-em-up” or “shoot-em-down” variety. Escapism, which has made so many billions of pounds profit for the record industry and the film, television and videotape market, has now moved beyond the passive entertainment phase and is opening up a vast new field of interactive pseudo-experiences.

The other area in which all the sophistications of modern technology are being given almost unrestrained freedom to develop is very closely linked to the computer games market. It is that of fighting wars. Modern weapons and fighting equipment not only enhance human capabilities to an almost unlimited extent with their destructiveness, speed, accuracy, infrared vision, radar and laser location, and so on, but they can also “think” for themselves with the computers they incorporate. Capitalism is therefore distorting and diverting a very large part of technological potential away from the satisfying of human needs.

Paramount amongst those needs, once nourishment and health have been obtained, is that of freedom. But this is precisely what capitalism will not and can not provide, since it is only through restriction, repression and deception that the ruling class is able to continue to exploit the labour of the great majority of the population. As a substitute for freedom, capitalism offers commodities—or at least the chance to earn them—an ever-increasing mass and diversity of gadgets and thrills and sweets.

Socialism Now

The sort of socialist society that has become possible with these developments is already a very different one from that which was feasible in Marx’s day. But, also, the urgent necessity of removing capitalism before it removes us has become far more pressing.

The overall effect of the technological. developments of .the last hundred years, and particularly of the last fifty years, has been the increased potential for flexibility and freedom. Although centralised world-wide planning of production and distribution has become more and more possible with the evolution of electronic and satellite communication systems and the information-handling capabilities of computers, it has, at the same time, become less and less necessary or desirable.

There are bound to be democratic decisions taken about certain aspects of production and distribution from time to time, at local, regional, continental and even global level. But, for the great mass of adjustments and controls, ordinary channels of supply arid demand (real demand) will provide the most flexible and responsive basic system for regulating socialist society’s production and distribution. The almost infinitely complex network of manufacturers, growers, distributors and suppliers will, however, need well-organised communication and co-operation amongst themselves, as well as ready access to a richness of information about research, designs, methods, output, capacity, local preferences, etc. etc., which is simply impossible in capitalism.

The electronic stock control systems now in use in many major stores and the computer-controlled warehousing gradually being installed by large distributors already permit the constant monitoring of consumption of goods to be carried on, future demand to be predicted within quite fine limits and automatic, and almost instantaneous, re-ordering to be carried out. However, the anarchy of the market, the restricted and biased consumption enforced by the money qualification, and the jealous guarding and suppression of information carried on by nation states and almost every type of capitalist company that exists make it impossible to realise the enormous social benefits that could be derived from this information revolution.

Modern information systems make it feasible for anyone, anywhere in the world, who has access to a telephone-linked computer to find out all the specifications and quantities of goods or services that are available or in demand. Instead, today, thousands of programmer hours a year are being devoted to devising blocks to prevent such information being accessed.

In the post-capitalist world it is this greatly enhanced information network which will replace and supersede the market and the price mechanism. The immense volume of information about the daily facts and figures of all production, distribution and services which is in the possession of the working class—and which is today barely used, except to total output figures and compile balance sheets—will be accorded its true value in socialist society as the data for conscious social control of the means of life by every member of society. “Democratic control” will be far more than a matter of voting when contentious issues arise. It will be the continual exercise of informed individual power in the co-operative processes of sustaining and enhancing social life.

Ron Cook

The above article is the text of the Conference Lecture delivered at the Annual Conference of the Socialist Party in March 1989.

Caught In The Act: Breakdown (1989)

The Caught In The Act Column from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Breakdown
When he was a Labour MP Leo Abse was one of the more —how shall we put it — colourful legislators in the — how do they put it — Most Exclusive Club in The World. He was recently shown that he can still make the news by writing a book which purports to give a psycho-analytical explanation for the style in which Margaret Thatcher runs the government of British capitalism.

According to Abse, if we are to understand Thatcher’s abrasive, overbearing and unyielding personality we must refer to her attitude towards her parents. She has fond memories of her father, a dourly religious grocer and council alderman in Grantham, which is reputed to be among the most boring towns in England. The late Alderman Roberts stood for the small shopkeeper's morality of Value for Money, Hard Work and Thrift, and Know Your Place and Keep To It. He had no ambitions to excite anyone; no Leo Abse was he. However he made a deep impression on Thatcher, who is liable to claim that she runs Britain like a corner shop where, if all goes well, we shall eventually be enjoying the finest English cheese, best butter and broken biscuits. In the meantime she has had a tendency to treat her ministers — Francis Pym, Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd, Nigel Lawson — rather like indolent shop assistants or errand boys in a H.G. Wells novel.

Immaculate Conception
But Thatcher shows a different estimation of her mother, who is so pale a shadow in her life that it is almost as if she never existed. Amateur mind benders and shrinks — not to mention those humiliated ministers — may find some amusement in raking over Thatcher's hangups about her ancestry and, such is the situation today, they may like to consider another explanation. It has been obvious for some time that Thatcher thinks herself as a sort of queen. In the aftermath of Lawson's resignation she defended herself with a defiant quote from the Bible: “I am what I am", which could mean that she has risen above royalty into a deity. At this time of year we hear a lot about a child who was supposed to have been born a long time ago and who had a mother but no biological father; his mother was a virgin. The offspring of that unusual and inexplicable event was — so runs the myth — destined to save the world, although from what, how or when have never been made clear. Thatcher likes to behave as if she too is a saviour, at present of Britain and much of Europe but perhaps soon of the entire world. Perhaps the attempted elimination of her mother from her life springs from a desire to be the outcome of a twentieth-century immaculate conception, biologically even more difficult than the one in the Bible, as a prelude to her saving the world from her version of socialism, Neil Kinnock, state controlled industry and the European Monetary System.

That does not seem so far-fetched when we bear in mind other aspects of Thatcher's behaviour. She is known to detest holidays, to need hardly any sleep and recently dismissed the engineering workers' claim for a 35-hour week with the sneer that she often works that many hours over a two day period and then, if need be, does it again over the next two days. Her relaxation seems to be in harassing her ministers and intruding in the details of the work she has delegated to them; she needs to be prime minister, foreign secretary, chancellor of the exchequer and home secretary, as well as queen and god, combined in one frenzied, immaculately conceived person. So there is some restlessness now among the Tory faithful. Some questions about what was once unthinkable — is it the most promising way of assuring the Conservative Party of victory at the next election — which, in the view of all good Tories, amounts to the same thing?

Electric Treatment
The prime minister’s standing has not been improved by the news that she is kept going by taking electrified baths, a therapy administered by a woman in, of all places, Shepherds Bush. Her sycophants, so long buoyed up in arrogant strength, must be wondering what will be revealed next. Will it be furtive visits to a fortune teller, to map out the course of the economy over the next couple of years by spinning out playing cards? On reflection that may not be such a bad idea, for the fact that a “brilliant, brilliant" chancellor like Lawson is unable to prevent economic crises shows how chaotic capitalism is and how unwise it is to rely on the economists and the “experts”, in the Treasury or elsewhere.

And that may be an explanation for what a growing number of people are beginning to see as mental imbalance in the prime minister. Perhaps she really did convince herself that with a mixture of stubbornness. belligerence and browbeating she could personally reshape capitalism on some misconceived principles learned from a blinkered small shopkeeper. The frustration of failing against the inexorable chaos of this social system may have unhinged her, for failure does not become success by pouring ever more energy into the frustration.

Alcoholic Problem
Any anxiety about the nation's affairs being in the hands of an overwrought leader whose judgement becomes increasingly warped through a masochism of effort should be tempered by the fact that Thatcher is not the first politician to show symptoms of instability. There are many, many other examples but for the moment let us consider the late Lord George Brown, who was also famous for his energy and his unmanageable personality. As consolation for his defeat by Harold Wilson in the contest for the Labour leadership, Brown was later put in charge of the Department of Economic Affairs. He would have preferred to be prime minister but his new job was very important because it involved snatching the British economy from the stagnating grip of the Treasury soothsayers and placing it with the DEA, where the crystal balls were specially designed to block off all images other than those of expansion, growth and prosperity. With manic power Brown laboured to set up the new ministry which was to change the face of British capitalism. But the prophets of the DEA could no more do the impossible than could those at the Treasury and the whole idea was quietly abandoned soon after Brown had been reshuffled into Foreign Secretary.

Brown found some release from the frustrations of his job in an industrious consumption of alcohol (what fun Abse would have, musing on the possibilities of an oral fixation and the quest for a mother substitute in the bottle) and when in his cups he was liable to be, well, indiscreet. Apart from his persistent offences against the niceties of protocol at many a ruling class gala event, he was liable to surges of temper and sulks in which he would resign from office on the assumption that nobody would take any notice. But the day came (actually it was at night, when Labour ministers were in panic session, grappling with yet another financial crisis) when, as Wilson had foretold, one of these resignations stuck and Brown awoke to find himself not only hung over but a back bencher again. At which point he forgot his reputation as a right wing defender of all that is normal to capitalism’s property motivated operation and declared that the left had at fast found a leader. Apart from the embarrassment this caused to left wingers, nobody took him seriously and Brown set into decline, ending his days as a less-than-rapturously-welcomed recruit to the SDP.

Sanity?
Any discussion of the apparent madness of some politicians, whatever form it takes, is useful only in so far as it exposes the fact that the “sane" ones are no more effective. If the Labour Party succeed in their efforts to persuade large numbers of workers that the present crises of British capitalism are largely caused by Thatcher’s rampant character a valuable lesson will be missed. The two men who would probably be in charge of the Treasury and economic affairs if there is another Labour government — John Smith and Gordon Brown — have made it quite clear that they offer no policies which are in any significant way alternative to those of Lawson and Major. Another way of saying this is that Smith and Brown are admitting, even before they are in power over British capitalism, that they will fail to control this social system, just as the Tories have failed and as all governments must fail. As these are two "sane" leaders, it is abundantly clear that the only way out of the mess is to summon the electoral equivalent of the men in the white coats.

Ivan

Editorial: Torn Curtain (1989)

Editorial from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a simple and widely-accepted view of the helter-skelter of recent changes in Eastern Europe. People demanded freedom and, because they protested and demonstrated, governments simply collapsed. But that is too superficial an explanation. After all, people in these countries had protested and demonstrated before (in 1956, 1968 and in the Seventies) and had been crushed by armed force. So what is different now? Simply this: because of a change in Kremlin policy. Soviet troops were under orders not to support these puppet regimes. Without force, an unpopular minority regime cannot hold power.

It would be nice, but naive, to believe that workers in any country can achieve almost anything if they just go out, en masse, demonstrating. This is just not true - think back to Peking and the Tiananmen Square massacre. What is necessary is that the state forces do not resist.

Analysis of recent events suggests the following scenario. Russia's economic decline has reached the point where Gorbachev's colleagues are begging the West to invest capital in "joint ventures" and special "enterprise zones". Grave food and power shortages are expected this winter. Economic reforms mean cuts in military spending are essential, and that consequently support could not be guaranteed to Eastern bloc governments. Britain made a similar policy switch, for similar reasons, in withdrawing troops from "east of Suez".

These economic problems also require stringent economic reform. Perestroika is a policy demanding greater efficiency, higher productivity, cuts in government subsidies on food and other necessities, and the sacking of surplus labour. To do this successfully, governments have to appear democratic, representative, responsive, to win the consent and support of the workers. Poland is a clear example of this strategy. The PUWP and Jaruzelski could not solve the economic mess and there was a need for severe measures, including unpopular cuts in food subsidies which would hurt workers. The only way this could be done was a government with genuine popular support. Solidarity fell into the trap and provided a government to do the necessary, backed by their popular mandate.

Conspicuous among the concessions made in Eastern Europe have been those to do with personal freedoms - liberty of expression, freedom of movement and so on. These personal freedoms are a safety valve: they make people feel a lot better while not actually changing anything very much. The most dramatic symbol of this was the breaching of the Berlin Wall. This was tokenism — one frontier breached at permitted points does not spell internationalism, the ending of all frontiers, and NATO missiles are still targetted on specific East German cities such as Leipzig.

A fourth trend is the policy of encouraging greater private enterprise. This has however been apparent for several years, in Hungary especially but also in East Germany (trading in the EEC on special terms), Poland and even in Russia, with the growth of the “grey economy”, particularly in the service sector

So in spite of all the media hype and hot air, the emotional scenes in Berlin and the rapid disappearance of so many government figures, we have to say that really very little has significantly changed. The working class in Eastern Europe are still coping as best they can with the usual working class problems of poverty and poor housing, exacerbated by food shortages. True, we can put in the dustbin of history all those dogmas about the "leading role of the party", and the spurious claim that socialism = state capitalism and is a rather long drawn-out "transition” phase, an interminable prelude before the curtain can rise on Act I of "Communism''.

But when those hundreds of thousands demonstrated in East Germany, how many banner slogans called for the abolition of the wages system? However important the battle for democracy may be for the working class, if concessions are achieved which allow the freedom to say one's piece, it is important to know how to use this enlarged elbow-room, and what to say on that public platform.

The conclusions we can draw are, first, that in times of crisis, if workers are persistent and united in their determination they can win some political and economic concessions. Next, that they should be wary in such a situation: it may be a poisoned chalice. Finally, it must now be clear to all that the Leninist experiment was an historical blind alley, a cul-de-sac. There is no way forward to socialism down that road. A minority seized and held power: what they called the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was in fact dictatorship by the party over the working class.

Changes can be made to capitalism, which adapts to the demands of each age. Only one demand is incompatible with its continuance: the demand for socialism and the abolition of the wages system.

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Special Notice:
In the New Year a special issue of the Socialist Standard will deal in depth with changes in Eastern Europe and reaction to them in the West.