Silly Rivalry. (1932)

From the June 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

On May Day some demonstrators marched on the Japanese Embassy and were bludgeoned by the police. The Communists said that it was their stunt, and the l.L.P. journal, Forward, told the Communists how silly it was.

“The whole case against Communism might be summed up in the final feature of the day. This was the march against the Japanese Embassy….. The forces of police, foot and mounted, were overwhelming, and all that happened was a disgraceful scrimmage, cruel batonings, broken heads and several arrests.” (Forward, May 7th.)

Now read what the New Leader, the other l.L.P. organ, says :—

“The United Column…..was well over 1½ miles in length and very impressive. (This) is a piquant comment on the efforts of the Communist Party speakers to represent themselves the bold and true leaders as distinguished from the faint-hearted l.L.P. The small group which, after the police charges finally did break through to the offices of the Japanese Embassy, consisted almost exclusively of I.L.Pers and was led by one of the most prominent of the Divisional I.L.P. Propagandists.”

The I.L.P., like boastful schoolboys, thus present themselves to the Communists with the challenge : “We dare you to think of a stunt so damned silly that we won’t do it, too.”

Editorial: The fruits of reformism’s failures (2025)

Editorial from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday 13 September an estimated 110-150,000 people demonstrated on the streets of central London waving Union and St. George flags to ‘Unite the Kingdom’. This followed a campaign of painting the cross of St. George on roundabouts and bridges and attaching the flag to lampposts which no car driver or bus traveller could have failed to notice. Meanwhile the Reform UK party tops polls of voting intentions and is winning local council by-elections up and down the country.

Some, like the organisers of the much smaller — only some 5,000 — counter-demonstration ‘against fascist Tommy Robinson and his Far Right supporters’, see it as the beginning of the rise of a fascist movement that needs to ‘smashed’. Certainly, the organisers were demagogic rabble-rousers peddling prejudice and hate, starting with Robinson himself. Some are indeed fascists. Others seem to have been Christian Nationalists as evidenced by some demonstrators waving crosses. But that’s the organisers.

Most of those taking part in the demonstration can’t reliably be called fascists, but are people who had been misled into believing that immigrants and asylum-seekers are somehow being given priority over people born here. They aren’t, but the rabble-rousers encourage the mistaken belief that they are. The socialist response is not to smash such demonstrations but to argue all the more forcefully why all workers, native or immigrant, should unite to end the capitalist system that treats them both as second class.

What we are witnessing is not fascism, which arguably belongs to a different era and different political conditions, but what political philosophers have called ‘nativism’ — the view that the established population of a state should be given priority over incomers. ‘Nativism’ is one end of the spectrum of nationalism, distinguished by insisting that measures should be taken against immigrants, from making it difficult for them to become citizens to stopping more coming to deporting those who have come.

Part of the socialist case against trying to reform capitalism to make it work for all is that the rise of reactionary parties — including in its day fascism — is a result of the inevitable failure of reformist politics and parties to do this. Those excluded from the ownership and control of society feel (correctly) that their problems are not being solved and (mistakenly) expect politicians to solve them. Traditionally either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party have been elected to do this. At the moment, the Tories are still discredited by the failure and antics of the previous government while the Labour Party, given a chance after last year’s election, has very quickly — more quickly than would normally be expected —become discredited too. This has left an opening for a different set of politicians to bid to have a go.

Reform UK, too, will fail as the problems are not caused by what governments do or don’t do but by the workings of the capitalist economic system, which both causes the problems and prevents their solution. The excluded majority are treated as second class because under capitalism making profits for those who own the resources on which society depends comes first. As long as capitalism persists, and as long as people put up with it, the needs of the excluded majority will come second — and some of that majority will be duped by far-right demagogues.

May Day and the Class Struggle (1958)

From the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day demonstrations used to be held on the 1st of May: how they came to be changed to the first Sunday in May is one of life’s little ironies, or should we say one of working class life’s little ironies?

It happened during the first World War when the British and German sections of the working class were killing each other. Then the British Government suggested that in the interests of winning the war it would be greatly obliged if the Labour Party, who were also "winning the war” as well as organising May Day, would hold it on the first Sunday in May. To hold it on a week day would mean thousands of workers might be absent from munition factories and that would mean a drop in war production and what was more vital it would mean a drop in the rate at which the British uniformed workers were killing their German comrades.

It always rains on Sunday

After the first World War the Labour Party, presumably on the grounds that a week day demonstration would affect “peace production,” continued to hold May Day demonstrations on the first Sunday in May. There were also “influential people” who thought that if workers wanted to demonstrate they should demonstrate in their own time and not on a day normally devoted to the bosses. And further, as it could be shown statistically that the first May Sabbath was a case—”That it always rains on Sunday" — or nearly always, and so was likely to dampen the demonstrators’ ardour, everybody that is everybody apart from the workers seems to have reached a happy May Day solution.

The First of the May Days

There are, of course, four May Days historically considered. Two in the past, one in the present, and a hypothetical one in the future. May Days go back a long way, even the Greeks had a word for it, or more accurately a day for it. So did the Romans, Mais was a month of celebration, games and feasting a time when even austere Romans like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony took their hair down.

In Feudal England it was a day of celebration for the return of spring. On that day our forbears consumed quantities of cake and ale and made whoopee. It was sort of “Knees up Mother Brown” of the Middle Ages, and when the warmth of the day had subsided the young men full of cake and ale picked up the young women, also full of cake and ale, and bore them off into the woods, and a new warmth entered into the proceedings. It is even said, and I hope that I do our forbears no injustice that the girls entered the woods as immature maidens and came out of the woods experienced women. It seems that our working forefathers had more definite ideas about May Day than their modern counterparts.

Exit file First May Day

But Feudalism went and those sorts of May Days went with it—as a result of economic development a new class was emerging who were displacing the old Feudal order, a class of merchants and merchant adventurers who burst asunder the dosed Feudal economy and opened up the world. And what with piracy and plunder and the slave trade and colonisation they were so busy amassing vast wealth that they had little time for anything else, least of all for such things as May Days.

But the peasants and draftsmen of England not only lost their May Days, but their immemorial rights. The Land Enclosure increased in severity—as the 17th and 18th centuries went by a vast mass of peasants became landless and in some cases homeless. At the same time economic development led to a bitter, competitive struggle between the old craft guilds and the new merchant class and in the end the guilds went down in ruins before the impact of a new and superior method of wealth production and organisation.

Thus at the end of the 18th century and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a landless, unprivileged and unorganised mass were hungry to enter the new factories built by the new factory owners, i.e. the new ruling class which had emerged from this process of economic development. And these new factory owners equally hungry from the standpoint of profits to receive them into their factories. It was this uncouth, unorganised mass who were the nucleus and origin of the modern working class, yet an unorganised mass who were to become organised by the very process of production. And as the weight of misery and oppression bore more heavily upon their shoulders they were involved in the riots and machine breaking and other acts of violence. From this class struggle between owners and non-owners, the workers began to throw up their own class organs of defence, which later emerged as the modern Trade Union Movement. 

The Second May Day

It was out of this class struggle that the idea of a second May Day emerged. Not a May Day merely symbolical of a resurgence of nature, but of labour carrying a promise of a new life. The idea was mooted in France, Germany and England during the 19th century for by this time capitalism had become international and the working class had become international also, and it was felt by groups of workers in different lands that as they had common interests they should also have common aims.

Yet it was not until 1888 that the 2nd International set aside the first day of May to be a day symbolical of international working class solidarity, with an advocacy of the eight-hour day. The first May Day Demonstration was in 1890. On that and subsequent May Days, Negroes, Indians, Chinamen, Germans, Frenchmen, marched in the name of the International working class in different parts of the world, transcending their national boundaries.

In England on May Day, workers marched in various towns and cities and often many of their women marched with them. They marched to the open spaces and parks and those who lived by the sweat of their brow gathered round coal carts and platforms to listen to those who lived or were later to live by the sweat of their tongues. 

Workers of the World unite

It was the high tide of working class international feeling. A time when Marx's slogan, “workers of the world unite” seemed to have more significance than ever before—or since. These workers were not Socialists; perhaps the nearest they got to Socialism was a passionate conviction to remould things nearer to the heart's desire, but they felt a common purpose in face of a common enemy. But this promised spring-time of the working class movement never flowered. The early blush on its cheek, faded before the long, hard winter of growing national sentiment and reformism.

By the turn of the 20th century a change had come o'er the spirit of the dream. The workers still marched, they still gathered round the same coal carts and still listened to the same old speakers. But the old speakers were now saying new things. No longer did they cry, down with the powers that be, for they were trying to start a political movement with the help of the trade unions which hoped to become part of the powers that be and in fact did become part of them—eventually what is more, some of the old agitators and speakers who boasted of their lowly origins successfully took part in that process. So successfully that in their ripe, or rotten ripe old age they recorded their success by writing books like “From Doss House to Debrett" or “From Pigstyle to Parliament," a perhaps not unnatural evolution.

Excelsior!

And so the Labour movement began to carry banners bearing strange signs. There were some in it demanding votes for women. Demands for the nationalisation of the Railways and Mines. Munidpalisation of gas, water and later electricity. The fact that these things came about has little to do with the early demands of the Labour Movement, but for other reasons. There was even a demand for the building of Labour Exchanges.

These things were now represented as being steps towards what was then termed the Millenium. The only trouble was that the more steps they took towards the Millenium the further it got away. In fact, they took so many steps towards it that it finally disappeared altogether and has never been seen since.

Freedom for Everybody

At the beginning of the 20th century there appeared the first of the Freedoms. Big banners proclaimed: "Freedom for the Boers." In due course the Boers got their freedom, but like so many such freedoms it turned out to be the freedom of the few to deny any sort of freedom to anybody else. Then there were demands for freedom for the Poles, freedom for the Slavs, etc., in fact, the only thing the workers never demanded was freedom for themselves, freedom from the servility of class domination.

Then the Labour Movement got mixed up with international politics, but international capitalist politics not international working class politics. They began by declaiming against "secret diplomacy." Then the Entente Cordiale. They demanded "No trafficking with Russia” against "The Big Navy Bill,” "Abolition of the Territorial Army,” etc.

So the Labour Movement, and with it May Days, instead of being the sounding board of international working class sentiment, became a big drum for national rivalries and conflicting foreign politics. A sort of Empire Day in reverse, but much more effective in compounding, confounding, complicating and obfuscating the pattern of working class politics.

After the war, with the advent of the communists in May Day demonstrations and other activities, British Foreign Policy got mixed up with Soviet Foreign Policy and things got in a glorious muddle. Then the communists started the "Hands off Movement" " Hands off China," "Hands off Spain," "Hands off Czechoslovakia," etc., although this did not prevent violent hands from being laid on all of these countries. Then there was the great down and up phase: "Down with Bonar Law," "Down with Baldwin,” "Up with Ramsay Mac and Snowden. “Down with Ramsay Mac and Snowden,” "Up with Cook and Maxton," "Down with Cook and Maxton,” "Down with Churchill," " Up with Churchill," then "Down with Churchill ”—ad infinitum.

Down with Fascism

Then in the years prior to the second world war there was “Down with Fascism" and a demand for a democratic military alliance against Hitler—Russia was then part of the " democratic alliance.” To show how May Days were only consistent in their inconsistency there were at the same time demands for drastic disarmament by the Tory government and devoting the savings to road making and increased doles. There were even demands that future wars should be conducted minus bombers and tanks. Although in demonstrations during the second world war unlimited quantities of both for the Second Front were the subject of slogans.

Now there are no longer cries, such as “ Down with capitalism—" Down with war." Nor even that tanks and aeroplanes should not be used in war. Only the Hydrogen Bomb should be taken off the war list so that war might once again become humane, decent and friendly. Such then has been the rise and fall of the second May Day.

May Day in Russia

One cannot, of course, omit May Day in Russia. No doubt the communists' dialectic skill has more than anywhere else turned May Day into its opposite. The communist boast that Soviet May Days are bigger and better than anywhere else. Unlike any other government they have made them state subsidised ceremonies, replete with the panoply and pomp of circumstance. As a show they probably make even a coronation look like a seaside carnival. All the great ones in Russia occupy the seats of the mighty on this day—symbolical of international working class solidarity. In Czarist times the police and military marched with the workers, but they were only with them, not of them. Now under the formulae of the unity of opposites they are included.

Tanks and jet bombers are also thrown in to show that communist war weapons can kill quicker and faster than bourgeois ones, thus demonstrating the superiority of "Socialism" over capitalism. And perhaps if Engels could have seen these Soviet May Days he might have thought that his aphorism—"the irony of history turns everything upside down," was an historic understatement.

To draw an historic parallel, one might think of the British Government in the 19th century organising the workers' May Day. Of thousands of workers with banners headed by old Queen Victoria in the gilded state coach and as they wheeled into the park massed bands of the guard playing with a row tow row tow to the British Grenadiers. And Gladstone, Disraeli and choice spirits from the House of Lords standing on coal carts with faces grimed for the occasion, proclaiming "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your brains." Only the communists could turn such a May Day fantasy, into a Russian May Day nightmare.

No doubt in turning back the pages of May Day demonstrations we might laugh at our Victorian working class grandfathers. We tend to laugh at many things in the past especially the Victorian past if only perhaps to prevent us from laughing at ourselves, because that might not be so funny. Whether if they could' see across the years to the present May Day demonstrations they would "look forward in anger” one cannot say. But one feels whatever they did they wouldn’t laugh at us but blush for us instead.

May Days of To-morrow

It might be that when the clock of history has gone forward by establishing a rational society we might so far as May Day is concerned put the clock back and make it once more a day of celebration and merry making. Then there will be no need to demonstrate. No need to cry “Down with secret diplomacy,” because there will be neither secrets nor diplomacy. Nor to call for disarmament, because there will be no need to arm or disarm Neither shall we organise for the abolition of the Hydrogen Bomb because it, or a miniature specimen of it, will have been relegated to the museum of pre-human history. Men will at last have become truly human, and in the light of that development I will conclude by saying—MAY DAY IS DEAD—LONG LIVE MAY DAY.

Ted Wilmott.

Blogger's Notes:

"Yet it was not until 1888 that the 2nd International set aside the first day of May . . . " This might be a typo. The 2nd International wasn't formally launched until 1889.

The May 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard carries a notice for a May Day meeting, entitled "The Class Struggle and May Day", to be held at Denison House, 296 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. The speakers listed were Lisa Bryan and Ted Wilmott. There's a strong chance that this article by Wilmott is the text of his speech at that meeting.

Life and Times: Stand up to Racism (2025)

The Life and Times column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Stand up to Racism’ is a South Wales campaign group that organises events and demonstrations against racism. I’m on their mailing list and a recent message told me of a weekend event in Swansea’s Castle Gardens – ‘Love Swansea Hate Racism’. It said: ‘Bring your guitar, beats, banners, brollies, poems, words, friends, and yourself to make our streets buzz with dancing and diversity, not fascist jackboots. Let’s show that hate has no home here!’ I decided to go along and see what was happening.

It wasn’t a good day weather-wise – intermittent rain and a bit of a gale – but still what seemed to me a fairly decent turnout of 100 or so people were gathered in one area of the city centre gardens. A police van was parked nearby and some uniformed officers were hanging about, but it all seemed entirely peaceful. There were plenty of banners and placards if none of the promised poetry or live music. But there were speeches from the platform and from one of them I learned that there was a rival far-right demonstration taking place nearby, which helped to explain the police presence.

A proposal was then made from the platform to march to where the far-right, the so-called ‘Voice of Wales’, were organising their gathering, which they’d called ‘a family fun day’. The idea put forward was not to confront them, but to show them they were outnumbered. And that’s what happened – the demonstration moved out of the gardens, processed along Princes Way and then crossed over one of the city’s main arteries to the Leisure Centre garden, where the Voice of Wales supporters were gathered. The police had accompanied the procession and now made sure that the two groups of demonstrators were kept apart from each other and that the far right could address their own supporters and anyone else who was around and wave their banners. But all this didn’t last long. The Voice of Wales group, who were effectively fewer in number than their opponents and were being drowned out by them, soon decided their ‘family fun day’ was over and packed up, at which the Stand up to Racism people drifted away. And so did I.

What to make of this? Well, I couldn’t but be supportive of the anti-racism demonstrators, for I can only see it as supremely desirable to be accepting of other human beings regardless of their race (in itself a misnomer), background or place of origin. And I can only lament the fact that there are some people who oppose or resent the presence of others in their society on the basis of skin colour, culture or place of birth. As an advocate of a borderless world society, all that makes so little sense to me. However, while being unequivocally opposed to the nationalism, bigotry and manifest racism of the Voice of Wales crowd with their ‘Stop the Boats’ banners and signs, their pictures of Donald Trump displayed on placards and their speakers’ appeals to ‘British values’, I can’t not have some reservations about Stand up to Racism too.

While opposition to racism is to be applauded, unfortunately those who organise such groups tend to use them as a recruiting platform to push a Leninist agenda of the need for a vanguard – themselves – to lead the working class to a society which they may call socialist but in effect would be governed by the vanguard that has ‘led’ it there. No surprise, therefore, that the most stand-out feature of the demonstration in Castle Gardens was an SWP stall, set up in the middle selling its newspapers and other publications and displaying posters with slogans for its latest campaigns. And no surprise either that many of the banners, placards and badges on view said things like ‘Boycott Israel’, ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Stop the Genocide’ and so were not specifically about racism at all but rather about the current conflict in the Middle East, which organisations like the SWP see as one of their ‘causes’.

But what about racism itself? Well, there’s no doubt that, even within the dog-eat-dog society that is capitalism, there has been a significant improvement in attitudes over the years. In this country, for example, the open, unabated, almost taken-for-granted racism (and sexism) that existed just a few short decades ago is dramatically less in evidence now. Who at that time could in their wildest dreams have imagined that, in the not-too-distant future the leader of one of the two biggest political parties would be a woman of colour. This is not of course to say that racist ideas have stopped having purchase over many people, but there has undeniably been what we can reasonably call progress.

Yet, given the divisive attitudes prompted by the conditions of the society we live in, the scourge of racism will always remain a possibility, a frame of mind that people whose lives feel precarious in one way or another (eg, through poverty, unemployment or job insecurity) may turn to. And indeed they may be encouraged to turn to it by leaders or parties that see it as in their interests to sow division among people who have not developed the consciousness to perceive that they have fundamentally the same interests as their fellow workers. This is currently being illustrated by developments in many parts of the ‘advanced’ world, eg, Germany, Hungary, USA.

So stand up to racism, yes, but we are unlikely to see the end of that scourge unless we stand up to capitalism and establish a socialist world of common ownership, democratic control, production for need not profit and free access to all goods and services. In such a society, racism, or any other form of prejudice or discrimination, will have no ground to take root in and no soil in which to flourish.

Howard Moss

". . . far too respectable." (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

We commend to the chastened reflection of Mr. Gribble and the members of the S.D.F. in Northampton the fact that the gentleman who was largely responsible for preventing the case of the Raunds strikers coming before the House of Commons was precisely that gentleman whose democratic sympathies they expressed their appreciation of by assisting into Parliament. It was Mr. Labouchere’s inordinate and intentionally prolonged remarks on the Women’s Suffrage Bill, which he was frankly concerned to talk out, that robbed those who professed to be anxious to bring the matter forward of the opportunity to do so. Of course it might have been done in a disorderly way by breaking down a few of the forms of the House, but the “Labour” members are far too respectable to do that. Besides, it might jeopardize the esteem in which they are so proud to be held by their fellow members of the capitalist-class !

Our enemies’ friends (2002)

From the July 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the demonstrators on the pro-Palestinian march of 18 May entered Trafalgar Square they were confronted by a lone socialist, bawling “Banish gods from the heavens, and rulers from the Earth!” over the assorted chants of Islamists and leftists. The same socialist had been told, in no uncertain terms, to go to Hell, by the Islamists, as he had tried to promote socialism as the solution to the Middle East question at the Hyde Park mustering point for the beginning of the march.

The various flavours of leftists on the march resolutely declined to confront the band of Islamists, despite the latter’s open insistence of their inimical opposition to them. Desperately holding to the principle of my enemy’s enemy is my ally the leftists held their noses and kept quiet. This in the face of the most reactionary ideas being pronounced by the Islamists: the separate nations of the Earth exist by the will of Allah, and they refuse to support the workers’ cause because they work for Allah. “Peace, Go to Hell” they shouted (and most things should go to Hell, it seemed, so far as they were concerned), and not one of the leftists who had been at the previous “peace” marches against the Afghan war, raised a word against their bellicose cry.

This is, perhaps, unsurprising, because this was in fact a pro-war march. The SWP, through their so-called Socialist Alliance front organisation, were promoting the slogan “Victory to the Intifada”. Some people on the march were chanting “No peace without justice” making clear their view that the Palestinian cause was “just”. Indeed, both slogans have little to do with a sensible materialist analysis of the situation, instead taking up a moralistic line on the “rights” of the Palestinians.

Impossible victory

This is so on two counts, on the military and class factors involved. The Palestinians have no chance whatsoever of militarily overcoming Israel. Modern war is waged by economic might, and Israel with its GDP of around $110 billion (in 2000), whereas the Palestinian territories have a GDP of $4.2 billion (in 2000): the former has the capacity to routinely outgun the latter – this leaving aside the greater Israeli population of available for fighting, some 1.5 million. Further, Israel has a much better developed transportation and communications system, vital ingredients of modern war (CIA World Fact Book http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/). There being no special conditions for fighting (as the Vietnamese jungles), nor any economic leverage for the Palestinians to apply, the sheer weight of power is on the Israeli side.

It becomes clear from this that the Intifada could only succeed with outside military intervention. Unsurprisingly, this is already happening. It is widely acknowledged that the Palestinian guerrilla organisations Hamas and Mujahadeen are financed and controlled by Syria and Iran. Perhaps less reported, is the Palestinian Authority’s dependence on European aid: for example, according to the British Consulate in Jerusalem’s website, the UK gave £1.12 million in aid for a “Modernisation and Unification of Legislation Project”, and £1.13 million “Assistance to the Palestinian Legislative Council” (http://www.britishconsulate.org/dfid/govern.htm). That is, the UK paid for the basic administrative infrastructure for a Palestinian political entity. This is out of a total of $121 million in aid received by the PA (2000, CIA WorldFact Book). By contrast, according to the same US source, the Israeli state receives $1.1 billion in aid from the US.

The basis for this struggle is, as has been noted many times in this journal, the struggle for control of the oil resources of the Middle East. Historically, the US relied on the “Twin Pillar” policy of using Israel and Iran as regional clients to secure their interest in the oil regions. With Iran going over to religious nationalists, Israel became the focus of continued US interest in the region, and the main target for their rivals to try to damage their capacity to control the region.

These different interests are entering into the situation to pursue their own antagonistic interests. It is interesting to note, for example, that the earlier stage of the conflict involved the Israeli army targeting the physical infrastructure of the Palestinian authority, the infrastructure paid for by the UK and EU. Given these competing interests, the various world powers intervening in the Israel/Palestine conflict will only seek for resolutions compatible with their own interests and against those of their foes. As such, it is clear that the slogan of “Victory to the Intifada” has zero content even within the usual risible terms of leftist “anti-imperialism’”. The only possible resolution within capitalism is an imperialist resolution benefiting one or other of the “imperialist” powers struggling for influence in the area.

Asked by another socialist at the demo why they were calling for “Victory to the Intifada”, the leftists replied that the Palestinians are oppressed. It would be interesting to ask them whether the workers of Syria or Iran are oppressed, and, since they clearly are, why the leftists are pursuing a policy of giving support to the foreign policies of those oppressive regimes: policies, the success of which could only strengthen their grip at home. The leftists would doubtless reply that they support the struggles of Arab workers, but that the Palestinians are oppressed as a people, and their right to self-determination must be fought for. This illustrates the romantic/moralistic approach of the leftists – the oppression of Palestinian workers is made qualitatively worse by the denial of national rights, that is, the denial to the Palestinian capitalists of a free hand in exploiting their workers and conning them into believing that they share a common interest in defending a patch of land.

Who owns, rules

Nationalism, is the political form of property consciousness. It asserts that a group of people cannot exist as such unless defined by their ownership of a particular quarter of the world – the relations between “peoples” are actually the relations between patches of land, rather than the people upon them. It was the predominate form of ideology for the rising capitalist class in the 19th century, a way of understanding the world in terms of conflicting properties, and is now a tool for conning the working class into believing that there is some communal interest between themselves and their capitalist masters in where the boundaries of their state are drawn.

This illustrates the second aspect the material situation that belies the leftist sloganeering, its class content. It is essentially a problem of property. Were the Palestinians to win, they would still be oppressed as workers, and the land would belong to a new set of owners. They would still be subject to poverty, to the tyranny of their rulers and to the chaos of capitalist existence. In fact, they could only lose out, as the sacrifice in life, freedom and material goods necessary to win such a war were made. The same would go for the Israeli working class as well. Modern war is inherently antithetical to the interests of the working class, involving, as it does, disruption to the complex and integrated system of production we depend on for our existence, and necessitating the imposition of the tyrannous political structures needed to govern a society in a period of total war.

Given, then, that the leftist position is one based on abstract ideals and morals, rather than a materialist analysis of the situation, it becomes clear how they can tolerate marching alongside the religious without opposing them. Their march was an expression of who they wanted to see win, regardless of real world material factors, and was an expression of their adherence to the ideal of national self-determination. As such, their position is essentially an idealist one, a desire to see the world conform with an idea, simply by professing it.

The socialist case against religion is a simple one. We understand that, as ideas are the result of the historical movement of society, and the premises of religion thus concur with specific forms of society, religion is a social matter and not, as protestant sectarians would have it, a matter of individual conscience. Religion as we know it today is a part of a social process of acquiring and understanding knowledge left over from a bygone age, one in which the imagination of humanity outstripped its capacity to understand and control the world. Knowledge is inextricably linked with the process of acquiring it, with the practise of thinking. Since we, as workers, live in a world that has acquired the capacity to control its own material environment, we must reject those guides to behaviour and analysis based upon premises of human powerlessness, and the practises of thinking that go along with them.

This is why the comrade present at the Palestinian march became the lone voice in confrontation with the reactionary confusionists of religion; arguing against ideas that can only lead the workers away from the practical issues at hand, and essentially hide the property character of the question. If the workers of the world are to be able to obtain and apply the control of the world of which they are capable, they need to throw aside such slogans as “Palestine for the Palestinians” and instead affirm the need for a struggle against the system of minority rule which underpins all the world’s wars, and proclaim “The world for the workers!”

Pik Smeet

Running Commentary: Excitement (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Excitement

Oscar Wilde once wrote that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Marxists might think this description perfectly fits economists, the apologists for capitalism. Despite their education, these political science "experts" appear to have missed the lectures dealing with Marx's Labour Theory of Value. As a result of this gap in their knowledge, they have a lot in common with the contestants in The Price is Right.

For those with the good fortune not to have seen it this programme is a prime example of the rubbish that masquerades as TV entertainment. As a reward for guessing the price of particular commodities, the hyped-up, frenzied workers taking part win themselves shoddy prizes. The euphoria that generates results in a further exhibition of hysterical behaviour by all in the studio.

How many viewers of The Price is Right also tune in to Antiques Roadshow? First impressions suggest that the two programmes have little in common. Antiques Roadshow aims to project a genteel atmosphere. A quietly spoken expert gives a potted history of the antique in question. Delight in the craftsmanship of the exhibited article is not, however, the programme's appeal. What concentrates the attention of all involved is the solemn pronouncement of the price the item now commands in the market-place. As in a film cartoon, the pound signs flash in the antique owner's eyes.

Second impressions confirm that the factor common to both programmes is the underlying assumption that the accumulation of wealth is the main object of human life. This object must be pursued ruthlessly by the capitalist class, leaving the worker to the dubious pleasure of participating in idiotic gameshows. or selling off the family EPNS.

Under the guise of entertainment, the ruling class continues to propagate their message that there is no alternative to capitalism. The alternative does exist — it is Socialism. Now that really is worth getting excited about.

Expanding police powers

On 1 April the new Public Order Act came into effect. The requirement that organisers of marches must notify police in advance has been in force since the beginning of the year. Implementation of the other provisions contained in the Act means that the police now have wider powers to control marches and demonstrations. They can re-route marches if they consider there is a risk of serious damage to property, or if there is a risk of intimidation or disruption to the community.

Although "static" demonstrations will not need permission in advance from the police, the police will have the right to move people on and to restrict the numbers of people participating. This will inevitably affect pickets and outdoor political meetings and rallies.

In addition, the Act has created new statutory public order offences of riot, violent disorder, threatening behaviour and disorderly conduct (although the Act is very vague about what behaviour would actually constitute an offence of this kind), and corresponding tougher penalties for offenders.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the new Act is that not only does it represent one more nail in the coffin of civil liberties, but it has also given the police enormous new discretionary powers to decide when a Public Order offence has been committed.

Blood on the coal

Despite recent conflicts within the NUM over new working arrangements agreed by the South Wales miners, it now seems likely that the new Margam super-pit will go ahead in South Wales. It will be one of British Coal's new, high technology, capital-intensive mines like that at Selby.

British Coal argue that the industry can only be profitable if productivity per miner is increased. The opening of the new Margam pit will be part of the latest phase in the process that began with the pit closure programme that sparked off the year-long strike of 1984-85. Since the end of that dispute countless small and "uneconomic" pits (those which did not produce high enough profits) have been closed. Instead, capital has been concentrated in the new generation mines — large coal fields which use the very latest technology and have been able to intensify the rate of coal extraction. But the new capital-intensive pits cannot become really profitable if the expensive new machinery is left idle at weekends. As a result, the decision to go ahead with Margam was made conditional on the South Wales miners agreeing to work a six-day week and eight-hour shifts to enable the machinery to be in almost continuous use.

Faced with the devastation that has been caused by the closure of the old South Wales pits, it is not surprising that the union has been forced to agree to the new shift system. However there are now fears, especially in Nacods — the pit deputies' and supervisors' union — that the new working practices will lead to a drop in safety standards in an industry which already has a horrifying record for injuries and fatalities.

In addition to the new machinery, which itself poses new problems for health and safety, and the longer shifts, incentive schemes will encourage miners to cut corners in order to speed up production. But Nacods claims that if British Coal is to go ahead with all of its proposed changes, then it will first have to get the government to pass amendments to the 1954 Mines and Quarries Act which presently regulates health and safety standards in mines. British Coal argue that the 1954 Act is anyway out of date and instead advocate new regulations which would have no statutory force but would only constitute a "code of practice". This would mean, for example, that existing regulations which set a minimum height for underground roadways would be scrapped; it would permit the use of roof bolts which, Nacods argues, are highly dangerous as the sole means of support; it would allow the use of free-steered vehicles in mines which American authorities have banned as too dangerous for use in pits because of their carcinogenic emissions.

So, in other words, "de-regulation" of the mining industry will not only mean fewer miners being forced to work harder to produce more coal more cheaply and so enhance the profits of British Coal, but they will be putting their health and their lives at risk in the process.

The Decline of May Day (1951)

From the May 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism pollutes almost every institution with which it comes into contact. Whether such institutions are absorbed from a previous social system or whether they grow from the foundations of the capitalist system itself, they are either moulded to suit the interests of the capitalist class or are deflected from their original purpose to meet the needs of capital May Day is no exception.

From time immemorial men have adopted the practice of setting aside a day in each year to celebrate or commemorate some event. In earliest recorded times such days usually had a religious significance. Prior to the rise of the modern religions when men imagined that supernatural agencies were at work in everything around them, they set aside annual days for the worship of their various gods. With the spread of Christianity and other religions that accepted the central theme of “the one god," the annual days of pagan worship disappeared, but their place was taken by a considerable number of saints' days. On the days dedicated to the greater of the saints men rested from their work. G. M. Trevelyan in his "English Social History" tells us that:

  “But men rested on Sundays and an indefinite number of greater saints' days. Custom enforced this rule, and the church courts did useful service in exacting penance or fine for work on Sundays and Holy Days."—(Longmans Edition, p. 88).

The urge to produce wealth for an ever expanding market gave rise to the determination to keep men, and women, at work for as many days and hours as possible. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with a workers right to work and to create profit for his employer. If religious custom stood in the way, then religious custom must be overthrown. The saints days, as holidays, disappeared until today the only religious days of significance that remain as customary holidays, in an emaciated form, are Good Friday and Christmas Day.

Capitalism in its turn adopted the practice of days of celebration, although not in the form of days of rest. In different countries the day selected for flag-wagging and fireworks, patriotic speech making and military parades, is a day to commemorate the emancipation of the national capitalist class, either from the yoke of Feudalism or from the domination of a foreign capitalist power.

In America, the Fourth of July is the anniversary of American independence from British domination-independence Day. In France, the Fourteenth of July is a day to celebrate the acquisition of political power by the French capitalist class in 1789. It was the day of the fall of the Bastille. In Russia, the Seventh of November, the day of the fall of the Provisional Government and the seizure of power by the Bolshevik party, is a day of national celebration. In Britain, a day is earmarked on the 24th of May, the anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria, to enable children to parade and rejoice over the “Glorious British Empire." These celebrations, like the empire, are dwindling. So on at length. New Zealand and Canada have Dominion Days on September 26th and July 1st respectively, whilst Northern Ireland has its Orangeman's Day.

In July 1889 the First Congress of the Second International met in Paris. This was a second attempt to form an international organisation of working class political parties, many calling themselves Socialist parties, in an endeavour to achieve international working class solidarity. The issue of an eight hour working day was foremost. In many countries, with varying degrees of success, the struggle for a reduction of the working day to eight hours had been carried on for the past decade. The Congress set about the task to make the eight hour day international and legal.

To this end the representatives of workers of 22 countries carried a resolution:

   “.. . There shall be organised a great International Demonstration on a fixed date, so that in all countries and towns simultaneously on the given day the workers shall demand of the authorities the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours.”-(Quoted in “Labour's Turning Point,” edited by E. J. Hobsbawm.)

The day selected was May 1st and the first May Day Demonstrations were held in 1890.

This was not a day of celebration or commemoration but a day of demonstration; not a day of rejoicing or puerile sentiment but a day of demand with determination. It was to be a day on which the workers in all lands should cease work in order that they might congregate in some local, central place to evince their solidarity with one another. It was the beginning of a new kind of annual day—the workers’ day— a day of prominence in the class struggle.

The leaders of the reformist, self-styled “Socialist parties," had little conception of the class struggle. At the outset they altered the date of the demonstrations to avoid any question of strike action. Instead of the 1st of May they chose the first Sunday in May. The Congress carried a further resolution urging:

   “. . . to hold a single demonstration for the workers in every country and that this demonstration should take place on the First of May, and recommends strike action everywhere where such action is not impossible.”—(Quoted by Emile Burns in “Labour Monthly,” April 1932) 

The Amsterdam Congress of the Second International in 1904, also found it necessary to resolve on the matter.

   “Whereas the unity of the demonstration only exists in some countries, and in others not the First of May, but the first Sunday in the month is celebrated, the Amsterdam Congress reaffirms the resolution (of proceeding Congresses) and asks all socialist parties and trade unions of all countries to organise energetically for working-class demonstrations on the first of May . . . but this demonstration can be most effective only through the suspension of work on the 1st of May.”— (Quoted by Emile Burns in “Labour Monthly.” April 1932.)

The idea of a day of working class idleness was abhorent to the employers. Their toadies and cronies in the reformist political parties set to work to render May Day harmless. The Second International was not an alliance of Socialist parties but of parties akin to the British Labour Party; parties which neither accepted nor recognised the class struggle; parties which were nationalist in outlook and reformist m character. The International was powerless to enforce its will on its component parties. Gradually the class character of the May Day demonstrations evaporated. Not only were the demonstrations organised for the first Sunday in May instead of May the First, but where any demonstration was held on May the First it was invariably in the evening, so as to avoid dislocation to trade and stoppage of work. In 1927 the London Labour Party, soon followed by the Labour Party and trade union officials throughout the country, set out to boycott the “single demonstration of the workers in every country" by organising a series of local demonstrations in preference to the main demonstration that had always been held in Hyde Park, London and in similar open spaces in other cities and towns.

May Day today has little of its original character left. It is not taken seriously by many workers. Whereas it was once an opportunity for an outing with a definite purpose in view, it is now merely an opportunity for an outing, which few are prepared to take.

The national political parties that formed the Second International lined up with their respective capitalist gangs in the 1914-1918 war and urged their members at each others throats in a war they said would end war. No May Day demonstrations were held in this country during that war. The discontent amongst the workers following that war caused a brief revival of the May Day demonstration spirit. On May 2nd, 1920, the Daily Herald estimated that "not less than 8,000,000 workers took a full day's holiday” and the London demonstration was estimated at nearly one million. Similar demonstrations were held throughout the capitalist world and demonstrations were held in Japan, China, India and other eastern and colonial countries where they had not been previously organised. 1926, the year of the General Strike in this country, was another year of large May Day demonstrations, but, apart from these occasional bursts of enthusiasm, May Day as a day of demonstration of working class solidarity has steadily declined. The labour and trade union leaders have assisted this decline and helped to ensure that May Day shall not embarrass the capitalist class by providing an opportunity for international working class activity. Because, if the workers can act in world wide co-operation on one day in the year, there is no reason to suppose that they will not do so on the other 364 days.

As class consciousness grows amongst the workers in all lands, co-operative action will be planned. It will not stop at the organisation of marches and demonstrations to the parks and squares of the great cities. It wifi be co-operation to speed the abolition of capitalism.

Until then we will use May Day to re-emphasise our very real and genuine expression of solidarity with our fellow workers all over the world and to reiterate our pledge to oppose all capitalist wars and to work for the emancipation of our class without distinction of race or sex.

W. Waters

It could never happen here (2021)

From the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may not have not escaped the notice of some, the irony of the police response to the vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common. There were scenes of big burly policemen man-handling women, peacefully gathered to mourn the death of Sarah a 33-year-old woman snatched from the street and murdered, allegedly by an off-duty police officer. Women not only came to mourn but to express their anger over domestic violence, street harassment and sexual assault, mainly perpetrated by men against women and girls. The protest had been ruled unlawful due to the restrictions of the 2020 Coronavirus legislation, but women obviously felt that this was too important to adhere to the rules. Also in March a 61-year old nurse was issued with a £10,000 fine for organising a demonstration of about 40 people protesting against the government’s paltry 1 percent pay increase for NHS workers.

Governments need to keep control, even if this means quashing dissent and stifling anti-establishment ideas. States are passing ever more draconian laws, whittling away perceived freedoms workers think they have. Laws that are rushed through in response to calamities like the attack on the USA Twin Towers and the Coronavirus pandemic were and are supposed to be temporary, however, these laws so often never get repealed.

The USA Patriot Act, designed to counteract terrorism, was signed into law by George Bush in October 2001 six weeks after the attack on the towers. The Act expanded the abilities of law enforcement for surveillance, including the tapping of domestic and international phones, and abuses of the Act led to government spying on innocent individuals. It had to be periodically reviewed because of concerns that certain provisions could be used to violate privacy rights. Most of the Act, however, been written into permanent law.

In 2020 the UK Coronavirus Act over-rode Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act which refer to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. The Guardian (3 November) commented:

  ‘Protections for protestors are set to be removed from the Coronavirus rules under the second national lockdown. An exemption that permits demonstrations to take place with additional conditions to mitigate the spread of the virus is expected to be omitted from fresh regulations being drawn up from this Thursday. The police had allowed and facilitated some demonstrations, however there have been questions as to whether the prohibitions on demonstrations were impartially and proportionately policed’.

Once the pandemic has subsided and we go back to no restrictions as promised, one wonders whether these laws will be repealed or will they be dragged out every time there is a demo or protest, citing health concerns.

Under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, currently going through parliament, protestors causing ‘annoyance’ could theoretically be jailed for up to 10 years. The government has passed almost 400 new laws and regulations in the past year, only a few of which have been approved by parliament.

Online social media groups are now being censored. The Department for Education has instructed schools not to use materials from organisations working to overthrow capitalism. There have been state shut-downs of the internet all over the world. Protestors have been using the internet to organise online and to assemble and protest offline. Governments are increasingly resorting to shutdowns in times of crisis, arguing they are necessary for public safety or curbing the spread of misinformation. Misinformation potentially meaning information contrary to what the government wants you to have. The worst offender is not some openly authoritarian state but India, the so-called ‘largest democracy in the world’. In Germany Netz GD is a network enforcement law which compels social media companies to remove ‘hate speech’ and other illegal content, illegal content as defined in the 22 provisions of the criminal code. This has been criticised by the Human Rights Watch saying ‘this law sets a dangerous precedent for other governments to restrict speech online by forcing companies to censor on the government’s behalf’.

In China the citizen identification number system or ID card is the only acceptable document used for everything from opening a bank account to registering for a mobile phone. It is used to buy train tickets and pass through security checkpoints and can be inspected by police for any reason; these cards also state the holder’s ethnic identity. Boris Johnson had at one time scoffed at the idea of ID cards and referring to China said it would never happen in Britain. At the moment we have to have special permission by way of a form or permit to travel out of the country, reminding one of the old USSR. There is the ongoing debate in parliament regarding the introduction of health passports which seem highly likely now despite murmurings to the contrary.

How long before these ‘ID’ cards carry more information than our supposedly private health status?

At the moment surveillance technology is mostly used for law enforcement and selling us stuff but information could theoretically be shared with companies or departments without our permission and used to monitor us.

An article in the South China Post (18 November) tells us:

  ‘Facial recognition technology has been increasingly deployed by countries to secure access and improve surveillance especially during the pandemic. The technology is controversial not just because data leaks are common but because of its potential to exacerbate racial or gender biases’.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, several companies including IBM, Microsoft and Amazon announced they would either pause selling their facial recognition technology or stop producing it entirely.

We are now encouraged to snitch on our neighbours for not following the rules, snitching on those in receipt of ‘undeserving’ benefits or lately on Covid ‘non conformers’. Workers turning on workers leaving the establishment unfettered.

The Socialist Party does not advocate reforms but we do denounce the worst excesses the state can dish out. What we cannot afford is complacency and the conviction that it could never happen here.

Carla Dee

Letters: Sweet charity? (2011)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sweet charity?

Dear Editors

I am writing to ask for your further explanation of a matter which has puzzled me, arising from the item “A Merry Christmas” on page 23 of the January issue. Commenting on the annual appeal of Crisis UK, the writer describes the organisation’s workers and volunteers as “well-meaning” and “obviously sincere”, but continues with the words “charity doesn’t work”. Well, no, inasmuch as while capitalism exists, there will almost certainly be homeless people needing help all through this and every year; but, nevertheless, it does work in that, for those few days at Christmas, some homeless people had some relief and comfort which they would not have had without that “charity”. Wasn’t that partial and temporary help better than nothing? Isn’t it possible that some of the people who worked to provide short-term help to some of capitalism’s victims, might also be working for the transformation of society to world socialism? Isn’t it possible for socialists to have both short-term and long-term aims? Can the achievement of world socialism really come about through ignoring immediate specific sufferings of individual human beings?

Andrew Durrant,

Garvestone, Norwich

Reply:

Yes, charity can make a difference to some individual’s life; it is ‘better than nothing’. But it’s not much and certainly not enough, like trying to empty a lake with a teaspoon.

You partly answer your own query when you say that “while capitalism exists, there will almost certainly be homeless people.” It’s for this reason we stated that “charity doesn’t work” – i.e. that it can’t cure the problems it seeks to address. Whether it be homelessness or some other charitable concerns, such problems are an inevitable product of a society where profits matter above all else. So while some individuals can and do benefit from charity, it doesn’t stop the problem continually arising.

The sufferings of our fellow humans (and ourselves) is surely part of the motivation for socialists to organise to put an end to capitalism. As individuals – if inclined – we can choose to give what we can afford and spare time to help where needed, but for the Socialist Party our sole aim is nothing but socialism, however long it takes – Editors.

March madness

Dear Editors

Demonstrations in support of denied democratic rights in some countries lacking free elections and free speech are one thing; they have no other way of expressing their politics, so take to the streets. Here we do have people power and it is called an election.

Governments in the UK know they have a mandate and they also know that the ‘opposition’ usually has the same politics as they have. This is true about the issues of privatisation and public sector job cuts. Labour councils under a Labour government were closing down council-run residential homes for the elderly before the 2010 general election. Demonstrations aimed at changing government policy have failed in their objectives in the UK. CND rallied thousands to ban the bomb in the fifties and early sixties. When the Harold Wilson Labour government was elected in 1964 CND’s high hopes were dashed. Britain stayed nuclear and vast sums went to the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear horror weapons.

In 2003 a million marched against the Tony Blair Iraq attack. Blair lied, people died. There were no weapons of mass destruction, but the USA and UK had them and still do. Despite being exposed a liar Blair got back in when Labour won the 2005 general election. Marching around London streets, shouting at empty government buildings and tourists is futile. Violence at such demonstrations angers and disgusts the majority of workers. As for cuts, sackings in and privatisation of the NHS, these are going ahead and the majority of voters fully endorsed these ConDem policies. At least the SPGB don’t lead mobs of confused workers into riots. There is a minority amongst demonstrators who are trying to do just that.

Rob Jameson, 

York

Reply:

You are right. We don’t. – Editors

Material World: The Military Police (2020)

The Material World Column from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today, in the USA, its police have come to resemble—in appearance, weaponry, and tactics—infantrymen in the US Army who see certain city districts as war-zones to be occupied and subdued, where the confrontations are described in terms of ‘battles’ in what some politicians say are ‘wars on cops’. The War on Drugs and the War on Terror, many will claim, has created such units as the paramilitary SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams which have gained a reputation for excessive force in their military-style ‘counter-insurgency’ strategies for the inner-city ghettoes.

Many police units are better equipped to fight terrorists in foreign lands than serve and protect civilians at home. Even small-town America is acquiring wartime weaponry. When police are equipped like soldiers, trained to be like soldiers, why are we surprised when they act like soldiers? To expect demonstrators to welcome being confronted by riot-police dressed head-to-toe in military gear, alternatively dispersing them and then kettling and corralling them, is delusional.

Some in the US Congress have long endeavoured to curtail police departments’ access to military equipment which the Defense Department have in abundance and have been providing to the civilian police. Billions of dollars of surplus kit has been supplied to law enforcement agencies. The militarisation of America’s police has been on full display during the widespread protests against the recent killing of George Floyd.

Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to discontinue the 1033 programme that transfers military weaponry to local police departments, explained, ‘It is clear that many police departments are being outfitted as if they are going to war, and it is not working in terms of maintaining the peace.’ Obama had placed limits and restrictions on the transfer of ex-military weapons. Trump rescinded those restrictions in 2017, permitting once again the flow of equipment to police departments such as armoured vehicles.

Research shows that the police are more likely to respond with force when they are the subject of protest, and that they respond more aggressively towards younger crowds and black people than they do towards white and older people. ‘There’s deep resentment on the part of the police that so many people are angry at them, and they’re lashing out,’ said Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College who studies the police response to protest and coordinates the Policing and Social Justice Project.

As Schatz said, ‘it is clear many police departments don’t train and supervise for restraint and de-escalation, and some officers are just plain racist and violent.’

In its 2014 report, ‘AR COMES HOME: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing’ the American Civil Liberties Union contended, ‘American policing has become unnecessarily and dangerously militarized, in large part through federal programs that have armed state and local law enforcement agencies with the weapons and tactics of war, with almost no public discussion or oversight. Using these federal funds, state and local law enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals purportedly to wage the failed War on Drugs, the battlegrounds of which have disproportionately been in communities of color. But these arsenals are by no means free of cost for communities. Instead, the use of hyper-aggressive tools and tactics results in tragedy for civilians and police officers, escalates the risk of needless violence, destroys property, and undermines individual liberties.’

A 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports much of what the ACLU found, in that, ‘Aggressive policing strategies have historically been disproportionately applied to citizens of color in ways that serve to preserve race- and class-based social hierarchies.’ The study also found that ‘militarized policing fails to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime.’

Socialists take a class view of law and order and do not accept the idea that policing is somehow ‘broken’ and is in need of reforms. We do not have a nostalgic memory of a romanticised past with the friendly ‘bobby on the beat’. We look, instead, towards a future society where community harmony can be maintained without the intervention of armed representatives of the state and the abolition of the social conditions which lead to unacceptable disorder and harmful violence.

ALJO

Class struggles in France (2006)

From the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doubtless many readers of the Socialist Standard will already know that the strikes and demonstrations in France last month had to do with the new work contracts which the de Villepin government introduced into the legislative process over three months ago. Some of this legislation is already on the statute books: the so-called Contrat Nouvelle Embauche (New Hiring Contract), for example, already covers more than 300,000 hirings in small enterprises. It was only over the infamous Contrat Première Embauche (First Hiring Contract) that President Chirac has back-pedalled  in the face of massive demonstrations. This ultra-liberal legislation was aimed at establishing more flexibility into what is often considered to be a highly protective and rigid system of employment relations in France. This legislation was justified in terms of the high levels of unemployment experienced by young people, the recent riots in France being presented as a wake-up call heard only by right-wing politicians but ignored by the more consensual politicians on the left. French workers were being asked to believe that the scrapping of legal protection against arbitrary hiring and firing was in their own interest.

Both the CNE and the CPE established the principle of abrupt firings with little or no legal protection for workers during a two-year trial period. The CNE affects workers in small enterprises and can be applied to workers of any age whilst the CPE was aimed at young workers up to 26 years of age. Once the two-year period is up (if it ever is), the happy workers will be offered permanent contracts, so everything will turn out well, in theory. Other legal dispositions packaged under the misleading term ‘law of equal opportunities’ include the possibility of hiring apprentices at 14 years of age and the possibility of inducing 15-year-olds to work at night. This partial return to nineteenth-century practices, we are told, would loosen up hiring practices and significantly reduce the high levels of unemployment recorded in the statistics produced by governmental agencies. The cost, of course, will be a significant increase in the insecurity experienced by workers who risk being laid off at any moment. This means that they will soon be unable to find decent accommodation, accumulate pension rights or simply plan for the future in such a way as to constitute normal family life. The contrast with the existing legislation centred on the permanent contract with built-in pension provision and a range of social benefits could not be sharper.

Big Lie

The difficulty of getting workers to swallow the big lie that job insecurity is a good thing being obvious, the government resorted to an ideological broadside aimed at setting one category of worker against another. The students who sparked off the movement against the CPE have been presented as privileged middle-class youth relatively unconcerned with the dire situation faced by immigrants in the run-down sink estates of the suburbs. The de Villepin government asked us to believe that these contracts were designed specifically to help a population of workers which has been consigned to suburban dumping grounds for more than three decades. (The fact that de Villepin waited for more than three weeks of demonstrations before he discovered this ideological fig-leaf shows how clumsy the public relations job has been.) Another strategy was to present French workers as dyed-in-the-wool conservatives defending a status quo made irrelevant by globalisation, the highly indebted nature of the French state and the need to remain in the vanguard of the technological revolution.

Inevitably, the ‘phenomenal success’ of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ in reducing the level of unemployment to a mere 5 percent was wheeled out as a counter-example to French timidity, notwithstanding the fact that the definition of unemployment in Britain has been changed over 20 times since the 1970s in order to disguise the real situation. Workers in Britain are well aware that the unemployment and insecurity which they see all around them does not find its way into the official statistics. The deregulation of the labour market in Great Britain over the last two decades has resulted in a doubling in recorded levels of official poverty and a new category of working poor has emerged to replace the indemnified unemployed. The recent mass strike of over 1.5 million public sector workers clearly shows that workers in Britain are by no means living in a neo-liberal cornucopia.

This said, it’s true that many French workers have enjoyed a level of protection denied to many new entrants into the labour market, young workers and immigrants. The permanent work contract provides access to a range of social benefits and protections which are envied by those workers who hop from one short-term contract to another. The government obviously hoped that this would constitute a source of resentment and jealousy which could be exploited. It’s true that workers on permanent contracts are difficult to fire, given that breaking a contract in these cases is very expensive, compensation being proportional to the number of years worked. But this tactic has backfired: even short-term contracts are better than the almost total absence of legal guarantees contained in the CPE and CNE. Besides, over half a million ‘baby boom’ workers are now leaving the labour force every year heading for retirement, so the level of youth unemployment is bound to fall. The question is whether or not these relatively secure jobs will remain on offer to the new entrants.

The hard fact is that it’s quite clear that in the long run greater job insecurity is on the cards for everyone. Long term permanent jobs – jobs for life – are getting scarcer and even the public sector has been placed on a slimfast diet. The bosses want workers who can be hired and fired in reaction to sudden and unexpected changes in demand in markets where every sale counts. Industrial jobs have been disappearing fast to be replaced by service sector jobs which are notoriously badly-paid and insecure. These trends do not respect political frontiers. The left-wing government under Lionel Jospin imposed a shorter working week in exchange for greater flexibility in working patterns, production workers being placed on call for work during the weekends or in the evenings to meet sudden fluctuations in demand with disastrous consequences for family life. Real wage levels are stagnant or falling. Pension rights have been reduced. A capitalism which attempted to adjust fluctuations in world demand by modifying monetary exchange rates in accordance with the rules laid down by the International Monetary Fund has been replaced by a highly volatile monetary system in which adjustments are made by hiring and firing production workers. The new generation of workers is facing a future where they will be considered simply as commodities, labour power, to be bought and sold in line with demand, all human safeguards having been removed.

The movement

The movement against the new employment legislation was initiated by students at the universities of Poitiers and Rennes. Despite superficial resemblances, these students do not have the same profile as the relatively privileged students who took to the barricades in May 1968. Nowadays university students in France tend to come from the more threatened sections of that section of the working class known as “the middle-class”. Elite students usually go to the so-called ‘Grandes ėcoles’ where they are guaranteed access to a world-class education, contacts into the upper-reaches of the civil service and entry into well-paid jobs in multinational corporations. They are even paid a salary whilst they study. By way of contrast, students in the universities tend to finance their studies by doing Mac-jobs, grants being rare and piss-poor. About 40 percent of students drop out in the first couple of years, disgusted by the ramshackle organisation of the faculties and courses given by a small army of hourly-paid teachers who are already living in the state of insecurity that the young are fighting against. Those who do succeed in this often unimaginative system are usually rewarded by a succession of badly-paid or even unpaid training courses, quite rightly presented as an apprenticeship into the real world of work (exploitation).

It is this threatened section of the so-called “middle-class” which has finally come out in open revolt against the absence of perspectives which capitalism has been trying to get them to accept. What has surprised many commentators has been the brilliant organisation and determination of students formerly presented as apathetic and passive by their elders. Rather than seeking the help of professional politicians and full-time student unionists, the students set up their own system of co-ordination with elected delegates and they undertook mammoth debates on the issues involved in the new legislation. (Some of the debates lasted 72 hours.) Taking advantage of the new forms of communication offered by internet and high-speed trains they improvised a nationwide movement which quickly led to the closure of 60 of the 90-odd universities in France and the partial closure of dozens of high schools. The various attempts made to establish links with production workers have resulted in a spectacular leap forward in political awareness, workers suffering from poverty wages and unemployment having been invited to speak at student assemblies. Safety inspectors, experts on employment problems and workers in jobcentres have been given a chance to talk of their experience. Outreach into the high schools in the run-down suburbs resulted in the presence of thousands of black and Arab youths in the demonstrations, offering an apprenticeship in peaceful political agitation to youngsters subject to social stigma and popular prejudice.

Anyway, it was fun seeing the conservative government caught with its pants down. De Villepin’s authoritarian imposition of the new legislation via the undemocratic procedure of decrees failed to impress the masses. His popularity, never very great, is now in free fall and his political career is seriously compromised. Nobody ever elected him anyway. Chirac, a burnt-out old wheeler-dealer elected faute de mieux in a second round play-off with Le Pen, promulgated the CPE law while at the same time promising to amend it in such a way as to remove some of the more contentious aspects. In the end he had to withdraw it. The short-term winner has been Chirac’s sworn enemy and would-be successor, the insanely ambitious Sarkozy.  As you can imagine, the cartoonists had a field day and the only people not laughing are the leaders of the French ‘socialist’ party who are increasingly filling the vacuum in their political programme with precisely those Blairite nostrums that the young are refusing.

The moment the trade union movement was reluctant to get engaged in a full-blown conflict with the government. Doubtless this has something to do with the fiasco of its mobilisation to counter the government’s pension ‘reforms’ three years ago but it could also reflect the fact that the students have done a good job in discrediting the prime minister and dividing the government. However, the unions could have shown a little bit more muscle. Although the CPE has been withdrawn, the employers seem very attached to the CNE which constitutes a real threat to workers and, it may be added, to the ability of unions to organise workers. Indeed, the MEDEF, the bosses’ union, wants to generalise the CNE to all sectors and age-groups. 

The students, future workers, tried to expand their movement to incorporate all the various categories of workers but they clearly failed to generalize their demands adequately. Vague slogans against the precarious society more often than not failed to reach those workers who have been living from hand to mouth for some time. The reason for this is fairly simple: the general outlook of many of the poorer workers is constrained by the absence of qualifications and the urgent need to find cash. By staying largely at the level of a simple defence of their own immediate interests (in a movement which had all the strengths and weaknesses of spontaneity) the students were confronted by the rapid demobilisation of the movement as the examination season looms into sight. The movement was, after all, a student one albeit with a considerable amount of grass-roots support from the trade unions. The suspicion that the aim of the movement was simply that of defending the value of academic qualifications – what distinguishes the students from the unskilled workers – is, in this sense, inescapable. The unions, for their part, were only too glad to keep the movement within the narrow bounds of the defence of wages and conditions, notwithstanding the considerable level of economic insecurity which already exists. On the other hand there were many hopeful signs that the students were getting to grips with a more general malaise and that the movement was groping towards a wider perspective. It is at this point that the absence of a deeper understanding of what capitalism implies and of the need for a socialist movement embracing all categories of wage-earner was at its most glaring.

A Personal Note

I am not alone in having been taken completely by surprise by the students’ movement. The rapidity of its expansion and its extension to other categories in the population was nothing short of incredible. After the heavy and depressing riots of November with their mindless violence and undercurrent of racial tension, it has been comforting to see an outburst of political activity clearly directed against the poverty and loneliness of capitalist society. Despite the images shown on television, the massive demonstrations were on the whole good-natured and peaceful. The mixing together of young and old, and absence of sectarian politics, and the generally high level of debate was particularly encouraging. Although the movement has not taken a socialist direction, there is clearly a lot of discontent out there seeking a political expression and there does seem to be something of a resumption of the class struggle in Europe as a whole.

Malcolm Mansfield

Voice From The Back: Ain’t Science Wonderful? (2001)

The Voice From The Back column from the May 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ain’t Science Wonderful?

Good news for police forces and repressive regimes throughout the world, those wide-eyed men in the flapping white coats have come up with a new anti-demonstration weapon, that must delight “all of us right thinking people”:

  “Riot shields and water cannon may soon be made obsolete by a revolutionary weapon that can stun a hostile crowd with invisible microwaves. The US Vehicle Mounted Denial System (VMADS), a radar dish mounted on the back of a tank or jeep, is interesting British police forces. The VMADS, or ‘people zapper’, uses a ‘directed energy beam’ according to a Pentagon spokesperson, ‘When it comes into contact with skin it causes a sensation of heat to an uncomfortable level.'” Observer, 25 March.

Good Riddance

There probably wasn’t a dry eye in the House of Commons when Tony Benn, 75, MP for Chesterfield gave what was probably his valedictory address to the House. He recalled that members of his family had sat in the Commons since 1892 and that he “loved the place”. It was obviously an emotion-packed occasion, because one Tory talked the most arrant nonsense about Benn:

“John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham) called him the country’s greatest living socialist and reatest living parliamentarian.” Times, 23 March.

Of course, Benn never was a socialist. He is a life-long supporter of the Labour Party whose anti-socialist, indeed anti-working class record has been well documented in this journal. But, don’t take our word for it; Benn once wrote in a rare moment of lucidity-“We must add . . . a clear recognition that the Labour Party is not—and probably never was—a socialist party” (Independent, 17 May 1989).

Child’s Play

Mrs. Thatcher, wrong as usual, called them “the real wealth creators of this country”—she was referring to a small section of the population who were wheeling and dealing in the City of London. We have often pointed out that the actions of stockbrokers and investors produce no wealth whatsoever. But defenders of the financial sector have argued, that even if that was true, it is still true that these men and women are highly skilled. Now, even that claim looks indefensible:

“A four-year-old girl proved the stock-market was child’s play yesterday by winning a share prediction contest against an investor and an astrologer . . . Tia picked her shares at random, financial astrologer Christeen Skinner studied the heavens and Mark Goodson used his experience as a private investor. Ms Skinner lost 10 percent of her £5,000 shares while Mr. Goodson lost 7 percent and Tia lost 4.5 percent.” Guardian, 27 March.

Carefree Days?

Those happy TV ads that feature carefree school kids enjoying their teenage years in security and comfort have always looked a bit phoney, but a recent report by the TUC has revealed just how phoney they are for a large section of working class children:

“At least 500,000 schoolchildren are working illegally with many playing truant to do so, according to a report . . .The report by the TUC revealed that a quarter of those under 13-289,000-worked, even though it is against the law for them to do any kind of paid job . . . The report, Class Struggle, revealed that one in ten children played truant to do paid work. Almost one in five received less than £2 per hour and around a third were on £2.50 or less an hour. It also found that almost half of children under 16 worked after 8pm and 23 per cent worked before 6am, despite the law stipulating that they are not allowed to work before 7am or after 7pm .” Daily Telegraph, March.

Major surgery needed

   “British GPs are offering kidneys for sale from living donors in the Third World to wealthy patients who want to jump the queue for a transplant. The illegal kidneys-for-cash trade involves dozens of British patients who travel to India to receive kidneys from impoverished donors, who are paid up to £3,000.One doctor claimed last week he could arrange for a kidney to be bought and transplanted in London . . . Dr. Jammail Singh, who works at Hellfields health centre in Coventry, told an undercover reporter that £2,000 was the ‘general’ price for a kidney. ‘Although it is a lot of money for them, they’re doing an extraordinary thing,’ he said. ‘They are generally manual workers. Just imagine if something goes wrong with the remaining kidney—they will be crippled for life.'” Sunday Times, 1 April.

Try and imagine the desperation of a £15 a month labourer in India who has to sell a kidney in order to feed his family. The whole system is an abomination, and the sooner the working class surgically remove the cancer of the profit motive from society the better.