Socialists and the coming election (1991)

Party News from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is currently considering putting up two candidates in next year’s Genera) Election, one in London and possibly one in the Greater Manchester area. A meeting is being held in London on Wednesday 11 December to finalise plans to contest the Holborn and St Pancras constituency, at present held by Labour frontbencher Frank Dobson: all members and sympathisers who can help are invited to attend (for details see Meetings Page).

To pay for the deposit and mount a credible campaign, including making full use of the postal distribution of the candidate's address, we need at least £2000. At the moment the amount standing in our Election fund is £697. Readers wishing to help us reach the targetted amount are invited to send their contributions (made payable to "the Socialist Party of Great Britain”) to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7 UN.

Blogger's Note:

The Party didn't end up contesting a seat in the Greater Manchester area at the 1992 General Election but they did contest the Holborn & St Pancras seat in London. A write up of that election campaign appeared in the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB Meetings (1991)

Party News from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sheer Hard Slog (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

The Poverties of Capitalism (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader has sent us the following observations arising from a recent trip to India and Australia.

Last year I had the misfortune to be offered employment. I say “misfortune" since, in common with most workers, I had little or no choice over the terms of my contract or the social consequences of my labour. I had the "choice" of taking up employment or being in the dole queue. In fact, once offered a post, I didn’t even have those options, since if I rejected the offer I would no longer be eligible for dole money.

In October last year I took time off from my post in order to go travelling to various countries around the world with a friend. Our first destination was Bombay in India, where the friend of a friend who put us up was lucky enough to be a multi-millionaire. It would have been impossible from any political standpoint not be be taken aback by the absolute difference of conditions faced in daily life by our host as against the vast majority of his fellow humans in the surrounding city. The abject poverty of the many would make the standard of living of the average British worker seem like a Utopian dream. When I asked my host how he felt about all the abject poverty surrounding him, he explained it in one word: “overpopulation".

Further on in my travels in India I frequently heard this explanation for the prevailing conditions of the majority. However, this time it was the ordinary people themselves explaining their plight. After hearing it so many times that I almost believed it myself, I stood outside this “argument of the senses” to exercise my brain in order to analyse the validity of blaming overpopulation as the cause of poverty. I call it the "argument of the senses”, since if one merely sees all the people on the street starving, one would be forgiven for assuming it’s because there are simply too many people to feed. Under capitalism, of course, this is the case, but that is only if one accepts as unalterable the doctrine of the present system that goods are only produced with the object of making a profit, regardless of human needs. These people are starving because they can’t afford to buy enough food and so there is no profit in producing it for them, not because there are too many people in India. After all, I had just experienced the abundance of my capitalist host and he was certainly not suffering the consequences of some "overpopulation”.

Later on in my trip I arrived in Australia, where I spent five months or so. Not surprisingly, in a country roughly the size of the United States, minus Alaska, with a population of only about 17 million, overpopulation was not used as the scapegoat for poverty in the way it had been in India. In Australia there are wide open spaces where one won’t see any sign of human habitation, and not just in desert areas.

Riches and poverty
According to the theorists of overpopulation, I should not have been able to find any poverty in Australia, but, of course, this was not the case. Poverty is inevitable when the peoples of the world are divided into two classes: those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labour power in order to live. But poverty, like richness, is a relative term and cannot be determined by any given amount of wealth. I may earn £10,000 this year, and even £50,000 next year, but still be living in poverty. This is because poverty relates to the proportion of wealth available to the individual as against that created by society as a whole. My £50,000 would certainly be an increase on the £10,000 of the previous year, but, as any major share-holder in a multi-national company would tell you. £50,000 per annum is still abject poverty.

So back to my experiences in Australia. Obviously, under the definition of poverty outlined above, most Australians are living in poverty. To illustrate the point about poverty not being defined by any fixed sum of wealth, whether it be measured in pecuniary terms or in terms of choice, experience, creativity or whatever, I will take the Aboriginal population as a whole. Under capitalism most aboriginals certainly live in poverty. Even people who wish to define poverty through welfare handouts would be forced to concede this fact. However, if we were able to travel back in time to before the European conquest of the continent, we would find the aboriginal population living outside the clutches of poverty. Certainly in physical, material terms they might be considered better off now than before, but in terms of their share of what society could, at that time, produce, they are now much poorer. Before European conquest, they enjoyed free access to everything that their society could provide.

The tragedy of our age is that although we, as inhabitants of this planet, could live much more comfortably and fearlessly than the undiscovered aboriginals ever did, relatively we live much more impoverished lives. Instead, in our “enlightened age”, so-called educated people of no doubt good intention, debate the "biological reasons” why alcohol makes aboriginals dissatisfied with their lot, or why they can’t adapt to the advantages of capitalism. Ask any capitalist to adapt to the advantages of being a worker in capitalism and they will show the same “biological” frailties as any aboriginal.

Eventually, of course, all good things in capitalism are forced to come to an end. My money ran dry and I was forced to return to England in order to sell my labour power once more. However, nine months is a long time in capitalism. “Circumstances beyond our control” prevented my employer from offering me what I had been led to believe was a certain promotion. The recession had deepened.

J. C.

Free! I'm Free! (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

Land monopolists (1991)

Book Review from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now The Synthesis: Capitalism, Socialism and the New Social Contract. Edited by Richard Noyes. Shepheard-Walwyn. £14.95.

This collection of articles by a number of British, US and Dutch writers is an application of the ideas of Henry George to today’s world. George, a contemporary of Marx and Engels, argued that the existence of exclusive private property rights over land distorted the workings of laissez-faire capitalism. Abolish private property in land by taxing away its value and capitalism would work for the mutual benefit of capitalists and workers.

Ground rent is indeed a deduction from the surplus value that capitalist firms extract from their workers, but its payment to the state as taxes rather than to land monopolists like the Duke of Westminster, Harry Hyams, Gerald Ronson and the Queen would only benefit the capitalists and not the working class.

For a short while in the 19th century Georgism was a radical doctrine that enjoyed considerable, if misplaced, working class support. Today, as one of the authors documents, Georgist infiltrators have had some influence on the thinking of the Green Party whose “Community Ground Rent" is the tax on land values that George advocated. But Georgism, in preaching that there is nothing wrong with laissez-faire capitalism as such and that “everything would be alright if ground rent were paid to the state", as Marx summed up George’s views (in a letter to Sorge, 20 June 1881), fits in very well with the free-marketeerism that enjoyed a passing revival in the 1980s. Indeed, this seems to be the general point this book seeks to make.

Adam Buick

The Road to Tiananmen (1991)

Book Review from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

China: The Search for Social Justice and Democracy. By Ranbir Vohra. (Penguin. £5.99.)

It is clear that this book was written in some haste to cash in on the demand for works dealing with the events leading up to the Tiananmen Square massacre in Peking in 1989. Vohra sets the scene by sketching in the history of China since 1850, but this means that he devotes too little attention to the 1989 events themselves. His two chapters on China under Mao Tse-Tung are obsessed with the figure of Mao and his ideas and plans.

But the sections dealing with developments since Mao's death in 1976 are rather better. Vohra traces the economic reforms which meant a slackening of state control and a growth in overseas investment in China. This was accompanied by massive inflation and a rise in the urban cost of living. Agricultural policies designed to boost production in fact saw a fall in the grain harvest. Plenty of workers faced a drop in their standards of living, while new private capitalists flourished. Like most academics, Vohra places far too much stress on factions and divisions within the Chinese ruling circles as the dynamic for political developments. But it emerges that ordinary workers did not find the post-Mao polices an unmixed blessing.

The account of the 1989 protests is vitiated because attention is focussed on the student movement, with only passing references to the degree of support and participation by other workers in Peking. The claim that the events were “a part of the ongoing conflict between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese intelligentsia, each side representing a different view of modernization" is wildly misleading.

On the other hand, Vohra is right to point out that the protestors had no coherent political programme, and that there is no evidence of support among the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population outside the big cities. He is also correct when he notes that the Chinese government had had little compunction in the past about murdering its subjects. An estimated 80,000 were killed in the late 1950s. while, in 1976, several hundred were murdered . . .  in Tiananmen Square.

This is expensive for a slim volume with no illustrations, but it is an informative account. And Vohra as least realises that Marx was opposed to commodity production.

Paul Bennett

What about Lenin? (1991)

Book Reviews from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stalinism in Crisis. By Robert Knight. Pluto Press. 1991. £9.95.

Stalinism and the Seeds of Soviet Reform By Moshe Lewin. Pluto Press, 1991.

Current events in Russia have left Trotskyists (not to speak of Stalinists and other Leninists) in complete confusion. These two books illustrate two contrastingTrotskyist responses to Russia's changing from bureaucratic state capitalism to private capitalism.

Knight, a writer for the RCP’s Living Marxism, sees the Russian ruling class as trying to “restore" capitalism in Russia and to convert itself from a bureaucracy ruling an inefficient statist economy into a capitalist class. Lewin won’t even concede that Russia has a ruling class or that it is heading for the sort of capitalism that exists in the West. In his introduction to this new edition of his book that first appeared in 1974, he seems to be saying that Gorbachev was engaged in converting Russia from a “degenerate workers' state" (whatever that might be) into some sort of “socialist" democracy!

And, of course, it is altogether too easy to blame, as the titles of both books seek to, the Russian dictatorship on to Stalin, when the bases for it were laid under Lenin.

Adam Buick

Between the Lines: Humbug! (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Humbug!

It is that time of the year again when Blue Peter shows us how to make cribs out of Big Mac boxes and Gary Glitter is resurrected to prove that there is life after death. A false mood of cheerfulness is forced. Ed the Duck, who is rumoured to be the heir apparent to Kinnock if Labour loses, will squeak Christmas messages to sick children in towns we have never heard of, and on the day itself Noel Edmonds will sit at the top of the Telecom Tower and make Australians cry by re-introducing them to their long-lost sisters from Catford.

It is the time of year when newsreaders smile just a little more. Last year they smiled incessantly because "freedom" had been delivered by Santa to the east Europeans and "communism" had collapsed under the weight of its refusal to provide the proles with sufficient threepenny bits in their Christmas pud. This year the inevitable Review of 1991 will furiously bang nails into the coffin lid of the Russian Communist Party. It is their media and they are entitled to bash their enemies; let's face it, state capitalism has been brought to its knees and there are some very happy billionaires and generals around. We, the wealth-producing majority, will have the capitalists' year reviewed for us: their defeat of the Kremlin superpower, their loss of a Prime Minister, their war for oil in the Gulf, their newspaper tycoon who drowned. This is not our life; this is the televised reality which must be slotted into our memory banks to make the memory of our class the memory of our masters' affairs.

On Christmas morning dull Church of England choirs will offer dirges about Christ who was born on this day. Christ, if he lived, was apparently a rebel leader against the tyranny of Roman imperialism. Had he lived today he would have been a victim of the government broadcasting: "And here is the Sermon delivered by the rebel leader from the Mount, but government restrictions require us to have an actor to dub his voice". John Selwyn Gummer perhaps? He certainly has my vote if he agrees to play the part through to the crucifixion. There are few things more uncheerful than a C of E choir on the telly while you are unwrapping your unwanted gifts. Few things, but some. There is, of course, the Queen-Parasite's speech to her subjects. Forget your citizen's charter, Johnnie boy, we're all subjects as far as the BBC is concerned. At one minute past midnight on 1 January we all become sinners (as well as yawning Europeans this year), for the Archbishop of Cant — this year a new face but the same old cant — comes on after the pissed Scottish dancers to tell us our fortunes. It is always a bad start to the year, this tedious sermon from Christ's man in Lambeth. On Christmas Day the Pope does his gig — a much more jolly affair, if only because it is obvious that the guy literally does not know what he is talking about in the various speeches he delivers.

Christmas is a time for the good old comics to come out and entertain the troops. Here we see glittery rubbish, recorded last summer, with jokes that can be understood by Sun readers and "songs for all the family" — if collective torture is on the agenda after three glasses of brandy. There is usually a Christmas film and it is usually talked about by families for days before the big day, only to be watched in sulking silence when it comes because Father and Aunty Florry have fallen out over who should pull the last cracker — this leading Flo to criticise his side of the family. Psychiatrists say that more divorces start during the Christmas festivities than at any other time except the fortnight's summer holiday. Capitalism is not a system which lets workers get used to spending lime with their "loved ones." When such time is offered, under all of the pressures of money insecurity and the need to participate in the ritual jolliness, genuine relationships crack.

Christmas TV is a moment of capitalism at its most dishonest. It is the moment like the politician kissing the baby whom he will later call a rioting delinquent, and like the bank manager on Children In Need who presents his slinking cheque before evicting a few thousand mortgage defaulters from their homes. Christmas TV is your exploiter wearing a silly paper hat and laughing at you through the screen. He has a lot to laugh about and the wage slaves give him too much to laugh at. The biggest Christmas gift of all is offered by the workers in the form of a willingness to carry on laying the golden egg of rent, interest and profit for another miserable year.

No doubt Christmas will offer at least one decent black and white film on BBC2 and, who knows, maybe they will show a few hours of decent music. Anyway, we have a world to win and then it can be Christmas every day — or never at all.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Communist Support for Conservative Candidates (1991)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communists have a simple faith: Whatever the Russian Government does is right, whether it be Pacts with Hitler or war with Hitler. Whatever helps the Russian Government is right, whether it be denouncing the Labour Party for associating with Conservatives or voting for Conservatives.

Viewed thus there is no inconstancy in the recent Communist support for Conservative candidates at Lancaster and Hampstead. At Lancaster, where the National Conservative candidate was opposed by an Independent Liberal and by Mr Fenner Brockway of the ILP. "a Communist deputation visited the Conservative campaign headquarters in Lancaster this afternoon and offered to work for the return of Mr Maclean, the National Government candidate” (Daily Telegraph. October 14th, 1941)

At Hampstead there were four candidates, all with the same policy, vigorous persecution of the war and aid for Russia. The Communists supported the official Conservative candidate, Flying Officer Charles Challen. who won the seat.

(From "Notes by the Way", Socialist Standard, December 1941.)

Sting in the Tail: Let's Get Swamped (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let's Get Swamped

Peter Kellner in The Independent (1 November) wrote about what a wonderful man John Major is.

  John Major is leading the Conservative Party towards a social revolution . . . neither his friends nor his critics have acknowledged the magnitude of his project.

What excited Mr Kellner was Major's appearance at the Windsor Fellowship (now there is a revolutionary name). This is an organisation that "helps black undergraduates who want professional or management careers in industry."

Along with Mr Major’s meeting with Sir Ian McKellen, where he discussed "the demands of Stonewall, the homosexual pressure group that Sir Ian helped to form", this has led Kellner into the silly notion that Mr Major is somehow different from Mrs Thatcher.

Mrs Thatcher, he reminds us, had said in 1978 on TV that there was fear that Britain could be "swamped"by "immigrants".

In the Queen’s speech written by Mr Major and his advisers there is very little to suggest that Major and Thatcher are so different.

Did Mr Major propose that Clause 28 which he supported be withdrawn? No. Did he make some momentous move to change Britain's official racialist policies on immigration? No. He had the Queen, the highest paid ventriloquist's doll in the world, mouthing about how the government intended to stop the £50 legal aid for immigrants protesting against deportation.

Hypocrisy and cant we are used to: but let's make it known that we are socialists — we want to be swamped. Welcome fellow workers, irrespective of your sexual proclivities, the colour of your skin, or anything so bloody stupid. We are workers, let us unite against the Thatchers, Majors and Kinnocks of this world!

Loyal and True

There is an oft-repeated piece of conventional wisdom that has it that the Tory Party's great strength lies in its loyalty to the leader.

Mr Kenneth Clarke on TV-am’s Frost on Sunday (3 November) when asked about his attitude towards former leader Margaret Thatcher said he held her "In fairly reverential respect . . . She was the boss."

However when pressed to answer the point that after the first ballot he had told her to her face that he would resign from the cabinet if she stood for the second ballot he replied "Well I didn't quite do that."

Ah, touching loyalty? Well, not quite. The oily Mr Clarke later revealed "I told others, whom I'm sure told her, I would resign."

Poverty of Thought

The sterility of bourgeois thinking was well illustrated by Geoffrey Wheatcroft when writing in the Sunday Telegraph (27 October).

  It is easy to make fun of the way the poverty lobby continually redefines its terms, so that the poor . . .  are those without colour television, washing machines or regular holidays.

For Wheatcroft everything is fixed in time and is not to be redefined despite social change. Being "poor" today is what it was 100 years ago — living in a hovel, being half starved and clothed in rags.

But poverty, like everything else, is relative. For example, during World War Two the immensely rich Aga Khan was trapped in Switzerland and had to live on "only" £40,000 a year. This was an enormous sum in those days and 200 times the income of most British workers, but the Aga Khan considered he was living in poverty.

Today society can produce much more wealth than it could 100 years ago and people's perception of what are luxuries has changed. Not to have colour TV, a washing machine, etc., when these can be provided in abundance is indeed to be "poor".

Wheatcroft may laugh at the poverty lobby but they can at least understand what is obviously beyond him.

It's a Jungle

"How the lion roared with pride" was a headline in The Guardian (4 November). Of course this swell-headed feline was the English Lion, but why should the lion represent England? It isn't native to these shores so wouldn't a Yorkshire Terrier or a Dover Sole be more appropriate?

The fact is that powerful nations which grabbed Empires through conquest often adopted ferocious animals as the symbol of their power. For example, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Tsarist Russia all chose the Eagle. It would have been less awe-inspiring if they or Imperial England had chosen the Duck or Badger although both are native to all these countries.

But what was that headline all about anyway? Only that a Lion had been duffed-up by a Wallaby, or, put another way, that England's Rugby team had lost the World Cup Final against Australia. Doubtless, every English patriot is as sick as a parrot.

Classroom Struggle

Settle down, class. In this current affairs period we will discuss why some European left-wing parties are gaining support while others are losing it.

Can anyone name any countries where the left-wing are doing well? Obviously Britain, Germany, Denmark. Good, but where are they doing badly? France, Spain, Austria, fine, that's enough.

Right, but how do we explain these contrasting fortunes? You at the back, yes, you with your nose buried in that paper. Let's hear from you. Hmm, so you say that the left-wing are unpopular in France, Spain and Austria because they are in government there and any party which administers capitalism must inevitably lose support. I've heard that before, somewhere.

Well, that's a debatable viewpoint, but now tell the class why the left-wing are so popular in Britain, Germany and Denmark where they are seeking government The political experts put it down to "the swing of the pendulum", what's your view? You put it down to voters having short memories . . . what IS that paper you were reading? The Socialist Standard? I should have known!

They Never Learn

After decades of boring-from-within the Labour Party, Militant has been forced to abandon "entryism" and openly come out as a separate organisation.

Dishonest to the end, they say: We are not setting up as a fully-fledged party because that would be counter-posed to Labour. (The Guardian 2 November). This despite the fact that they intend to put up parliamentary and local government candidates against Labour!

This move must be a bitter pill for Militant to swallow. They really believed that they could take over the Labour Party. And remember all those years spent lecturing other equally futile left-wing groups for being outside Labour's ranks? Now they join them and all their wordy justifications (47 pages long) for what they present as a tactical withdrawal are only camouflage for what is a headlong retreat.

Has Militant learned the folly of "entryism"? Not one bit and they have broadcast their intention of sneaking back into the Labour Party when they think the coast is clear. What a hope and what a policy!

Labour of Sisyphus

Recently we read another politician telling us that "politics is the art of the possible".

But all politicians are committed to running the affairs of capitalism, a system which by its very nature generates military and trade wars between nations, produces such massive poverty and insecurity that racial, national and religious hatreds inevitably occur, causes pollution of the earth through the drive for profit, etc., etc.

And yet the politicians are the ones who are endlessly engaged in the hopeless task of trying to reform away the problems which capitalism itself creates!

The art of the possible? A more accurate definition of their activities would be that "politics is the pursuit of the impossible".

What Do We Mean By Class? (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class is a redundant issue. Everyone's a worker now.

Class is still very much the basis of present-day society. In this society people are divided into those who own the workplaces in the form of capital, the employers or capitalist class, and those who do the work but do not own what they produce, the working class.

As a system of society which predominates throughout the world, capitalism is based on the extraction of surplus value through the wages system. Even if there has been some separation of ownership and control in capitalist enterprises, this does not affect the inherent class antagonism between those who own and those who produce. Ultimately, those who benefit are still those who don't need to work because they enjoy an unearned income derived from the exploitation of those who do.

Exploitation is a thing of the past. If you don't like your job you can always leave it.

Exploitation exists because of the very fact that people work for employers. Employers buy our capacity to work with a wage or a salary and then extract more work out of us than it cost them to pay us. This unpaid surplus work is the source of their profit. So there’s a conflict of interests at work: they want to get as much out of us for as little expenditure as possible, and we need the money in order to live. It's the only way this competitive organisation of society can work, since their success depends on our exploitation. It's nothing to do with morality or low wages. It's all about the employers owning the workplace and us earning our livelihood by being a wage slave. And it really is a form of slavery, because although we can leave our particular job we can't leave that class of people who are compelled to get a job.

As long as I get "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work" I don't mind if my employer makes a fair profit.

There can never be anything fair about the wages system for workers, since this is the mechanism of our exploitation. It pre-supposes that workers do not own or control the workplace. Wages and salaries are the price of the value-creating ability we sell to employers. We produce goods and services worth more than we receive in pay, whether the pay is high or low. This socially-produced surplus value is the source of the employers' profit. Employers operate in a competitive world economy and will, irrespective of the size of their profits, pay their workers only what they must. Without the resistance of workers, wages and salaries would be lower than they are. So we have a class struggle at work.

I work in an office. I don't produce anything physical, so how can I be exploited?

The life-blood of this economic system is the making of profits through the exploitation of the whole working class. This is a social process which involves the whole workforce in a complex division of labour in which some physically alter materials while others are involved in planning, design and organising. All of these roles are part of this economic system and all those who perform them are exploited as they all contribute in one way or another to the production of profits for the employing class as a whole. As a class we run society from top to bottom. We do not run it in our own interest, however. We run it for the profit of the employing class, a minority of people with most of the power and wealth and the freedom this gives them.

I am not working class: I earn a good salary, own a house and big car; I've been to university and take a Mediterranean holiday every year.

You may think of yourself as being a "professional" or "middle class" but this doesn’t affect your basic economic position. Because the property you own does not bring you in a regular income large enough for you to live on, like the rest of us you are compelled to sell your working abilities. Your pay may be called a salary but you still belong to that class of people forced to hire themselves to an employer. From this perspective, things like status, level of earnings, education, type of job or occupation are besides the point. They do not affect your exploited class position in society, even if you arc in some respects better off than most other workers. Salaried doctors, managers, teachers, scientists, and so on are comprised within the working class.

There will always be classes; there will always be rich and poor - it's only human nature.

It is class society which operates against human nature. Capitalist exploitation creates rich and poor people, with their opposing interests. But there is no reason why our rational desire for mutual aid should not allow us to establish a classless society. To end class exploitation requires class-conscious political action by the working class to establish common ownership and democratic control of the places of work. This will do away with the wage slavery of working for an employer and open the way for work based solely on human needs and abilities.

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If you agree with these views or have any questions, please write to us or come along to one of our meetings.

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When Labour Ruled (2) (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

"As in all recent elections . . .  [the Labour Party] played down any claim to stand, as a socialist party, for a radically different form of society . . . it asked the voters to say that it could administer the mixed economy and welfare state better than the Conservatives".

No, this is not David Butler's comment on the next year's general election but on that of 1959. In the event, the voters judged that the Tories could run capitalism better than Labour. But after a further five years of Tory rule they changed their minds and in October 1964 a Labour government under Harold Wilson came into office.

The 1964 Wilson government was elected on a programme of ending the "stop-go" of what they called "Thirteen Years of Tory Misrule". This was a reference to what happened every four or five years during the 50s and 60s when a boom led to a balance of payments crisis by sucking in imports, to which the government responded by measures to damp down demand. Actually this was a reflection, at the level of government policy, of the minor cycles that capitalism continued to go through during the prolonged period of capitalist expansion that followed the war. In any event, Labour promised to replace "stop-go" by "planned and sustained economic growth".

A Labour government, George Brown had declared in January 1963, would cure unemployment "instantly" (Observer, 27 January 1963). James Callaghan explained how in more detail:

Our first priority will be to make British industry GO, and to make it efficient. We shall ask industrialists, trade unionists, and economists at all levels to help us create a National Industrial Development Plan. This plan will set expanding targets for industry; will collect and analyse information about costs, export possibilities, profit margins; and will reconcile production with demand . . . The plan will aim for a large increase in the output of our factories each year—produced more efficiently than before. (Daily Sketch, 11 February 1963).

After Labour's victory in October of the following year, Brown became Minister of Economic Affairs and Callaghan Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ray Gunther, a former leader of the railway clerks union, was appointed Minister of Labour, Brown's job was to draw up the promised National Plan; which he duly did, unveiling at a ceremony in September 1965. It provided for total output to rise by 25 percent by 1970, a growth rate twice as fast as the percent a year that had taken place under the Tories.

The plan never got off the ground. As early as November 1964 a balance of payments crisis developed with a run on sterling. By July 1965 this had become so serious that Callaghan was forced to curb government spending. After announcing cuts in existing expenditure, he went on "we shall also have to defer some of the desirable social reforms we had hoped to do in the immediate future" (Times, 28 July 1965). Although Labour won an increased majority in the election held in March 1966, in November 1967 they were forced to devalue the pound and impose even tougher austerity; prescription charges which they had abolished on coming to power were restored at a higher rate. And growth never did attain anything near the planned 4 percent. Contemporary newspaper headlines (see box) tell their own story:

• Mr Gunther Condemns Dock Move by Strikers (Times, 20 October 1964) 
• Wilson Warns of More Tough and Unpopular Measures Ahead (Sunday Times, 24 February 1965)
• Wilson's TV Attack on Clock-Watching (Telegraph, 25 February 1965)
• Britain's Attitudes Outdated—Premier. Country "cannot afford strikes" (Guardian, 25 February 1965)
• Profit Motive as Test of Efficiency. Mr Brown's Reply to Directors. "Government Not Anti-Business" (Times, 22 May 1965)
• Wilson Hits at Rail Go-Slow (Observer, 18 July 1965)
• Spending Cut to Suit Nation's Pocket. Chancellor Curbs Council Mortgages, HP, Building. £100m of Defence Next Year: Social Reforms Deferred (Times, 28 July 1965)
• "Squeeze" Delays School Building Six Months (Telegraph, 26 August 1965)
• Brown Wants Strong Powers to Back Incomes Policy (Financial Times, 21 December 1965)
• Wage Restraint Vital in 1966—Premier (Financial Times, 1 January 1966)
• Folly To Press For Big Wage Rises—Chancellor (Financial Times, 18 May 1966)
• Sackings Better Than Short-Time, Says Gunther (Sunday Telegraph, 18 September 1966)
• Ministers Hint At Permanent Pay Curb (Observer, 18 September 1966)
• Government Embraces Profitability (Guardian, 23 November 1966)
• Local Authority Spending Must be Cut—Greenwood (Financial Times, 21 December 1966)
• Government Justified in Demanding Sacrifices—PM (Financial Times, 1 May 1966)
• Hint of Change in Social Aid. Mr Gunther on "Means Test" (Times, 21 August 1967)
• Emergency Powers Ready (Financial Times, 21 October 1967)
• Prescription Charges Essential—Crossman (Financial Times, 29 January 1968)
• Standard of Living "Must Fall". Mr Gunther on Last Chance (Times, 29 March 1968)

By 1970 the working class had had enough and Labour was booted out. By its own standards the Wilson Labour government of 1964-70 was an utter failure. It didn't deliver sustained growth and social progress; instead it ended up restraining wages and cutting social services, and it left office with unemployment at its highest for thirty years.

Why do Labour governments fail way? The first thing to notice is that there is nothing special about Labour governments in this respect. Tory governments do the same. In fact all governments do. It is just that Labour's failures are more resounding in that the Labour Party was formed as a trade union party committed to trying to improve conditions for the working class while nobody expects the Tories, as the party of the ruling class and the rich, to behave any differently.

Dismal record

The basic reason for the failure of the Wilson government's attempt to plan a steady expansion of output, so as to keep unemployment down and provide expanding social services, was that his government was a government of capitalism, and capitalism is a profit-making system under which what and how much is produced is determined by considerations of relatively short-term profitability. Ministers and civil servants may draw up grandiose plans for a steady expansion of production, but those in charge of firms react to market conditions not paper plans. If, as happened under Wilson in the 60s, they judge that they will not be able to sell the extra output at a profit then they won't produce it.

Labour has only ever challenged capitalism verbally, and then only sparingly. In practice, when in power, it has always accepted capitalism and capitalism's economic priorities: that, since capitalism runs on profits, profits must be allowed tor be made, and must be maintained if necessary at the expense of wages and salaries

A number of Labour leaders have been quite open about this. Harold Lever, who then an MP (now he's a Lord) and chairman of the Labour Party's economic and financial committee and later a cabinet Minister, writing just after Labour had won the 1966 election, declared in terms which the present leaders of the Labour Party would wholeheartedly endorse:

'Labour's economic plans are not in any way geared to nationalisation; they are directed towards increased production on the basis of the continued existence of a large private sector. Within the terms of a profit system it is not possible, in the long run, to achieve sustained increases in output without an adequate flow of profit to promote and finance them. The Labour leadership knows as well as any businessman that an engine which runs on profit cannot be made to move faster without extra fuel. So, though profits may be squeezed temporarily by taxation and Government price policy, they must and will, over a longer period, increase significantly even if not proportionately to increased production' (Observer, 3 April 1966).

Since profits are needed to fuel the engine of capitalism, one of the tasks of any (and every) government of capitalism is to ensure that the flow of profits is not threatened by strikes and wage demands. In short, one of the jobs of managing capitalism is to try to ensure that the working class does not demand, and does not get, too much. This is why Labour governments, as managers of capitalism, always end up attacking the working class in the same way as the Tories do.

Whenever profits have been threatened, as by a failure of exports to sell well enough or by an economic downturn, Labour governments have reacted by restraining and freezing wages and by postponing and cutting back on social reforms. This is not because they are incompetent or dishonest or traitors but because that is what managing capitalism involves. Anybody who takes on this responsibility has to do this, just as Wilson had to and as Kinnock will if ever he gets the chance.

Adam Buick

Next month we look at the wage-restraining, union-bashing, strike-breaking, service-cutting record of the Labour governments, under Wilson and then Callaghan, that ruled between 1974 and 1979.

Who's afraid of socialism? (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The view is not uncommon that socialist society would quickly starve to death because no one would find it worth their while to grow food or indeed to make anything. Complete lassitude. Maybe, but if millions of people took the trouble to invest in all the effort required in building a socialist world and then let it fall apart through indolence, then the history of the human race must be a fiction, and the law of self-preservation a nonsense.

This view is one not only ill-considered, but expressive of a particular economic system and social ideology elevated to a primary principle of human behaviour: that no act is of value in itself, but only to the extent that it serves to accrue as much of the acts of others as possible for as little as possible. Here the norm for capitalism is used as the norm for socialism, and because it does not fit. socialism is rejected as impossible.

Here, also, is to be found the idea that what, who and how you are is the result of individual character. To have any success in life is a personal achievement, proof not only of ones superiority over others, but of justice rewarding ability and dedication. A natural order! To admit socialism is to reject all this; to allow all the advantages of a good life to those who have not earned it by virtue of personal endeavour and inborn talent.

Nothing is of value it seems unless someone else is deprived of it. The value of ones success is measured against the failure of others—the pecking order, so important to a self-esteem that knows and honours its place, in expectation of the bliss to come. "Who will do the dirty work?” is the cry of the already bruised ego. Not me, please sir! The fear that it might well be me. "If there are no leaders, who will tell us what to do?" Am I to be cheated of the chance to boss others around? What sort of a life will it be with no chance of promotion? What would I work for?

The fear of socialism has nothing to do with socialism; for the fear is now and socialism is not. Fear comes from insecurity, both emotional and physical; and insecurity is the inescapable lot of the wage slave. Ingrained in our consciousness and behaviour is the idea of reward, of the prize. Reward shall go to the deserving and be withheld from others. It is the ideology which supports the wages system and grew out of it.

Satisfying demand
Since it is the institution of private property that deprives all of the enjoyment of what is produced by all—and also many of the opportunity to contribute to the common good—then let us get rid of it.

Socialism deprives no one of anything other than the ability to be better off than anyone else. Socialism is not a system of rationing or centrally-planned scarcity. It is a society that can make what it wants to. and where individuals can take from this what they want. A whole range of skills would be required by a society of such complete and infinite variety. Invention, design. organisation, medicine, education, agriculture—as endless as human needs.

In running a factory for example, there are many tasks. All are important to the overall task. In capitalism these are valued in a hierarchical sense, taking its pattern from society at large, from menial to managerial. In socialism they will be valued simply because they are all necessary.

Yet, in certain respects, socialism would be not all that unfamiliar to the time traveller. There will be, as now, demand for goods and services. Howr will this demand be satisfied and how will this differ from today? In purely practical terms, not all that much. There are two basic elements: production and distribution, of which the latter must include transportation and consumer access.

The essential difference is the absence of exchange at all stages of the process, because exchange in money values is but the expression of private property which will have gone. What you want you could get from a self-service supermarket, which as far as one can judge is as good a system as any, but minus the three-headed Cerberus which presently stands guard at the checkout. demanding payment; the constant reminder that what is socially produced is not socially owned.

A checkout of sorts, would however, have its uses. Firstly, to record stock usage for the purpose of re-ordering and setting stock levels and. secondly, to provide information on the degree of demand for particular items. If demand falls off. it could be an indication that people no longer wanted the items concerned.

Consumer research would have a very important part to play in finding out what people actually did want. So that socialism would be a "demand-led” economy to a far greater extent than is possible today within the constraints of capitalist economics.

One of the principal activities of manufacture. in co-operation with distribution, would be the creation and running of consumer research centres, to involve people at every stage in the planning for new products (and the possible ending of old ones). So that any plan to produce something new would involve discovering what people thought of present products, checking this against the proposed improvements of the new product, and then deciding in the light of the information thus gained how to proceed.

As cost of production and price to the consumer are no longer issues, product ranges to suit the pocket—so much a feature of capitalist production—become unnecessary and so waste is reduced.

In addition to consumer research centres, a democratic system to oversee production and distribution through user councils can be envisaged, with levels of representation from local to area, and so on as necessary, so that all interested parties could be kept informed of what was going on.

Money, it has been claimed, is the consumer’s voting paper in the market election. The significance of this claim depends upon how much democracy there is in the market election system—on how many "voting papers" people have. If you have no money you won't be able to vote at all while the more money you have the more votes you get: which is hardly a democratic arrangement.

Who needs money?
Money has a mystique—magic powers. Because it is the universal measure of values. being unrelated to any one thing, it has the promise of everything. As far back as 1581, the age of merchant capitalism. John Hales in his Discourse wrote: “Money is, as it weare. a storehouse of anie com- moditie ye would have”. Money is not. though, the only way to initiate or to measure demand. Those who claim it to be so are seeing capitalism as an abstract system from which people have been excluded. Money as the reflection of private property restricts demand.

Need or the desire for a particular item initiates demand, and this can be measured through some system of inventory and stock control. In both retailing and manufacture. money values are mainly used to establish profit and loss accounts, which in socialist society would not exist. Because money values are volatile and constantly changing, even under capitalism in ordering goods from a manufacturer who in turn requests production from the factory, it is only physical quantity that has real meaning. And so it would be in socialist society.

The much-trumpeted "demand-led economy" of today is in reality no such thing. Consumer choice may be the theory of entrepreneurs and their political guide dogs, but not their practice.The steady erosion of personal choice, at the diktat of a never-ending quest to reduce production costs, is the everyday experience of all. Standardisation of products, limitation of product ranges, and the gradual disappearance of all but the few dominant names, provide variations on an ever-decreasing number of themes. You have only to go around the country to see the lookalike town centres, sporting all the familiar names above the doors and inside on their counters.

It is not easy to break the bonds of traditional thinking to comprehend a society of free people engaged in the rational pursuit of the means of everyday life for their own good. If we attempt to see our lives stripped of their incumberances; to realise that money and the property system only add the dimension of struggle to it (of earning a living—instead of living life) that, at least, will be a start.

Ian Jones

Caught In The Act: In The Raw (1991)

The Caught In The Act column from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the raw.

Our readers will be relieved to learn that the Socialist Standard will not be contributing to the praise, criticism and analysis of the life, times and death of Robert Maxwell - at least not in the style to which we have, over the past few weeks, become accustomed.

Maxwell was - how many times have we read this? - larger than life, which in his ease means that he routinely behaved in an excessively outrageous way. That was the soil in which so many stories about him flourished - like the time when he abruptly sacked a man for smoking outside his office, paying him off at once in cash from his own pocket which both surprised and delighted the man because he wasn't employed by Maxwell anyway. Sacking people was one of Maxwell's things - according to SOGAT secretary Brenda Dean he fired some of that union’s members six times, usually round Xmas to emphasise the point.

He could behave in this way - and then be remembered as a lovable eccentric for it - because he was rich. Most people don't - and can't behave like that because they’re poor. Maxwell was capitalism in the raw, in the sense that he worked on the simple and unavoidable principle that under this social system to have money means to have power.

This raises an interesting question. Why was he a member of the Labour Party, which professes to stand, if not for socialism, at least for capitalism without its rougher edges? The only possible answer is that Maxwell thought the Labour style of running British capitalism was best for his profits; he would certainly not have joined them if he had thought Labour policies were harmful. And why did the Labour Party accept him? Clearly that had a lot to do with his control of a large media empire, particularly the Mirror Group Newspapers and all that implied. What are a few professed political principles worth, compared to support from the Daily Mirror?

Perhaps Maxwell was not so much cynical as crazy. But, confronted with this gross personification of a ruthless, oppressive, murderous social system, how do we assess the response to him? The responses of the media, of the sycophants who feared above all being fired by him, of the Labour leadership who grovelled in the hope of attracting some grubby votes? These too are examples of capitalism in the raw. It is not a pretty sight.

Heroes.

We all know who Neil Kinnock dislikes - Militant, those who remind him of his past as a left-winger and anyone who challenges his fragile hold on the job of leader of the Labour Party. But who does he admire? In a recent issue of The Director he unveiled his choice.

Inevitably, he admires Ancurin Bevan who, apart from being Welsh, turned his back on much of what he had called his principles because he thought that would help him become Foreign Secretary. Kinnock has been doing the same thing ever since he became party leader - except that he has his sights on Number Ten. His next heroes were Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King whose popular reputation as men of unrelenting principles does not mix with Kinnock's, who has abandoned almost everything his erstwhile admirers once thought he stood for in his greed for power.

But Kinnock's headline-snatching choice was a heroine - Annie Besant, who led the famous match girls' strike in 1888. The passage of time has given that strike and Annie Besant a romantic niche in history But if Kinnock were Prime Minister, what would a Labour government think of a similar strike nowadays? Their record in power does not encourage us to believe that they would have been at all sympathetic to the strikers, no matter how appealing their ease.

Kinnock made his choices because, he said, they were united in a fundamental commitment to individual freedom. This is a little rich, coming from the leader of a party whose commitment to individual freedom was less than wholehearted when they were in power. In fact, the interview did little more than confirm his reputation as an unoriginal, shallow and inept contributor to political thought. It reinforced the impression that there is no reason to take anything he says seriously.

Crime and Punishment.

Kenneth Baker, genial bungling Home Secretary, is not famous for being uniquely successful in his political career but he has learned the technique of the pre-emptive strike, which he used to deflect the annual bout of Home Secretary-bashing at this year's Tory Party conference on the issue of the so-called joy-riders. Baker did this by declaring that he was about to introduce harsher penalties for those who are caught committing this offence and, to make it more likely that they are caught, by creating a new offence.

Approval for this extended beyond the conference hall; those who wait for the media to warn them that the country is being overwhelmed by a surge of anti-social behaviour are usually in favour of responding with suffer sentences for it. This vengefulness helps to obscure the fact that when politicals are confronted with a problem of any kind they have to appear to be in control and capable of doing something about it. Reality is rather different.

To begin with, "joy-riding" is not new. It has been happening for a long lime, with some help from the car manufacturers' reluctance to make cars more difficult to steal because of the expense involved. Then there is the fact that this government has devoted a lot of energy to Law and Order. They have given the police pay rises above the going rate in order to increase their numbers and are now aiming at recruiting another 1000. They have given the police more powers and they have introduced harder sentences for those convicted of some offences. By rights - or rather by their standards - crime should have responded to these measures by falling rapidly but, in fact, the figures for reported crime continue to climb inexorably, ever upwards.

So no joy-rider with any sense would be impressed by Baker's windy rhetoric. But they might wallow in the notoriety while they can, for while at present they are the bogey everyone loves to hate, by this time next year they may have been superceded by another one, by other demands for action and for the police and the courts to crack down. Whether there will be another Home Secretary to make the same kind of promises as Baker will depend partly on the timing of the next general election - and partly on Baker's well-known talent for survival.

Ivan

Editorial: Festival of Commerce (1991)

Editorial from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the jamboree of commercialism known as Christmas approaches, we take the opportunity of expressing our attitude to it and wishing you a tolerable and enlightening New Year.

Christmas developed from an ancient pagan festival: both the date and superstitions like the mistletoe are of pre-Christian origin. It is supposed to celebrate the birth of "Jesus Christ", a possibly legendary figure claimed as the Messiah and as a demigod. He is the focal point of one the most powerful and widespread, oppressive and stultifying religious movements that have tortured humanity.

Religion cannot be reconciled with a rational view of the universe and society. Inverting Genesis, we say "humans made God in their own image". The rule of God in the universe reflects and serves to justify rule by human masters in society. Why else is he called "King"? Indeed. why else is he "he" rather than "she"? Like our real rulers, he is portrayed as powerful yet merciful, presiding sadly over the labyrinth of human misery. If God exists, he is our enemy.

Nowadays Christmas is primarily a secular festival. The rat-race is suspended for a few days to give the morale of the wage and salary slaves a midwinter boost. During the festivities, those that can afford it try to enjoy themselves. The limited extent to which they succeed is evidenced by their frantic efforts to drown out the consciousness of their alienation by loud music, over-eating and—above all—getting pissed.And then back to the grindstone.

Expensive and unwanted gifts are purchased and exchanged, to the great profit of all the business interests involved. This custom is scarcely a spontaneous expression of affection. On the whole it is more like a ritual duty. A significant point is the way people are embarrassed to receive a present and to have none to give in return. The exchange economy not only fragments society into a myriad of isolated competitors; it also produces the poisonous ethos of "you don't get or give something for nothing", which penetrates personal life.

It is customary at Christmas to speak of Peace on Earth and Good Will To All Men. But the tragedy of an outmoded and insane social organisation continues as usual. Think of its delights. Poverty and destruction in the midst of actual or potential plenty. Slums, famines, pollution, commercial destruction of wildlife, waste, more waste, social divisions and strife of all kinds. Built-in obsolescence, advertising, the domination of money. Uniforms, tanks, bombs, prisons, muggings, alcoholism, prayers, prostitution, national anthems, bigotry, fear, ignorance, loneliness, AIDS, Neil Major and John Kinnock. Feeling better now?

Humanity has the means—technical, material, organisational—to build a new world of freedom, harmony and enough for all. A world in which the enormous potential of modern knowledge and technology, released from the service of commerce and war, can be realised. A world in which the human species owns its means of life in common, and controls them democratically in the interests of all. A world in which the direct satisfaction of human needs of all kinds had replaced profit and the "national interest" as the moving force of social life. A world which will know nothing of money or coercive government or national frontiers. A world fit to live in.

We think humanity is fully capable of constructing such a socialist society once it has the understanding necessary. We must establish the new society soon of the species is to survive. Helping people grasp this is the purpose of the Socialist Party. Don't just wish us luck if you sympathise (we don't believe in luck, either). Contact us for more information; and you might feel inclined to join and help us in the new year.

Dreaming spires and screaming tyres (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A resident of the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford describes the background to the recent riots there.

For a week during the summer Blackbird Leys, a housing estate in Oxford, was catapulted (and I choose that word carefully) to the the forefront of public attention after a sudden and apparently spontaneous outbreak of violence. Rioting occurred and petrol bombs were thrown when police tried to break up crowds of young people who had come to watch a display of the driving of stolen cars, something of a local pastime. Why did this happen? What is the origin of this conflict with authority in the shape of the police which is such a feature of Blackbird Leys? And why did it erupt on this occasion, as it never had done before, into such open violence?

The violence and conflict was not the product of simple material deprivation; unemployment at 9 percent, but this is not the highest in Oxford. It was more subtle; to do with things which are more intangible; boredom, police insensitivity and the alienation of a whole category of people from mainstream values, opportunities and ideals, and the establishment of a youth culture with its own values which are irreconcilable with the bourgeois values of the wider society.

Blackbird Leys is a large featureless 1960s council estate with a population of around 9,000 which, although it is technically part of the city of Oxford, is attached to the south of Oxford, outside the main Ring Road, in a way which gives it the definite appearance of being an afterthought, something which is artificial and created, not something natural or organic but an excrescence, manufactured to cope with a category of people somehow left out of mainstream society. This feeling of exclusion both physical and social is real and tangible. The actual situation of the estate—you have to go there specially; it is not on the way to anywhere—is mirrored by social exclusion, the feeling of being somehow outside the rest of Oxford and not integrated into the community at large.

The estate itself is oval-shaped and lacks any proper social centre or focus. The nearest thing to this is "the oval"—roads around a rectangular space with trees which functions as a traffic island. It is around this space that most of the driving stolen cars for excitement and danger takes place. The whole estate with its long straight roads is laid out in a way that encourages this joy-riding and speeding. Recently humps that were put in by the City Council to slow traffic down on these long roads have made joy-riding even more exciting and have only served to inconvenience legitimate traffic.

Blackbird Leys was originally built to house Oxford's population overspill and to serve the nearby Cowley car plant, an ambitious programme of public building which one could never imagine happening today. The reality was quite different: it was not built with people and their real needs in mind and was a planning failure. Blackbird Leys is now perceived as an area which is "bad" and which concentrates Oxford City's unwanted into one area, a sort of semi-unofficial social asylum, housing, for example, those with criminal records, and "problem" families. Not surprisingly it also has a high immigrant population. It is also large enough to have its own social differences. Away from the centre are streets of mostly privately-owned houses whereas nearer in and closer to the centre are the more regular and featureless council properties.

Blackbird Leys also borders on to the south Oxfordshire countryside with its picture-postcard villages. Garsington is one of these and is a particularly exclusive small village (exclusive in a real economic sense—it excludes others from participation in its way of life and in its attractiveness) with its beautiful small church, manor-house and thatched cottages. From the centre of Garsington can be seen a swathe of green country which suddenly turns grey and out of which rise tower blocks. The contrast is striking, both between the grey and green and between the life of some and the life of others. From the centre of Blackbird Leys one can see a pleasant green wooded hill which speaks of an otherness to the regularity and featurelessness of the area.

This real sense of difference both from the city and the country only serves to heighten the isolation of the residents. If you have money you can participate in the richness and variety of life, you can live in attractive surroundings, and if you don't you are demeaned and devalued and such things as pleasant surroundings are not seen to matter or to be important—or necessary. These social differences will surely be exacerbated even further by the new development of Greater Leys, a private development starting to enclose Blackbird Leys from the south. This is an estate which is very different, both qualitatively and quantitatively from its larger neighbour. A no-man's-land separates the two and walking across it there is a feeling of stepping from one section of society into another.

Police clampdown
The immediate trigger for the Oxford violence was a long-planned police clampdown on the persistent problem of joy-riding and the opportunity which this gave to frustrated, bored excluded young people in hot weather for a confrontation with authority. By coming in as they did, as a posse, the police made themselves a target for violence and aggression. They were perceived as representing mainstream culture and the interests of the privileged and powerful rather than those of (this particular section of) the working class. Thus they presented a symbol of authority against which the original trouble was a reaction.

This insensitivity made the situation much worse. At the height of the trouble the estate crawled with police spoiling for a row and television camera-crews (I saw some from Germany) and journalists from the national press falling over themselves to film any sign of violence. This turned a fairly small-scale confrontation into one played out for a national and international audience. This, of course, electrified the atmosphere and prolonged the trouble.

Various superficial attempts have been made to improve the situation on the estate. These concern the symptoms but not the underlying disease and, in fact, the situation cannot be resolved within capitalism at all. The wide oval in the centre of the estate where joy-riders do their handbrake turns has been narrowed in a way which has made the featureless, impoverished centre into even more of an eye-sore. The tarmac extensions to the pavements look ugly because no attempt has been made to harmonise them with the existing pavement. Pathetic attempts like this make it more difficult to express the symptoms of the underlying disease, which is capitalism, an economic system, which separates people from each other and makes them compete in a cut-throat way for the necessaries of life; it creates an underclass which never gets a look-in to the better things of life.

What is needed is a wholesale change, a revolution, and end to the misery of private property and the inevitable inequality which goes with it; a new system of society which integrates everyone and distributes its wealth according to the reasonable needs of its members. This new socialist society would abolish at a stroke the problems of deprivation and exclusion of Blackbird Leys and inner-city areas. It would enable the wasted talent of those who are presently excluded on economic grounds from a proper participation in the life of society to be properly developed. The energy squandered on destructive and anti-social pastimes like joy-riding could be put into activities which are more rewarding, fulfilling and socially useful. Young people have much energy, enthusiasm and intelligence and the loss of this is a tragic waste, for society and for those who never fulfil themselves. What is really needed in Oxford is not condemnation from the Home Secretary, nor more police or re-designed pavements but a fundamental change in society.

Iain Jamieson

The end of utopia? (1991)

From the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

NO MORE UTOPIAS—this was the bold headline above an article in the European section of the Guardian on 27 September written by Norberto Bobbio and which had originally appeared in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Bobbio thinks that the collapse of what he calls "the communist regimes" in eastern Europe and, particularly Russia, means the end of communism as an idea which has persisted in one form or another for 2000 years.

And he seems to know what communism (we also call it socialism—the two words mean the same) means:

"The communist ideal is about forming a society which is radically different from any that has gone before, a society based on the elimination of private property. The latter is condemned as being the cause of all the ills afflicting mankind, from minor disputes over boundaries to the great wars that have turned the whole world upside down. It is also about setting up a regime based on common ownership, if not of all goods, at least of those that form the major source of wealth and of man's dominion over man. Right or wrong this is communism".

That is sound enough but he then spoils it by claiming that the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 was "the first major attempt to achieve a communist society in the genuine sense of the term, a society in which private property would be abolished and replaced by the almost total collectivisation of a country with a population of millions".

This is nonsense because even Lenin recognised that socialism was impossible in such a backward country as Russia. All the Bolsheviks could do was to hope that revolutions in the developed European countries would come to their aid and, in the meantime, they would begin to modernise Russia by introducing state capitalism. They certainly didn't think that socialism could be established in one country. That idea came later.

So there was no attempt by the Bolsheviks to abolish private property. Even their promise of equal wages, which has nothing to do with socialism anyway, was quickly dropped and large differentials in income were encouraged instead, while the Bolsheviks (who became the Communist Party) made sure that all property came under their direct control and, in effect, ownership.

Bobbio's unhistorical approach is clearly shown when he compares Thomas More's Utopia with state capitalist Russia. He recounts how in Utopia the traveller who has discovered "the happy island where common ownership is rigorously observed" defends it from sceptics who argue that it cannot work because of human nature—greed, laziness, etc—by telling them "you talk like that because you haven't seen what I have seen". It is impossible now, says Bobbio, to give such a reply any more because "no one who has visited a communist country can now say come and see, then you can talk". What connection can there possibly be between Thomas More's 16th century ideal society and 20th century Russian state capitalism?

To those who insist that there has never been communism in Russia Bobbio replies that it is not enough to say this:

"You have to say why it is so, and suggest which other paths you can follow in order to avoid past mistakes. I don't know of there is anyone around today who can provide answers to these uncertainties".

Yes, signor Bobbio, there are and we will! The Socialist Party and its companion parties overseas have always insisted that communism/socialism can only be established when the essential conditions for it are present. For one thing, the productive forces of society must be developed to the point where they can provide plenty for all. Capitalism itself has long ago solved that problem for us. For another, the majority of the world's workers—all the people who have to work for a wage or salary and in whose interests socialism will be—must agree that it is both possible and desirable. Socialism could not possibly have come about in such an economically undeveloped country as Russia where the vast majority of the population neither understood nor desired it.

The Socialist Party welcomes the collapse of Russian-style "communism" as a significant step in clearing the way for genuine communism to which it has been a serious obstacle for over 70 years. And the idea of a classless, moneyless, worldwide society of production for use will not go away because something entirely different has failed. The proof of this is—and will be—the existence of its advocates in many parts of the world.

Vic Vanni