Trust me, I’m a reformist (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember Kaa, the snake in the cartoon version of The Jungle Book? A thoroughly dangerous and treacherous constrictor whose one interest in life is to get his coils around Mowgli and squeeze the life out of the poor lad.He nearly manages it too, with his hypnotic eyes and the lisped lyrics of a song that goes:

‘Trusst in me, jusst in me, shut your eyes and trusst in me’.

And if you were to look for a common denominator of all the reformist parties currently slithering around in front of the working class, whatever the details of the various plans they’ve hatched to ensure a wonderful future for the likes of you and me, it would surely be this plea to ‘Trusst in me’.

And they all echo one of Kaa’s follow-up lines, ‘You can sleep safe and sound, knowing I am around’.

And if you reckon that you will be able to sleep safe and sound by once again voting to hand over the administration of the capitalist system to any of these reformists, you are heading for yet another rude awakening. Because, as we will never tire of reminding you, the system cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority. The minority’s interest will and must always come first.

And unlike the fictional Kaa, who was after just one quick fatal squeeze, in the real world we’re trapped in the coils of a system that is designed to keep squeezing us to provide its owners with profit.

Budgie

No socialism in one country (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is not a collection of separate national systems; it is a global network of production, trade, and competition. Every country is tied to the world market, and survival within that system requires competing for profits, investment, and economic advantage.

Because of this, any attempt to build socialism in one country alone would be forced to operate under capitalist pressures. It would have to maintain wages, compete in international markets, and prioritise economic survival over human need. Step by step, the original goal of a cooperative and democratic society would be pushed aside by the demands of global competition. History shows that isolation does not abolish capitalism — it reshapes it under new management.

Socialism, therefore, is not a national project but a humanity-level one. The working majority everywhere shares the same condition: we produce the wealth of the world yet remain dependent on wages and subject to economic insecurity. Our struggle is not against other nations or peoples, but against a system that divides us while relying on our collective labour.

The necessary conclusion is clear: real emancipation requires conscious, democratic action on a global scale. When people understand their shared interests beyond borders, they can replace production for profit with production for use, competition with cooperation, and economic domination with genuine human freedom. Socialism is not merely an ideal — it is the logical and practical next step in the struggle for a world organised by and for humanity itself.

Global networks

What is often missed in discussions about ‘banana republics’ is that the decisive transformation was not simply political independence but the globalisation of capital itself. In the past, domination appeared visible because it was concentrated in a single corporation or foreign power controlling land, labour, and government institutions directly. Today, control is more diffuse and therefore less obvious. No single company needs to govern a country when financial markets, credit systems, trade dependence, and technological monopolies can discipline entire economies.

Modern states are not passive victims; they actively compete to attract investment, secure export markets, and integrate into global production networks. This creates a situation where governments formally exercise sovereignty while simultaneously adapting policies to maintain competitiveness within the world market. The pressure no longer comes from a colonial administrator but from capital mobility itself — investment can simply move elsewhere.

This helps explain why countries with very different political ideologies often pursue similar economic strategies. Whether governments describe themselves as left, right, nationalist, or progressive, they must operate within the same global framework of profitability, productivity, and trade balance constraints.

In this sense, the historical ‘banana republic’ has not returned, but neither has dependency disappeared. What has emerged instead is a system in which economic power operates structurally rather than territorially. The question today is not who rules directly, but how global economic relations limit the range of choices available to every nation-state.

Structural problem

When reformist governments promise improvements within capitalism, they inevitably collide with economic factors they cannot control — investment decisions, profitability, need for capital accumulation, and global competition. When reforms stall or are reversed, disappointment follows, and many workers understandably turn elsewhere, sometimes towards right-wing populists who appear to challenge the status quo more decisively. This recurring pattern points to a deeper structural problem rather than individual political failure.

Historical examples like the reforms under Lyndon B. Johnson, subsidised education, or public transportation systems in countries such as Brazil show that significant social concessions can exist within capitalism. Free or subsidised services, however, were never simply the result of goodwill; they emerged under specific economic and political conditions — periods of growth, social pressure, or geopolitical competition. When those conditions change, reforms become vulnerable to cuts or restructuring, regardless of which party governs.

This helps explain why debates framed as a struggle between ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ administrations miss the underlying issue. Policies may differ, but governments operate within the same economic framework, which ultimately prioritises accumulation and fiscal constraints over permanent social guarantees.

The recurring cycle — reform, limitation, frustration, and political backlash — suggests that the problem may not lie primarily in voter misunderstanding or conspiracies, but in the expectation that lasting social security can be achieved through reforms that leave the basic economic structure unchanged.

Understanding this dynamic may be more useful than attributing political shifts solely to ideology or manipulation, since it highlights why similar outcomes reappear across different countries and historical periods.

Moral denunciations

The controversy surrounding Noam Chomsky and his association with Jeffrey Epstein has generated intense debate within the left, but much of the discussion reveals a deeper political confusion. The focus has largely shifted toward personal morality and individual guilt rather than examining the social structures that allow power, wealth, and influence to concentrate in the first place.

Capitalist society consistently brings intellectuals, politicians, financiers, and academics into overlapping networks because access to funding, publishing, and institutional influence depends on proximity to wealth. This is not primarily a question of individual virtue or hypocrisy, but of how a system organised around capital inevitably connects cultural authority with economic power.

Sections of the left tend to respond to such controversies through moral denunciation, as if removing flawed individuals could purify politics. Yet history shows that replacing personalities does not alter the underlying social relations that reproduce inequality and elite influence. The problem is systemic, not psychological.

A serious socialist perspective therefore avoids both personal hero-worship and moral panic. Intellectual contributions should be evaluated critically and independently of personal reputation, while recognising that meaningful change cannot come from reforming elites but from conscious democratic control of social production by the majority itself.

In that sense, the debate should move beyond personalities and return to the central question: what kind of social organisation continually produces these concentrations of power, and how can society collectively move beyond them?

R.

Editorial: Are We Progressing? (1933)

Editorial from the October 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hopes and Fears for Socialism

The man who says that he has no use for theory is wrong—and dangerous. Yet the Socialist is always coming up against people who justify their lack of concern about Socialist theory by some such jibe at all theory. In the matter of politics, as in the care of the human body, the man who believes that he acts on no theory at all, but on “common-sense,” is, in fact, only acting on the theories which happen to be most widely accepted at the moment. In the field of politics this is almost tantamount to saying that such a man is bound to be wrong, for are not the existing widely-accepted theories the ones which have been applied without success as a cure for the existing evils?

There are sound theories, that is theories which are in accord with the existing facts and which, if applied, will produce the result intended; and there are unsound theories. The man who “does not believe in theory” is blindly accepting the unsound theories propagated by those who do not understand the economic and political situation and by those who have an interest in maintaining it as it is, evils included. The two theories found most frequently among those who will not listen to the Socialist case are not confined to any one political party, but are common among Liberals and Tories, Labourites and Communists. The first is the theory that conscious organised action to achieve Socialism is not necessary because, in spite of appearances, “things are getting constantly better and better.” The second is the theory that conscious organised action need not be taken because everything will go on getting worse and worse until there is a really terrifying crash “which will simply force people to do something.”

Superficially both theories appear to be plausible enough: fundamentally both are hopelessly wrong. They are dangerous to those who hold them and a serious obstacle standing in the way of the Socialist movement.

The first theory appears to be true because at any given moment there always does seem to be a great deal of activity directed towards making things better. Just at present we are being promised better trade and less unemployment, the abolition of slums, a better organised milk supply, better transport, shorter hours, electricity in our homes—and, of course, higher wages. The snag in it is twofold, firstly it is so far all talk, and the resulting performance—when it comes—will produce quite a small mouse compared with the mountain of promises, and, secondly, that by the time this mouse has been brought forth, capitalism, the source of our present troubles, will have given birth to a large number of other terrifying evils. If you doubt this look back over the past hundred years of “solutions” of the housing problem, the poverty problem, the unemployment problem, the hours problem and the wages problem. They are always being solved. “Solutions” are the permanent stock-in-trade of the capitalist politicians. If you feel disposed to give a chance to some young political group which roundly denounces the old gangs for their failure, remember that the old gangs all began as young fire-eaters; and observe that the planks in the programmes of the new gangsters, are only the same old worm-eaten rubbish with a new coat of paint.

The other theory, the theory of “crash,” looks plausible because periodically unintelligent discontent does burst forth in the shape of violence and destruction.

Yet both theories are unsound. Neither the gradual accumulation of social reforms, nor the periodical outburst of violence solves the problem which faces us. To see that this is so it is only necessary to glance over the events of the past 30 years. In spite of wars and upheavals, Labour Governments and dictatorships, capitalism persists without any essential change for better or for worse. It makes a little adjustment here and another there, it replaces one set of rulers by another set, it calls things by different names, but the same essential capitalism is here with us yet.

Thirty years ago dawn was announced in the Welsh hills by David Lloyd George. Poverty was to be abolished from this land of plenty. Health insurance—9d. for 4d.—was to guard us against the hardships of illness. Labour exchanges would find work for the unemployed. The land tax would undermine the power of the privileged class. If there were anything in the theory that progress only needs a “good leader,” here was the man. Energetic, clear-headed, bold and able to understand working-class problems. What happened ? Nothing very much. The hopes of the workers and the fears of the rich were alike confounded.

Then came the crash, the war. Now—so we were told—the workers would be driven to revolt, and then the new world would be ushered in. The results were otherwise. War-weariness was astutely canalized by this same Lloyd George, with his promises of a ”land fit for heroes to live in,” and his rallying cry to the workers to ”be audacious.” In Great Britain the end of the war saw the workers marching happily behind the man who had betrayed them before.

Then the dawn suddenly shot up in several places all at about the same time. Labour Governments in Australia, so-called Socialist revolutions in Russia, Germany and Austria, followed by a short-lived Bolshevist triumph in Hungary.

What now has happened to those extravagant early hopes? The Socialist Party of Great Britain stood alone in this country when it warned the workers that they were putting their trust in shadows. All those dawns have faded, even if some are not yet everywhere recognised for what they are. The same thing happened with the two Labour Governments in Great Britain, 1924 and 1929- 31.

Then there came hopes and crashes of a different sort, the rise of the Fascists in Italy, followed in 1931 by the National Government in England, and in 1933 by the rise of Hitler in Germany. Part of the working class hailed these events with just the same pathetic fervour as was shown by another part of the working class at the rise of Labour Governments and the rise of the Bolsheviks. So that there was the curious spectacle of one section of the workers looking on MacDonald, Mussolini and Hitler as heroes come to save them, while other workers regarded these men as the embodiments of evil, signifying the collapse of economic life as we have known it, which in fact would mean the collapse of capitalism.

Yet it goes on. Capitalism adjusts itself. Workers go to work under much the same conditions as before. Unemployment, poverty and bad housing continue under dictatorships of the “left” and “right” just as they do under limited monarchies and democratic republics. The means of production and distribution go on being privately owned. Rent, interest and profits, that holy trinity, continue whatever the political form under which capitalism is governed, and whatever political doctrines the ruling clique profess to hold.

Capitalism persists in spite of all the energy and enthusiasm swallowed up in the movements of reform by peaceful penetration and the movements of reform by violence and collapse.

The “inevitability of gradualness” flounders in the same bog as the communist - fascist theory of progress by chaos.

That is the result of following two unsound theories.

Editorial: The Fruits of "Practical Politics" (1952)

Editorial from the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The advocate of Socialism has varied opponents but on one thing they are almost all unanimous, that Socialism is not practical. They will concede that is is a noble conception and attractive but say that it fails to meet the needs of the world we live in today; it does not offer practical solutions to the urgent problems that must be tackled at once. These critics sweep aside as nonsensical the Socialist answer that there are no solutions to these problems short of changing the foundations of human society the world over. Let us then examine two aspects of the work of the "practical men” in this country, first their handling of the housing problem and second their endeavours to save us from war.

When the first world war began the Government and the chief Opposition parties agreed that the only practical thing to do in order to prevent rents from rising rapidly was to control them by Act of Parliament. The motives of those who supported this development were mixed. Some thought of it as a means of protecting the standard of living of the poor, while the Government had in mind principally the desire to discourage all-round strikes for higher wages, because this would interfere with the prosecution of the war. But they all agreed in telling us that it was a fine thing and should be continued, as indeed it has up to the present day though with loopholes and with permitted increases of rent in various circumstances.

They still claim that it was a fine thing; or at least they did until some of the consequences that they had not foreseen began to demand attention. So now a widespread call has been made, with backing in all three main parties, that something must be done. A “Reform” is needed—for the purpose of undoing the problem created by the first reform. For it has been discovered by investigators that almost as fast as new houses are being built old houses are falling to pieces because the rents allowed to the landlords of many rent-controlled houses do not make it worth their while to keep the houses in repair.

The results of an inquiry made by the News Chronicle ”lead to an estimate " that each year 200,000 houses—roughly the same number being built—become obsolete.” (N.C. 26/8/52.)

The local authorities have power (as the result of other social reforms achieved by the “practical men”) of demanding that repairs be carried out. So a new problem has arisen, of the owners of decrepit property finding ways of unloading their worthless property in order to escape liability. The local authorities take over some such properties, carry out the repairs and seek to levy the cost on the owners but are often unable to get "anything like the total amount” (Manchester Guardian 30-8-52).

The Manchester Guardian writer continues:—

“More adroit and less scrupulous owners succeed in conveying their property to men of straw who, for a consideration, will accept ownership of half a tottering terrace. One such, in Manchester, against whom the local authority, in theory, could make a considerable claim as the owner of a number of houses, is an inmate of a social welfare institution."

The same writer records that many of the houses "unfit for habitation” that continue to be inhabited because the occupants have nowhere else to go ” “are owned by small property owners, often the sons or grandsons of thrifty working men brought up to believe that bricks and mortar were a sound investment.”

But although the practical men have discovered that their original scheme has solved nothing and are calling for a new solution, they do not know what to do.

"Obviously,” says the Manchester Guardian, "the extreme dilapidation of much working-class housing in our industrial centres is not to be remedied by an adjustment of rents, still less by the removal of any restriction, which would merely add rack-renting to the burden of squalor and discomfort” And the writer ends his article with the remark: “To raise them would bring a swelling flood of complaints. How, anyway, can one raise the rents of property on which, since it has been condemned, no rent at all is just?”

We may leave the practical men who sought to solve the housing problem under Capitalism to reflect on the folly of their utopianism. Socialists told them, long before, that the housing problem, like the poverty problem in general, is insoluble within the framework of the capitalist system. In particular we would remind supporters of the Labour Party of their stupidity in thinking that you can improve a social system the driving force of which is the making of profit by cutting out the land and housing capitalists’ prospects of making profit.

How sensible is re-armament?

Let us now look at the problem of war. In a speech at Woodford Mr. Churchill congratulated the trade unions on backing re-armament and hoped "that our policy of keeping our re-armament within the bounds of national solvency will also commend itself to sensible men and women throughout the country.” (Times, 8/9/52.)

Here we have our "practical men” again, this time called " sensible.” Just how sensible is re-armament? To those who live in Britain and America and their allied countries it appears to be a sensible proceeding when the population are crying out for more and better food and clothing, not to mention habitable houses to live in, to devote labour and resources to the manufacture of weapons of destruction. Their justification for this odd view is that it has to be done because the Russian Government likewise is devoting fabulous sums to the manufacture of atom bombs, warplanes and all the other terrifying weapons of war.

But in Russia other “practical men"—as like their British counterparts as peas in a pod—are deluding themselves with the same specious argument.

They all (in both camps) admit that it is folly, but plead that it is necessary folly, caused only by the unreasonableness of the governments on the other side of the Iron Curtain. And all of them excuse themselves by saying that they are at all times ready to discuss at the round table “reasonable” proposals for the nations to co-operate.

Here the socialist intervenes once more with some real practicality in the form of facing the facts of the world we live in. The world is a capitalist jungle in which all the nations—for all are capitalist—struggle and arm and fight to preserve themselves from going under. They can do no other. The idea that nations in the capitalist world can co-operate on a friendly basis is purest utopian self-deception. Nations cannot co-operate for all are driven on by competition for markets, materials, strategic frontiers, etc. The only co-operation they can envisage is that induced by fear, the fear that drives them to huddle together in the rival camp.

Again the socialist insists that the only solution is to end the world jungle of Capitalism, but to achieve that it is necessary for the world’s populations to turn their backs on Capitalism and all its ways.

Is this practical? It is the only practicality for the human race. Is it immediately possible? Not until the socialist message has been widely accepted. And in this respect all the countries are in the same plight that the populations in the main fear and dislike the consequences of Capitalism but do not reject Capitalism itself. Mr. Churchill was speaking the truth when he claimed of the Tory and Labour parties that “ four-fifths of both parties agreed on four-fifths of what should be done.” They are still living in the world of make believe of thinking that what should be done is to try and reform Capitalism into something beneficial to the human race.

It is the task of the Socialist Party to win over the working class to the conviction that Capitalism should be ended and Socialism instituted in its place.

Cooking the Books: Death of a currency (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Local currency is retired to end a notable trend’ reported the Times (1 September) about the demise of the Lewes Pound, a local currency introduced 17 years ago in the Sussex town and copied in various other towns and cities in Britain.

We mentioned its launch at the time (Socialist Standard March 2009) and the extravagant claims made for the local currency by George Monbiot: ‘It by-passes greedy banks. It recharges local economies and gives local businesses an advantage over multinationals’ .

The aim was to encourage people to spend their money locally by using a currency that could only be spent and circulated in the town concerned. If people used the local currency to buy from a local shop, it was argued, it would stay in the town, but that if they used ordinary money to buy from a national supermarket the chances are that it would end up being spent elsewhere.

Local currencies didn’t replace ordinary money. In fact, they had to be backed pound for pound by an equivalent amount of ordinary money deposited in a bank. The Times refers to this in its report when it says that, now that the scheme is being wound up, ‘the backing money will be donated to four local charities’.

As we mentioned at the time:

‘The Lewes Pounds get into circulation by people buying them for ordinary pounds and are convertible back into pounds on demand. In answer to the question “What happens to the sterling pounds that are taken when people buy Lewes Pounds?” the organisers explain: “All Sterling pounds are held in a safe deposit box with a local bank, so that we can access them at any time should people wish to trade their Lewes Pounds back into Sterling”’.

So no by-passing of ‘greedy banks’. Nor any extra purchasing power introduced to boost the local economy. It was just one piece of paper being replaced by another of equal spending power. Since people wanting to use the local currency had to buy it, those doing this were likely to have been enthusiasts who would have bought things locally anyway using ordinary money; the same goes for those accepting it in change (which people couldn’t be obliged to do). It is unlikely, then, that local businesses benefited — except the scheme itself by selling Lewes Pounds to collectors. How multinationals lost out remains a mystery.

The scheme failed in the end due to the nationwide trend to pay by card rather than cash. In Brixton the organisers of the local currency there tried to get round this by introducing an electronic Brixton Pound  but this too was overtaken by smartphones with their electronic wallets, and the Brixton Pound too was wound up.

When the Brixton Pound was introduced in 2009 our South London branch commented in a leaflet distributed in the area:

‘What’s the point (apart from helping local shopkeepers)? What difference does it make what coloured pieces of paper we have to use to get the things we need to live? The real problem is that in present-day, capitalist society we have to use money at all to obtain these, and that the amount of money we have will always be rationed by what we get as wages or as benefits. That restricts and distorts our lives’ (Th£ Brixton Pound — What For?).

The sad fact is that all the enthusiasm, time and voluntary work that went into devising and running local currencies led nowhere. This particular ‘notable trend’ to do ‘something now’ to try make things better under capitalism made no difference whatsoever.

Running Commentary: Catch ’em young (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Catch ’em young

Everyone knows that all state schools are short of resources. Strathclyde Regional Council have found a way to alleviate the problem. Following in the footsteps of national and local press, programmes for charity, sports events or whatever, they are selling advertising space in the exercise books used by their 422,000 schoolchildren. For 500,000 books. £2.250 will buy the back page, inside covers are slightly cheaper, and a bargain £5,400 buys all three covers and a logo on the front.

Of course, not just any advert is accepted. Cigarettes, alcohol, sweets and BMX bikes are out. (So, we are sure, would be The Socialist Party or The Socialist Standard). Road safety and health education are in. So far, so good. "We also want to encourage thrift" said the Head of Public Relations and to this end they have approached banks and building societies.

The report appears in Super Marketing 11 July 1986. It is therefore no surprise to read a little further on that Lyons Tetley are "very happy with results" of their pilot scheme, which was "very cost effective" and intend to take further space. Of course, using exercise books in school at £2,250 a throw to persuade half a million mums to send their offspring to school filled up with Ready Brek is obviously a lot cheaper than those TV commercials where kids light their way through the fog with their Ready Brek induced halos. What better way to condition the workers of tomorrow to be receptive to the siren calls of consumerism — and after all, without those advertisements there mightn't be any exercise books . . .

More on poverty

In the August Socialist Standard we pointed out that at that time the last published official figures for people living at or below the government's poverty line were based on a count taken in 1981. Another count had been taken in 1983 and this should have been published last year but the government were prudently delaying this.

Just as that Socialist Standard was produced the later figures became available; in fact they were placed in the library of the House of Commons, just as the library conveniently closed for the summer. However, details have seeped out and are not comfortable reading for those who think that life in Britain under the Tories is as happy and abundant as we were promised it would be. when the alleged monetarists were let loose in Whitehall.

In 1981, the official figures showed 7.7 million living on or below the poverty line; by 1983 this had risen to 8.8 million. A House of Commons library estimate is that by 1986 this total has risen again, to 11.7 million

This comes at a time when the Child Poverty Action Group are celebrating — or perhaps it should be mourning — their 21st birthday Formed under another name in 1965. at the time they did not bother to arrange to bank any funds because they were sure that their campaign to abolish child poverty would succeed within one year A lot of their hopes rested in the election of the 1964 Labour government, of which one Labour MP (Frank Field, Guardian, 4 August 1986) now says: "At the end of the 1964-70 Labour Government the charge was that the poor had got poorer under Labour' ". The CPAG soon learned a little about the reality of working class poverty and what Labour governments are in power for By the end of their first year they had opened a bank account and had changed themselves from an advisory group into an action group.

Like so many apparently well-intentioned reformist bodies. CPAG have probed, exposed and agitated. But, typically, they overlooked the fact that working class poverty is basic and unavoidable under capitalism, whichever party is in power. When they were formed in 1965 there were less than 400,000 people living on Supplementary Benefit; now there are some thing like eight million dependent on it. The numbers out of work, grappling with the increased burden of poverty which unemployment brings, has risen during this time from 330,000 to over three million.

Working class poverty cannot be dealt with by piecemeal reforms, treated as if it were separate from the other problems produced by capitalism. The facts point to the irresistible conclusion, that the CPAG has devoted a lot of energy and a lot of ingenuity to raising hopes only for them to be clashed against harsh reality. It would have been better for them to have assessed the true nature of the problem they were facing and then campaigned for the abolition of the cause of poverty. For if capitalism is allowed by its poverty-stricken people to continue there will still be a CPAG, or its equivalent, in another 21 years time. And another. And another.

South American headache

"One of our team's first problems there was what to do with almost 100 orphaned children who had been trained in torture. Their speciality was pulling out eyes". These chilling words by Dr Nacho Maldonado Allende. psychoanalyst and co-ordinator of an international team of mental health workers in Nicaragua are reported in the June/July issue of Open Mind, journal of the National Association for Mental Health.

Getting across basic elements of mental health care in Nicaragua is a much more primitive and elementary matter than even the disgracefully inadequate facilities in this country allow. The team exchanged ideas and shared knowledge with the local peasants they were training, rather than trying to impose professional expertise. Alcoholism is a problem in Nicaragua as almost everywhere else. When asked what should be done about it. the locals replied "Do nothing. We are deprived and for the moment we need it to help us ". If they paused to work it out, workless, homeless and at times hungry workers in Glasgow. Belfast and Birmingham would give the same reply.

Dr Allende's team found many Nicaraguans suffering from what he described as "frozen grief". People who had. for instance, suffered the loss of a close relative, appeared cheerful but their suppressed sorrow and frustration surfaced in headaches, insomnia, numbed limbs.

While there are degrees of deprivation and suppression, workers throughout the world face the same problems of capitalism. Those who dispute this might well ask themselves the real reason the next time they suffer a headache or sleepless night.

That Party and its Promises! (1976)

From the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

By “that party” we mean of course the Labour Party, sometimes called the Socialist Party, but which does not stand for Socialism.

In the opinion of Ron Hayward — and he should know — the Labour Party stands for “equality in education”. At least that’s what he told the writer on an LBC phone-in. Whether “equality in education” is feasible or not, desirable or not, is hardly worth investigating. The dole queues are full of graduates, and millions of well-educated women find themselves reluctantly at the kitchen sink. Let us, however, take a good look at what the Labour Party in office has done about education and compare its record with its promises.

The Labour Government has been proposing cuts in local authority spending, and as the biggest share of local authority spending goes on education, the schools are going to take the brunt. Surrey County Council is reported (Guardian, 5th July) as planning to cease all nursery education, to increase class sizes in the schools and to raise the fees for higher education courses. This is a pattern which we can expect to see followed by most other education authorities.

Let us compare this situation with the picture presented in Labour’s 1959 manifesto — The Future Labour Offers You. Under the heading “Our Children”. Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan and Co. told us:

The worst handicap a child can face at school is the oversize class. Overcrowding in the schools is a nightmare to teachers and to parents. That is why our first task must be to cut classes in primary as well as secondary schools to a maximum of thirty.” (our emphasis.)

Contrast this “first task” brainwave with the actual reality. Many children going through what the state calls “education” have done so, even in the good years and “good” areas, in classes of 35, some rising to 40 or more. Now the size of classes is likely to rise again, not from a real shortage of qualified teachers, but because there is not enough money forthcoming from the Treasury to pay the teachers.

In 1959, Labour also told us: “Most important of all, our plans will require many more teachers. We shall launch a big drive to recruit and train them as swiftly as possible.” Well, at least one of our recent governments has done that. And the result is that with the present Labour Government saying “less money for education”, a large proportion of these expensively-trained teachers are experiencing the frustration of joblessness. While the classes get bigger and bigger. Talk about waste!

Returning to 1959 we find the Labour Party declaring : “The main fault with our present State education is that there is not enough of it. In order to give every child a fair chance to choose a career and to train for it, we must be prepared to spend more.”

Exactly the opposite of what they are doing now. The fact is that the political parties’ manifestoes are like the apples the greengrocer puts in his front window. They look mouthwatering! So you go inside on the promise of all that lovely, glossy, sound-looking fruit, only to get sold wrinkled, bruised, unsound fruit that the greengrocer dredges up from under the counter or some dark corner that you can’t quite see.

The professional reformist politician is like the most unscrupulous greengrocer you could ever have the misfortune to meet! You even become so carried away in your enthusiasm that you don’t stop to ask the vital question “Can he produce the goods?”

If you did ask, you’d get no meaningful answers out of him, but only specious assurances. Here’s a sample from that 1959 Labour manifesto: “A programme for one Parliament is not a blueprint for Utopia. What we have summarised here can be done in that limited time. We can make such great social advances as bringing real security into old age through our National Superannuation scheme. We can cut down the size of school classes. We can turn shabby old houses into modern homes. So this is a practical assessment of the jobs to be done, and a realistic account of the way we propose to do it.”

Which means that they want to do these things and hope we’ll take their word for it that they can. To which we reply: if it could be done, why wasn’t it? And conversely, if it was not possible except when the economic climate was right, why claim so confidently that it could be done? This charge of making promises that cannot be carried out is one that can equally be levelled at the Tories, the Liberals, and other assorted reformists, including the Nationalists among those who have swindled the electorate.

The moral of the story is this. A political party without principles is merely a vote-catching machine, governed by expediency. Its soup-kitchen philosophy of being kind to the kiddies is easily ditched whenever it should appear to be in conflict with the short-term economic interests of capitalism.

Capitalism just does not work for our benefit: it’s the bosses’ benefit show, not ours. There is only one way we can use our votes in line with our economic and social interests as workers. And that is by voting and working for Socialism and the end of this wages, waste and want system.

Charmian Skelton

“The Force of Passing Events.” Reform in the Baking Trade. (1908)

From the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Fear of the Awakening.

From time to time there have appeared in the Socialist Standard articles descriptive of the horribly inhuman conditions imposed upon bread bakers by our rascally commercial system, and showing how the victims, after floundering about in the Slough of Reform for years, are now turning to the remedy—Socialism. One of these articles has been quoted in full by the official organ of the London master bakers, which now is voicing the fear that unless something is done by way of reform the result will be cataclysmal for the exploiters. In an article headed “White slavery” an appeal is made to the sweater to be a little more merciful than heretofore, and he is reminded of the “laws of reason,” “our common humanity,” “the principle of live and let live,” and such like meaningless twaddle so dear to the heart of the mealy-mouthed and fire-eating reformer alike. Instances known to the Editor are given of men who work 110 hours a week for the “quite inadequate wage of 26s. a week.” That is less than threepence an hour for working in the hot, fetid, smoke, sulphur and steam-laden atmosphere of a bakehouse. The Bakers’ Record, however, recognises that there are two sides to every question, especially now the labourer begins to show his teeth, and it sapiently observes, “Every toiler in a bakehouse, however subordinate his position for the time being may be, always has the prospect before him of being able one day, through the exercise of industry, intelligence, and enterprise, of opening out into life on his own account ; these counteracting considerations notwithstanding, there can be no blinking the transparent fact that much cruelty is exercised here and there, which to a degree throws opprobrium on the whole trade.” It is, no doubt, a regrettable fact that the Socialist at the street corner has for ever made the further blinking of these disagreeable things impossible. It is also a pity that opprobrium should fall on a whole trade. Disgusting and sickening to see the operative turning his face to the rising sun of Socialism as a way out, instead of indulging in the beatific vision of one day becoming a bloodsucker himself as compensation for the loss of his own red corpuscles, and industriously applying himself, with a wet towel around his pate, to the study of the intricacies of high finance that he may be able to successfully float his future Bonanza bakery (the days of the little drum up a side street being over); but the melancholy fact must be recognised, nevertheless, and the operative side-tracked at all costs.

Murder will out.

But how ? Not with jeremiads and the gospel according to Samuel Smiles, but with reforms. This much the capitalist has learned. But what reform? Here the difficulty is met. In the baking trade we have had a surfeit of arbitration and conciliation boards, and see them for the frauds they are, although boomed by shaky-knee’d labour leaders in other industries. That we are not taking any more is obvious to the hack writer referred to. He says : “The past history of the Protection Society (masters) reveals the fact that all such efforts have been in vain, that Arbitration Boards on which masters and men have been represented in equal strength have proved utterly futile, and that the intervention and good services of that useful public body, the London Chamber of Commerce, were utterly useless.” O tempora, O mores ! Alas and alack ! the times are indeed out of joint. The working baker scornfully rejecting a proved fraud— Arbitration. He will no longer beg the robber class to rob him a little less, but is audaciously talking of preventing the robbery altogether. The scribe goes on “the masters selfishly look after what they consider their own individual rights and interests.” Of course they do. That is what they are in business for—nothing else. And they buy all their commodities—flour, salt, coal, yeast, and labour-power—at rock bottom prices, and will continue to do so despite the reformers’ pathetic appeals to them to consider the broader interests of capitalism as against individual selfishness as a means of putting off the evil day of the workers’ emancipation; and despite the fact that that narrow selfishness coupled with the economic development is forcing the pace, as the writer points out in the following terms :

“Therein we can clearly see lies the danger of legislative interference, at no distant date, and we are not sure that it would be to the interests of either party when it became necessary by the force of passing events. We do not hesitate to say that it would be distinctly to the disadvantage of the masters.”

The Capitalist “in the Cart.”

“The force of passing events” is good, very excellent good. It comprises the driving factors which no individual master or joint-stock company can stay or control. The reformer, then, might just as well throw up the sponge and “cease his damnable faces.” The diabolical system cannot be permanently patched up. The “force of passing events” renders the methods of production in vogue to-day antiquated to-morrow, and the rules of the game obsolete and inoperative. The capitalist cannot observe them if he would. He that would save his trade alive must adapt himself to the new conditions, must toe the commercial line drawn by the most unscrupulous, by the man who has the predatory instinct and a species of low cunning abnormally developed. The inexorable decree of Capital is :—

” ‘Mid the clash of gentler souls and rougher,

Wrong must thou do or wrong must suffer.”

and the survivor is he who has elected to do wrong.

The Futility of “Fakes.”

Faced with this position the reformer, who, generally speaking, can skilfully and accurately diagnose the disease, is hard put to it find another quack remedy. “The force of passing events” has rended all the old, fly-blown fakes into things of shreds and patches which cannot be refurbished any more. The position is desperate. The worker must be side-tracked by some means—but alas ! the reformer must either speak truly or fall back on age-worn appeals. He therefore calls for “harmonious action,” “a frank and manly understanding between employer and employed,” and such like “tosh.” But it leads nowhither. “He circling goes who navigates a pond.” It’s no go. The only understanding that will serve is the understanding of our position in the social organism—that we are mere commodities on the labour market; that the sole function of the capitalist is to make profit, which he can only do by robbing the worker; that there can be no “harmonious action” between the exploiter and the exploited, however ignorant capitalist institutions have succeeded in keeping the workers, and that all “understandings” promoted with that end in view can be summed up in the rhyme of our younger days:—

There was a young lady of Niger,

Who went for a ride on a tiger;

They came back from their ride

With the lady inside,

And a smile on the face of the tiger.

That’s the position.

Emancipation via Revolution.

There is no getting to the windward of the capitalist while production for profit lasts. Fully aware of this, we are going for no more rides. We are out for the emancipation of the workers by the workers—for emancipation via the social revolution.

W. Watts

Who are the Impossibilists? (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is obvious that the revolutionary attitude of the S.P.G.B. is making headway within the ranks of the S.D.P. It is recognised by many members of the latter organisation that the advocacy of reforms is not the work of a Socialist.

The Duty of a Socialist

(in his capacity as propagandist) is to explain briefly and lucidly the position the working class occupy to-day. He must bring the worker to understand that he is a wage slave, compelled by dire necessity to sell his labour-power in return for wages. He must teach the worker to recognise that he belongs to a class who are— and will be—kept in economic bondage until the arrival and institution of the Socialist Republic. This method of propaganda—certainly the correct one—adopted by the S.P.G.B. is growing with such rapidity that the wire-pullers of the S.D.P. can no longer pursue a policy of ignoring methods.

Some time has elapsed since Harry Quelch announced his intention of dealing with “impossibilism,” and of proving the necessity of the advocacy of certain reforms beneficial to the working-class. Behold, now, the long promised article (Justice, June 13/08). The article was a reply to the following letter submitted to “Tattler” :—

“I have also had the following letter handed to me by the Editor :—

“Dear Comrade,—Will you clear up for me the following point—viz., the position of our organisation towards impossibilism ? The controversy between the impossibilists and the S.D.P. I am unable to clear up to my own satisfaction. Socialism teaches that there is an iron law of wages which drags down wages to the level of subsistence. If this is a fact, how can any reform alter the operation of this law ? In other words, is not a poverty-stricken working class a necessity under capitalism ? In reference to unemployment, if unemployment is a necessity of the ruling class, what is the use of appealing to that class for the right to work ? I have heard our comrade Hyndman say that the provision of work for the unemployed would mean the collapse of capitalism. But capitalism being the cause of unemployment, to abolish unemployment is it not necessary to first abolish capitalism ? Dear comrade, if you will solve this problem for me you will earn my gratitude.”

Our organisation is opposed to “impossibilism” because it is impossibilism, and we are Social-Democrats, not impossibilists. The impossibilist position may be summed up as follows: The emancipation of the working-class can only be achieved by the working-class themselves. In order for the working class to achieve its emancipation it is necessary that the workers should be educated, organised and class-conscious. But no reforms of any advantage to the workers are possible under capitalism ; therefore the workers cannot become educated, etc., until they have emancipated themselves; yet they cannot emancipate themselves until they are educated.”

“Tattler’s” summing up of the impossibilist position contains some truth, and we recognise its truth because the italicised passages may be used against the reform-mongering parties like the S.D.P. and the I.L.P., i.e., “We do not preach pure Socialism to the workers because they do not understand it, and they do not understand it because we preach reforms instead,” say these parties.

The argument from our point of view turns upon

What is Meant by Education.

If “Tattler” takes education in its narrowest sense, then the educated class and snobocracy of the universities should be revolutionary to the core. That such is not the case, however, even “Tattler” knows. Does education necessarily mean a knowledge of the higher mathematics, Greek, and chemistry ? No ! Education from the Socialist point of view is a recognition of that class antagonism prevalent in society to-day, and a consciousness that the workers as a class must combine in opposition to the capitalist class and its supporters for the purpose of taking, holding, and controlling the political machine, and subsequently the means of life, in their own interest.

The full recognition of this basic principle of Socialist propaganda and of the uncompromising action necessary to the attainment of the above object is absolutely essential from our point of view, and the moment the individual unit of society recognises this and acts accordingly, he is, from the Socialist view-point, educated.

Unless the workers are educated in this sense all efforts at emancipation will be as futile as those already attempted. And that is why “they cannot emancipate themselves until they are educated.”

The administration of education at present lies in the hands of the capitalist class, who will take care that only those subjects tending to keep the workers in subjection, and to make them

More Efficient Producers

shall be taught. The education in Socialist principles takes place after the worker has had his mind chloriformed by the paid agents of the capitalist class.

But before leaving this we may point out that the S.D.P., whilst believing in the class war, has many prominent members of its organisation who state that, in the struggle for working-class emancipation the workers will be led and guided by members of the middle class. They are, apparently, ignorant of the fact that Socialism will not arrive until the class war has reached its most acute stage. It will then be a struggle between two classes—the working class and the capitalist class. It is difficult to discern where another class comes in.

“Tattler” admits that “as long as capitalism lasts there will be unemployed,” which admission proves the futility and fatuity of approaching the capitalist class for measures of alleviation. Such being the case, it should be the duty of the S.D.P.—instead of advocating the “Right to Work”—to teach the worker that demands a large margin of unemployed in order to keep down wages and the standard of living, and to give an increase in profits. Instead, the S.D.P. have for 25 years marched battalions of unemployed from one end of the country to the other, gulling, defrauding, and deceiving the industrial outcasts by telling them this, that and the other Bill will help them. The S.D.P. know perfectly well that the capitalist class will not, in fact, dare not, tamper with the unemployed problem. That is the rock upon which capitalism rests. Take it away and your whole system is abolished. Do the S.D.P. think the capitalist class are going to interfere, knowingly, with their own interests ?

If remedial measures were of any good, how is it that to-day there are

A Larger Number of Unemployed

than ever. Frederick Engels wrote in 1886 the following : “Meanwhile each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question ‘what to do with the unemployed ‘; but while the number of the unemployed keep swelling from year to year, there is no answer to that question.” Since that date the number of unemployed has increased. Industrial development and the perfection of machinery grows apace ; with that goes the displacement of human labour arid consequently an increase of the unemployed. Karl Marx states in “Das Capital,” “Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital . . . grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation ; but with this grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.”

Along with the exploitation of the working class grows the increasing intelligence of the workers, who are being organised in order that when the inevitable collapse of the present system takes place, they, the workers, will be competent to deal with the new method and state of society. We, as Socialists, must point out that Socialism is the only hope. That is our aim. That is our sole object. The S.D.P. do not do so, but waste their time deluding the working class into believing that some reforms are good. The “impossibilist” method will not prevent reforms being given by the capitalist class, nor can we avoid accepting reform measures passed by the governing class when it suits their interest to do so. What does matter is the wasting of energies and activities upon the advocacy of reforms, the splitting up of the forces of the workers into opposing factions, each desirous of seeing its own particular pet and paltry palliative pushed persistently and prominently before all others. In these circumstances the workers are necessarily lacking in the one common principle to which all could give allegiance.

The S.D.P. have 48 palliatives down for immediate enactment.

Note the Confusion

existing in that organisation. Harry Quelch’s principle desire is to see a “Citizen Army” in existence. Hyndman says that Payment of Members’ Election Expenses is the most important. Mrs. Bridges Adams and “Comrade” Warwick insist on the agitation for the Feeding of School Children being the first object of S.D.P. propagandists. Some advocate Old Age Pensions at an age when the majority of the workers are dead; others say that an important reform is the Municipalisation of the Pawnshops, while Mr. J. F. Green says the Eight Hour Day is a measure that he “would like to see in the forefront.” We anticipate being told that these are but individual members, but each of them has his own particular coterie of supporters, and further, each, of the reforms advocated by them and their following is on the list of “immediate reforms” wanted by the S.D.P. It must be borne in mind that while these reforms are being advocated Socialism is being neglected and put in the background. If this is not so then reform and Socialism are synonymous terms, according to the S.D.P.

But then “Tattler” again disagrees and says “There are two directions in which reforms at the present moment could materially benefit the worker,” viz., by a reduction of the hours of labour and, the better housing of the poor. With reference to the first of these it must be remembered that the shorter working day generally means a greater intensity of labour during the time the worker is employed, the

Increased Strain

being met by the greater period for recuperation.

Many instances have been cited in the Socialist Standard where a reduction in the hours of labour has led to an increase of unemployed in the particular trade affected. Such increase of production with fewer working hours causes the market to become overstocked owing to the non-effective demand for the commodities produced to excess. During these periods of glutted markets the workers who were employed producing the goods are either placed on short time or cease work until those stocks are depleted.

“Tattler” tells us that it is because the hours of labour devoted to the production of surplus-value are decreased that capitalists always fight against any reduction of the working day. There may be some exceptions to the rule, but very few capitalists revert to a ten hour day after trying one of eight hours. Messrs. Lever Bros., Mather & Platts, Allaij & Co., Brunner Mond, and other firms have not built up their great businesses on a system detrimental to their own interests.

Says “Tattler” (same article) :—

“Granted that a certain proportion of the day’s labour is necessary labour, it is quite clear that the amount of exploitation and of surplus value is in direct proportion to the prolongation of the working day. Thus, given a day of ten hours, four of which represent necessary labour, there are six hours devoted to the production of surplus value. The worker works, then, four hours for himself and six for the capitalist. If the hours are reduced to eight, everything else remaining equal, the worker then only works four hours for the capitalist instead of six. That is certainly a material advantage, and it is quite easy to understand, therefore, the vehemence with which the capitalists always fight against any reduction of the working-day.”

“Everything else remaining equal” Mr. Quelch (or “Tattler,” or the Editor of Justice— they are all the same chap) may have a case. It is precisely because everything else doesn’t remain equal that he has none. It must be recognised that if the workers obtain any

Material Advantage

it can only be taken from the capitalist class, who lose thereby. All statistics in connection with the production of wealth prove conclusively that, in spite of the reduction of the hours of labour, the workers (who produce all the wealth) are becoming poorer and poorer, whilst the idle and luxurious capitalist class get richer. Marx has pointed out that, in connection with the reduction of the hours from 12 to 10 per day, “The denser hour of the 10 hours working-day contains more labour—i.e., expended labour power, than the more porous hour of the 12 hour working day. The product, therefore, of one of the former hours has as much or more value than the product of one and one-fifth of the latter hours. Apart from the increased yield of relative surplus-value through the heightened productiveness of labour, the same mass of value is now produced for the capitalist say by three and one-third hours of surplus labour and six and two thirds of necessary labour, as was previously produced by four hours of surplus labour and eight hours of necessary labour.”

The worthy “Tattler” has manufactured a premis not of fact in order to justify a specious argument. Knock away the premis and the bottom is out of the case. By the “Tattler” method anything can be proven. From the Socialist point of view his position on Housing is also wrong. Houses to-day are erected, not for living in, but for the purpose of making profit. If the habitations in the “garden cities” produce more profit than those in the slums, it is reasonable to assume the gradual disappearance and demolition of Slumdom. The wages in Bournville, Port Sunlight, Ancoats and Whitechapel are in each case determined by the cost of subsistence. The “garden cities” mentioned naturally produce better and more efficient wage slaves than those in the slums.

No matter how we turn, no matter what reform is instituted, there the capitalist class, controlling political power and holding the wires of the administrative machinery, are able to use the same to their own advantage.

“Tattler” then concludes :

“At the same time it must be borne in mind that the tendency is always, not only to keep wages down to the subsistence level, but also to lower the level by reducing the standard of comfort.”

These remarks prove

The Logical Position

of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Because the tendency is always on the downward grade, notwithstanding the remedial measures advocated by the S.D.P. and other reform organisations, reform is absolutely useless, as it cannot, on “Tattler’s” own admission, prevent the downward grade. It is evident, then, that the education of the working class must proceed on lines identical with the policy of the S.P.G.B. Whatever the party, the workers can only achieve their emancipation on such lines. Socialism itself implies a scientific organisation of industry, and this can only be realised by class-conscious Socialists.

—CONCILIO ET LABORE

Labour has failed: give socialism a chance (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing the Chartists understood was the importance, to bring about social change, of first winning control of political power as the power to make and enforce laws. They campaigned for universal suffrage (at least for men) as they rightly saw the vote as the way to political control. Once the workers had the vote, they reasoned, they could use it to send delegates to parliament who would pass laws to improve their social and economic situation.

They weren’t wrong about the need to win political control to bring about social change or about the vote as the way to win such control, but the vote has its limitations. It can’t change the way the capitalist economic system works, based as it is on minority class ownership of the resources society needs to survive and on production for profit.

For over 150 years now, a majority of the electorate in Britain has been made up of workers: those who, excluded from ownership of the means to produce wealth, are forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies to some employer for a wage or salary in order to live. From time to time voters have elected Labour governments but, when in office, these have accepted capitalism, only trying to reform it to make things better for workers.

The theory was that a series of successive Labour governments would gradually transform capitalism into a more equal society by extending nationalisation and the welfare state to be paid for by redistributing wealth away from the rich. But what happened was that, instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, capitalism gradually changed Labour, the final result being what we see today under Starmer: a party that proclaims itself the ‘party of business’ and which openly seeks to govern as such by putting profits (and military spending) before people’s needs and welfare.

As Starmer has put it: ‘Our job is to work with businesses to create the best environment that allows them to thrive’ (The Times, 29 January). Businesses ‘thrive’ of course on making profits. All Labour governments have been forced to do this but this is the first one to have openly proclaimed this from the start and to have acted on it so quickly.

Understandably, many who have supported Labour up to now no longer have any faith in it. There are calls to set up a new leftwing party, with Jeremy Corbyn as figurehead. That the Labour Party is a pro-capitalist party is now plain for everyone to see, but it is important to understand why the original Labour project of gradually replacing capitalism with a more equal society prioritising people’s needs failed — and was bound to fail. Otherwise, the same mistake will be made again.

The Green Party is already making this mistake of imagining that capitalism can be gradually transformed by a series of reform measures into something else, in their case into a more environment-friendly society. If they ever get the chance to form the government, they too would fail just as all Labour governments have. So would any new leftwing party if it adopts, as have previous breakaways from Labour, the same gradualist and reformist approach that the Labour Party once did. The plain fact is that capitalism just cannot be made to work in any other way than it does, ie, it puts profits first.

The Labour project didn’t fail because of the betrayal or incompetence or lack of determination of its leaders. It failed because it set itself the impossible task of making the capitalist leopard change its spots. Capitalism is an economic system which functions according to its own economic laws that impose themselves on those who run governments as well as on those who run businesses. Capitalism is driven by the quest for profits. It is a profit-making system that can only run in the interests of the profit-takers and never in the interests of workers whose labour is the source of profits. No government can overcome these laws and all governments have to apply them on pain of provoking an economic downturn.

What is needed is an understanding that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of majority. That understood, it follows that what is needed is a political party based on a different strategy from that pursued by Labour in the past, a party committed not to tinkering with capitalism’s effects but exclusively to abolishing it altogether and replacing it, in one go, by a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of resources with production directly to meet people’s needs and not for profit. In a word, socialism.

Once a majority want this they can use the vote to win political control with a view to carrying out this revolution in the basis of society. Given this, and that currently most people seem to see no alternative to capitalism, the urgent task of socialists is to convince more people that socialism is the way out.

Adam Buick

The Death of the Welfare State (1996)

From the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Supporters of capitalism have always denied the need for a fundamental change on the grounds that the system can take care of the 
poor through state help and welfare, now the welfare state, the
 sacred cow of reformists everywhere, is being attacked 
from every direction

Labour and the Tories have, it seems, moved closer together than ever with respect to their attitudes to the welfare state. On 8 May the Guardian reported Labour’s Chris Smith, shadow social security secretary, saying:

"Surely it is time to get away from the sterile battle lines of public and private. . . The principle must surely be that the state acts as guarantor of all provision, the regulator of all provision and the administrator of some. ”

How they intend to guarantee those provisions that they don’t provide, which will presumably have to be provided by individuals for themselves through insurance, is not made clear; in fact not a lot is made clear. What is crystal clear, though, is that Labour has abandoned its commitment to the welfare state along with Clause Four; the to-and-fro of reform and counter-reform between the major parties, such as it was, is over.

This to-and-fro was never, of course, a simple external relation between the parties but has been just as much a part of their internal make-up since the Second World War. Labour introduced the NHS but also introduced prescription charges and charges for dental and optical treatment; the Tories under Macmillan expanded the council house building programme; the current cause of much argument and agonising within Labour—child benefit—was introduced by the Tories in 1945 before Labour took office that same year. The case of child benefit is perhaps particularly interesting and informative, given the possibility of the next Labour government abolishing it for 16-18 year olds.

Family Allowance, the immediate forerunner of child benefit, was agreed in principle in 1943 by the wartime coalition government, and introduced by the Conservative government of May-July 1945, gaining the royal assent on 16 June 1945. The Labour movement was split on the issue, with many trade unions opposed to this reform—but why? Wasn't it to benefit working-class families? In fact, it wasn’t, anything but, the capitalist establishment wanted to introduce this reform because they felt that capitalism in the UK couldn’t afford not to. In 1940, Eleanor Rathbone MP, chair of the Family Endowment Society, argued in favour of the introduction of Family Allowance, saying that a “man with a wife and family is much less likely to act (revolutionarily) than one who has given society no such hostage”. Family Allowance was to be an incentive for working-class men to have dependent families—which could then be effectively held hostage by the state should he question capitalist authority. The ruling class also favoured the introduction of this “benefit" on a more basic level; the unions, hardly revolutionary' themselves, would have been less inclined to oppose it otherwise. The Tory MP L.S. Amery, again arguing in favour of this reform (in the Times, 14 January' 1941), said that Family Allowance would “afford a logical basis upon which a stand could be made against all further wage increases”. It was thus seen as a method of keeping wage bills down.

Who benefits?

If Labour now want to abolish child benefit for 16-18 year olds, is it in order to correct past mistakes, to somehow pass on a real benefit to working people after all? No chance. While they haven’t said exactly what they would spend the money on, they have gestured vaguely in the direction of education; but whose education would it be spent on? Many working-class families have, over the years, come to rely on child benefit, particularly to help support children in further education. If child benefit is abolished for precisely those of the age to go into further education, how will the less well off working-class families be able to afford to keep them in education? The simple answer is, they won’t. The only options for many will be for 16 and 17 year olds to try for places in the already over-subscribed YTS system (adding further to the already massive pool of cheap labour for bosses), to directly enter the employment market with little or no chance of a job and no benefits, or to leave home and beg on the streets. What a marvellous range of choice capitalism offers.

There is another option of course, at least for those families with at least one wage-earner—to fight the employers for higher wages to compensate for the money lost. But if this was thought even vaguely likely, Labour would have been more reluctant to have considered this particular cut. The last thing they want is to encourage class conflict, particularly under their own administration; but the relative weakness of the trade union movement at the present time makes an immediate escalation of class struggle unlikely.. this doesn’t mean that it won’t happen; workers may find themselves forced to fight by sheer material circumstances. But the point is that the ruling class, at least in the West, is being forced to take back reforms that have been previously granted and supposedly reformist parties are being forced to institute and administer the process.

On the one hand, capital feels it can no longer afford reforms, on the other, it also feels that it must take past reforms away and to bolster itself at the direct expense of the working class because of the relative weakness of the trade union movement. This is happening right across the west, with the temporary' exception of France where the government keeps trying to cut back on the welfare state but where workers’ solidarity has so far forced them to back down. They will keep trying, though, because French capital is no more isolated or “sovereign” than anywhere else. In other parts of the world, such as the Far East, home of what western capitalists habitually refer to, with some envy, as “tiger” (“dynamic market”—note the use of this term in labour’s new Clause 4) economies, there have often never been any reforms, even basic democratic ones, to roll back, while countries such as Vietnam refer to themselves as socialist while they introduce some of the most vicious, exploitative capitalist economic structures in the world. Global capitalism is precisely that; nobody is insulated from pressures on profits, which under capitalism is where sovereignty always really lies.

The to-and-fro of reform and anti-reform has always been the pattern to some extent, but things appear to have reached a state where reform has effectively lost its impossible fight. Reformist parties such as Labour have almost entirely capitulated; they were never going to introduce socialism anyway, having only ever been at most state capitalist parties, but now they have given up entirely. A never-ending pissing into the face of a gale has left them wet and weary and has exhausted what emancipatory desire they might once have had. All their desires now are masturbatory and egotistical, focused on nothing more than the plaudits of high office that mask a basic sterility.

There are few more frightening, deadly or apt symbols of the failure of reformism than the world-wide rise of tuberculosis. The steady and virtually inevitable erosion of welfare reforms has caused the number of cases of TB to rise steadily in the west over the last few years after most people had thought it had been effectively eradicated. In other parts of the world, of course, it had never gone away in the first place. A recent article on TB in the Guardian Weekend (27 April) put this point quite succinctly. In the 1970s there was a general optimism in the west that TB was effectively gone for ever, thanks to vaccine research and improved living conditions. But only in the west:

“Admittedly, no one country ever wiped it out completely. And in the third world, things remained not much better than they hail always been. But, hell, they were free to buy our superdrugs weren't they? ”

Well, no, they weren’t. They couldn’t afford them. Profits, as ever, came first. As they do with HIV research, even while HIV is forming what the same article designated a “devil’s alliance” with TB, not that it’s on the increase again in west. Who is most at risk from TB? The poorest and weakest members of society of course, the elderly homeless and immigrants shoved into cramped and poverty-stricken living conditions. But as the welfare state is dismantled, it seems highly likely that TB will spread further, and it will spread first through the poorer sections of the working class. As the Guardian article

again puts it:

". . .  tuberculosis is universally recognised as the disease of poverty. And as such, it acts as a chillingly efficient barometer of the human physical condition. Today, that barometer has swung right off the scale throughout the third world, and at the same time it is beginning to rise in Britain and other advanced capitalist states. ”

Reformism has failed and how the reformist project is collapsing; as it does so, evils we thought were wiped out or at least under control, are coming back with increasing vengeance. TB is not just a disease, in the contemporary world it’s also a symptom of the failure of reformism within capitalism.

In the film Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard says of American hypocrisy in war: “We cut them in half with a machine gun and we give them a band-aid.” Reformism was always a similarly inadequate response to capitalism’s violence in the name of profit, trying to patch up the symptoms of the disease that capitalism itself is. Now, though, the ruling class can’t even afford to keep the first aid kit stocked up. It’s high time the rest of us realised the necessity of taking on and eradicating the disease itself.

Jonathan Clay

Social Cut-backs or Social Revolution (1996)

From the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the past the big argument in the working class movement was
 “Social Reform or Social Revolution?” At present, as there have
been no beneficial reforms for over twenty years and with none on 
offer, the choice is rather “Social Regression or 
Social Revolution?”

Over the years a running argument has gone on between reformists and revolutionary socialists. Between those, on the one hand, who wanted to concentrate on pursuing improvements within capitalism and, on the other hand, those like ourselves who wanted to concentrate on ending rather than reforming capitalism.

The reformists argued that reforms were worth pursuing because they bring immediate benefits to people. We didn’t deny this could happen but pointed out that reforms could never be anything more than palliatives and that they could never solve the problems they were directed at.

We added—and this was the most important factor for us—that campaigning for reforms was not a sound way to build a socialist party as it would attract the support of reform-minded people who would eventually drag the party in a reformist direction. Campaigning for reforms diverted time and energy away from campaigning for socialism, so postponing the achievement of the only framework within which the problems could be solved and so in fact prolonging the existence of those problems and the suffering they caused.

What was required was an immediate change in the basis of society from class ownership to common ownership; in other words, a social revolution.

We have to admit that, although we won the argument at an intellectual level, we didn’t win in terms of convincing even a large minority of those who wanted to further the interests of the working class or of those who considered themselves socialists. Most of these felt that, if reforms could be had, they should be pursued. To their way of thinking, socialism was a long way off, so what was wrong in trying to get improvements via reforms in the meantime? Some reformists called themselves “possiblists” to emphasise that their policy was to pursue something that was possible as something that was achievable in the immediate future, “something now".

In some ways this was an understandable (though mistaken) attitude but it had consequences. Reforms, as measures introduced by governments, have to be pursued by political means; which implies the need for a reformist political party. In Britain this was the Labour Party and, this century, hundreds of thousands of people put their time and energies into building up Labour as the political vehicle for obtaining reforms within capitalism

Reformists in power

Labour, in power, did introduce some reforms but the main purpose of any government is not to introduce reforms but to run the common affairs of the capitalist class of a country. So, in assuming government power to introduce reforms, Labour also assumed responsibility for running capitalism. As, however, capitalism by its very nature is a system based on the exploitation of wage-labour for profit and can never be made to run in the interest of the exploited majority, anybody taking on responsibility for running the political side of capitalism has to do so on capitalism’s terms.

Capitalism can only run as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits and against the interest of the useful majority of wage and salary earners and their dependants. This is why all Labour governments ended up taking measures against the interests of the majority (such as restraining wages or opposing strikes) and disappointing, by cutting spending in such fields as health, housing, education and pensions, those who saw them as a vehicle for obtaining reforms.

This has always been the limitation of reformism. Capitalism can never be reformed so as to work in the interest of the majority, so the most that reforms are only ever going to be able to do is to alleviate some problem a little but never solve it. Such reforms as capitalism can be pressured into granting are always granted on its terms, basically, as long as they are not too expensive and as long as there is something in them for the capitalist class or some section of it—in terms, for instance, of a better trained or less inclined to be sick workforce.

Any reformist party that becomes the government has to work to capitalism’s agenda not its own of trying to improve working class conditions. If profits and reforms conflict it is profits that must come first.

Profits before reforms

n the first half of the 1970s the background to the reform-revolution argument changed. Since the post-war boom came to a final end with the world economic crisis of 1973-4 there have been no beneficial reforms, there have been no improvements in the fields of housing, education, health, pensions and state benefits generally. Quite the opposite in fact, the reforms that existed at that time have been gradually whittled down.

No government in Britain since the mid-70s has introduced any reform. All of them have cut back on reforms. All of them have been anti-reform governments. The basic reason for this has been the increased competition on world markets that the end of the post-war boom heralded. In order to provide businesses operating from within their frontiers with the means to remain competitive all governments have had to take measures to increase profits.

Profits are the source of funds businesses draw on to invest in the more up-to- date equipment and productive methods needed to keep their productivity and costs in line with those of their competitors. Profits are also the main source of government revenue. Governments produce nothing and so have to be maintained out of the surplus value produced by workers over and above the value of the goods and services they consume.

Apart from what they borrow, governments obtain their income via taxes. Although taxes don’t all fall directly on profits as corporation tax and income tax on dividends do, all taxes fall indirectly on profits. This is because direct taxes on wages and salaries and indirect taxes on the goods and services that workers consume increase the amount of money workers must have to be in a position to maintain their working skills. They increase the cost of the workers’ consumption. To take account of this, employers have to pay higher wages and salaries, which reduces their profits. However, the benefit of these higher nominal wages doesn’t go to the worker; it goes via taxes to the government. The result would be the same if workers paid no direct or indirect taxes and received lower wages and the government taxed profits directly.

Government income and profits come out of the same pot, the surplus value produced by the workers. The more there is for one, the less there is for the other. During the post-war boom this latent conflict did not come to the surface except occasionally during balance of payments crises and the relatively mild recessions of the period. With the world market expanding, sales were relatively easy and profits were rising. Most of the time capitalist firms were able to let go without too much problem a portion of their profits to finance government spending, including on reforms, especially as the result of this reform spending—a relatively healthy, well trained and contented workforce—would benefit them in the long run in terms of a more productive and therefore more profit- producing labour force. Despite this levy they still had enough profits left to accumulate as new machinery and more up-to-date productive methods.

When the post-war boom came to an end, however, and the period of intense world market competition opened up, the situation changed. Capitalist firms needed all the profits they could to stay competitive and the cry went up “cut government spending”, “cut taxes”. Governments had no alternative but to comply. In fact the political and economic history of Britain since the mid-70s is the history of the means adopted to reduce the share of surplus value taken by governments, so as to leave more for profits.

Although this policy is particularly associated with Thatcher it actually began under the 1974-79 Callaghan Labour government, even if reluctantly. Labour had started by trying to spend its way out of the 1973-4 slump, i.e. by increasing government spending, but had been forced by economic circumstances (as relayed via the IMF) to do a U-turn and cut spending on reforms.

When the government sought to cut spending by local councils, both on wages and on the services they provided, the result was the notorious Winter of Discontent—when rubbish piled up uncollected and bodies were left unburied—which the Labour Party has only recently succeeded in living down.

Undoing reformism

Thatcher, however, showed no reluctance. In fact she made it a crusade. When she was elected leader of the Tory Party in 1975 she declared that her aim was to “destroy socialism”. By this she meant not socialism (which of course hadn’t been established to be destroyed) but the house that the post-war Labour government built, and the Tory governments of the 1950s maintained, of a capitalist economy with a large state sector and a Welfare State providing benefits as of right. Destroying “socialism” meant destroying this and, unusual as it is for a politician to honour a promise, she did.

The nationalised industries were sold off to the private sector. Local council spending was capped and services which people had come to take for granted, including help for the elderly, the sick and the handicapped, were axed or charged for. Council housing too was sold off. Market forces were introduced into the NHS and prescription and dental charges increased enormously. The conception of the Welfare State as a state that provided benefits as of right to people in return for the contributions they paid was abandoned and the old National Assistance (previously Poor Law) system where benefits were only paid after a means test to people in dire poverty was reintroduced.

Not only have there been no beneficial reforms since the mid-70s, there are not likely to be any in the foreseeable future either. Such struggles as reformists have engaged in over the past twenty years have been defensive, not struggles to achieve some new reform but struggles to prevent some previously-achieved reform from being taken away.

This, too, changed the terms of the argument between reformists and revolutionary socialists. When reforms are achieved the hope is there, even if illusory, that they may be steps forward towards a better society ; reformists are able to claim, as some used to, that a slow accumulation of reforms was the way to socialism; and ordinary workers will be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. But in a period when reforms are being taken away this argument can’t be used. Who can claim that slowing down things getting worse is a step towards socialism or any sort of better society?

Back to charity

How have reformists reacted to the disappearance of the only thing—the availability of reforms—that gave their mistaken position an air of plausibility? In two ways. One has been to cease to be reformists by coming to accept the present, unreformed capitalist status quo. This is the option the Labour Party has chosen. The other has been to retreat into charity and individual case work, the option taken by those who have gone into charities like Shelter, Child Poverty Action Group, Low Pay Unit, Age Concern and the like. Both options are an admission of the failure of the original reformist project of going into parliament to get legislation passed that would improve the condition of the working class.

The Labour Party is still a “reformist” party in the broad sense of the term, as a party that mistakenly believes it can make capitalism work in the interest of the majority. But in this it doesn’t differ from the Tory and Liberal parties which suffer from the same illusion. In that sense they, too, are reformist parties. But reformism was originally a current within working class opinion which sought to improve working class conditions by means of social reform legislation.

Because it now accepts that it must govern capitalism on its terms and according to its economic laws, the only reforms Labour now offers are not social reforms but constitutional reforms such as the abolition of hereditary members of the I louse of Lords or regional government for Scotland and Wales. Unlike social reforms, these don’t cost anything and so won’t be a burden on profits but, equally because they don’t cost anything, they don’t offer anything tangible to people and leave their conditions—and problems—completely unchanged.

All they amount to is rearranging the furniture, a game the Liberals and Nationalists are into too but with different proposals as to where to put the furniture. Apart from this, politics today is a choice of which gang of professional politicians is to form the government and preside over the capitalist system as it is without trying to extract social reforms from it. That is no longer on the agenda. Reformism has now become a fringe political movement, as represented by Arthur Scargill’s breakaway SLP.

The campaigning charities have come on the scene more or less avowedly as mere stretcher-bearers dealing with the worst casualties of capitalism. Their aim is not even the old reformist one of trying to improve the conditions of the whole working class by social reform legislation; it is only to try to help out the worst cases. They don’t think in terms of solving the problem they have targeted. They act on the assumption that the problem and their charity work will have to continue indefinitely, a never-ending struggle not, as with the reformist struggles of the past, to achieve and maintain social reforms but only to help out a tiny minority of those affected. They do demand legislative changes and they do ask for more money to be spent to help their clients, but the most they have ever got is the removal of some minor anomaly in the treatment of similar cases.

This is what “possibilism” has been reduced to—dealing with individual worst cases—as this is all that is possible under capitalism today in terms of social action.

The argument for reformism was weak enough anyway but, faced with this bleak social prospect, it’s got nothing going for it at all.

Adam Buick