Sting in the Tail: Open Letter (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open Letter

The Scorpion's Nest, 

52 Clapham High Street 

1 February 1991

To David Bellamy,

Botanist and TV Personality 

Dear David,

We read how you told the annual conference of the CBI that, instead of cutting their profits, environmental care could, by using "new technologies", bring them new profits.

Bet this went down well with the manufacturers of the necessary equipment (Mr Heseltine told the conference that the market for this could be worth billions) but possibly the companies you hope will buy it weren’t quite so enthusiastic.

You see, David, capitalism is a very competitive system and every company must keep its costs down even at the expense of the environment. That's why we have pollution but maybe you knew that?

And those profits you spoke so approvingly of, they are the unpaid labour of the useful class In society. It's legal robbery, David, but perhaps you didn’t know that?

Anyway, although we enjoy your TV programmes it's obvious to us that you know more about the environment than you do about the economic laws of capitalism which make such a mess of It.

Words of Wisdom

  "The 1960s were good years for liberalism; a fair amount of money was spent on poverty programs and relatively nothing happened. Enter new leaders and new priorities. Why didn't earlier programs work? Two possibilities are open:

1. We didn't spend enough money, we didn't make sufficient creative efforts, or (and this makes any established leader jittery) we cannot solve these problems without a fundamental social and economic transformation of society; or 2. the programs failed because their recipients are inherently what they are — blaming the victims."

(Stephen Jay Gould in Ever Since Darwin Page 47.)

Dismal Johnny

The press made great play of the different style of government we could expect with the demise of Margaret Thatcher and the advent of John Major.

Mrs Thatcher, it was said, was the hard-edged, no-nonsense type of prime minister while Mr Major would prove to be a decent, compassionate man with a social conscience.

A couple of years ago Mrs Thatcher in one of her photo opportunity visits to the depressed North East of England reprimanded demonstrators and branded the unemployed as "Moaning Minnies". In January Mr Major claimed that such problems as rising unemployment and evictions were being exaggerated by "Dismal Jimmies".

His speech to Newcastle businessmen was made on 8 January. Next morning It was announced that the Ravenscraig Steel Mill In Lanarkshire was to close with the loss of 1,200 Jobs.

Doubtlessly there will be some Moaning Minnies and Dismal Jimmies among the ungrateful families of steel workers who will fall to appreciate the different styles of Thatcher and Major.

Bitter Harvest

George Bush began the year with a visit down-under during which he extolled the "warm kinship" between Americans and Australians.

But when angry Australian farmers demonstrated against US subsidies to American farmers which they claim costs them 1 billion dollars a year in lost overseas markets, the "warm kinship"rapidly cooled.

Bush told the demonstrators:

  While I don't like having to use these remedies, I will safeguard the Interests of American farmers.

The Guardian 3 January 

So free-marketeer Bush defends subsidies to American farmers while at the same time he is bitterly denouncing the EEC for subsidising Its farmers

1992 will provide the usual bumper crop of bare-faced, hypocritical politicians. That is one harvest that never falls!

Hard to Credit

The news that Canada's Labourites, the New Democratic Party, had won the provincial elections In British Columbia was interesting only because the party they ousted was the Social Credit Party.

Social Credit was a 1930's movement whose case was built around the notion that banks "create credit" by lending money they do not have. Why, they argued, shouldn't governments do the same? The resulting increase in purchasing power would bring prosperity, banish slumps, etc.

Parties holding this view sprang up all over the world but although most of them have vanished some modern books on banking and economics still peddle the nonsense that banks lend more than they have, so this unsound theory is still around and not only In Canada.

Still Clueless

Channel Four's "A Week In Politics" (22 December) had four Labour ex-cabinet ministers discussing the problems a Labour government will face if elected. Present were Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Barbara Castle and Merlyn Rees and they went at it with typical sound and fury.

Benn said Labour must "face-down" International finance and not the unions but Healey replied that "excessive union demands" must be resisted and cited some left-wing councils who wore currently doing that.

"Labour should spend its way out of recession" said Benn, but Healey rubbished this and warned that people might have to "make sacrifices". Castle claimed Labour could finance extra spending by cutting ’Tory waste" while Rees urged a return to Keynesian intervention.

So despite the lessons of decades in cabinet and over 100 years as MPs between them, the four still believe, whatever their differences, that Labour can solve capitalism's contradictions. Some people never learn.

Happy Families

The new statistical bulletin Homicide In Scotland 1986 - 90 reveals that of the 589 people accused of killing in Scotland during that period only 193 were strangers to the victims.

A further 271 were lovers, friends or acquaintances of those killed, but the other 125 comprised 45 husbands or wives, 32 sons or daughters, 23 parents, 4 brothers or sisters and 21 other relatives!

So our own families are among the most dangerous people we know and yet capitalism's apologists tell us that the nuclear family "holds together the fabric of society".

What Do We Stand For? (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists advocate state ownership and state control, don't they?

No. The word "socialist" has been badly distorted in the last 75 years. The main culprit was Lenin — followed by the Bolsheviks and their admirers all over the world. The Socialist Party pointed out from 1917 onwards that Russia wasn't socialist and could not be at that stage of its development. The other main advocates of state control in this country are, of course, the Labour Party.

When it suits them, they call themselves socialist; when they think it will lose them votes, they don't. One of their politicians in the past defined socialism as "whatever the Labour Party happens to be doing at the moment". In fact, there is nothing socialist about what they do.

What do socialists like yourself stand for, then?

Socialism for us is the next stage in social evolution — a far more free and ecologically responsible society which will succeed this one — if we are quick enough. Our present political/economic system threatens to ruin the planet in lire way it is going at present.

The majority of the world's population need to bring about radical democratic change without delay if we are to meet human needs, preserve the Earth's ecological balance and avoid the large-scale use of nuclear and biological weapons.

What is it that you think needs changing?

We contend that it is urgently necessary to move on to a more advanced way of organising production and distribution in society: one in keeping with the tremendous strides made by science and technology. At the moment we tend to regard "the economy" rather in the way we regard the weather; as beyond control, with its booms and slumps like summers and winters. And. as long as we leave things as they are, that’s how it operates — out of control. But it is a human-made system, a social construct. And it is now far too crude and erratic to serve a modern society's needs.

What makes you say that the economic system is crude?

Its price structure is a poor, one-dimensional tally system which ought long ago to have been superseded by much more complex and sensitive social control. Modern information systems and computing power make it feasible for anyone, anywhere in the world, to know far more about any aspect of the world's production and distribution than was even imaginable fifty years ago — and to find it out within a few minutes. This makes possible a highly sensitive and complex global network of all the production and distribution processes. And it would mean that, in place of the enormous financial structure of present society, we should have a much more qualitatively rich and socially widespread system of information and control. Everyone in a socialist society would be involved in the control, as they would in the supplying and receiving of information.

But why should you want to change an economic system that has proved itself, and been refined over two hundred years or more?

The system we live under is not simply a way of organising society's production and distribution. It is a system of accumulating wealth — in the form of land, roads, bridges, tunnels, mines, oil refineries, factories, farms, office blocks, ships — all the paraphernalia of modern high-tech society.

The significant social fact about this wealth is that it is not owned by the great majority of the population. The result is that they have little or no say in how all this wealth is used, either from a human or an ecological point of view.

One of the most worrying things is that there is little deliberate human control at all. because the accumulation of wealth — its expansion through profit and reinvestment — is the overriding force driving society. Those who try to divert it or go against it get swept aside. Most people, about 90 per cent of the population, have no means of living of their own. They have no choice but to offer themselves for work to those who do own the factories, farms, offices and so on. for wages or salaries. For about fifty of the best years of their lives this work, under someone else's control, takes the bulk of their waking hours, with perhaps another hour or two commuting to and from work. This is not freedom, but economic bondage, and cannot be anything else under the ruthless drive for profit.

Freedom to stop doing a boss's bidding and become destitute and a social outcast is not freedom at all. It is compulsion. Moreover, the fact they we offer ourselves for jobs does not mean that we shall always get them or keep them. We live the whole of our adult lives under this pressure, this insecurity.

But surely the present system provides steadily rising living standards for most people?

This ignores that the insecurity is made far worse by the fact that, periodically and inevitably, the spiral process of reinvesting profits to make yet more profits overreaches itself — the productivity of factories and farms cannot be increased fast enough to keep ahead of the increased demand for profit.

Throughout the economy, profit ceases to be sufficient to expand production and then, as has happened throughout the last two centuries and is happening now, we have what is called a recession /slump /depression/ crisis. Then wage and salary earners are thrown out of work, production is cut back; companies and individuals go bankrupt in their thousands; many of those with mortgage or hire purchase debts are unable to maintain their payments and have their homes and belongings repossessed.

Millions are prevented from working at all, while those still in work are often driven to the point of exhaustion every day. If production were cut back because people did not want or need the goods and services, that would make some sense, but that is far from being the ease. Production is cut (and must be cut in this economic system, regardless of whether people need the food or medicines or whatever) because production has ceased to be profitable.

But if state control of the economy is not the answer, what is?

We agree that attempts at state control or interference in this process usually makes it worse, as has happened in Russia and the Eastern Bloc. But, left to itself, the economic system has become hopelessly inadequate for what should be a modern, highly developed, global society.

It's like an old steam tram carried over into the age of supersonic flight. People still resist the increasing pressure to make a radical change in society, but socialists believe that until that change is made, symptoms of the incongruity will get worse; the increase in crime, the decay of inner cities, the degradation of the environment, the impoverishment of Third World countries, the recurrence of famines and disease outbreaks, the outbreaks of armed conflicts around the world, the increase in the power of states and the harshness of their regimes.

Although there is nearly always state involvement, underlying all these are economic causes. They can only be improved when we decide to dispense with economics altogether and take full social control of our production and distribution. And that will be socialism.

Socialist election campaign (1992)

Party News from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plans to contest the Holborn and St Pancras constituency in London in the coming election are going ahead. Our comrade Richard Headicar has been appointed the candidate and a Socialist Standard sales campaign has been launched in the constituency. Further details of the campaign can be obtained from: Michael Ghebre, 169 Royal College St, London NW1 OSG (tel: 071-482 XXXX).

Meanwhile, thanks to further gratefully-received contributions from readers and collections, the amount in the Election Fund has reached £1157, well on the way towards our target of £2000 set to mount a credible campaign. Any further contributions should be sent to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St. London SW4 7UN.

Uncommon Tragedy (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1968 the journal Science published an article by an American biologist, Garrett Hardin, entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons”. Its central argument, that common property leads to ecological ruin, has since become “part of the conventional wisdom in environmental studies, resource science and policy, economics, ecology and political science” (Human Ecology, No 1,1990).

Hardin did not exactly break new ground. Others had already elaborated a theory of the commons along similar lines. Nevertheless the publication of his article struck a chord at a time of growing environmental concern. It echoed the prevailing ethos of ecological pessimism articulated by the emerging environmental lobby and, more particularly, by the authoritarian anti-humanism of its neo-Malthusian wing.

Hardin set out to demonstrate the implications that different systems of property rights had for the sustainable use of natural resources. As the title of his article suggests, his main concern was with a system in which these resources were held in common (in the sense of not being monopolised by anyone).

Unrealistic model

He gave the example of a rangeland on which a population of herdsmen were able to graze their cattle without restriction. While the benefits of adding a head of cattle to his herd would accrue to the individual herdsman alone, the environmental costs of this decision would be shared by all the herdsmen. Thus, from the individual’s viewpoint, these costs would be largely “externalised”. That would encourage him as a rational economic actor to increase his herd still further—and thereby become richer—since the benefits would outweigh the private costs this entailed.

The problem, according to Hardin, was that every other herdsman would be inclined to do the same and thus, ultimately, the combined effect of their actions would be to increase the number of cattle on the commons beyond its carrying capacity. In short, common ownership of the rangeland will lead to tragedy. That the private ownership of the cattle might be equally implicated in his scenario was a point that appears to have escaped Hardin’s notice.

Some economists have tended to see the solution to this problem as something to be imposed from outside or above: leave the existing system of property rights intact but introduce measures such as cattle taxes or quotas to force herdsmen to reduce their stocking rates. An alternative approach, favoured by Hardin, is to enclose, or privatise, the commons. Private ownership, goes the argument, would compel the individual herdsman to bear the full costs of any decision to increase his herd and thus persuade him to maintain a stocking rate compatible with the sustainable use of grazing land. It would also provide the necessary incentive to upgrade pasture because the benefits of doing so would be similarly “internalised”.

Both these approaches concur on one fundamental point: there is no possibility of an internal solution to the “tragedy of the commons”. After all, if there was, there would be no reason to expect a tragedy. Yet it is precisely on this point that the theory is coming under fire.

Wherever a commons has existed it has been associated with a complex pattern of institutional rules governing a distinct community of users; unregulated open access regimes are more typical of sparsely populated frontier zones. As John Reader puts it:

  access to the commons was restricted by entitlement; use was regulated to ensure that no individual could pursue his own interest to the detriment of others. Far from bringing ruin to all, the true commons functioned to keep its exploitation within sustainable limits. (New Scientist, 8 September 1988).

There are numerous examples that bear this out, from the traditional Japanese village to Pacific island communities. Some have emerged only recently, such as the case of a number of Turkish coastal fisheries, but many contemporary examples have been in existence for hundreds of years. Indeed, it is the very persistence of the commons as an institution which testifies, in the view of some, to its inherent stability.

Carlisle Ford Runge has presented a cogent critique of Hardin’s theory (American Journal of Agricultural Economics, November 1981), in which he argues that it is not the existence of a commons that is the problem but uncertainty in the context of interdependent decision-making. Hardin assumes that the decisions reached by his herdsmen are made in isolation from one another. A more appropriate model, Runge suggests, permits communication between the parties concerned. In this way a compromise could be struck between them which results in a better outcome than would otherwise be possible.

Within actually existing pastoral societies such mutual assurance is secured through the institutionalisation of rules that allow herders to adapt their behaviour in the light of the expected behaviour of others. Once established, herders have a vested interest in maintaining such rules through the exercise of moral sanctions because of the high opportunity costs involved in finding an alternative. Group size may be an important consideration insofar as it affects the transmission of information within, and the cohesiveness of, the group.

Significantly, Hardin felt compelled to qualify his theory in his response to Reader’s article when he explained that the title of his article should have been “The tragedy of the unmanaged commons” (New Scientist, 22 October 1988). But since the commons as a rule are not unmanaged, this made the whole relevance of his theory questionable.

Land enclosures

When we look at the historical development of private property it is abundantly clear that what characterises this process above all is its coercive nature. The gradual demise of the commons in Britain from the 15th century onwards was not the result of their decline into ecological ruin. It was the deliberate result of the state’s policy of land enclosure to meet the agricultural capitalists’ demand for more land.

This same process of land enclosure is still going on in many parts of the Third World today. In the colonial era, conservationist arguments were often used to justify the appropriation of other people’s land. Communal tenure was dismissed as “primitive” and “unscientific”, and conducive to poor economic performance as well as environmental deterioration. By and large, these same attitudes continue to inform the policies of many post-colonial regimes. As Vink and Kassier point out, there are “numerous examples of livestock development projects in sub-Saharan Africa which have, implicitly or explicitly, been based on the tragedy of the commons hypothesis” (South African Journal of Economics, No 2, 1987). Such projects have sought to substitute private for communal tenure but have been “characterised by a pervading sense of failure”.

There is scant evidence to show that environmental management of rangelands has improved as a result of introducing private ownership. On the contrary, the undermining of communal institutions in the Sahel and Southern Africa has led to increased overgrazing. Land enclosures in drought-prone semi-arid areas preclude the application of traditional risk-avoidance grazing strategies involving the movement of cattle to less vulnerable areas. Moreover, the commercialisation of agriculture accompanying the spread of private tenure tends to make the private rancher vulnerable to the vagaries of the market. So, while, in theory, private tenure may induce them to maintain sustainable stocking rates by internalising their environmental costs, economic pressures often force them to disregard these costs to ensure short-term viability.

The social consequences of land enclosures have almost invariably proved calamitous. While some may benefit—usually government officials and multinational corporations—the high transaction and enforcement costs (such as stock-proof fencing) preclude most from participation in such schemes. This results in large-scale land eviction, increased inequality and rising discontent.

The small yeoman farmers evicted by the Enclosure Acts in Britain had little option but to migrate to the towns were some prospect of employment awaited them. In much of the Third World today, however, urban employment opportunities are few and far between and are declining still further under the current fad for “structural adjustment”. Many of those displaced by land enclosures tend to end up in the more ecologically marginal areas which are subsequently degraded under this strain.

Property and pollution

Despite his advocacy of private property, Hardin had to recognise its limitations where it concerned other kinds of natural resources to which—unlike his example of a rangeland—it was difficult, if not impossible, to prevent open access. As he put it. “the air and the waters surrounding us cannot be so readily fenced”.

But he saw the tragedy of the commons reappearing here in another form, as pollution, when a “rational man finds that his share of the costs of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them”. Even where privatisation on a limited scale could be introduced the basic problem would remain:

  The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream—whose property extends to the middle of the stream—often has difficulty seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy the waters flowing past his door.

For Hardin, the solution to this problem necessarily entailed some infringement of the rights of property owners. In this regard, he saw a role for the state. However, the difficulty with this approach is that, though the state may have more room for manoeuvre, it is subject to the same competitive pressures that face industry on which it depends for its tax revenue. Ironically, state enterprises are often among the worst transgressors when it comes to pollution.

Hardin’s theory of the commons is basically an attempt to vindicate the principle of private property in respect of the Earth’s resources. As such it can be shown to be both empirically suspect and theoretically unsound. In the counter-arguments it has provoked, we can glimpse the potential of a sustainable alternative to the imposed monopoly on what should be our common heritage.

Robin Cox

Socialism Now! (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is on the agenda — and right now. But it will not come by people putting their trust in leaders. It will be established when the vast majority of workers understand it, want it and democratically organise for it in a party which is not out to mend capitalism but to end it.

Socialism means the total abolition of capitalism. An end to private and state ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. Production will be solely for use, with all people having free access to the common store of goods and services, instead of production for sale with a view to profit.

To win workers to organise for socialism is no small task and it is easy to be demoralised or to deceive yourself that there is an easier way to initiate the new system. But there is no alternative to the hard work being carried out by the Socialist Party — whose sole aim is socialism — and the sooner those who want socialism join us, the sooner it will be achieved.

Caught In The Act: At Issue (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Issue

Months before polling day the 1992 general election has got under way. Along with the frantic politician’s speeches, the polls and the press conferences we are being deluged with what Tony Benn would call "ishoos" — diverting and irrelevant matter which the politicians exploit in order to undermine their opponents and suck up votes for themselves.

One such issue is the argument about whether taxes would be higher under a Labour government than under the Tories. In this argument tradition is powerful: the Conservatives have always represented themselves as the party of low taxation, fixing Labour in the voters’ minds as the avaricious collector, and profligate spender of taxes. The Labour Party, skewered on this attack, have had a hard time pointing out that it is hardly justified by the evidence and that they are as prudent and stingy about the finances of British capitalism as any Tory could be.

What both parties ignore is that the whole issue is irrelevant because the majority of people — the working class — do not effectively pay taxes and indeed can't pay them. Our income is determined by what it takes to reproduce ourselves as wage labour, whatever apparent deductions are on our wage-slips at the end of the month or week.

Taxes are a charge on the class who can afford to pay them and in whose interests they are collected — the capitalist, employing class. The state machine in all of its manifestations exists to protect and maintain the position of the capitalist class and they pay for it to do that. Workers who allow themselves to be misled about this and who vote for one capitalist party or the other on the basis of whether they will raise or lower taxes are wasting their votes and denying their own political power.

Protection

Another point at which the Tories are making some powerful attacks is the Labour Party policy towards the armed forces. Their ease here is that a Labour government, influenced by the pacifists and nuclear disarmers who infest their party membership, would reduce the British forces to impotence and so leave us undefended. This is always a popular issue — after all we need "our" soldiers, sailors and airmen to prevent the Germans, Russians, French, Japanese or whichever group happens to be the enemy at the time from pouring into this country and raping our grandmothers while they generally defile the British Way Of Life. On the other hand the Tories, their ranks thick with ex-officers, can be trusted to protect All That We Hold Dear.

Reality is rather different. As we have seen under the present government Tory ministers do not shrink from slashing back the forces to what British capitalism can afford. While Labour has done the same thing in similar circumstances, they have always made it clear that in government they are quite unmoved by the woolier opinions of their membership: they have supported every one of British capitalism’s wars and they have maintained, protected and used British forces whenever they saw this as necessary, they could not have put it any clearer than in their 1989 Policy Review: "Labour is determined that in the 1990s and beyond, Britain shall be properly defended ..."

In any case, the people who will vote about this in their millions do not have a Britain to defend; all they have is their degraded status as workers. The issue of which party will keep the larger forces should not intrude into the polling booths.

Property

So is there no important issue? Is nothing at slake in the election? Well, as a start, we can say that whether the Labour or Tory party wins, the class structure of society will not be changed in any significant way. One effect of this will be that the inequalities in society — the existence of riches and poverty will continue to be something politicians promise to do something about.

A recent study by Inland Revenue, dealing with marketable wealth — goods which can be sold quickly as well as savings and investments — stated that in 1989 the richest ten per cent of the population owned 53 per cent — more than the other 90 per cent put together., the poorest 50 per cent owned just six per cent of the wealth. These figures will not surprise anyone who has been concerned to look behind the political sham fight to the real issues. They will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that poverty is basic to capitalism and will not be eradicated by voting for the parties who support capitalism's continuing.

New Image

In the run up to polling day the Tories have had to confront the problems of ridding themselves of the lingering image of what has been called Thatcherism. It is instructive to observe how they have set about this task. The object has been to wipe out the memory of our being subjected to the harsh but bracing winds of the market system and to convince us that we are now cossetted in the warmth and comfort of a new, caring Tory Party. It has been to replace Thatcher’s style as a strident, abrasive dictator with Major's image as the nice guy next door.

This has been done with a ruthless thoroughness of which the Tories, experienced as they are in political in-fighting, are the masters. It has been done with no regard to the fact that Thatcher's style and characteristics were once represented to us, by the very people who are now trying to eradicate them, as vitally necessary to our welfare and even our survival.

To some people — the Tories hope to a lot of voters — this will come as an easeful relief. But should we accept so easily that we can be manipulated in this way? Is a social system supportable when it requires such massive cynicism to defend its political representatives? What justifies all this investment in deceit? The answer is that elections are times when society can be up for grabs. The working class —the majority of the voters — do not have to choose between one bunch of cynical impotents and another, so that capitalism carries on. They can replace this social system with one based on human interests with all that that implies. That is the issue at the election — food for thought and for conscious political action.

Ivan

Russia drops the pretence (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (or Union of So-called Socialist Republics, to be more accurate) is no more. When, on 25 December, the red flag over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time, the 74-year association of Russia and “socialism” came to an end. In each of the member-states of the new Commonwealth of Independent States nationalism has replaced Leninism as the official ideology.

Socialists can only welcome the abandonment by the Russian authorities of any claim to be socialist. That claim was never justified, not under Lenin any more than under Stalin, and did uncalculable damage to the cause of genuine socialism. Now Russia can be seen as what it always was in reality: one other capitalist state in a world of capitalist states.

What has happened in Russia—the emergence of a political regime relying more on the consent of the ruled than on their coercion—was bound to happen sooner or later since a developed capitalist economy cannot be run for any length of time on police-state lines, at least not without creating serious economic difficulties.

A modern industrial economy requires an educated working class to operate it, and such a working class cannot be bullied into working efficiently. Their co-operation has to be sought, and to this end they have to be granted certain rights both at work and in society generally, such as the right to form trade unions that can bargain over wages and working conditions and the right to have a say via the ballot box in the choice of political leaders.

State capitalism

All developed capitalist countries have been forced to grant the working class such rights. So it was possible to predict that this would happen sooner or later in Russia too. but not precisely when and how. We detected the beginning of this process in Russia under Khrushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s and it seemed then that some sort of political democracy would emerge there within a decade or so. But then came Brezhnev. And we must confess to being as surprised as anyone else at the speed with which events have moved in Russia and Eastern Europe over the past three years.

The point is that the actual course of events depends on the precise historical background and on the choices made by those involved—the ruling class and their political representatives, and the working class. Those who seized political power in Russia in 1917 used it to force the pace of capitalist development there. The state was used not only to drive the peasants off the land and into the factories, mines and construction sites (as had happened in the early stages of capitalism in England too) but also to organise the extraction of surplus value from the newly-created working class and its accumulation as more and more capital, a task which in other capitalist countries had been left to the private initiative of capitalist enterprises.

As a result the type of capitalism that emerged in Russia was one where the state was the capitalist. As the state was monopolised by a clique of Party and state officials, known in Russian as the “nomenklatura”, this made them the effective owners of the means of production, even if collectively as a body rather than as individuals, and enabled them to enjoy a privileged lifestyle.

From the point of view of Russian capitalism, this system was relatively successful in that it built up an industrial infrastructure which allowed Russia to emerge from the Second World War as the second greatest military power in the world. However, by the 1950s there were signs that it was beginning to become a drag on further capitalist development in Russia in the same way that previously the Tsarist regime had been.

An educated urban working class had emerged that could no longer be treated in the same brutal way as the dispossessed peasants who had been slave-driven into building Russia's basic industries. A section of the Russian ruling class realised this and under Khrushchev a number of reforms were made: Stalin's methods were criticised, the labour code was made less strict, and central state control was relaxed in both the economy and the field of ideas. Another section of the ruling class, however, saw where this would logically lead: to some measure of political democracy and the end of the nomenklatura system and their privileged position in society. Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 and Brezhnev took over.

Brezhnev pursued the policy of trying to carry out economic reform while leaving the political structure—the one-party state and its privileged nomenklatura—unchanged. It didn’t work. The working class in effect refused to co-operate. "They pretend to pay us. and we pretend to work", as a popular saying of the Brezhnev era put it. Industrial development and productivity continued to stagnate. It eventually became clear to the dominant elements within the Russian ruling class that the process begun under Khrushchev in the 1960s would have to be resumed if economic stagnation was not to undermine Russia’s military strength. Gorbachev was chosen in 1985 as the man to preside over this process.

Ruling class split

Glasnost (“openness”) was introduced and the working class was allowed a degree of freedom of speech such as they had never known before, not even under Khrushchev. Gorbachev and the section of the ruling class he represented wanted to use the working class against another section of the ruling class which opposed his policies and wished to retain the old political regime. It was a classic case of the working class being drawn into the political arena by one section of the ruling class to settle scores with another section, as had occurred in Britain in the 19th century when the industrial capitalists sought the support of the working class against the landed aristocracy.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that, once in the political arena, the working class were not going to settle for anything less than the complete elimination of the nomenklatura as a privileged ruling class. They didn’t know what they wanted to put in its place but they did know that they wanted the privileged Party bosses, who had exploited and duped them for so many years, off their backs. In this respect. Yeltsin who embraced this view at a relatively early stage proved to be a shrewder politician than Gorbachev who continued to believe that the old regime could be gradually phased out of existence without upsetting the nomenklatura too much.

In the event it was the stupidity of the conservative wing of the nomenklatura that precipitated events. In staging a coup in August against Gorbachev, they brought about the complete destruction of the old political system. Most of the armed forces refused to follow the putschists and Gorbachev returned to power. Within a few days the Communist Party had been banned. As this party wasn’t a party in the conventional sense of the term but the political institution which allowed the nomenklatura to control the state and maintain its privileges, this amounted to the abolition of the nomenklatura. With this act in September 1991 Russia’s political structure caught up with its economic base.

Decolonization

Effective power passed into the hands of Yeltsin who had been elected President of Russia in a country-wide poll (whereas Gorbachev had merely been appointed by a parliament largely composed of nomenklaturists). Yeltsin's analysis of what to do to save Russia's status as a great power in the capitalist world was more radical than anything Gorbachev was prepared to contemplate: granting independence to Russia’s colonies in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as to the Ukraine and Belorussia.

This represents the break-up of the Soviet Union as a single political unit, but since Russia made up 90 percent of the former territory and 72 percent of the former population of the USSR it is not all that of a sacrifice. Of the 10 (11 if Georgia is included) new stales only the Ukraine (population 52 million, making it the fifth largest state in Europe after Germany, France, Britain and Italy) counts for anything and will be a serious loss if it really does go its own way. The others, all apart from Belorussia and Moldavia in Asia, are unviable statelets which will remain as dependent on Russia as France's ex-colonies in Africa have on France.

Russia may have lost its super-power status—which, in any event, was based on a military might well beyond its economic capabilities—but it remains a world power still armed with many more nuclear weapons than any of the other nuclear powers except America. Strengthened by a popular allegiance the old Soviet Union never had, Russia will eventually re-enter the world arena to compete alongside greater Germany and Japan against the currently world-dominant America. At least it won't be doing so in the name of socialism, not that that will make the capitalist world of competing stales a safer place.

Adam Buick

The West isn't best (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the recent collapse of the former Soviet-dominated bloc in Eastern Europe and then of the Soviet Union itself, it could have been expected that the advocates of private-enterprise capitalism would have rejoiced at the apparent triumph of the “free market”. But despite the best efforts of some sections of the media, the celebrations have been unmistakeably muted.

Having proclaimed that the “collapse of communism" showed the strength and invincibility of Western-style capitalism, the John Majors and George Bushes of this world have rather been left with egg on their faces. For not only has the last year proved beyond doubt the manifest failure of the state- capitalist bloc in the East, it has laid bare the current economic mess of the capitalist states in the West.

Far from demonstrating the prosperity and economic superiority of the USA, Britain. Germany and Japan, the capitalist system has ushered in probably the worst slump since the Second World War. Industrial production is not just falling in Russia—it is falling in the supposedly “successful” capitalist nations too.

Growth

Why, then, has fate seemingly conspired so cruelly against the Western politicians who could now be expected to be enjoying their hour of glory? To understand this, it is necessary to understand why, for some periods at least, output and growth are able to expand in capitalist society.

In the capitalist system of production, economic growth appears in the form of the accumulation of capital, capital being a sum of values invested in the means of production with the object of creating further value. The accumulation of capital is the driving force of capitalism and crucially depends on the creation of a surplus value in the production process by the working class (that is, value created by workers in excess of that received back as wages and salaries), together with the realisation of that surplus value when the commodities that have been produced are sold on the market. Surplus value is then divided between the various sections of the owning capitalist class as ground-rent, interest and profit.

Though the capitalist class receives a privileged income because of its ownership of capital, it would be a mistake to think that this is the principal reason why capital is invested to expand production. Part of the surplus value created by the unpaid labour of the working class is of course, consumed by the capitalists in the form of luxury goods and so on, but a significant part is transformed into additional capital and is re-invested in production, to buy raw materials, plant and equipment and the working abilities of wage and salary earners.

Competition provides the general motive force for the accumulation process, and enterprises must accumulate capital as rapidly as possible if they are to survive. This involves maximising the surplus value wrung from the working class and producing commodities as cheaply as possible by increasing the productivity of labour through mechanisation, robotics and the like.

So long as capital is able to accumulate in the hands of the capitalist class, re-investment occurs and production expands. More value is created by the working class, more commodities are sold, more profits are made and the additional capital re-enters the production process and serves to expand production and output further. However, as the history of capitalism has repeatedly demonstrated, this process is in practice always interrupted sooner or later.

Slump

Points periodically arise—corresponding to the onset of an economic crisis—when the circulation and accumulation of capital is severely disrupted. Enterprises find that they have over-accumulated and over-expanded their operations for the particular market they are selling to. Commodities cannot be profitably sold and the surplus value embodied in them is unrealised. Further accumulation of capital and reinvestment in production is thus at the same time rendered both more difficult and less worthwhile.

Often, this process of “over-accumulation” occurs in industries producing consumer goods, with enterprises responding to favourable price signals flooding the market with more commodities than can be profitably sold. A halt in investment then takes place, which can spread quickly to those sectors of the economy that have been supplying these consumer goods industries with producer goods such as, say, machinery and robotics equipment, commodities not intended for consumption but for the production of other commodities.

In this way the economic crisis can become generalised and a slump can set in. At other times the drive to rapidly accumulate capital will lead to a disproportionate growth in some of the producer goods industries themselves and the economic down-turn will spread from these sectors of the economy. An over-accumulation of capital in key producer goods industries will lead to an overproduction of producer goods and the likelihood of real wage cuts for some workers and redundancy for others, this leading in turn to a fall in demand for consumer goods.

So, although the accumulation of capital provides the spur for wealth creation and growth under capitalism, capital accumulation occurring within the context of capitalism's unplanned and anarchic production process leads to key—and previously profitable industries over-expanding, causing cutbacks in production and unemployment. After a (possibly prolonged) period of stagnation, a destruction of stocks and a gradual devaluation of capital take place, helping to provide the conditions for further accumulation to take place and for a recovery from the slump

The accumulation of capital has also been at the heart of the problems being encountered in Russia which formerly operated a form of bureaucratic. centralised state-run capitalism. Once this dictatorial state capitalism had forced peasants off the land and into the factories as wage labourers earlier in the century, it proved to be a grossly inefficient basis for the further accumulation of capital.

Partly because of its in-built mechanisms for diverting capital to stagnant areas of production that should have been purged from the system, and partly because of the resistance of the working class to productivity speed-ups and other methods for increasing the rate at which surplus value was produced, the state-capitalist economies eventually stagnated. Indeed, they suffered not so much from a crisis of overproduction as a slowly-developing crisis of generalised stagnation and relative under-accumulation. Average rates of profit and the capital available for further investment fell dramatically. Countries such as Russia are now going through a painful process to restore an acceptable rate of accumulation through the destruction and devaluation of inefficient plant and machinery, with large-scale unemployment and massive real wage reductions for the working class.

The lesson from this is clear: whichever way capitalism is operated, economic crises and slumps will inevitably occur, not because of the foul-ups of politicians but because of the internal dynamic of the system itself. That is a sobering thought indeed for Yeltsin. Bush, Major and all the would-be “managers” of capitalism across the globe, as East and West, world capitalism stagnates in a deepening slump.

Dave Perrin

"Dead Right" (1992)

Cartoon from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: IQ tests and racism (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

A brief (and inadequate!) response to your somewhat misleading article dealing with "intelligence testing" (‘We Are Not Inferior', Socialist Standard, November 1991).

There is a long tradition among traditional “socialists" that rejects IQ testing. Stalin banned IQ tests in 1935 on the grounds they were grounded on “bourgeois ideology"; Hitler made them illegal at the same time because of their “Jewishness”. (In numerous studies, the largest in Glasgow, Jews do significantly better than Gentiles—hardly a finding to endear the procedure to the Fuhrer!). And now, the Socialist Party has to put in its two pennies-worth, arguing that the social scientists who support the concept of IQ arc racist and anti-working class.

The racist argument just doesn’t stand up. Both Eysenck (a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany) and Jensen have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact the Japanese and Chinese, individually, whether tested in their own countries or as American immigrants, do better on blind IQ tests than do their white counterparts—but nobody accused the researchers as advocates of yellow supremacy! And, yes, they also report that literally hundreds of tests of black and white Americans have found that the former score lower (although. ironically. Jensen found that blacks perform relatively better on the more culture-loaded verbal tests!)

Likewise, the IQ advocates cannot be accused of arguing that the working class is "innately inferior”, as your writer suggests by repeated references to Herrnstein. Indeed the logic of statistical repression theory, fundamental to an understanding of Eysenck and his colleagues, is exactly the opposite to a "genetic" justification of social class division in society.

As Eysenck puts it: 

  Regression is intimately connected with social mobility. In Western societies, only one person in three retains the social class of his or her parents. The major determinant of this upward or downward movement is IQ. When we look at children of a given family, we find that the brighter ones rise in the social scale and the duller ones drop despite the same education, socio-economic status and home background . . . (Intelligence: The Battle for the Mind. Pan Books 1981, p64)

Contrary to your writer’s assertion, the overwhelming majority of psychological researchers base their theoretical work on the biological basis of human behaviour. We have all met unfortunate individuals born with damaged bodies/brains and consequently limited in their abilities. Only simplistic thought imagines that the handicapped are qualitatively different from the rest of us: we all form an extended continuum. What we are and what we may attain is determined firstly by the genes we inherit from our parents and secondly by environmental factors (especially “educational”— especially in the critical first years of life).

If we reflect upon the great number of genetically determined characteristics and potentialities that vary between major racial groups— body size and proportions, cranial shape and size, hair and eye colour, number of vertebrae. fingerprints, bone density, age when we cut teeth, blood groups, colour blindness, diabetes. depression. schizophrenia—wouldn't it be truly amazing if genetically-conditioned mental traits were a major exception?

When Karl Marx suggested for socialism the slogan "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” he was, as a disciple of Darwin, acknowledging the importance of genetic factors.

This is why IQ tests, for all their failings (and let’s be under no illusions, psychologists do not even have a universally agreed definition of the multi-dimensional construct "intelligence"!) can be a valuable tool for identifying "problems" children are likely to experience as they travel through the vital "learning years”. Knowing each individual's strong and weak attributes can help the teacher devise an appropriate learning environment.

Bob Potter 

Hove, East Sussex

Reply:

Bob Potter should re-read the article in question and he will find that we did not say that all who support the use of IQ tests are racist and anti-working class. What we said was that racists have been able to use IQ tests to back up their views since the term "intelligence quotient" misleadingly suggests that what the tests measure is "innate intelligence".

Differences in IQ Test scores between so-called "racial groups" (which are in reality cultural groups) are to be explained by the groups' different opportunities to learn to do and/or by their different attitudes towards what is being tested. Thus the high scores of people from Jewish. Chinese and Japanese backgrounds is to be explained in terms of their group's particularly favourable attitude towards intellectual achievement rather than to genetic factors. Similarly. the better scores Bob Potter mentions of American Blacks on verbal tests are due to cultural factors amongst this group favouring verbal expression.

We criticised people like Jensen and Eysenck for suggesting that biological factors related to "race" were at work in such cases. Clearly different human beings do have different abilities—as is indeed implied by the old socialist slogan "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs"—and some of this at least will be due to their different individual genetic make-up. But. frankly, since our correspondent asks, no, we don't think it likely that this will be found to be linked to factors such as skin colour, head shape, blood group or big toe size.

Editors

Nationalist Myths (1992)

Book Review from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Identity By Anthony D Smith. Penguin. £5.99.

This book begins by defining a nation as “a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members”. Smiths view that nations are based on “common myths" is something that socialists can certainly go along with, one of the most common myths of all being that a nation is a homogenous unit whose members share a "common economy" or have a fundamental identity of interests.

Unfortunately. Smith has little conception of the antagonistic class interests masked by the division of the world into nation-stales and comments that “nationalism provides the sole vision and rationale of political solidarity today . . . all other visions, all other rationales, appear wan and shadowy by comparison". In recognizing that nationalism has some negative as well as positive aspects for the capitalist world order. Smiths preference rests on a vague hope for a developing pan-nationalism in Europe Arabia and other parts of the globe that could provide a form of "collective identity" while serving to diminish social and political instability caused by national conflicts.

But what this shows is that Smith has failed to comprehend the role of nationalism—not as some autonomous or independent source of instability—but as a product of the competition and rivalry inherent to the capitalist system itself. It was as such that modern nationalism developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century as a challenge to the decaying old feudal empires. Then it was part of a progressive movement, a movement towards independent liberal-democratic capitalist states at the expense of feudalism and absolutist government. Indeed at that time some early socialists like Marx and Engels did support some movements for “national independence" and "self-determination for nations" as a way of hastening the development of capitalism and so providing the economic preconditions for socialism.

In the twentieth century the situation has been vastly different. Capitalism succeeded long ago in sweeping away the old feudal restrictions and has now become a world system with a global market for commodities and an international division of labour. All of the world’s nation-states are capitalist and all seek to defend the interests of the sections of the capitalist class operating from within their borders, whipping up nationalist fervour one minute while trampling on local cultures and traditions the next, and periodically sending their wage slaves in uniform to die in bloody battle on the capitalists' behalf. Nationalism and "national liberation", as ideologies serving the interests of differing sections of the ruling class, now stand as barriers in the way of the progressive movement which seeks to establish a real world human community without class division and national frontiers on the basis of the potential economic abundance made possible by capitalism. That movement of course, is the movement for world socialism, and Anthony Smith might have done well to acquaint himself with it before writing this book.

Dave Perrin

50 Years Ago: Trade Relations After The War (1992)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other side of the New Order is the insistence on the desirability of raising the standard of living of the world’s population. Here you find the Conservative Times and the Labour leader, Mr. Herbert Morrison, agreeing about the form of words to be used. The Times (October 4th. 1941) says that the old conception of "Wealth of Nations" is "finding more positive expression in ‘the welfare of nations,”’ and Mr. Morrison suggests "the conception of human welfare as the avowed aim and object of international post-war policy” (Times, June 7th, 1941). But the magic word “welfare" and seeming agreement get us nowhere. Before human welfare can be the aim and object of international policy that aim and that object have got to be adopted by those who control the Government and that cannot be while capitalism is the established order of society. The aim of the capitalist, whether individually or through capitalist trading and industrial associations or through Governments, is and must continue to be the production and sale of goods for profit.

Governments may come under the control of men or parties which profess other aims, but so long as they have the task of administering capitalism it will be the profit motive, not the idealistic aim, that will and must determine their conduct and policy at home and in the international field.

(From the Socialist Standard, February 1942.)

Letter: Undemocratic SLP (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

I read with interest your review of The Socialist Labor Party, 1876-1991 by Frank Girard and myself (Socialist Standard, October 1991). I have a couple of comments: The SLP (founded in 1876, not 1878) does not really have “a detailed blueprint for future society . . . " It is true that they publish a chart showing how industrial representation would function, but it is very sketchy, designed to illustrate rather than specify. It is unfair to imply that they claim to foresee all the details in their projected future organization of society. As to labor vouchers versus free access, the SLP is less dogmatic than generally described and has apparently modified its position somewhat. In a recent issue of their paper they concede the possibility that labor vouchers would never be necessary.

I feel the phrase "SLP’s undemocratic structure" can be misread. The National Secretary and the NEC don’t actually have constitutional power to expel members. Aside from members-at-large, a member can be expelled only by his local organization ("section"). (The extra-constitutional expulsion of Frank Girard by a National Convention is the single known exception to this rule).This fact explains why so many sections have been expelled over the years: they refused to expel a member who had fallen from grace with the National Secretary and so were themselves expelled.

While over-centralized in the view of many, the party’s constitutional structure is not so much a problem as the compliant membership which has tolerated an authoritarian leadership. In short, it has in this regard reproduced some of the ills of class society. The SLP has not been alone with this problem, of course, as an examination of innumerable left (and right and center) organizations will attest. My knowledge of the SPGB is limited. but if you have not had this problem I would be interested in knowing how you explain this.

Ben Perry 

Philadelphia, USA

Reply:

There are two factors preventing the emergence of an authoritarian leadership within the SPGB. Firstly, a democratic constitution and. secondly, a democratic consciousness amongst the membership.

Policy is decided by the membership, either by votes cast at branch meetings prior to the Annual Conference or by referendum. The EC cannot expel any member or branch; it can only lay a charge which is heard by the next meeting of branch delegates whose findings have to be submitted to a referendum.

To function properly a democratic constitution has to be backed up by a democratic consciousness amongst the membership. This really exists in the Socialist Party, in large part because we reject the whole concept of leadership— not just authoritarian leadership, but any kind of leadership—and place the emphasis on understanding. This applies both to how we sec the working class establishing socialism and to how we see a socialist party should be organised.

Workers must understand and want socialism, and organise democratically without leaders, before socialism can be established; and only those who want and understand socialism, and reject the whole idea of leadership, are admitted to membership of the Socialist Party.

EDITORS

When Labour Ruled? (4) (1992)

A Short Story from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Labour Wins . . .

When the Labour Party won the general election of June 1992 Neil Kinnock, who had something of a name as a crooner, might have burst out with the Frank Sinatra song High Hopes. A couple of years later, when he was locked in secret, desperate negotiations over an alliance with the Liberal Democrats, he might have tried Stanley Holloway’s Get Me To The Church On Time. And when the Labour Party, exasperated by Kinnock’s compulsive alliterations and wisecracks in face of yet another disastrous experience of power, got rid of him a fitting accompaniment might have been There Go My Dreams.

In fact Labour only just managed to scrape home in the election—an overall majority of seven seats was hardly a rich harvest from all those years of trimming and twisting, searching for the polices most likely to bring in the votes. Nevertheless there was a spring in Kinnock's step as he set out for Buckingham Palace, to kiss hands, bow and scrape, walk backwards, vow allegiance to the Crown and do anything provided it helped him to take up residence in Number Ten.

The new Prime Minister’s first job was to appear on television, making a speech which had been written some time before. There would, he guaranteed, be no truck with the past. He knew that previous Labour governments had not been without their faults (he had spent a lot of time, as an intensely ambitious politician in opposition, studying them) but he could give his personal assurance that the mistakes of the past would not be repeated. Without actually mentioning Harold Wilson, he declared that his would not be a government dominated by one person; to the accompaniment of grim smiles from his rivals he said that we would henceforward be governed by a team. It would be a caring government, cherishing the like of the National Health Service (which it had cut back during its last spell in power) and working tirelessly for a nuclear-free world (although in the past it had started up the British nuclear armoury and had supported every one of British capitalism’s wars). It would work in harmony with the trade unions to ensure a growth in prosperity so rational and controlled that it would benefit both sides of the negotiating table (he put from his mind Labour’s history of attempting to impose statutory wage restraint and the consequent warring with the unions). He almost repeated one of the sillier assertions of his deputy. Roy Hattersley. who once babbled that "a socialist incomes policy can protect, rather than diminish, real earnings . . . ” Why should he give Hattersely some free publicity?

Inheritance

Labour made its case plain, in its 1989 Policy Review, when it announced its intention. not to dismantle capitalism and its production of wealth for sale and profit, but to "make the market work" to maintain and strengthen the profitability of British industry. They were concerned not just with using their association with unions to keep wages in check; they had worked hard to cement a partnership with the employers as well to help them compete against foreign competition. This yearning for financial orthodoxy and economic competence was welcomed by the Investors Chronicle, which thought that "Labour's economic policy . . . contains nothing to which the City objects violently on principle”.

It was as well that Labour took these precautions because, far from introducing the revolution, they had merely taken on the running of British capitalism. As a Tory ex-minister put it: "The Labour Government have inherited our problems. They seem also to have inherited our solutions". While this was perfectly true Labour’s long spell in opposition had placed it under an obligation to produce "solutions" which seemed fresh and radically different from the Tories. The traditional way of doing this—which Labour followed—was to give the old “solutions” dazzlingly new names. Wage restraint became The Culture of Co-operation and measures to increase the capitalists' profits were called Positive in Partnership. Apart from that they could only hope for luck to run their way, for something to turn up so that they could claim the credit for a period of boom. If that didn't happen—well there was always the chance of the voters again being gullible enough to blame an economic crisis on to "unfair" foreign competition or sinister currency manipulators in distant capitals or Britain's notoriously greedy and lazy workers.

 

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

Lectures

But luck did not run their way. During their first six months in office a yawning deficit in the balance of trade opened up. Ministers, still mindful of that alliance with the unions, began to make coded threats about the reluctance of workers in the British car and electronics industries to be exploited as intensely as their counterparts in Germany and Japan. In the money markets, where a lot can be made and lost simultaneously—but not by production-line workers—sterling came under pressure, which was worrying for anyone who was concerned about any threat to "our” currency and even more so for the ministers who were supposed to protect it.

The world economy slid deeper into the recession which did so much to undermine the support for John Major’s government, the effects of which Labour had promised to control. Investment and production declined while unemployment and bankruptcies zoomed upwards. Although it was not the best of times to press for higher wages, the unions were under pressure from their membership to try to catch up the ground lost under the Tories. Strikes, both official and unofficial, became headline news again and the gutter press could each choose a union leader as their current bogey.

Neil Kinnock had promised to be a prime minister of action, so he quickly sent John Smith to the TV studios to lecture the workers on why they should work harder, hold back their pay claims and stop buying imported goods. "We all agree," said Smith (as if “we all" had agreed), “that we cannot spend what we have not earned. There are no quick fixes. The government must be aware of the economic realities. If that means we have to postpone some of our social ambitions, then we have to do so”. This speech was a great disappointment to the people who were encouraged to believe that the Labour Party did have quick fixes which they could apply to control problems like recessions.

Losses

As the Labour government floundered about like a drunken soldier they began to lose crucial by-elections, even in places like South Wales where Tories had once been as rare as an endangered species. Kinnock’s last desperate bid to stem this tide was to try for an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. When this was frustrated by the Lib/Dems’ insistence that Labour was more right-wing than the Tories it was clear that Kinnock’s time was up. But who to replace him? John Smith’s stamina was suspect, especially after his banqueting forays into the City to win the confidence of the bankers and the merchants there. Roy Hattersley’s day was past and in any case he resembled himself on Spitting Image too closely. Tony Blair, having pushed his case as Labour's youthful future, thereby damned himself as a perpetual Peter Pan. Margaret Beckett was ambitious enough but she roused chilling memories of Thatcher. Gordon Brown was a poor TV performer, with his sepulchral denunciations of working class extravagances.

Labour felt they needed cheering up and that, as it turned out, was the crucial factor when the Men In Red Ties called on Kinnock to give him notice to quit Number Ten. In the election for the new leader, one of the candidates was Des Topper, a hardened left-winger from a Midlands mining constituency who was famous for his tireless harrying of ministers, employers and Tories and anyone else who he saw as obstructing his version of the workers’ paradise—which was actually little more than regular, reliable wage-slavery and cheap beer at the colliery club. Topper stood for the leadership as a gesture towards what he saw as Labour's forgotten principles. But to cheer themselves up the Labour Party elected him and when they had recovered from their surprise the PR and media experts closed in about him.

Changed man

True to his promise to give the workers the chance to vote for Labour's allegedly lost alleged principles Topper quickly called a general election (in fact he had little choice since their majority had disappeared in those by-elections). He then appeared on TV. to rally the nation to Labour’s banner. He was a changed man. On the advice of an expensive tailor his sports jacket and loud shirt—once his trade marks in the Commons—were replaced by a sober grey suit and discreetly striped shirt. His hair, which had once been long and aggressively floppy, was trimmed enough to satisfy a City banker. He put on some weight so that he no longer looked so agonisingly principled. His Midlands accent was tamed into a Home Counties drawl. And he learned to tell us that Labour’s anti-working class policies were socialism and to accuse anyone with any doubts about it of making it easy for the Tories to win back power.

His speech to the nation was most moving, even if it had been written by somebody else. "We recognise", he said, staring earnestly into the homes of his audience, "that this great party of ours had made some mistakes in the past. We shall not repeat those mistakes in the future. I give you my personal guarantee that we shall . . ."

Ivan

Between the Lines: Death, hypocrisy and videotape (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death, hypocrisy and videotape

Has nobody told Stormin' Norman about East Timor? Were we not told by the trigger-happy hypocrites who gave us the Gulf War that the invasion of one country by another was intolerable and must be defeated by force? First Tuesday (BBC2, 7 January, 10.45pm) told the hitherto unexposed story of the ruthless butchery of the Timorese people which has gone on for sixteen years.

In 1975 East Timor became independent from Portuguese control and elected its own government. That year Indonesia took over East Timor, outlawed the elected government and began a process of imposing control by means of brutal coercion. It is estimated that one in three of the population have been killed since the Indonesian take-over. In sixteen years as many as 250,000 Timorese workers are said to have been done away with. This is legalised terrorism on a mass scale. It is virtual genocide.

So, where are "our boys" whose task is to defend "the good" against "the evil”? (Remember all that "Free Kuwait" rubbish? The Kuwaiti dictatorship now presides over torture and mass deportations of its subjects.) The answer is that the only American and British arms being sent into the area are being sold to Indonesia.

The governments which claimed to have fought a war in the Gulf against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait are selling to Indonesia the means to unlawfully colonise East Timor. The alleged atrocities committed by Iraqis against Kuwaitis are being committed by Indonesian state thugs against the Timorese workers as a matter of course, but, despite several detailed reports by Amnesty International, the governments of Britain, the USA or Australia (the latter being a major trading partner with Indonesia) just stand by. Of course, hypocrisy is as attached to capitalist politics as fleas are to a dirty dog. How else can the cynical, anti-human policies of defending profit and damning need be justified?

The well-made First Tuesday documentary contained shocking footage of the 12 December 1991 funeral demonstration where Timorese workers were burying a man killed by the Indonesian army. At the funeral Indonesian troops fired on the crowd, killing one hundred mourners, others died on their way to and in hospital.

Indonesian brutality has given rise to an ill-equipped campaign of military resistance by desperate Timorese workers. Such counter-violence is futile: semi-armed guerrilla fighters will be no match for American-backed Indonesian state thugs, and anyway, killing Indonesian workers in uniform will not make anyone free, just a few more graves full.

The tragedy of East Timor reflects vividly the crass hypocrisy of Western celebrations about the coming of "Freedom" and the decency of King Capital's New World Order. It shows just how much the Gulf War was fought for oil profits and just how true it is that if Kuwait would have been as relatively poor as East Timor and if Iraq had been Indonesia things would have been different.

Aah, Freedom

The government has deregulated the law relating to TV, so now we are "free" - if we pay for it (in short, capitalist freedom) - to watch two new pom channels: After Midnight and Adult Channel. Behind the Headlines (BBC2, 8 January. 10.55pm) had a discussion on what such "freedom" will mean. In future viewers will be sold little plastic cards which they can slot into their TVs in order to watch sleazy movies made for sleazy men.

The programme also discussed the new 0898 sex lines on which consumers with such desires can pay 45p a minute listening to out-of-work actresses pretending to be naughty schoolgirls or busty nurses. There is even an 0898 number on which a genuine rape victim has been paid £3,000 to give a recorded account of her rape ordeal. Sweet freedom, eh? The poor woman is "free" to sell her pathetic story and men who are excited by rape (the stealing of the sexual commodity) can listen to her for just over a quid an orgasm.

Meanwhile Decca has announced that in February it is to release a video of the most salacious bits of the William Kennedy Smith rape trial - yours to enjoy in complete "freedom" for £10.99 a copy.

If this is freedom, then it is a lunatic's conception of what it is to be free. It is the freedom to sell, to exploit, to degrade, to abuse, to drag humanity through the dirt. Perhaps someone could market an 0898 number with recordings of children being tortured in East Timor; there might be a few bob to be made out of the screwballs who will get off on that.

Steve Coleman

Editorial: No to nationalism (1992)

Editorial from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political virus of Nationalism is spreading. In Yugoslavia and the late Russian Empire, after decades of forced national unity, new national splinters are emerging, echoed by the sound of gunfire. In the north-cast of Ireland both sectarian gangs persist in their absurd nationalist hatreds, while fanatical Welsh nationalists set English property on fire and Scottish nationalist tricksters preach independence from Britain as some kind of panacea for ending poverty. Czechs against Slovaks; Flemings against Walloons; Ukrainians against Russians; western against eastern Germans, and both against Turkish and other immigrants.

Commentators speak of neo-fascism being on the rise. To be sure, gangs of desperate, frustrated, ignorant workers are looking for scapegoats. In Poland they are blaming their problems on the Jews, even though most Polish Jews were killed in the holocaust.The growth of the French National Front, with its facile equation between immigration and national crisis, is a miserable reflection upon millions of people who seem to have learned little from the experience of Nazism.

The world capitalist economy is in a crisis. Millions are feeling the hardship of living under a system which puts profits before needs. Not understanding the system, they seek someone to blame. Deceived by their masters, they seek security in isolation, entombed by artificial borders which stifle the cultures of those who never look beyond them. In Britain, nationalists wrap their ugly flag around them and thank God (who saves The Queen) that they are not continentals.

The contradiction of capitalism is that, being a global system, it cannot allow petty national fragmentation to succeed. The complacent British must become Europeans, and the isolationist Americans must face up to the world slump they must share with Japan, and the Croatians must realise that even if they escape Serbian domination they will soon have to accept German economic rule.

Socialists, whose country is the planet Earth, do not underestimate the importance of cultural diversity. The notion of the whole world conforming to one uniform way of life is far from appealing. It is the profit system, with its inevitable cultural imperialism whereby those with the dollars dictate what we listen to, how we speak, what we read and where we travel, which reduces culture to lifeless conformity to the cheap and nasty offerings of a culture industry.

Socialism is a global solution to a global problem. The problem is that the Earth and all its abundant resources belong to the minority, not to the human community as a whole. The minority abuse the planet Earth for the purpose of making profits. Socialism will end minority ownership and control, place the world in the hands of everyone and produce goods and services solely for need. This will require global organisation and not national fragmentation. Socialism will put an end to every border; nation-states will be abolished immediately.

The working class has no countries. The British do not own Britain any more than the Russians own Russia, the Georgians Georgia, the Armenians Armenia or the Serbs Serbia. We, who produce the world’s wealth, must cast off the chains of nationalist illusion. We have a world to win.