Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information, Target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Proper Gander: Being informed about informers (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was probably a coincidence that a BBC documentary about the tyrannical Russian state was released on the same day as the government’s Defence Secretary John Healey announced increased investment to move the UK to ‘war-fighting readiness’, especially against Russia. While its timing gave the programme a propagandist tinge, it doesn’t consider how the Russian state may be a danger to those of us in the UK, but rather how it oppresses those living under its rule.

The threat of being ‘denounced’, to the extent it exists in Russia, isn’t something easy to empathise with elsewhere. Aspects of what it means to be ‘denounced’ are found in any country, as all have legislation covering what politically-motivated acts are deemed unacceptable, and anyone risks the consequences for their employment, for instance, of being publicly ‘shamed’. However, in Russia, the laws are especially strict and the state monitors dissent from its decrees closely, and so to be ‘denounced’ for transgressing them can mean particularly harsh punishments. One way which supposedly subversive activities come to the state’s attention is through informers. The two featured in the documentary Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within aren’t employed in this role, which they’ve taken on like an enthusiastically-pursued hobby. They gather up information online and in the media about would-be dissenters and often alongside targeting them directly, notify the state regulator, who may then further investigate and prosecute.

One of the informers is Valentin Botzvin, an armed forces veteran who has become ‘self-appointed guardians of Russia’s soul’, as the narration puts it. He targets those who he says ‘are forming an anti-peace system with different values’, including Alisa Gorshenina, who contributed to the design for a video by activist band Pussy Riot. The other snout featured in the programme – Anna Korobkova – is more prolific, claiming to have written 1,000 denouncements. One victim was Alexandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist at a Russian university. In 2022, Anna sent Alexandra’s employers a letter about her ‘immoral act’ discrediting the military through her academic work, and some of her friends and colleagues were also similarly accused. Alexandra fled to France and began investigating Anna’s real identity, such as by looking for patterns in their style of writing and comparing them with other texts. The camera used for photos on Anna’s Wikipedia entry was tracked to a man called Ivan Abaturov. Alexandra found a written denouncement signed by Ivan which resembled one sent by Anna, and both were traced back to one computer IP address. When challenged, Ivan replied denying he was Anna, in the same writing style. He is described as having been a troublemaker while at university and as himself has posted on social media talking about denouncements.

While revealing ‘Anna”s true identity gives the documentary a narrative and an air of espionage, Valentin the veteran is quite open about informing. As a member of Russia’s military, he had already developed a loyalty to the state, which no doubt gave him the drive to snitch in his retirement. That there are younger people, such as Ivan, who are as keen to denounce others shows how this creed has permeated out. While they may sincerely believe that what they are doing is morally right, this is because they have adopted a belief system which just so happens to align with that of the ruling elite, even if it is against their class interests.

The mindset of those who are at risk of being informed upon is different. As Alisa explains, the threat of retribution for expressing nonconformist views makes her fearful and paranoid. Alexandra felt she had to leave Russia, as did Noize MC, a rapper who was being monitored for his ‘sharp, socially conscious lyrics’, with some of his gigs being cancelled by officials. Alisa chose to remain in Russia, saying that to leave would be to have something else taken away from her, along with her rights. A caption at the end of the programme says that she was arrested, detained and found guilty of displaying an ‘extremist’ rainbow emoji and insulting the army, for which she was fined. We’re also told that by the end of 2024, almost 3,000 critics of the war against Ukraine were being prosecuted, while almost 300,000 denunciations were registered with the state regulator in the first year of the conflict.

When a state criminalises disagreement with its ideology, this shows a weakness in any arguments for it. But this weakness is eclipsed by the strength wielded by the state through its legislation and punishments. These are applied randomly in Russia, as Alexandra explains, in that one person may avoid any sanctions for writing a provocative social media post, while others may get prosecuted just for clicking ‘like’ on one. This may be due to gaps in the resources available to the state, but as Alexandra says, this inconsistency contributes to the threat. For those who question the way they have to live, anxiety about being denounced adds pressure to self-censor. Music acts such as Pussy Riot and Noize MC bravely attempt to express some anti-state sentiment, which represents a little optimism. Unfortunately, at the moment, state oppression and limited class consciousness would make any movement for genuine change in Russia difficult to establish.

According to its iPlayer page, the BBC Eye strand offers ‘high-impact investigations and in-depth reporting from our award-winning World Service team’. With a running time of only 22 minutes, there’s a limit to how in-depth Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within could be. So the documentary doesn’t consider the context much beyond saying that denouncers threaten to ‘bring back ghosts from Russia’s past’, particularly during Stalin’s rule. Throughout the decades between then and now, the state has remained, and even when it has been less autocratic it has still enforced and engendered acceptance to maintain itself. These ‘ghosts’ may now be more active, but they’ve always haunted those living under the regime.

Mike Foster

The Soviet opposition (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the most part the Party maximum was an operative rule until the end of the twenties and early thirties. Then it began to be undermined, primarily by the decline in the real wages of most workers. The limited increase in money wages did not cover the rapid rise in prices; a considerable number of workers found their small circle of high officials was protected by the creation of a system of special stores, distributing centres, and dining rooms, where goods could be obtained at fixed prices. Gradually they acquired other privileges too: their own hospitals, free rest homes, dachas, and so on. In the same period a peculiar habit began to appear: the Party activ were given expensive gifts for holidays, congresses, and conferences. On February 8, 1932, the Party maximum was formally abolished, bringing a new increase in the real income of leading officials.

When the economic situation improved, permitting the abolition of rationing in 1935 and a steady increase in real wages, the privileges of high officials were not terminated. On the contrary, they were increased. A system of representatives’ subsidies (predestavitel 'skie dotatsii) was established for all officials at the level of the chairman of a city Soviet or higher. Moreover, the direct salaries of higher officials rose much faster than wages of ordinary workers. Many officials increased their salaries even more through a system of pluralism (sovmestitel ’stro); that is, one man held several offices, receiving full pay for each. Thus the l-to-5 ratio between an average worker’s salary and that of the highest official, which Lenin evidently considered optimal, was violated even before the war.

Subsequently the ratio grew still greater. During the war and the first post-war years, when the real wages of ordinary workers were falling once again, the salaries of the highest officials continued to rise. That was the period when the disgraceful system of “packets” (pakety) was introduced in the higher State and Party institutions. Each month almost every high official would receive an envelope or packet containing a large sum, often much higher than the salary formally designated for his post. These payments passed through special financial channels, were not subject to taxes, and were kept secret from the rank-and-file officials of the institution.

Russian dissident Roy Medvedev on the growth of the Russian rulers’ privileges, in Let History Judge, Knopf, N.Y. 1972, pp 539-40.

Notes by the Way: The Workers’ Share of the Product of Industry (1952)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Workers’ Share of the Product of Industry

In the “ Times Review of Industry ” (April, 1952) Dr. L. Rostas examines the preliminary results of the 1948 Census of Production. One piece of information brought out by the Census of Production figures is the total value of the net output of workers in manufacturing, mining, building, etc., and the amount of wages and salaries paid.

The figures show that in 1948 the average net output per employee was £543. Wages represented 48.1 per cent, of that figure and salaries 11.8 per cent., so that wages and salaries together represented 59.9 per cent, of net output.

Dr. Rostas quotes for comparison the corresponding figures shown by the 1935 Census of Production, which was 60 per cent. While therefore the position in 1948 was almost identical with that in 1935 earlier figures showed that the workers' share had risen between 1906-7 and 1924. These figures were published in the Report of the Committee on Finance and Industry (1931, Page 312), and were 52 per cent. in 1906-7 and 55 per cent. in 1924.

The above figures relate to manufacturing industries, mining, building, etc., but do not include transport, finance, civil service, etc. The figures covering all workers are published each year in the Government booklet “ National Income and Expenditure.” For 1948 the division of the total national income (before deducting taxes on income) were: wages 45 per cent., salaries (largely clerks, shop assistants, etc.) 23 per cent., making a total of 68 per cent. In that year the pay of the armed forces represented 3 per cent., and Rent, Dividends and Interest 29 per cent.

The wages and salaries figure for 1951 is also 68 per cent, but in 1938 it was rather smaller, 61 per cent. The main reason why the later figures for wages and salaries have been higher than before the war is that owing to the fall of unemployment more workers have been receiving wages.

* * *

Increase of Output per Employee

Dr. Rostas also shows the increase of physical output per employee in the 13 years 1935 to 1948. Total output of manufacturing industry increased in the 13 years by about 32 per cent., but as the number of workers had increased by 25 per cent., the physical output per worker had increased by about 6 per cent. This is less than half of one per cent a year and is below the normal annual increase over long periods. Undoubtedly the rate of increase will have been somewhat larger in the years since 1948.

In the five years 1924 to 1929 it increased by 11.6 per cent., representing over 2 per cent. a year. (Report of Committee on Finance and Industry, 1931. Page 310.)

An elaborate inquiry by the economist Colin Clark covering the 80 years 1870 to 1950 shows that the product per worker increased by 76 per cent., or rather less than 1 per cent, a year. (Published in Review of Economic Progress, July-August, 1951, Brisbane. Australia.)

During the same period, 1870-1950. the amount produced per head of the population increased by a larger percentage than did the increase of output per worker. This was because a larger proportion of the population were employed in 1950 than in 1870. The amount produced per head of the population was a little over twice as much in 1950 as in 1870.

* * *

Innocents in Russia

Mr. Emrys Hughes, Labour M.P. for South Ayrshire, is best known for his near-pacifism and his constant efforts to get the world's governments to get together to avoid war. He recently visited Russia and published his observations in “ Forward." He has one advantage over many visitors to Russia that he speaks Russian and he claimed that nothing was done to prevent him from entering into conversation with people he met.

Nevertheless he does on one issue betray a certain amount of simplicity. Writing in “Forward” (3rd May, 1952) he claims that “the Communist Dictatorship not only survives but is generally accepted," and that “there is a stable government to which there is no discernible or organised opposition.”

Now Mr. Hughes knows that it is illegal in Russia to attempt to form any political party other than the Communist Party and that all journals and news reports are censored. If he were in Russia and tried to form a party like the one of which he is a member, or tried to make his customary pacifist speeches, or tried to publish a journal like “Forward," of which he was formerly editor, or tried to run as a Labour Party candidate, he would be breaking the law and would incur speedy and drastic penalties. Knowing all this he nevertheless can say that there is in Russia no discernible or organised opposition!

It may be correct that there is little opposition and that what underground opposition does exist is not organised, but when Mr. Hughes says that the opposition is not discernible he is being a little naive. Does he really expect anti-Communists in Russia to disclose themselves? If he had visited Germany under Hitler he would have found the same absence of individuals anxious to become “discerned” and consequently jailed.

Or to come nearer home, if Mr. Hughes had six months ago visited the anti-trade union establishments of Mr. Thomson of Dundee he would have failed to discern on that dictatorial individual's premises even the smallest sign of “ discernible and organised opposition.”

It is, of course, very difficult to tell what opposition exists under any dictatorship and perhaps later events may show that Mr. Hughes was as much misled about Russia in 1952 as was the British Ambassador in Russia in 1917 who was quite unaware until it broke out into open revolt that there was widespread opposition to the Czarist regime.

* * *

How to Muzzle the Press

In Russia the Government openly exercises a censorship on what news comes into the country and on the reports sent out by foreign journalists, and, of course, on what is printed in the Russian Press. Also there is the widespread Russian jamming of foreign broadcasts.

When challenged on the subject Mr. Stalin used the defence that whenever the censorship had been lifted the statements made about the members of the Russian Government by foreign reporters were such that the Russian people became "very indignant," and the censorship had to be re-introduced (Soviet Weekly, 15th May, 1947.) It is a very curious excuse in face of the way in which much of the Russian Government's own internal propaganda is designed to stir up popular indignation against foreigners.

However, a crude censorship is not the only way of preventing publication. It will be recalled how for months the events leading up to the abdication of Edward Vm (the Duke of Windsor) were kept out of the British Press though widely discussed in other countries. More recently we have seen how a request to the British Press not to publish an indiscreet statement made by Lord Alexander at a dinner at the Canada Club was generally observed. Here the reason given was that “security” was involved though in fact a very similar statement had been made by him shortly before and had been published. The Evening Standard (4/7/52) published a letter by Mr. Beverley Baxter saying that as the request not to publish was made by Lord Alexander on grounds of “security" the editors of the morning newspapers were right to accede to the request. The editor of the Evening Standard took the opposite line. He wrote:

"No question of security was involved. The editors were therefore wrong to accept a request for suppression on security grounds.”

A Denunciation of Nationalism

The  Indian, M. N. Roy, who was at one time prominent in the Communist International, but later broke away and took a line of his own, recently wrote for the Manchester Guardian (21/6/52) an article “Asian Nationalism. Its Roots in Race Hatred."

In it he puts the case that the Asiatic nationalist movements are not just movements to secure independence from the foreign governments that kept them in colonial subjection, for even after achieving independence they continue to preach the same anti-foreign doctrines as before. He quotes Mr. Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and advocate of Indian nationalism, as having admitted that he does not know what nationalism is:

“What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive."

Yet though Mr. Nehru could not define nationalism he went on to declare that it “warms the heart of every Asian" and that “any other force that may seek to function must define itself in terms of this nationalism.” Mr. Roy says this is nonsense and that what Mr. Nehru's explanation really means is that nationalism is “race hatred kept alive artificially.”

“ Asia nationalism is an unmixed evil. It has not got the saving grace of a cultural and idealist origin as in the case of earlier European nationalism."

Although Mr. Roy notices that between the wars European nationalism developed into fascism, and quotes the statement of the late Lord Acton that nationality sacrifices everything “to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould and measure of the State,” he does not appreciate the simple fact that nationalism has been and is everywhere the form in which each capitalist group tries to carve out a place for itself in the world of warring capitalist states. If he did he would not be at all surprised that the politicians who have used nationalism to gain independence from a colonial power need it just as much afterwards in order to persuade the workers to go on fighting capitalism’s battles.

If it is an illusion to think that nations can be friendly in a capitalist world provided that they are all “independent,” it is equally an illusion on the part of Mr. Roy to think that the Powers, great and small, could dispense with nationalism.

At least one thing Mr. Roy has correctly summed up. Discussing the disappointing results of national independence from the worker’s point of view, he says that when India and other countries achieved independence, “absolutely nothing changed except the personnel of the State machinery.”

On one thing we can put Mr. Roy right He says of the “reforming Liberals and the revolutionary Left in the Western countries” that disregarding the bitter experience and irony of history which had shown them nationalist movements starting with men like Mazzini and ending with regimes like Mussolini’s, they “vied with each other in patronising colonial nationalism.” Whatever the Liberals and Labourites did, the S.P.G.B. certainly did not fell into this error but always condemned nationalist propaganda whether at home or abroad, in Europe or in Asia.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

The piece on M. N. Roy and the perniciousness of nationalism was previously posted on the blog as a standalone article in September 2011. I'm not sure what happened there. Maybe I copied it from the SPGB website, not knowing that it was part of a larger Notes by the Way column. No worries.

Are you being driven mad? (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

One in twelve males and one in eight females in Britain will spend some part of their lives in a psychiatric hospital. Most women between thirty and sixty are regularly prescribed tranquillisers by their family doctor. Since its introduction in the 1930s, ECT (electric shock treatment or electroconvulsive therapy) has been used on thousands of people. There is a widespread use of neurosurgery and other therapy methods, and admissions to psychiatric hospitals are increasing as daily life in our society becomes more tense and frenzied.

“Madness” is very often behaviour which conflicts with conventional ideas of normality or proper thinking. We all think as an involuntary activity, in ways which are specifically human and which differentiate us from our older animal relations. To think is to reflect m the brain the material reality of the environment: il is a relationship between matter and matter. The way in which we relate to our material surroundings determines how our thoughts are to be classified by other people. In primitive society people believed that they were in touch with another world when dreaming. In the Middle Ages people who rejected Christian morality were tortured as lunatics who were possessed by the devil. "Sanity” can be interpreted as a readiness to accept common experiences in conformity with common ideas; "insanity" can be dissent from the social conditioning process.

Mediaeval society had certain ideas about how women should behave. Those women who did not fit in with those ideas were often persecuted as witches. Sprenger and Kramer's hook on how to spot a witch, The Malleus Maleficarum, written m I486, was the downfall of many a woman who suffered from epilepsy. the symptoms of which were listed in the book as the classical characteristics of a witch. In 1515 five hundred unfortunate women were killed for witchcraft in Geneva in the space of three months. In the eighteenth century the "mad" were confined to institutions where they were chained up. beaten, humiliated and put on public display. The diaries of many a nineteenth century nobleman contain reports of Sunday afternoon outings to the lunatic asylum to be entertained by the misfortunes of the deranged.

Most British mental hospitals were built to fit m with nineteenth century ideas about mental health: these days the chains have gone, but the humiliation of the confined has not. Many inmates in modern asylums were first put there for moral or criminal transgressions An unmarried servant girl at the turn of the century who bore a child would face such moral outrage that she would become depressed and, instead of receiving sympathy from those around her, would be locked up in an asylum. Soldiers who could not take the conditions of war, homosexuals who cracked up trying to repress their feelings for the sake of acceptability, poor children who saw nothing wrong with stealing from the rich, men who broke under the monotony or responsibility of their jobs, wives who were left on their own by husbands who grew tired of them, girls who could not conform to the advertisers' modes of anatomical excellence —all of these may be found m any psychiatric hospital. They are not sick just sick of what society is.

Conventional mental disorders are experienced by almost everyone at some time. Depression is a perfectly natural response to a lifestyle in which we are taught to have expectations, but are denied the opportunity to fulfil them. If we are depressed because we are not allowed to do what is technically feasible but socially forbidden, we are simply reacting to a seemingly insoluble social dilemma. Socially produced ills are what cause such depression: people formulate their own reasons to be miserable. Another common mental illness is paranoia: the feeling that there is some force beyond you which is trying to dominate or oppress you. Most of us have felt vulnerable, threatened, unwanted or inadequate at some time. But are we ill because we have these feelings? In a society based on the hypocrisy, artificiality and authoritarianism of the sort that is an integral part of the buying and selling system, are those who are in the inferior social class wrong to have a feeling that we are being oppressed?

It would be very nice for our bosses if every worker who complained that he is oppressed could be classified as a nutcase, but responding to the oppression which surrounds us is not paranoia. In a society which locks people up for taking what they have produced (stealing from work), for refusing lo kill (in many countries military service is still compulsory) or for attacking the government (as is the fate of dissidents in the Russian Empire and South Africa), it is the ignorance of oppression which betrays the greater mental contusion. Then there is schizophrenia which most psychiatrists define as a state of mental fragmentation: it is a condition in which part of the mind accepts reality as it is, while the other part entertains delusions. These so-called delusions are sometimes treated by neurosurgery, the aim of which is to modify the patient's thinking so that the brain responds to all events in a standard way. A case of schizophrenia is cited by Morton Schatzman in his book, Radical Therapist:

Recently, a young man in the NATO military forces, with a position in a chain of command to push a nuclear-missile "button”, decided to refuse to obey orders related to his job. He told his superiors that they should not command any man to do such a job. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and was hospitalised.

Mental problems are caused by the relationship between the human mind which is rational — and a mystifying social environment — which is irrational. If we misunderstand the world around us we are entitled to feel depressed and threatened and deluded. When one considers just how crazy the present system of organising human affairs is, mental non-conformity is to be strongly advised. What is often called “madness" is a rational response to such problems as war, poverty and insecurity. In The Inner World of Mental Illness, so-called psychiatric disorders are characterised as

. . . opposed to a normality which is intimately related to the major value orientations of western society. It may be asserted therefore that abnormality (psychosis) involves negative relationship to prevailing social normative prescriptions . . . In the jargon of the moment we may call this "alienation”.

The mental health pressure group. PROMPT, has stated that one of its roles  is

. . . to demonstrate that what currently passes as "mental health" is often the measure of the person’s exploitability by those who own (or otherwise control) the means of production and distribution of that which is necessary to sustain life; and to show that a person called “mentally ill” is often someone strongly reacting against their exploitation.

In state capitalist Russia dissidents who try to criticise the bogus socialism are often locked away from the public on the grounds that they are mad. Once locked away, many of them are driven to actual mental derangement by excessive isolation and the use of drugs. Once diagnosed as being insane the dissenter loses whatever credibility he may have once had. Bukovsky and Gluzman, in their Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents, points out that

Dissidents, as a rule, have enough legal grounding so as not to make mistakes during their investigation and trial, but when confronted by a qualified psychiatrist with a directive from above to have them declared non-accountable, they have found themselves absolutely powerless.

The other capitalist states use similar methods. British television, for instance, is quite expert at branding social dissenters in such a way as to lead acquiescent workers to reject what they are saying very often before they have even said it. Most socialists will have been called a crank or a lunatic at some time for having spoken about a world without money. Of course, men like the Duke of Edinburgh who dress up in military uniforms and talk about how safe nuclear weapons are, are considered to be perfectly sane and worthy of public respect.

The battle for socialism is the battle against the conventional ideas of our age. Socialists ask questions. We ask why it is that there are people who produce all of the wealth of society and yet live in poverty and people who are idle who live in luxury. Why do grown men and women cry when they run out of money in the middle of the week and they have a family to feed. Why are children sent to school to be conditioned? Why are otherwise rational men and women occasionally seen to address the sky and ask for help? Why must we live in constant fear of being killed by bombs that none of us want? Why are our fellow human beings dying of starvation by the minute while food rots? Why slums? Why palaces? Why unemployment? Either it is all normal and those of us who reject it are 'insane,' or else we are sane and it is mad.

Socialists aim to bring the ideas held by the majority of people in line with their experiences. This is the role of any scientist who is serious about his work. But instead of endeavouring to examine social reality, government scientists tend be employed to perpetuate the current form of reality. This is particularly true of modern psychiatry which is more concerned with the treatment of symptoms than with examining their cause. Indeed, if psychiatrists were to study causation they would be put to the impossible task of either giving up their occupations and trying to change society or continue their jobs in the knowledge that what they are doing is futile and often counter-productive.

If a man lives his life in chains and responds by kicking out at those around him, the psychiatrist’s solution of binding his legs or dulling his brain so that he is too weak to kick is less reasonable than the socialist solution of destroying the chains. However, under capitalism — the social system which prevails throughout the world today — the freedom of the parasites at the top can only he secured by the social constriction of the vast majority. So, reasonable a proposition as it may he to smash the chains which presently confine us, they who pay the psychiatrists are paying to ensure that symptoms are treated while the problem remains.

But surely if we, the majority class in society, are the victims of this system, we should be destroying the chains ourselves? Indeed we should but it is an unfortunate fact that a majority of that majority class have become accustomed to the confinement of life under capitalism and nothing would disturb them more than the prospect of social freedom. How is it that capitalism has spared its victims from such dangerous thoughts of non-conformity? We can begin by rejecting the most popular explanation: that human beings come into the world with ideas already implanted in their brains. This is the argument of the apologist for capitalist normality, who is anxious to inform us that we have "forgotten about human nature”. (As if the moment he reminds us we are going to stop being socialists!)

In fact, ideas are not inherent, but are acquired by convention. Our language is a learned code. Our concepts of right and wrong are products of historical change. Learning is the essence of our conformity. We learn to accept things as they are in three ways: firstly, by the overt agencies of thought control, such as schools, universities, newspapers, television, radio, parental guidance, and religion, secondly, by experience of the system which one comes to accept as natural phenomenon; thirdly, at an early age our feelings of freedom and human creativity are repressed to fit in with conventional social relationships. Rejection of these conditioning. processes is often labelled as insanity.

For instance, if a child takes no notice of the social norms imposed by its parents and teachers it will be persuaded, bribed, locked up, beaten — but if these things fail and the child does not step into line it may be labelled as disturbed, insane or subnormal. This label will have profound effects upon the future economic and personal prospects of the non-conformist. People who reject the 'naturalness' of their social environment are easily dismissed as fantasists or utopians. It in within the terms of sanity to complain that the rent is too high, but it is a case for psychiatric concern if one demands decent living conditions for everyone. Many innovative scientists, who have challenged conventional hypotheses, have been dismissed as lunatics. The non-repressed individual is virtually unknown in our society, but if you try to live in an unrepressed manner you are likely to end up either being isolated in squalor or confined to an institution. How many of us could honestly say that we would live as we are living now if we were really free?

In The Manufacture of Madness Thomas Szasz says that psychiatry

. . . is harmful to the so-called mental patient. This is not because it is liable to abuse, but rather because harming people categorised as insane is its essential function. Institutional psychiatry is, as it were, designed to protect and uplift the group (the state) by persecuting and degrading the individual as insane or ill.

He goes on to point out that there is no basic difference between modern ideas of madness and those of mediaeval society. Despite the so-called liberalism of the modem state

. . . there are still the disadvantaged, the disaffected, and the people who thought and criticised too much. The non-con formist, the objector, all who deny or refuse to affirm society's dominant values, are still the enemies of society.

This view is confirmed by an article in The New Scientist (21/6/79) in which it was reported that in South Africa, Germany and Japan

. . . doctors unabashedly carry out psychosurgery to make “patients" more obedient and supposedly as a “cure" for homosexuality.

It should be pointed out that many patients have died as result of needless psychosurgery. It should also be pointed out that many of those being presently held in such top security mental hospitals as Rampton are undergoing corrective treatment involving drugs and ECT, as well as brain surgery, simply because they have refused to obey the social norms. The terrible thing is that the more such people claim that they are being abused, the more the psychiatrists who are supposed to be treating them accuse them of being mentally ill. It is not only in Russia that offenders against the status quo are sentenced to insanity.

Dissent is safest when it is engaged in en masse. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to be an instrument for mass opposition to the capitalist system as a way of living. If you stand out against it alone your friends, family and workmates will try to dismiss your non-conformity as eccentricity or utopianism. The more of us there are, the harder it becomes for the Normals to ignore us with a nervous laugh. We, the overwhelming majority of the human race, have no weapon which is more effective than our capacity for critical thought. Ideas coupled with political solidarity will penetrate every single aspect of the social edifice which seems so unbreakable to the lone dissenter. If we are bitter and vociferous and impatient it is only because the system which aims to control us has driven us to it. Now let us be mad and sane enough to learn to control the system.

Steve Coleman

State capitalism and the Russian dissidents (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to Andrei Sakharov, a leading Russian dissident, the view that Russia is state capitalist is fairly widespread there:

In my opinion, contemporary Soviet society can be concisely characterised as a society based on state capitalism; that is, a system differing from contemporary capitalism of the Western type by virtue of complete nationalization, a Party-State monopoly of economic affairs—and therefore in culture, ideology, and other basic aspects of life. This opinion is apparently shared by a great many people abroad and in the USSR—although in most cases the latter of course do not voice it (My Country and the World, p. 14)

To call Russia state capitalist is to reject the claim of the Russian leaders to have established a classless egalitarian society. That there is no social equality in Russia is evident to any impartial observer. Even a superficial glance at Russian society will reveal that the mass of the people are poor and at the same time have no say whatsoever in the way society is run. On the other hand, the group which does take the key economic and political decisions can be seen to enjoy considerable material privileges too. The term “state capitalism” however conveys not only that a situation of social inequality exists in Russia but also that the society has a definite class structure and, like capitalism everywhere else, is based on the exploitation of the working class.

The Soviet oppositionists do in fact give us a fairly detailed picture of the class structure of Russia. In 1969 there appeared a samizdat document Time Does Not Wait written by two authors using the pseudonyms Zorin and Alexeyev. Here we read:

The Party and government leaders not only possess total political power but also have at their disposal the entire economy. State ownership of the means of production and the centralized planning system mean that all the budget figures, all the surplus products created by the people’s labour, are disposed of collectively by a closed circle of people, according to each one’s rank. Here the nomenclature appears as a form of property. In reality this is a single state-monopoly trust in which positions and posts are equivalent to the ownership of shares, (translated for the Socialist Standard by C. S.)

So the ruling class is here seen as the select group wielding, on the basis of the State monopoly of the means of production, complete economic and political power and is identified with the “nomenclatura” which is thus a legally-recognised hierarchical corporation collectively exploiting the surplus labour of the Russian people.

The “nomenclatura” is a list of posts, appointment to which is the prerogative of the Party. All the leading posts in national and local government figure in the “nomenclatura” and nearly all are filled by members of the Party. The “nomenclatura”, then, in so far as it is a list of posts the ruling Party itself considers it should fill in order to maintain its control is a reasonable enough starting point for defining the Russian ruling class. We say starting point because there are others not strictly in the “nomenclatura” who would also need to be considered part of any ruling class; the full-time bureaucracy of the Party itself for instance.

Andrei Sakharov himself, in his rather naive first public pronouncement in 1968 of his differences with the Russian government entitled Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, made a passing reference in a footnote to the view that the “nomenclatura” constituted a ruling, exploiting class enjoying material privileges:

It is sometimes suggested in the literature that the political manifestations of Stalinism represented a sort of superstructure over the economic basis of an anti-Leninist pseudo-socialism that led to the formation of a distinct class—the bureaucratic élite of those who figure on the nomeclatura lists and who appropriate the fruits of social labour by means of a whole series of officially recognised or concealed privileges (Sakharov Speaks, p. 84, changed on basis of French version)

By 1975, Sakharov, without doubt because of his experiences during the intervening period, had come to fully accept this view himself. By then he realised that he was fighting not just to change the policy of the government but against an entrenched ruling class determined to defend its power and privileges. In his book My Country and the World he writes:

Although the appropriate sociological studies either have not been carried out in our country, or have been classified as secret, it may be affirmed that as early as the 1920’s and 30’s — and definitively in post-war years—a special Party-bureaucratic stratum was formed and could be discerned. This is the nomenclatura, as its members call themselves; or the “new class”, as Milovan Djilas has named them. This élite has its own life style, its own clearly defined social status—"bosses” and "chiefs”—and its own way of talking and thinking. The nomenclatura has in fact an inalienable status, and has recently become hereditary. Thanks to a complex system of covert and overt official privileges, along with contacts, acquaintanceships, and mutual favours—and also thanks to their high salaries—these people are able to live in much better housing, and to feed and clothe themselves better (often for less money in special ‘closed’ stores or for currency certificates, or by means of trips abroad—which, under Soviet conditions, constitute the highest award for loyalty) (pp. 25-6)

Sakharov had first used the actual term “state capitalism” to describe Russia in an interview given to a Swedish radio and television correspondent in July 1973 (see Sakharov Speaks, p. 167).

One of the weaknesses of Sakharov’s analysis and that of Zorin and Alexeyev is the way they seek to show that the “nomenclatura’s” rights are legally-based and hereditary. Both Sakharov and Zorin and Alexeyev state that the “nomenclatura’s” right to a privileged situation is “inalienable” and Sakharov adds that it “has recently become hereditary”. What they have in mind is clear: a member of the “nomenclatura” who ends up on the losing side in an internal party controversy may lose his top Party or government post but he will not be thrown out of the “nomenclatura”. The members of the “anti-party group” of die-hard Stalinists (Molotov, Malenkov, Bulganin and Kaganovich) ejected from power in 1956 were all given other, though comparatively minor, posts in the “nomenclatura” and Khrushchev died a wealthy man in his own private dacha. In describing the “nomenclatura” as hereditary Sakharov no doubt has in mind the fact that children of members of the “nomenclatura” can enter, and have been entering, its ranks without any difficulty and almost automatically.

No doubt both these facts are true, but to include them as key features of the Russian ruling class is to accept a legalistic rather than a sociological definition of class and to lay yourself open to the criticism that the individual member of the "nomenclatura’s” position and privileges are not in fact legally enforceable. From a legalistic point of view, such a criticism has some validity. The members of the “nomenclatura” have no legally-recognised and legally-enforceable right either to a post in its ranks or to transmit such a post to their children. Their position may in practice be virtually permanent and it may in practice always be possible for them to get their children a post in the “nomenclatura”, but if, for some reason, they were thrown out of the “nomenclatura” or if their children were refused entry into its ranks they could not have recourse to the courts to enforce their claim.

The legalistic definition of class suggests that, to constitute a possessing class, a group must have legal property rights over the means of production including the legal right to bequeath their property to their descendants. But this is not so. Marx’s method was to judge a society not by its political or legal superstructure but by its real social relations of production. A possessing class in the Marxist sense can be discerned in any society if an empirical investigation reveals that a distinct and reasonably stable group exerts a de facto monopoly control over access to the use of the means of production. This monopoly will always (except in periods of revolutionary social change) be backed by political power and may also be legally recognised, but this latter is by no means essential. The absence of legal recognition would not negate the existence of a possessing class.

On this definition, a ruling, possessing class, as a group exerting a de facto monopoly over the means of production, has long existed in Russia. This does not mean, however, that a class of individual private property owners might not still evolve, either from the ranks of the bureaucracy or from the at present severely restricted illegal and semi-legal private entrepreneurs of Russia.

State capitalism and private capitalism

None of the Soviet oppositionists are Socialists in the Marxist sense of the term (they do not stand for the establishment of a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole community). So what do they stand for? What do they wish to see established in Russia in place of state capitalism?

Their key demand is for the establishment of a genuine political democracy in Russia with freedom of expression, freedom to organise in political parties and trade unions, a democratically elected parliament, etc. There can be no doubt at all that they are sincerely and courageously struggling for this aim. But since politics and economics cannot be separated it is pertinent to ask what sort of economic system they envisage, even if by default, for a democratic Russia.

Here it is hard to resist the conclusion that many of those who speak of “state-monopoly capitalism”, including Sakharov himself, are more opposed to "state-monopoly” than to “capitalism”. In a sense this is understandable in that what they are fighting against day by day is the monopoly exercised by the State in the fields of politics and ideas—the dictatorship of the leaders of the CPSU—while the term “capitalism” is not properly understood and is being used as a term to express their rejection of the claim of the CPSU leaders to have established a classless society in Russia.

However, class society in Russia has certain features in common with pre-capitalist class societies in that the privileges of the rulers—even though they derive in the end from a monopoly over the means of production—are expressed in political terms. Thus, just as in feudalism society was divided into legally-defined estates, so in Russia today society appears to be divided according to political criteria: into those in the top and middle ranks of the CPSU who, by virtue of their political status, enjoy access to the top jobs (through the “nomenclatura” system) and to the best goods and services (through exclusive shops and politically-motivated “prizes” as well as through high salaries), and into the rest of society.

This special feature of the Russian class structure has given rise to the illusion that the mere abolition of the political monopoly of the CPSU of the “nomenclatura”, of the exclusive shops and other perks would be equivalent to abolishing class privilege in Russia. But this would no more be the case than the abolition of feudal privileges established a classless society in Western Europe, as imagined by 19th century democrats.

What the abolition of these politically-derived privileges would do would be to leave no class distinction but the ownership (or non-ownership) of wealth. This is the grain of truth in the claim made by the CPSU leaders that what their opponents seek is the “restoration of capitalism” in Russia. "Restoration” is of course the wrong word since it suggests that capitalism was at one time abolished in Russia (which was never the case), but it is still true that in practice what the Russian dissidents would achieve if successful would be a transition from the existing “bureaucratic” or “state-monopoly” capitalism to a type of capitalism similar to what has emerged in the West.

Such a transition would not need to involve the complete denationalization of land and industry in Russia For, after all, a large proportion of industry in Western countries is now in the hands of the State. There is, however, a difference between Western state capitalism and Russian state capitalism in that in the West the State sector is subordinate to the private sector, whereas in Russia the state sector, the source of power and privilege for the political bureaucracy which controls it, completely dominates (but has not entirely suppressed) the private sector. The establishment of democratic political institutions in Russia would create the same sort of relationship between the private and State sectors as currently exists in the West: the nationalised industries would be run in the interests of a political bureaucracy.

But what is, or would be, the Russian private sector? There already exist in Russia today many people who are individually wealthy. Not so much those who have made money out of illegal or semi-legal private enterprise, but mainly those who. after years of privilege deriving from membership of a corporation which collectively owns and controls the means of production have amassed considerable fortunes and become wealthy individuals in their own right. But there is no legal way in which they can invest this wealth productively so it is generally hoarded in the form of dachas, precious metals and art collections. The partial denationalization of industry proposed by Sakharov in My Country and the World, as a means of weakening the “state monopoly” would provide such an outlet. For who does Sakharov think would have the money to buy the factories he proposes should be sold off? The only people who could are bureaucrats who have become individually wealthy — and others, we might add without being unfair, like Sakharov himself who became so by providing special services to the political bureaucracy in the scientific or artistic fields.

So, ironic as it might seem, the main beneficiaries of the democratic programme proposed by the Russian oppositionists would most probably be a section of the very bureaucrats they are so courageously struggling against. Which is why other dissidents like Roy Medvedev may not be entirely mistaken in expecting democratic reform in Russia to come from above, from a section of the bureaucracy itself.

This, then, is the ambiguous position of those in Russia who recognise the system there to be a state capitalism. Not being socialists, the only alternative they can offer—even if they don’t always do so explicitly—is private capitalism. The Russian oppositionists’ fight for political democracy is in effect a fight against state capitalism on behalf of private capitalism. Which is why we, as Socialists, cannot support them.

Adam Buick

The Memoirs of a Dutiful Follower (1967)

Book Review from the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

This book. Post-war Years; Vol VI of Men, Years—Life (MacGibbon and Kee, 45s.), has not been an easy one to review for a special reason. It is one of those rare autobiographies written by one who has spent his life under a dictatorship—where he still remains. The reviewer, reaching for the knife, must always in fairness keep asking himself the question: “How would I myself have acted if I had had to live my life under the heel of a Stalin?” And having answered that as best he may, he must then also wonder how free the author was to tell his story even under the milder tyranny of Stalin’s successors. The fact that only recently two Russian authors, Sinyavsky and Daniel, have been condemned to harsh sentences in labour camps for writings that would have been regarded as mild criticisms and certainly permissible in any country with the slightest pretensions to freedom or democracy, tells its own tale.

Equally, one must not fall into the trap of leaning over so far backwards that one can write anything as stupidly naive as the dear old Guardian whose reviewer (quoted on the dust jacket) says we should be “grateful to find such courage and moral purpose in so readable a form.” Whatever else one can accuse Ehrenburg of, courage and moral purpose must clearly be left out of the indictment. The whole book, interesting and even fascinating though it is in parts for its insight into some of the darker chapters of Russian history, is the opposite of courage; it is the apologia of one who has succeeded in living through decades of Red Terror when his friends and colleagues were being slaughtered. His only “defence” (like that of Sieyès after the Terror in the French Revolution) amounts to nothing more than “I survived”.

There are not really any lessons to be gleamed from the book that were not, at least in substance, if not in detail, already known. But the detail can still be illuminating. For example, how often were we told in the Stalin era that one facet alone proved that Stalinism could never be as bad as Hitlerism, namely the respective attitudes to anti-semitism? Well, it is doubtless true that Hitler was unique in his “final solution” of the Jewish question—as six million corpses in the gas chambers will testify. But even apart from Stalin’s own exercises against whole peoples like the Crimean Tartars and the Volga Germans (there is no evidence in this book that Ehrenberg was at all concerned with such trivia), the sustained persecution against Jews which is given great prominence throughout the story shows that even this alleged mark of superiority of the Russian regime was spurious. All the talk about the Russian Constitutions guaranteeing freedom from persecution was, as was obvious at the time—just talk.

Ehrenburg goes out of his way to give prominence to the fate of a leading Jewish intellectual called Mikhoels who was apparently a close friend. This man was used by Stalin during the war to go on deputations of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to England and America where they raised huge sums of money from Jews and others for aid to Russia. After the war, he like so many others, was butchered in one of Stalin’s purges. The author found this all very sad. At the same time he tells us about his visit to (of all places) Sheffield for one of the endless series of so-called Peace Conferences about which he goes on at great length throughout the book. What he forgets to mention is that whilst there he was closely questioned by reporters from the English Jewish press about the fate of Mikhoels and other prominent Jews. Ehrenburg told them he knew nothing but would make enquiries when he got back to Russia and let them know. Of course he never did let them know. Nor did he make enquiries; it is clear from the book that he was lying in Sheffield; he knew quite well what was going on. Perhaps we should make excuses for him. He did not dare to say what he knew. But what about now, when Stalin has been dead for over a decade? The reticence on every page of this book makes it quite clear that he is still afraid to say what he knows. What a reflection of this alleged Socialist society, this workers’ paradise fifty years after the revolution! And why does Ehrenburg bother to write his memoirs at all if he is unable to tell the truth? Better silence than lies. But then, a regard for truth has never been a virtue of the Communists.

As mentioned above, the book is very largely taken up with accounts of the “Peace” Conference that the Communists were running in countries all over the world in the decade after the end of the war. They were of course a gigantic fraud having nothing whatever to do with peace and everything to do with acting as a propaganda front for the foreign policy of Russia in the worst days of the Cold War. It is just possible that people like Ehrenburg really imagined they were achieving something for peace in their constant travels around the globe (he seems to have visited practically every country you can think of); there is not the slightest sign that this so-called Communist intellectual ever stopped to think that perhaps the competitive jungle known as capitalism in the west, which was just as much capitalism in Russia, produced wars as surely as a hen lays eggs. So that no amount of peace conferences which left the social system unchanged could possibly have any effect.

Still, it at least enabled Ehrenburg to enjoy his globe trotting and meet “intellectuals” (ill-defined creatures, to be sure) of his own ilk. And the book is full of stories about these famous friends he made — Picasso, Matisse, Einstein, Casals, Joliot-Curie et al, ad nauseam. It was, of course, one of the “peace” movements aims to enrol these famous names whose influence in their respective countries would serve such a useful propaganda purpose for the policies of Russia. It is indeed pathetic to see how such gifted individuals would allow themselves to be used in this shameful way. The truth is, of course, that they have no more notion of the workings of capitalism and of what Socialism is really about than the mass of workers in England or Russia or anywhere else. Or than Ilya Ehrenburg, if the evidence of this book is anything to go by. But they are pretty vain creatures and were easy meat for Communist flattery and liked to be regarded as princes of peace as they sat on platforms in front of admiring audiences of thousands of working-class dupes. And of course this game goes on still and people still pay regard to the views of such as Bertrand Russell (who wanted to drop an atom bomb on Moscow in 1947) or (believe it or not) Vanessa Redgrave. And although a lot of these people are like children (Einstein, it seems, persuaded Roosevelt to make the atom bomb but never thought it would be used), some of them must (or at least should) have realised what was what. For example, we are told here that when Matisse was told that the Russian people were forbidden to see his paintings which were hidden away in cellars he just laughed. Perhaps it is funny that the regime you support, and which wants you for your works, regards those works as unfit for human consumption. It is less funny to know that artists like Matisse but, unlike him in living in the west in freedom and wealth, were hounded in Russia and even executed like Mikhoels and his friends.

But of course the real trouble with Ehrenburg, as with so many others both in Russia and the west, is that he never seems to question the basis of his creed. In 1918 the Socialist Standard made it clear that whatever else Lenin and his Bolsheviks might achieve Socialism (or Communism — they are synonymous terms) was out. A dictatorship of a so-called Communist Party was fastened on the necks of the Russian people so that the workers there have been exploited under a tyrannical system of state capitalism. Ehrenburg talks, with every appearance of sincerity, of “the Soviet people, whose concepts I cherish”. It never occurs to him to ask himself: what people? what concepts? '

All we have now is the rule of a minority group who exploit the Russian workers for their own benefit and that of their hangers-on like Ehrenburg. The time has still to come when the workers of Russia, like those of England or America or China, will show that they indeed have a concept of what the world could be like under a free system of society where the means of life will really be owned in common. The fact that the emancipation of the working class of the world is still to come is the fault of the workers themselves. But the Ehrenburgs of the world have a lot to answer for. It might be as well to conclude with a mention of a quotation from another work of this author taken from our companion paper the Western Socialist a year or two ago in which he urged the Russian soldiers to “kill, kill, kill, my brave Red Armyists” and “break the power of the German women” — a brutal incitement to slaughter of the civilian men of Berlin and the rape of their womenfolk. A not untypical contribution to international working-class solidarity from a self-styled Communist intellectual. Needless to say, none of the reviewers in the posh papers, A. J. P. Taylor and all, seem to have been aware of this side of the picture.

A. P.

Letters: Democracy and Socialism (1979)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy and Socialism

I concur with your exposure of Russia, China and similar countries as slate capitalist. However, I wonder if at times your attitude on this matter is not too negative, if not contradictory. For example, in the August 1978 edition of the Socialist Standard, in an article entitled 'State capitalism and the Russian dissidents', you stated that you could not support the Russian dissidents in their strivings for political democracy and. by implication, for private capitalism. Yet, in the September Socialist Standard you featured tracts on the power of the vote. One of these declared that socialists must capture control of the slate machine through Parliament. If socialism is to be achieved by democratic means, how can you refrain from supporting the fight for democracy (a prerequisite for socialism) in any country? Do you expect the Russians to stagnate and temporise until a socialist government is elected in Britain?

Secondly, as you made clear at the time, the Bolshevik revolution was not a socialist one and could not have been, because Russia was a predominantly peasant country and needed to industrialise. However, can you explain why, if it was not the intention of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to introduce socialism, the socialist ideology was adapted and persists today, even if it is based on the assumption that socialism is a prelude to communism? Further, if you accept that Russia had to continue to develop and progress (under capitalism) and you have stated in past copies of the Socialist Standard that capitalism has served the purpose of providing us with the potential to fulfil everyone’s needs, would you have been happier if Russia had developed more along the lines of the capitalist countries of the West, that is. with a greater degree of private enterprise?

P. S. Maloney

Palmers Green London N13

Reply:

The article ‘State Capitalism and the Russian Dissidents' showed how some opponents of the present Russian dictatorship, while struggling for some measure of political democracy there, envisage replacing Russian state capitalism with private capitalism. Socialists cannot support such a struggle; we oppose capitalism whatever form it takes. Where then do we stand on the issue?

Political democracy—in the sense of freedom of expression, the right to organise into parties, possession of the vole and so on — is essential for the establishment of socialism. But if socialists drop their uncompromising stand for socialism and instead campaign for some reform — including the vote — they cease to be socialists. They end up, like the Russian dissidents, standing for capitalism, which would in the end hamper the struggle for democracy, since capitalism’s “democracy" is anything but stable.

So what should workers in Russia, or any similarly repressive regime, do? Wherever possible they should struggle for socialism, which is a society of common ownership and democratic control of th. means of wealth production and distribution. The most effective, and enduring, struggle for democracy is the struggle for socialism.

The ideology of socialism was used fraudulently to justify the Bolshevik revolution. which marked the birth of capitalism in Russia. That fraud continues; while claiming to be socialist, Russia has a privileged class, a powerful military machine and a repressive state apparatus. The words socialism and communism mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably. Socialism is not a prelude to communism; this is another example of historical confusion used to explain away the existence of state capitalism in Russia. When capitalism is abolished it can be succeeded by only one social system, which can be called either socialism or communism.

Socialists are not particularly concerned about how capitalism develops; this will vary from time to time and from place to place. Neither do we argue that every country must pass through the same process of developing capitalism before socialism can be established. One country can learn from another and compress its development, as happened in Japan after 1857. Overall, society moves towards socialism and the job of workers everywhere is to help it by spreading socialist propaganda.

The important thing is that, in terms of resources, the world is capable of setting up socialism now. All that is needed is for the working class to stop supporting capitalism and to opt for socialism. Workers in Russia are not immune to socialist ideas and we look forward to the day when we can welcome a companion socialist party there.

Editors.

Parliament Does Matter

Dear Comrades,

B. J. Clifton in his letter (February Socialist Standard rejects the SPGB view that it is mistaken to believe that class rule is based upon economic power. Perhaps he should consider the implications of the alternative view that class rule (control of the state) IS based upon economic pow'er (command over the means of living) which would imply, of course, that irrespective of whether workers support capitalism, as long as capitalists have economic power, they will rule. What this means can be demonstrated by the following formula;

Capitalist class rule ensures the existence of capitalism. Capitalist class rule is based upon capitalist economic power. Capitalist economic power is an inherent and inevitable feature of capitalism. Therefore, capitalism can never be abolished because the condition that enables the capitalists to successfully defend their system — their economic power—is an inherent aspect of the system they are successfully defending thanks (ultimately) to their economic power! Apparently then, capitalist economic power is both the cause and the result of the same thing; their class rule. Looks like they’ve got a foolproof guarantee for perpetual existence so all we workers can do is glumly resign ourselves to an eternity of wage slavery!

If that sounds like one of those awful metaphysical riddles that must have a catch somewhere I would suggest you would not be wrong in thinking so. The point is that capitalist class rule does not exist irrespective of whether workers support capitalism but because workers support capitalism. As the article, "The Parliamentary Road to Socialism” pointed out, capitalist economic power cannot be separated from the massive support, expressed by the election of capitalist parties to Parliament for the system which enables the capitalists to have this economic power. The exercise of power implies the ability to coerce which depends, in the final analysis, on the active or passive willingness of those coerced, to be coerced. Take away the political support for the capitalist system provided by the working class—and the only effective and democratic method of doing this is through parliament where political power is legitimised in the first place — then the economic power of the capitalists will disappear with capitalism itself.

Fraternally,

Robin Cox, 

Haslemere, Surrey.

Political Notebook: Jack Cohen is dead — Long live Jack Cohen (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the May 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The apologists for capitalism are not known for their high principles. Profits come first under their system. This month’s Notebook takes a look at what a few of the twisting hypocrites have been up to lately and comes to the not surprising conclusion that the sooner the working class stops supporting the lot of them the better it will be for us all.

Jack Cohen is dead — Long live Jack Cohen

Sir John Cohen—described in one obituary as ‘the golden barrowboy who became the supermarket king'—died last month at the age of 80. According to the press reports, Cohen's was a 'rags to riches’ story of a man who pushed his way up the capitalist ladder until, at the time of his death, his Tesco stores' annual turnover is breaking the £1,000,000,000 barrier. The reason for this success was, according to The Jewish Chronicle, that

 Sir John was a redoubtable entrepreneur renowned for his aggressive salesmanship . . .

In fact, Sir John, just like any capitalist businessman made his profits by exploiting the working class. His own level of education or intelligence was, fortunately for him. another matter. But there is one thing that might puzzle the readers of Cohen’s sycophantic obituaries. If you go into any Tesco store you will observe that, despite the death of the owner, things are carrying on just as usual. It’s almost as if the dull, witless workers are able to organise things without the capitalists to tell them how to do it.

People's Democratic Prisons

It is a well known fact that China is a People's Democracy. And just like the other People’s Democracies, if workers have the audacity to complain that rich leaders are living it up at the expense of the poor toilers, they're locked away in a democratic people’s prison to punish them for their cheek. Increasingly in recent times, wall posters in Peking have criticised the undemocratic character of the Chinese State. The first reaction of the Communist Party was to lock up these bolshie proletarians for having the nerve to try and dictate to them, but more recently, according to The Guardian (14 March)

  China’s wall-poster protestors have won a major victory with the release from prison of a group of students who were the first to call for the establishment of ‘socialist democracy’ and a proper legal system. The leader of the group, Li Zhengtia, spent nearly four years doing forced labour in the mines or in prison or in the southern province of Guangdong. Posters on 'Democracy Wall’ in Peking have claimed that as many as seven hundred people were punished for their connection with the group.

Chinese workers are correct to doubt the value of their ‘People’s Democracy’. But under Chinese capitalism the liberty of the commodity comes before that of the people.

Exploitation without discrimination 

When apartheid is overturned it will not be because of the whining of trendy liberals like Peter Hain, but because the capitalist class who have interests in South Africa will see the profitability of the equal exploitation of all colours. An item in Boxing News (9 February) shows that South African fight promoters have discovered that mixed fights pull in larger audiences and so make them more money. So, these principled gentlemen who sincerely believe in the good sense of racial separation drop their high principles before the temple of Profitability. The situation now is that

   Blacks can manage and train whites. Whites are permitted to manage and train blacks. Blacks can promote major tournaments and whites have gone out of their way to assist blacks with better training facilities and financial support. Several major South African companies have come to the aid of boxing and Alan Proctor, a director of Sanyo, is looked upon by many as a godfather. Sanyo have poured thousands upon thousand of Rand into boxing and have just completed a Sanyo Boxing Academy in Soweto.

Other companies to invest in South African boxing since mixed fights started have been Old Buck Gin, Nashua. King Korn and Datsun. The spread of anti-racist liberalism? No bloody fear! All that’s happened is that the capitalists have seen the value of exploiting without discriminating against colour. Which must make liberals like Peter Hain terribly, terribly happy.

The Moronic Martyr

Robert Relf is a racist clown who has been on a hunger strike in gaol after being convicted under the Race Relations Act for posting up stickers saying that black people spread diseases and should live in the trees. Relf’s opinions can only be treated seriously in a psychiatric sense, but it is worthy of note that when he appeared at the Court of Appeal on 12 March to threaten the Court with his imminent martyrdom Lord Justice Lawton declared that

  if Relf wants to commit suicide that’s up to him. We are not going to be blackmailed . . . the sooner that is appreciated by him and others like him the better it will be for law and order in this country.

Readers may like to consider the fact that this great believer in law and order was himself a member of, and candidate for, Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. The main difference between Relf and Lawton is that the former is a moronic lout who is willing to act as a stooge for the sinister ambitions of his National Front leaders, while the latter is a professional hypocrite who is willing to act as a stooge to a rather wider section of the ruling class.

Steve Coleman

News in Review: Nkrumah falls (1966)

The News in Review column from the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nkrumah falls

After Nigeria, Ghana. After Ghana— where?

The African continent is crowded with newly independent states with leaders who, having come to power on the promise of freedom, have established dictatorships. Some of these have been described, with breathtaking audacity, as “One Party Democracies” or something similar. But whatever lies are used to excuse them, the fact is that these countries are dictatorships where only one political party is legal and where opponents of the regime are usually imprisoned or exiled.

The Africa which was once the plaything of the imperialists is now in a turmoil under its suppression. It may well be that Nkrumah is not the last dictator there to lose his office.

The history of independent Africa must be a great disappointment to the supporters of organisations like the Movement for Colonial Freedom, who were once so insistent that freeing Africa from European rule would give the continent a happier, more democratic way of life.

It was obvious from the outset that these organisations did not understand the problem they were dealing with. It was clear that the alternative to rule by the colonial powers was simply rule by a native government. At the best, this was the replacement of one type of suppression by another.

Sometimes it has turned out worse that that. In Dr Banda’s Nyasaland, for example, the government recently pushed through an Act which revived public executions—something abolished by the British when they occupied the country.

And sometimes, of course, it has meant outright dictatorship, with a leader surrounded by sycophants and living in continual fear of his life. This was Ghana under Nkrumah.

The African states have not yet absorbed a lesson which some of the older capitalist powers have found useful. A political opposition has its uses. It acts as a brake on a government's excesses, it is a method through which a country’s capitalist class can exert pressure on a government, and by publicising facts which are inconvenient to a government it actually keeps that government in touch with reality.

Nazi Germany, as many of its military, industrial and scientific leaders have since testified, suffered as a capitalist state because of the intricate, intolerant nature of the Hitler dictatorship. And it is hard to believe that Nkrumah would have gone to Peking if he had reason to think that his power was being undermined.

The fact that he did not realise this was, in very great part, due to the lack of an opposition in Ghana. Had there been one, it would have reflected the growing discontent with Nkrumah’s regime and with the country’s increasing economic difficulties.

The absence of a safety outlet meant that the whole thing exploded and Nkrumah, the great dictator, the redeemer, the man who thought that a dictatorship would keep him in power and would make him Africa’s man of destiny, has been hoist with his own petard.

Lord Robens said it

Lord Robens, who is chairman of the National Coal Board, is the best friend the miners ever had. Who said so? Lord Robens himself.

A couple of months ago Robens was made a Director of the Bank of England —a job which, as everyone knows, was created with the special intention of being friendly to the miners.

This elevation came after some years of Lord Robens busily closing pits and sacking tens of thousands of workers in the coal mining industry.

Of course, this process was never vulgarised with the name “sacking”. The Bank of England probably called it rationalisation. Politicians like Mr. Wilson probably call it modernisation. Lord Robens, presumably, calls it being the Miners’ best friend.

The mineworkers, however, have been doing a bit of rationalisation of their own with results which have made Lord Robens feel less than friendly.

Many of them have noticed the large scale sackings which have been carried out. They have also read in the newspapers that the National Coal Board has plans for more closures, more redundancies. Not unexpectedly, a lot of them have decided that the Coal industry holds no future for them, and they have been getting out of it.

During 1965 a total of 38,000 people left the Coal industry. But this was twenty thousand more than the Coal Board intended; they had planned to sack only eighteen thousand. The rest left on their own accord, which has caused Lord Robens to complain:

  The run out at this pace was something of a disaster for us. It has had a very adverse effect on the financial turn-out of the Board.

Now it is obviously very inconsiderate of the miners not to sit down and wait until the Coal Board decides to clear them out, and to jump the gun by going out and finding another job before everything is ready for them to be sacked like docile, boss fearing workers should be.

Perhaps they are applying the same standards as Lord Robens applies to the workings of the mines. He is interested in making a profit; they are interested in a secure wage. Perhaps they are disillusioned with nationalisation, which Lord Robens, when he was plain Alf and a member of the post war Labour Government, supported but which he is not so sure about now:

  He (Lord Robens) was in favour of rationalisation of the coal distribution trade but no nationalisation. (The Guardian 8/3/66).

Whatever the truth of this, one thing is certain. The miners who are leaving the Coal industry are doing no more than try to protect their interests in a social system which continually attacks them. Whether they succeed or not they cannot be criticised for taking the action; capitalism is a world where everyone fights for himself.

Least of all can the miners be criticised by those who so assiduously uphold capitalism, as politicians, as employers, as leaders of capitalism’s symbols of commerce and privilege. In this respect, Lord Robens lives in a very fragile glass house, and he should be the last person to throw lumps of coal.

Communist confusion

The Communist Party, which has never been famous for clear thinking, is deeper in confusion than ever.

To start with, they are hopelessly split over the quarrel between China and the Soviet Union. These two countries were, after all, once supposed to be in inseparable comradeship in the struggle for Socialism—and here they are squabbling over all the classical capitalist issues like frontiers and trade routes and spheres of influence.

For the Communist who takes seriously the claim that Socialism exists in Russia and China, the choice between the two must be next to impossible.

Then there are events like the recent trial in Russia of the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky, for allegedly criticising the Soviet regime. The Communists are in more than one mind about this.

Should they automatically condemn the two writers, as they have done in similar cases in the past, as enemies of the people, saboteurs of freedom, imperialist agents and the rest of the terminology which we all know so well by now?

Or should they agree with John Gollan, Secretary of the Communist Party in this country, when he said that “The handling of this affair has done a greater disservice to the Soviet Union than the works of Sinyavsky and Daniel”?

For a Communist who has always dutifully believed that the Soviet can do no wrong, and that the Russian government is incapable of prosecuting a man unless he is guilty (even before he has been tried) the choice here must be very difficult.

And what about the Communist Party's decision to abolish the Daily Worker and replace it this month with a paper called the Morning Star?

Is there not something honourable, to a Communist, in the word worker? Should he not be proud to sell a paper with it blazoned across the top?

Or is the Communist Party now trying to cover the association which it has always claimed with the working class movement? Has it gone in for a bit of market research and discovered something which was obvious anyway—that the history of the Daily Worker had made it, for many members of the working class, a bad joke?

Perhaps the name Morning Star is simply part of the Communist Party’s efforts to get in on the latest craze of modernisation. At their rally last month at the Festival Hall, the Communist Party were claiming loudly that they were the real modernisers of British capitalism.

They were demanding more expenditure on schools, a nationally integrated transport system, reduced arms spending. And naturally there were the usual inducements of magnificently generous pensions, family allowances and so on—generous in direct proportion to the unlikelihood of the Communist Party getting power and having to implement them.

All of this must have been very confusing to any member of the Communist Party who strayed into the hall under the impression that he belonged to an organisation that had something to do with Socialism. It must have been confusing to those who remembered the wartime days when the Communists wanted more spent on arms, and the days when, far from supporting modernisation, the Communist Party was opposing the Attlee government’s productivity drive.

Yes, all very confusing—unless we grasp a basic fact. The Communist Party, whatever it claims for itself, does not stand for Socialism and never has done. It is merely another, if rather peculiar, party which supports capitalism.

And that is exactly the reason for their changes of policy—and for the splits and arguments and confusion they cause among the party’s misguided supporters.

A boring business

Everyone knows that at election time political parties promise all sorts of rewards to people who vote for them— provided, of course, enough of them vote to get the right side into power.

From another point of view, though, the electorate deserve some sort of recognition for the tremendous effort they make to find something to distinguish the Labour Party from the Conservatives and, having found it, to make enough of an issue of it to persuade themselves to vote one way or the other.

At one time, perhaps, this was a little easier. There was a time when the Labour Party breathed the fire of revolution—or at any rate when they wanted to nationalise a few industries, which they passed off as Socialism. There was a time when the Tories stood for red-blooded Private Enterprise and for the British- Empire-On-Which-The-Sun-Never-Sets.

These were at any rate clear differences between the two parties, even if they were superficial. But even that has changed now.

Ever since the Labour Party came to power after the war, they have inexorably travelled the road which their nature and their policies laid out for them. They have grown more and more like the Tories. They have tried—how they have tried during the past few years!—to convince the electorate that they are no more than an alternative method of running capitalism, with no more nonsense about social revolution.

This has had its effect. Mr. Wilson has been openly referred as the best Conservative Prime Minister we have. Very few serious political correspondents pretended during this last election that there were

any real differences between the two sides.

  . . . no one could maintain that there is a black and white difference either in the politics or the competence of this Labour Government and its Conservative predecessor. (Robert McKenzie in The Observer). 

  If a Tory Government were returned it would either have to pursue similar economic policies or instigate an about-turn. If the first applies we might as well stick to the present lot. If the second were to happen, we should have complete confusion. (William Davis in The Guardian).

For the average voter, who wanted nothing more than to support a capitalist government, the election came down to a few simple questions.

Did he want a government which said it would build another aircraft carrier or one which said it would not? A government which said it would nationalise steel or one which said it would not? A Prime Minister who said he stood for action not words or one who said that this is a time for decision?

These were the limits of the argument between the Labour and Conservative parties. On the other issues their differences were hardly discernible and in any case both of them naturally reserved the right which all capitalist parties reserve, to change their minds when they are in office.

So the election was really all a massive sham, a choice between two similars. It was also, for anyone who is interested in the welfare of the human race and who realises the potential which lies behind the votes at an election, a terrible, frustrating bore.