Running Commentary: Miracle or Myth (1987)

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

Miracle or Myth

When all is said and done, the reason British workers are encouraged into awestruck admiration towards Japan is because it is where the workforce are supposed to submit happily to their own intensely organised, single minded exploitation. Japanese workers. we are told, don't come out on strike; they wouldn't know a demarcation dispute if one came up and punched the clock beside them in the morning; Japanese managers wear the same work clothes, eat in the same canteen, do the same physical jerks, as the workers on the assembly lines. A Japanese company doesn't just employ its workers, it operates like a second family to them, taking care of them all their lives.

This, to take the argument further, is what has made Japan the second richest country in the world. Considering their defeat in the last war. it's nothing short of an economic miracle. Why don't British workers follow the example — kick out the trouble-making union leaders and learn to love working hard for the shareholders?

Well one reason is. perhaps, the evidence that Japan is not a land of unrelieved contentment. For example the suicide rate there has been rising dramatically during recent years. The figure for 1986 was the highest ever and averaged at one suicide every 20 minutes; 55 per cent were by people aged between 40 and 64. The reason, according to the National Police Agency, is ". . . the stresses of Japan's competitive society".

In 1985 the Japanese Ministry of Labour found that almost half the absences of more than one week due to sickness were caused by some stress related illness. One in 30 office employees needed treatment for mental disorder such as schizophrenia, depression or alcoholism.

It is no coincidence that these social ailments are appearing in such strength just as Japan s economy hits trouble in world markets. This has posed extra problems for managers and executives — the higher paid, higher stressed workers and many of them have taken their own lives rather than face the reality that, for millions of people, the Japanese economic miracle is a myth. It is not the Japanese workers who are the second richest in the world but the capitalist class there — the parasites who own the means of life.

Japan has been described by a psychiatrist as a country of ". . . 121 million people . . . ruthlessly competing with each other while desperately pretending to be co-operative". Does that sound like a place of secure happiness? Does it sound like a miracle of prosperity and mutual help? Or does it sound like the capitalist system which workers know and hate all over the world, all the time — but writ large for its distress and destructiveness.

Release

Douglas Hurd is the latest of the Home Secretaries who have declared their intention to bring an end to overcrowding in the prisons. Nearly twenty years ago the "liberal" Roy Jenkins warned that a prison population of 40,000 would be "intolerable"; the fact that recently it exceeded 50,000 and continues to hover around that level says something about the tolerant nature of Home Secretaries, not to mention the prisoners and prison staff. During his time at the Home Office Leon Brittan — who set something of a record by managing to upset the police, prison officers and prisoners pretty well all at once — promised to end the overspill of remand prisoners into police station cells. Yet until last month hundreds of prisoners were spending months crammed into those gloomy, insanitary conditions, at the end of which they may have been acquitted of the charges against them or given a non-custodial sentence.

Hurd's "solution" to the overcrowding has been to slash the sentences imposed on minor offenders so that anyone getting twelve months or less is released after half their sentence instead of after two thirds as before. As a result nearly 4000 prisoners were abruptly ejected from the gaols of Britain during August.

Leon Brittan did not approve: "a sad development for British justice" he called it. But what need was there for him — and for anyone who suffered nightmares at the prospect of hordes of dangerous thugs roaming the streets — are social inadequates, which means inadequate not only to keep up in capitalism's rat race but also inadequate in the crimes they commit in their efforts to keep up. For many of these the exact date of release matters little for within a fairly short time the seemingly inexorable cycle of destitution, crime and prison — perhaps speeded up by addiction or alcoholism -— will begin again. One authoritative estimate says that 80 per cent of short term prisoners emerge from gaol to face acute housing problems — which must make even Leon Brittan wonder why they should want to come out.

Hurd's reform is the latest in a long list which have failed to stop the rise of the prison population. There have been suspended sentences; community service; bail hostels and parole, to name only a few. In many cases there is little doubt that courts have adjusted their sentences upwards to compensate for such measures and the expectation is that this will happen to take account of Hurd's half remission.

No reform will affect, let alone solve, this problem. The roots of crime lie in the very system which needs a state machine with its police, judicial and penal organs, to protect the property right of the ruling class. No Home Secretary could ever have —- or want — a brief to do anything about that.

Success

Rudolf Hess' dramatic flight to Britain during the last war was at first met with a sort of stunned optimism. Did this mean that the Nazi leadership was breaking up. that in spite of the fact that Panzers had swept over half of the Continent Germany was on the verge of defeat? But this was soon followed by an official reticence; one theory about this is that the British government decided it was best to devalue the whole episode by labelling Hess as mad, placing him in the "care" of a squad of psychiatrists. At all events, the episode saved Hess from the death sentence at Nuremburg although what would have happened to him if the war had gone the other way. . .

The most popular theory about the reasons for Hess' flight is that he was trying to negotiate an Anglo/German alliance against Russia, which was about to be attacked by Germany. Of course such a proposal was bound to fail — at least at that time, when the British ruling class were in no doubt about the source of the principal threat to their standing and where their interests therefore lay.

It is a different situation today. Although he was not responsible for it, Hess may well have looked with an ironic satisfaction on the present unity between Britain and West Germany, directed as it is against Russia. Over the past forty-odd years the basic interests of capitalism have remained unchanged but their elements have been re-arranged, rather like a kaleidoscope, so that some countries which were once allies are now enemies and vice versa. Capitalism's history is littered with such changes, notably in the case of relations between the British and the German ruling classes.

These changes bring obvious problems to the makers of national propaganda. The wartime alliance between Britain and Russia was represented by both sides as a unity in defence of democracy. Now the alliance between Britain and Germany, aimed against Russia, is justified with the same reason. The only way to make any sense of this is through grasping the fact that wars — including 1939/45 are not fought to save democracy. In the last war the nature of Nazi Germany enabled the British propaganda machine to persuade many workers to join the war effort under the delusion that they were fighting for some worthwhile, human objective and to conceal the truth — that the war was fought to protect the economic interests of their national class of exploiting parasites.

The essential cynicism and lies of capitalism are rarely revealed more clearly than in wartime. One thing about the flight of Rudolf Hess is that from beginning to end it was subject to this treatment. Even his death was a matter of international wrangling, of one ruling class trying for advantage over the others. As a one-time political leader himself, he could have asked for no more appropriate end.

The Labour Party Supports Capitalism (1995)

From the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party stands for capitalism:

“A dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper, with a thriving private sector and high quality public services, where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them. ” 

The Socialist Party stands for socialism:

"The establishment of a system of society based upon the common 
ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for
producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole
community."

Clause Four is dead. Long live Clause Four! The Labour leadership has decided that it must at all costs win the next election, and that the best way to do this is to modernise, to fudge, to adopt a new credo, to waffle, to change, to water down, to reform, to flannel. All of these words—and many others—have been used by friends and foes of the Labour Party to describe the intent and effect of its new Clause Four

All the discussion, the evaluation, the commentary, the prolix prose would seem to suggest that something really significant has changed in Labour Party policy. It hasn't. To amend slightly the observation of Michael Mansfield QC, it took the Webbs 60 words to say that the Labour Party offers only the reform of capitalism—it takes Blair 300

The new Clause Four mentions “socialist” once (as a label for the Labour Party) and capitalism not at all. The “socialist” label is transparently a con because the new version makes it clear (insofar as it makes anything clear) that the money and profit system will remain under labour: “the enterprise of the market . . . the rigour of competition . . . a thriving private sector". No matter that such guarantees of free-market capitalism are accompanied by references to co-operation and public service—this kind of mixed economy is offered by the other parties supporting capitalism, too.

It is instructive (or at least amusing) to read the reactions of some Tories to Clausc Four Mark 2. Douglas Hurd is reported as warning Conservatives to be ready to repel piratical labour boarders: "Mr Blair is trying to board the Conservative ship and run up his own flag on our masthead. ”

This picture of a swashbuckling Blair contrasts with his bleak record of selecting questions to the prime Minister. According to Matthew Parris (Times, 14 March) Blair has "never backed any public sector pay demand. . . not supported the teachers . . . never once complained about welfare benefits for the poor: about poverty; or about homelessness . . . never directly contested any past privatisation . . . never touched the subject of labour relations or trades unions ". Instead he has most often made points about fat cats, European unity and Tory sleaze.

The real question for electors is not whether Bambi’s blather is more likely to win votes for Labour than the Webbs’ more concise but antiquated Clause Four. It is whether any party that, openly or by inference, promises only the reform of capitalism is worth supporting Previous Labour governments were elected on programmes that were manifestly much less conservative than Blair's—but they still froze workers’ wages, broke strikes, cut welfare benefits, and deployed weapons of mass destruction against the populations of other countries.

Labour leaders need to have followers, as indeed do the leaders of all the other, anti-socialist, parties. The tragedy is that the followers, against their best interest, want to be followers. Until they decide to think and act for themselves, we can expect the clauses of the policy statements to get longer and the vision of the leaders to get shorter.

Stan Parker

Greasy Pole: Nightmare for Tory Leaders (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

By their decisive vote the Tory membership have elected, in David Cameron, a leader who seems to be unsure about his own identity. Is the man they have chosen the same David Cameron who, perhaps trying to impress us with his fearlessly rounded personality, recalled his ballet lessons as a child? Or is he the David Cameron who quickly denied having those lessons “after checking with his mother” (although not, apparently, with his spin doctors)? Is he David Cameron speaking, at the start of his campaign, to the Centre for Social Justice (and there’s a grand name for an organisation that hardly anyone has heard of): “The biggest challenge our country faces is not economic decline, but social decline”? Or is he David Cameron three months later, when he told the assembled hacks outside Parliament: “I want us to confront the big challenge that this country faces: making sure we have a strong economy so we can generate the jobs we need . . .”? Is he David Cameron looking forward so much to being party leader: “I am very excited by it. I want to be a voice for change, for optimism and hope”? Or is he David Cameron shortly afterwards, who was asked on the Richard and Judy show if the Tory leadership would not be some kind of poisoned chalice and responded starkly “It’s a nightmare job”?

There are not a few precedents to encourage Cameron in that pessimistic – or rather realistic – assessment. At the Tory conference in 1963 it dawned on Alec Douglas-Home, then known to readers of Burke’s Peerage as the 14th Earl of Home, that he – the government’s affable gentleman amateur – was in serious danger of being uprooted from the mellow courtesies of the House of Lords and dumped, as party leader and prime minister, into the bear garden of the Commons. This was not an attractive proposition. “Oh they must find someone else” he wailed to a lobby correspondent “Even if they can’t agree on Rab (Butler) or Quintin (Hailsham) there must be someone else. But please, please, not me”. But “they” did not “find someone else” because of all the contenders for the leadership he was considered to be the one least likely to be a disaster.

And on that unpromising assumption he was pitched into battle against Harold Wilson, whose craftily cultivated Yorkshire vowels enunciated the claim that the Labour Party stood for a thrusting, technological Britain while the Tories, by the very fact of Douglas Home becoming their leader, had proclaimed their resolve to cling to a discredited past. It did Home no good that he saw himself to be a “moderniser”, charged with uniting his party after the schisms of the Macmillan years. His Party Chairman, along with many of his supporters, came to dread his efforts to compete with Wilson’s grasp of the irrelevances of capitalist economics. On some of his prime ministerial journeys abroad his wife repeatedly had to remind him of their destination for fear that he would step off the plane and use the welcoming microphones to let everyone know how delighted he was to have arrived in some other city.

Heath

Home never mastered the techniques of putting across on television the deceptions and evasions so necessary to a politician. He came across as someone whose historically privileged background prevented him having any idea of how the majority of people lived – not that the politicians who do show some such understanding are any more effective. So it was some surprise, that it was by only a small margin that Home lost his one and only election in 1964. He then largely left the job of opposing the Wilson government to his lieutenants and in July 1965, as the tide of criticism rose around him, he resigned. In 1989 a TV interviewer asked him “You never really wanted to be Prime Minister did you?” and Home replied “Terrible intrusion into one’s private life”. As he left Downing Street his party resolved that never again would their leader “emerge” as he had; in future it would be through an election. Not that it has done them much good, or made the job less of a nightmare.

The first person to gain advantage of the Tories taking their first nervous steps into any kind of internal democracy was Edward Heath. He was by then already a controversial figure in the party, partly because of his support for British membership of the European Community and partly because he had pushed through the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance, which had affected a great many small shopkeepers. In a sense unknown to Home he was a “moderniser” whose modest background was in contrast to the earl in his castle among the grouse moors. But Heath resisted any attempt by Tory propagandists to “sell” him in that way, on the grounds that to do so would be to descend to the same depths of cynicism as Wilson.

During his five years as Leader of the Opposition Heath signalled that the Tories had broken with the polices of “Butskellism” – the consensus between Labour and Tory Chancellors about economic policy. In its place the party developed plans to reform – which really meant to curb – the effectiveness of trade unions to resist any attacks on wages or working conditions. At the same time there was to be an end to government helping out “lame ducks” – propping up firms or even industries which were in difficulties. In the short term the argument ran, this may cause problems, for example to workers who lose their jobs; but in the long run the logic of profitability would ensure greater and enduring prosperity for all.

Cameron

This was also called modernising but this latest plan to solve all the problems of British capitalism did not long survive the Tory victory at the 1970 election, as it was undermined by a series of what came to be called U turns. Finally, Heath’s government was seen as a bunch of rigid blunderers who willingly reduced the country to a three day week rather than question the dogma contributing to the crisis.

By the time he lost the election in February 1974 Heath had few friends in his party and he was infamous for his unprovoked rudeness. He seemed genuinely to fail to understand why anyone could possibly resist the force of his arguments; as Douglas Hurd, who was then his Political Secretary, put it “He believed that people deserved the evidence and by god they were going to get it”. Worse was to come for him as an exasperated party deprived him of the leadership and elected Thatcher in his place, leaving Heath to moulder on the back benches, jeered by his own party when he criticised the Thatcher government and immersed in what looked very much like the comfort of a long-term sulk.

And now it is Cameron’s turn; the question is, in spite of his assurances, has anything really changed? On his way to the leadership Cameron presented himself as an architect of compassionate conservatism – as distinct, presumably, from cruel and pitiless conservatism. Well he would say that, wouldn’t he – just as all the other recent leaders – Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard – have said it, before their party went on to fight an election on policies which were anything but compassionate. Of course cadging for votes does strange things to a politician; how else can we explain Cameron’s recent yearning to give up his £1.2 million house in Notting Hill and move to Neasden. Or his inability to remember, not just whether he took Class A drugs, but whether he joined the Tory Party, when he was at Oxford. (With a memory like that, how on earth did he get a degree?)

When he said the job of Tory leader is a nightmare perhaps he had in mind, not just the experiences of the three men most recently in that job but the fact that he is the fifth Tory leader during the last eight years and that of the ten leaders starting with Churchill the majority have either been ousted or have resigned. A persistent feature of nightmares is the sensation of being out of control – something which all the politicians who profess to be able to shape capitalism to their will, perhaps to make it a compassionate social system – must know about. They may try to conceal the chaos behind a mask of confidence, until reality ensures that they wake up screaming.

Ivan

Running Commentary: Used in evidence (1988)

The Running Commentary Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Used in evidence
Certain members of the criminal set will have greeted with hollow laughter the announcement of the government's intention to abolish the so-called Right of Silence. A fat lot of good it ever did them, they may well have mused; for they are the people who have suffered the fate of being "verballed-up" — convicted on a spoken admission of an offence ("It's a fair cop. guv" sort of thing) which they did not in fact make but which was the creation of an imaginative copper.

Of course under the new arrangements suspects helping the police with their enquiries will still be able to remain silent if they wish and are able to hold out against their interrogation. But at their trial the prosecution will be allowed to refer to this and to make as much of it as they can, inviting the jury to conclude that only the guilty keep mum.

This has some embarrassing implications for all politicians and especially for those in positions of power. Poor Robert Armstrong, in the Spycatcher trial, talked about being economical with the truth; now what about those who economise in that way by a sparing use of words — those who use phrases like "no comment" or simply ignore pointed questions in order to hide their culpability in some outrageous decision or incident?

For example, a little while ago it was revealed that when he was prime minister the late Harold Macmillan decided to suppress the report on the 1957 fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor. This resort to silence was used because the report laid out some facts about the true scale and threat of the fire and Macmillan thought that to publicise this would have been an embarrassing complication in Britain's relationship with America, which he saw as balanced on nuclear capability. Human rights and safety did not enter into it. How do we now judge Macmillan?

More recently Mrs Thatcher habitually responds with evasions to parliamentary questions which prove some Tory vulnerability and could not. she may feel, be answered without conceding a point to Labour in their need to show that they would make the better job of running capitalism.

If, every time a politician stayed silent or evaded a question they were incriminating themselves, they would now stand convicted of a mass of very serious offences against human interests. Their guilt would lie in their impotence to affect or improve society as they have claimed they could. It would be in their unrelenting efforts to deceive us into keeping this social system in being although it cannot meet our needs and is repressive and destructive of us.

Whatever they say — how much, how little — they cannot hide this awful reality. They cannot evade the fact of their guilt and it is high time that what they stand for was brought to account.


Clamp-down
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd explained the government's plans to place restrictions on free reporting about events in Ireland by saying that it should not be possible for anyone to try to justify acts of indiscriminate killing and destruction.

He did not make it clear whether this will prevent future media obscenities such as the notorious Sun headline, which gloated over the ruthless killing of hundreds of Argentinian sailors on the Belgrano with the word "GOTCHA!".

At all events the policy — like quite a lot of what this government does — seems to be politically crude and ill-advised, an attempt to stifle what freedom of expression we have through an impulsive reaction to a problem. No minister can seriously believe that the sight of Gerry Adam 's cold features on television after the reporting of some IRA bombing would help to persuade anyone that the bombing could be excused. The very opposite is more likely to be true; for Adams — and on the other side the likes of Robinson and Paisley appeal only to the already-converted and tend to antagonise others.

Perhaps, twenty years after the Irish problem flared up again, the government is having to face the fact of its own impotence. Of course they are very free with the propaganda about the IRA suffering crucial setbacks, being on the point of final defeat and so on but there is plenty of historical evidence to show how futile it is for a power to engage in a prolonged struggle with a nationalist movement which has any considerable popular support.

In the case of Ireland, British policy is complicated by the rival economic interest and the manner in which these energise deep-seated bigotries — a feature not unknown in war. What is apparent is that since 1968 there has been no progress towards settling the troubles. Direct rule from London; occupation by British troops; internment; the abolition of juries; all have failed to have any real effect.

The only policy the British government have been left with is to step up the pressure on the IRA, for example by the Shoot to Kill tactic, by abolishing the Right to Silence and now by the media ban. They have also given considerable publicity to what they have done so that they appear to be effective when in fact they are not.

The persistence of the troubles, and the government's continuing inability to deal with them, provide evidence of how powerful is the conflict of interests in Ireland and of the bigotry there — which the British government has not been averse to using for its own ends in the past. This is a typical, tragic episode in this social system in which rival capitalist groups exploit the ignorance of millions of workers while politicians pretend to be able to unravel the mess. How the media behaves in this hardly matters; the realities are too clear and too urgent.


Maggie immortal?
If they had known in 1979 that Margaret Thatcher intended to remain as Prime Minister for ever or until she died, whichever is later, would the working class have been so ready to vote her into power? Her reign - for that is how she seems increasingly to regard her time at Number Ten — has been remarkable for a number of features. Typical of them was the style of her recent announcement about carrying on. when she said this was partly because nobody else was up to the job, which was a pretty damning thing to say about her ministers.

But this was inevitable, considering how assiduously Thatcher has weeded out anyone who posed as a threat to her. She has not sat easily with doubts or criticism from her supporters and now has a government which is likely to go down in history as a unique collection of toadies. She has turned on its head the once accepted theory that the most efficient government is the one which is most open to the stimulating effects of opposition.

Her administration has also been notable for its dismantling of the policy — which in some respects goes back to just after the First World War — that governments and local councils should have a decisive role in almost everything of social consequence. On that policy councils all over the country were enabled to set down housing estates, run homes for children and old people, clear up the rubbish and so on. The central state took control over industries which, to serve the interests of the British capitalist class as a whole, were most effectively run as an integrated whole. In that way were born the Post Office, the National Coal Board. British Railways and the rest. In the past Conservative governments were not averse to carrying through their own bits of nationalisation, or leaving untouched those which were already in existence, if they considered there was a case for this in terms of overall profitability.

Now that this is being replaced the former image of the all-caring, all-managing state has been replaced with the look-after-yourself, stand-on-your-own-feet image of privatisation. It did not seem possible, ten years ago, that a government would be able to inspire such a reversal of popular thinking but it has happened.

There is a danger that the mourning for state and council control will obscure some important facts. The policy was originally formed, not to serve the interests of the people who do all the work and produce all the wealth but to protect and improve the profits of their exploiters. The case for nationalisation was that it was a more efficient way of running a business like the coal mines and would therefore work towards safeguarding the profits of the industries which depended on coal. The case for the NHS was that the former fragmented services were not the best way of dealing with workers' illness, of servicing them into consistently productive and profitable employees.

Labour Party supporters will not appreciate the point, but from the point of view of workers' interests neither theory — state control or privatisation — has anything to offer. They are both methods of running a social system which cannot operate in our interests. Workers who are now debating the issue of privatisation should consider the actual experience of both methods, and draw the obvious conclusions. It would be nice if they did this before Thatcher finally goes, for the sooner the better.

Between the Lines: Whose Choice? (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whose Choice?
Were it not for a few armed men taking some accurate shots at British troops in North America in 1776, there would have been no USA and no election for the American media to drone on about for the past year. It is interesting to speculate whether George Washington, were he alive today, would be banned from the media because he was a terrorist. However, Washington won and the battle between the two mega-mediocrities for access to the White House tennis courts has been in full swing. If you ask most workers who it is that chooses the President, they will tell you the electors do. Apart from the fact that about half of the American workers did not vote at all, it is a mistake to imagine that those who did made their own choice. Managing TV election campaigns, including millions of dollars of advertising time, is now one of the principle ingredients of any American Presidential election. Most political advertising conveys images of rivals rather than a candidate's policies, and the election is won on the basis of which millionaire most successfully destroys the credibility of the other. Thus it was that Dukakis lost, a victim of his own inability to show that Bush was a less competent and nastier individual than himself. Bush proved himself to be "the evil of two lessers" and so won the key to the door. Technically the key was handed to him by the workers of America. To be sure, if they wanted to they could use their votes to lock the door of the state to all future Bushes and Dukakises and other front men for the profit system. In reality, ABC, NBC and CBS had far more to do with the outcome of the 1988 Presidential election than the workers ever did. The TV screen did not reflect what the workers were thinking; it told them what to think We had good reason to make the same observation about the British general election last year. And as long as this is the case — as long as a small, unelected clique of politically conservative media controllers are allowed to set the electoral agenda — it is a matter of serious doubt whether the democratic claims of the electoral system can be treated as much more than a sham.


Whose Freedom?
The government has issued a new White Paper (7 November) on the future of broadcasting. They claim to be concerned to make the media freer. More channels, less regulation. greater local service — and of course, that favourite characteristic of capitalist freedom: if you want the extra goodies on offer you'll have to "pay as you watch". The claim of Mr Hurd and his fellow advocates of greater TV freedom is that more TV, with more market priorities governing it, will offer more opportunities for us to see what we want. This is not so. Firstly, the new channels will not open up new opportunities for independent TV production, but will be bought by current media monopolists, such as Rupert Murdoch, who is already making millions out of deregulated TV in Australia. These millionaires will not make exciting new programmes but provide the cheap, shoddy, and vulgar in order to please advertisers. Secondly, new TV stations will continue to cover the capitalist agenda. This is because the only people with a real incentive to produce TV which challenges the capitalists' interests are the working class and. as socialists never cease pointing out. the workers do not own or control the means of production. including means of mass communication. Greater media freedom will come about, not by flogging airwaves to multi-millionaires or by "relaxing" standards so that workers are able to watch dirty movies, but when the media is freed from the necessity of being a business.

Steve Coleman

Arming the world for profit (1995

From the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists never need to be reminded that there is an insane logic to capitalism, that capitalism continues to throw up obscene contradictions that appear to consign the human species to a downward spiral towards oblivion. The world arms trade for instance.

Britain is the world’s second biggest arms supplier. There are 145,000 workers in this country employed directly or indirectly in the arms trade. If we add to this figure the number of Britain’s armed forces, regulars and reserves, the figure jumps to 750,000 people gaining an income from the maiming and killing business. Which means for every two employed in hospitals and clinics, etc saving lives and helping people, there is one employed in doing the exact opposite, albeit unwittingly.

Most of us are familiar with the hackneyed justifications for Britain’s share (20 percent) of the world arms trade. It goes something like: “If ’we’ didn’t sell arms, someone else would.” The reality is that arms sales generate profit, and for capitalists where there is the potential for profits, then morals and principles go out of the window.

Arms dividend
We were led to believe that the end of the Cold War would initiate a "peace dividend". Money hitherto spent on arms would be rechannelled into social programmes such as health, welfare and education. Capitalism was finally going to put on the humanistic guise that the threat of "communism" had prevented it doing in the past. If anything, however, the post-Cold War set-up now means that the West can sell arms anywhere, even to countries that had previously been dependent on Russia.

While it is true that "Third World" countries now only purchase one-third of the arms they did in 1988. the vacuum is being filled with arms sales to newly-developing countries like Brazil. Pakistan. Indonesia and China. Hence, mid-November saw the US Defence Secretary, William Perry, "opening the door to a possible sale of advanced fighter jets to Latin America at the start of a six-day trip to improve military ties with Brazil and Argentina". (Guardian, 17 November).

Days previously, the Observer (13 November) ran a headline about a secret UK arms deal with Indonesia worth £2 billion, inclusive of military hardware and military training for the Indonesian army.

Between May and November this year, the UN Security Council and the EU lifted arms embargoes on three countries famous for aggression and repression — Israel. Syria and South Africa. That these countries already possess the wherewithal to defend themselves against potential enemies — both South Africa and Israel have a nuclear capability — matters little to Western governments. The profit motive comes first.

And such is the thirst for profit that Western governments are prepared to sell arms to both sides in a conflict. During the Iran/lraq war some 26 countries were arming both sides, fuelling a war that lasted 8 years, killed 1.000,000 people and cost $600 billion. During Pakistan's and India’s most recent stand-off and General Zhia’s intimidating sabre-rattling that threatened to pitch Hindu against Moslem, it was Britain that saw to it that both countries were armed to the teeth should insults come to blows. Furthermore, Britain is currently arming five countries with internal conflicts.

In November 1991, Douglas Hurd was telling Europe to stop aiding foreign countries with repressive regimes, declaring that "governments who persist with repressive policies should not expect us to support their folly with scarce resources". Two months later, the Guardian would prove Hurd a hypocrite when they reported that “Britain provides military training for 110 countries . . . Training in Cambodia includes sabotage and mine-laying courses" (15 January 1992).

When asked whether it is still government policy to export landmines in spite of a UN resolution banning their export, Roger Freeman, Minister for Defence Procurement replied: “We are not going to export them . . . except in certain circumstances when we’re dealing with a friendly nation". Douglas Hurd expressed similar sentiments, believing "there is nothing wrong with selling arms to friendly countries to allow them to defend themselves” (Observer, 13 November 1994).

These absurd statements pose the question: if there are so many "friendly" countries, how come there is so much war in the world? Again, why does Britain have a defence procurement programme for 1994-5 totalling £9,363 million? And on what basis can Britain justify its £12 billion contribution to the £32 billion Eurofighter 2000 project?

Sales drive

In recent months. President Clinton has launched an overseas arms drive in an attempt to bolster the sagging US arms industry, if it was ever sagging in the first place. The US government had previously insisted that arms exports are only sanctioned when they serve US interests or help US allies.

Any war or potential conflict now has huge spin-offs for the arms-dealing governments of the West. No sooner had the Gulf War ended when Middle East orders for arms worth $28 billion were secured by the US. Since the end of the Gulf War, world arms sales to the Middle East have totalled $55 billion, $14 billion of which has been supplied by Britain. British sales include 88 Blackhawk helicopters, 94 Hawk and 48 Tornado aircraft and 18 Challenger 2 tanks.

In the Middle East, the very fact that Saddam is still in power is being used by the US as a ploy. With an unpredictable "madman" in the Middle East, having fought two wars in ten years and having already lobbed missiles at Iran, Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the existence of Saddam serves US interests. So long as he remains in power he scares his neighbours, who are only too happy to turn to Western arms dealers for the arms with which to defend themselves. Recall also Clinton's recent attempt to portray North Korea as the new Asian bogey man, prompting neighbouring countries to put in huge orders for Western state-of-the-art defence systems.

“A war on poverty," wrote Tory MP Alan Howarth in the Guardian (17 November), “would be a more cost effective strategy than stacking up arms against imaginary enemies or selling them to regimes which have no commitment to peace." Maybe, but rechannelling money spent on arms into social programmes is not going to happen. Capitalism, by its very nature, breeds competition and conflict, and consequently, nationalism, jingoism and war. Arms sales are endemic to this process. That is the insane logic of capitalism. 

John Bissett

Sting in the Tail: Spare Parts For Sale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare Parts For Sale

Those who take the view that profit has nothing to do with health must have been startled by the reports of the General Medical Council hearing on the "kidneys-for-sale" allegations.

Four doctors were in the dock accused of serious professional misconduct. They were charged with buying kidneys from four Turkish donors for use in transplant operations.

The defence produced Geoffrey Alderman, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at Holloway and Bedford College. University of London, who told the hearing: "I think it should be open to living donors to give or sell their kidneys."

The report in The Independent (18 January) stated:

  He claimed the decision to give a kidney would always be an altruistic one even if money was received. "No money could compensate for the loss of a kidney".
  Nor should arguments about exploiting the poor prevent the sale of kidneys, he said. "In a liberal democracy there are bound to be inequalities. This is the way of the world".

The professor's “liberal democracy" is of course really capitalism. Inside capitalism everything is for sale. We leave the reader to judge the "altruistic" nature of poverty-stricken desperate workers selling vital organs, and the "inequalities" that let people die because they are too poor to buy a life saving transplant.

As far as capitalism is concerned "this is the way of the world". As far as socialists are concerned it is time we got rid of the whole rotten system.

Caring Capitalism

From time to time we hear from the government that they care about the plight of the poor, the ill and the handicapped.

They point to such things as attendance allowance for those who look after terminally ill people.

A report in The Independent of 23 January 1990 illustrates what this "caring" amounts to in practice.

  But Community doctors at University College and Middlesex School of Medicine argue that many ill people die before their carers receive the allowance because of a six month qualifying period.
  Dr. Irene Higginson and colleagues discovered from records of nearly 500 cancer patients who were sufficiently disabled for their carers to be able to claim, that 92.8 per cent died within three months and 98.8 per cent within six.

Some "caring" - some system!

After Dinner Waffle

The Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd recently visited East Berlin. After a very good dinner he gave his host the East German Foreign Secretary the benefit of his views on free elections.

It was all very impressive stuff - dealing as it did with fair access to the media for all political parties. It must have been a very good dinner indeed for according to The Independent (23 January) he said:

  For in order to hold legitimate and successful free elections it Is not enough to assert a principle or even to fix a date. There have to be rules of fair and open administration of elections.
  There has to be equity in the opportunities open to the political parties. There has to be fair access to press, radio and television.

We applaud Mr. Hurd's sentiments, but we fear it was just another of those empty after dinner speeches much loved by politicians.

He surely doesn’t mean that in Britain at the next election the Socialist Party will have equity of access to the press, radio and TV.

This Gun for Hire

The fall of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe has not been greeted by universal joy. One group who are less than thrilled are the former spies and secret police who now face unemployment.

A number of Middle East regimes have started recruiting these security experts, thrown on the scrapheap by recent events. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Israel are now recruiting this pool of spooks, spies and thugs.

The Saudi intelligence chief, Turki Bin-Faisai is reported as having a 3 million dollar budget to start hiring secret agents, it says a lot for the "freedom and democracy" so beloved by the media, that every government in the world has a secret police.

Big Burger Business

27,000 people applied for a job in the latest McDonald's fast food restaurant according to Time magazine (February 5).

The American culinary empire - which some say has more to do with gastro-enteritis than gastronomy - already stretches from Seattle to Singapore. The newest offering, besides being the largest in the company's 11,300 chain, is also the first of 20 planned outlets in a $50 million deal that took 14 years of negotiation and which will see Big Mac boldly going where no burger has gone before.

Meanwhile, the lucky 605 youngsters chosen for exploitation at wages of S2.40 an hour are busy learning how to say "have a nice day" with the appropriate ingratiating smile. They can also look forward to dressing up in silly hats and scurrying around at top speed. After all, fast food demands staff who're fast on their feet.

That should be no problem for the new starts according to George Cohon, President of the Canadian subsidiary of McDonald's.

"These kids win a lot of medals in the Olympics," he says. "We can train them to work in McDonald's"

So where is this new 700 seat restaurant? It's in Pushkin Square, Moscow, just a few streets from the Kremlin.

Is there anyone out there who still thinks capitalism isn't a world wide system?


Only Human

If you ever watch "The Money Programme" or "Business Daily" on TV you will see some of society's great men being interviewed.

They are industrialists, bankers and financiers. How assured and articulate they are. and how they seem to have all the answers to every question. Here, surely, are brilliant men whom workers should admire and regard with awe.

But are they really so brilliant? Many of them who were lionised only yesterday don’t look so clever now. For example Ernest Saunders, ex-chairman of Guinness, is in disgrace and awaiting trial on serious charges. Then there's Alan Bond, the Aussie who could do no wrong but whose vast financial empire now lies in ruins. And what about all those so-shrewd bankers who threw away billions by lending to countries the rest of us wouldn't have trusted with a fiver?

Now we learn that Ferranti was taken for £215 million by a con-man who sold them a dodgy American company. What does this make Ferranti’s chairman and board?

So all of these men are clearly as fallible as anyone else and probably owe their exalted status to a combination of ability, luck, having the right connections and, in many cases, not having been caught yet.

Scorpion.