Running Commentary: Man of Steel (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man of Steel

Is your boss a bastard? Does he refuse to accept anything but the highest standards and does he berate you when you produce, as you often do, less than the best be it engineering, sales or documentation?

If he is, then do not be too hard on him; he may only be doing as he is told. Perhaps he was present at the September meeting of the Steel Industry Management Association when Sir Charles Villiers, chairman of the British Steel Corporation, advised all managers to be “bastards” to any of their workers who turned out sub-standard work.

It may be that Villiers is a sensitive man. BSC is not famous for being a vastly profitable concern and he, as its £30,000 a year head, is often under fire from the press. A little aggressiveness towards his employees, he may have calculated, could do his reputation no harm.

Or perhaps he meant it. Villiers is not just a representative of the capitalist class—he is a member of it. Educated at Eton and Oxford, a member of the exclusive Beefsteak Club (where none of his steel workers would be allowed past the doorman), living in Eaton Square (where none of his steel workers could afford much more than the space for a garden shed) and, before taking over at BSC. chairman of merchant bankers Guinness and Mahon.

Yet his speech was a curious thing. Firstly, what if all workers took him at his word and refused to turn out anything less than the best? What then would happen to capitalist industry, which turns, out mountains of trash when it is trash which pays?

Secondly, what was a member of the capitalist class doing, being so frank about class relationships under capitalism? The idea that we all live in a happy, united society of common interests is hardly best served by such a hard headed attitude.

He who lifts a comer of the truth about these matters will not be popular with the other members of the ruling class. Will Villiers soon be crying all the way to the Eaton Square dole office?

Pym's number one 

Another member of the ruling class to be offering some urging to workers recently—although with a rather different attitude—was Sir Francis Pym and all his friends will hope to see this ambitious politician's keenness rewarded.

Pym also went to Eton, then on to Magdalen College, Cambridge. He belongs to Bucks, the Cavalry and the Guards which are not brands of cigarettes but expensive West End clubs. He has a stately home in Bedfordshire. Clearly, he knows on which side of the bread is the capitalists' caviar.

So it is natural that Pym should be anxious to see the working class, who don’t go to posh schools or join exclusive clubs and who live in council fiats or mortgaged semis, readily accept the cuts in their living standards which the Tory government is so busily planning.

But of course Pym is a gentleman so he does not use coarse language. Instead, he hopes to inspire us all; speaking at the recent Manchester Central by-election, he said he thought we are “. . . fighting another Battle of Britain, only this time it is to the Many that we need to turn."

Politicians often use the trick of persuading workers to accept their lot by referring to former military events which are described —at least in British history books — as triumphs. Harold Macmillan was fond of ruminating tearfully on the agonies of the 1914/18 trenches. Harold Wilson, at a time when he seemed to be convinced that he was Winston Churchill, once urged us all to have a little of the Dunkirk spirit.

Both were playing the same game. Both were making pretty speeches about poverty, which is not pretty and which no worker should willingly accept.

It is likely that Pym was not aware of one very important implication of his speech, when he talked about the Many. It is, in fact, the Many who really matter. He did not appeal to the the capitalist minority to fight another Battle—to look up their shares in the Financial Times more assiduously, to buy extra large estates in the country, to lounge with greater intensity in the tropical sun. He addressed his plea to the majority, to the people who count because they produce everything and who run capitalism from one end to the other. He was talking to the working class.

And the workers, who are on the receiving end of government policy should beware. They should look with complete scepticism on all politicians' blandishments and know that—like Passchendaele, like Dunkirk—there is something nasty in store for them.

China syndrome

It must be very difficult being a supporter of the idea that socialism exists in China, when you get so little help from that country to back you up.

One after another, news from Peking indicates that, far from being a place where the means of production are owned in common, where there are no classes, no money and where there is free access to wealth (not that such a state of affairs is possible in any one part of the world), China is steadily seeking a prominent place among the powers of world capitalism.

Recently, for example, the Chinese government has signed some big trade agreements with the Western capitalist states; symbolic of this has been the normalising of its relations with the United States.

Now comes the news that China is trying to join the International Monetary Fund and in line with this is making what are meant to be reassuring noises to any capitalist thinking of investing in that country.

Chinese Vice Premier Gu Mu said in Peking recently that China is preparing new foreign investment regulations which would make it more attractive to investors. He added that overseas investors need not fear another “cultural revolution”—in other words that there will be political safeguards for such investments.

If China gets into the IMF it will be able to borrow from the World Bank, something it may see as essential if it is to expand its export trade into new areas. This comes as an emphasis to the fact that China is a rising threat to the more established capitalist powers—and may one day assert this threat, like Germany and Japan, by emphatic military means.

It also comes as an embarrassment to those who cling to the unsupportable idea that there is something different in China, something worth working class support, even sacrifice. The facts say otherwise; capitalism exists in China and increasingly makes no bones about it.

Political Notes: It’s an honour (1983)

The Political Notes Column from the August 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s an honour

There has never been any reason to believe that Harold Wilson had designs to abolish himself so there must be some other explanation for the fact that, although when he was prime minister he announced that no more hereditary peers would be created, now that he is out of parliament he is reported to have accepted — to have wanted — such an honour for himself.

Of course this may be yet another — if especially obscure — example of Labour Party gradualism, of the theory that capitalism will eventually find itself ended through a succession of near-imperceptible steps. It is something over fifty years since the Labour Party announced that one such step would be the abolition of the House of Lords and Wilson's stated preference for the creation of life, as opposed to hereditary, lords was greeted as a gradualist move in the process of abolition sometime.

This enthusiasm — Labour supporters starved of real progress, have had to learn to exist on such contemptible crumbs — must have been dented when the police began to take a deep interest in several of the eminences so recently ennobled by Wilson.

Capitalism can do very nicely — as it does in places like America, France and Russia — without the tradition of dressing people up in funny clothes, pinning bits of ribbon and metal on them and giving them funny titles. Which is not to say that the system does not have some picturesque rewards for those who have given it special service.

Harold Wilson was one of these. He came to power through a skilfully worded pledge that working class problems could easily be conjured away through something called the technological revolution; that the micro chip would alter the basic nature of capitalism. Predictably, he and his government were soon bogged down in crisis. Their fine promises were forgotten as they grappled to deplete workers’ living standards. When they lost power they were thoroughly exposed and discredited and since then no more is heard of the harvest to be reaped from the white hot technological revolution. By any standards, a notable achievement by Wilson. He fully deserves his honour; capitalism has looked on him and found him to be good.

Head count

The debate over the restoration of the death penalty was loaded with moral considerations and much talk about the ethics of the judicial taking of life and the right of society to respond to a murder by itself murdering the killer. Almost everyone who took part agreed that this was a very important issue because with human lives at stake a careful and informed discussion was necessary. When it was over and the votes had been counted everyone could go home congratulating themselves for playing their part in such a highly charged occasion with full regard to their grave responsibility.

But what sort of problem were they talking about? If the death penally is restored so that it applies as it did before the Homicide Act of 1957 — before the introduction of degrees of murder — there will be about one execution a week in Britain. If a Bill goes through in this form, something like 60 people will die who would otherwise survive to serve a life sentence.

Now there is no denying that the death penalty is a disfiguring barbarity. There is no denying that the vast majority of murders can be said to be some sort of response to the inhumanities which capitalism imposes on its people, and which it expects them to survive with patience and conformity. But in comparison to the tens of millions who die each year through the simple fact that capitalism can’t meet the needs of the human race, the numbers who might be despatched by the hangman in Britain are insignificant. If MPs. and others who were convinced that they were arguing about moral issues, about the sanctity of human life, were sincere why are they so consistently able to ignore this massively greater death toll?

The answer is simple. The apologists for capitalism can discuss an issue like the death penalty, with its strictly limited scope, without ever needing to consider the wider and deeper responsibility of this social system for the problem. The whole thing can be talked out in terms of ethics, religion, insignificant reforms; when it is over capitalism is left undisturbed.

This is a much more comfortable way of approaching an issue, than one which might call into question the basics of society, their effect on people and the fact that this social system must degrade the people who keep it in existence. As so often happens, the debate on the death penalty was really about granting capitalism yet another reprieve.

Up school

Margaret Thatcher has not made her name as a political tactician of historic subtlety so perhaps she was unaware that, by sacking Francis Pym, she was depriving some of her opponents of one of their most cherished illusions. Pym's departure from the government meant that, with the exception of the increasingly ridiculous Lord Hailsham, there is now not one Old Etonian in the Cabinet — to say the least, an unusual situation for a Tory government and one to cause consternation in London's clubland.

It has always been a favourite left-wing pastime to tot up the numbers of Tory ministers who spent their schooldays at Eton and Harrow and to produce the result as proof that a Conservative government is in the hands of a small, privileged, self-perpetuating clique. At times, there seemed to be something to be said for this theory. Harold Macmillan, for example, seemed to go out of his way to give some top jobs, not just to Old Etonians but to those who were related to him. The lesson we were invited by the left wing to draw from this was that a government full of such high born people could not possibly understand, and deal with, the problems of the “ordinary” people and that we should therefore vote for a party with a less exclusive background.

Unhappily for this theory, we had the experience of Labour governments, many of whose ministers had not only not been to public school but had sometimes had very little formal schooling at all. Some of them were fond of reminding us of this, by applying an eccentric pronunciation which removed aitches from where they should be and stuck them back on where they should not be.

Jimmy Thomas was one such eminence; another was Ernie Bevin. Their place in political history is assured; they were zealous workers for the interests of the British capitalist class at no matter what cost to the class of their origin, the class which can't send its children to Eton or Roedean and which suffers the effects of the social system which Thomas and Bevin helped to administer.

Thomas, after a spell drunkenly contemplating the deepening misery of British workers in the slump of the late twenties, saved his miserable skin by joining the National government with the Tories and the Liberals. His aristocratic friends were much amused by his comical terminology. Bevin, among his many other achievements, saw British workers committed to the slaughter of the Korean war and the start of the British nuclear weapon programme.

The familial and social beginnings of the people who run capitalism is of absolutely no account. It is working class acquiescence in the system which is important. Without that the leaders would be impotent and redundant and we would have a society free of conflict and privilege.

Blogger's Note:

On the subject of capital punishment, this issue of the Socialist Standard also had a longer article on the subject: British rope trick

Political Notes: Splits (1982)

The Political Notes column from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Splits

Does the Tory government know its own mind? On the one hand we have Howe and Tebbitt, dredging among the official statistics, assuring us that there are unmistakable signs that the worst of the recession is over and that we can now look forward to better times ahead. On the other there is Francis Pym, who has the job of master-minding the government’s propaganda, warning us that things are going to get worse:

  In the short run, living standards generally can only fall . . . we have to find ways of coping with and living with much higher levels of unemployment

There is no evidence that Pym was thinking about his own living standards or his own unemployment, although he talked about what “we” have to cope with. In any case, those with memories extending beyond last week may well prefer this sort of gloomy prognostication, from their experience of what has too often followed a politician’s hearty assurance that better times are just around the corner.

Are speeches like Pym’s, then, completely irrelevant? In fact, some people might find consolation in them, for no politician can forecast what will happen to capitalism’s economy; they can no more foresee a slump than they can a boom. If they had this ability the present recession would not have happened. There would be no three million dole queue. There would be no public expenditure cuts. We would be spared the offensiveness of ministers like Norman Tebbitt, who pretends that poverty (ours, not his) is good for us. We would not have to endure Thatcher’s nervous defiance of the reality she sees all around her. And we would be freed of the drivel of people like Pym.

Whatever stress this government is under, they are not split on the fundamental principle that capitalism must be run in the interests of its owning minority of parasites.


Malignant

The death last month of Ritchie-Calder saw the end of an identikit lefty, who moved easily in the unreal world of soft headed, temporising liberals, ready to support any excess of capitalism provided it is the work of their favoured party.

A devoted member of the Labour Party and a journalist who wrote mainly about science—which he saw as a means of dealing with social problems—Ritchie-Calder must have been thrilled when, in 1963, Harold Wilson began to claim for Labour the role of the party of science. The red (or was it white?) hot technological revolution, promised Wilson, was going to abolish poverty and strife through a four per cent growth in productivity. It sounded simple and it deceived a lot of people, like Ritchie-Calder, who should have known better. And of course it didn’t happen as Wilson promised.

Typically, Ritchie-Calder was a professed pacifist who nevertheless supported war, ending up with an important job on the Political Warfare Executive during 1939/45. Plenty of other lefties went the same disreputable way, after a brief obligatory struggle with what they called their principles.

After the war, Ritchie-Calder's continuing quest for impotence led him into the United Nations; he toured the Congo on their behalf during the troubles in 1960. He probably felt more comfortable there; the history of that country’s blood soaked exploitation by the rubber-seeking imperialist powers can keep a left wing journalist’s typewriter rattling for months.

Inevitably, he joined CND. No Aldermaston march was complete without his personification of the delusion that capitalism can be a society where human knowledge and achievement are used for human benefit.

And inevitably again, the ruling class showed what they thought of him that he presented no threat to their interests—when in 1966 he became a life peer and. a few years later, chairman of the Metrication Board.

Ritchie-Calder was one of those eminent people who give respectability to the organisations of capitalist reform—and therefore to capitalism itself. They may or may not be sincere; what is undeniable is that they are dangerously misguided. We have had too much of them and of their works. Behind a benign exterior they are as devastating as a malignant disease.

 

Cuts

Margaret Thatcher was once dubbed by Labour MPs, taking advantage of the abolition of free milk for some school children, as Thatcher the Snatcher. (The Iron Lady later said that she had been so wounded by these slurs that she would creep home and weep privately to her husband Denis.)

Well now the Prime Minister has advanced up the scale of criminality and from a snatcher has become, according to one outraged Labour MP. the Westminster Ripper. This parliamentary language may be written into the Labour Party campaign to exploit the government’s discomfiture over the cuts in public expenditure, which are now being blamed for almost all our ills from suicidal unemployed to decaying hospitals.

From this there has emerged a handy, distorting equation: Tory equals cuts equals poverty; Labour equals no cuts equals prosperity. Like all such propaganda, this has no basis in truth.

The Labour government of 1929 was infamous for its attacks on the already precarious living standards of the workers. That this was no accident was proven by such Chancellors as “Austerity” Cripps and Roy Jenkins, with his lugubrious warnings about the disaster awaiting us if we continued to live it up in our palaces on caviar and champagne. As a result of watching Jenkins on TV, a number of slum dwellers are said to have guiltily reduced their consumption of fish fingers, hoping thereby to contribute to the national recovery.

The last in this line—Denis Healey—was known as the “first monetarist”, which did not mean that he was a “monetarist” but that he zealously pursued a policy of public expenditure cuts. The latest account of this is in the book Inside the Treasury by Joel Barnett, who was Healey’s Financial Secretary. Apart from admitting that, in contrast to their promises to be able to control capitalism, the Labour government of 1974 did not have the first idea of what to do about the economy, Barnett records how Healey’s proposed cuts were pushed through the Cabinet, against some typically inconsistent opposition: “There is no will in this Cabinet,” expostulated Peter Shore, “To tell the IMF to take a running jump, even if unemployment rose to 2 million”.

Both Labour and Conservative governments have imposed cuts, which is another way of saying that they have both tried to do what the capitalist system demands of a government. They are basically in complete agreement on that. And that is another way of saying that no member of the working class, with the power to transform society, should misuse that power by supporting them.

So They Say: Public Eye (1977)

The So They Say column from the August 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Public Eye

A great deal of emphasis is placed nowadays on the way a thing appears; while this is no bad thing in itself, the importance of a “good image” tends to increase as the wares offered become less and less satisfactory. Any salesman, or politician hawking his policies is aware of this. In turn this progression can lead to the “image” representing the opposite of the truth and the State is no newcomer to the trick. Recruiting posters for the armed forces give the impression that most of the applicant’s time will be spent living it up on distant beaches.

Sir Robert Mark, the recently retired Police Commissioner, says that the police force too has found it useful to give certain false impressions which assist it in the work of the State.

The real art of policing a free society or a democracy is to win by appearing to lose. By that I mean, for example, that it would be disastrous in dealing with situations like Grosvenor Square or Red Lion Square if we were to rely on water cannon or teargas or particularly violent methods. I think our technique is more sophisticated. We have a singularly attractive horse, she is the Brigitte Bardot of the 230 horses that we possess and she is trained to simulate death on the word of command in front of a television camera. This is the way to make sure that the police image which the British people like to have is maintained.

London Evening Standard, 15th July 77

Performers and Performance

Many reasons have been put forward to explain what is called "Britain’s poor economic performance.” The odd thing is that almost every one of them seems to have an opposite number: Wages are too high—wages are too low, likewise prices, investment and inflation. To further confuse the issue Mr. Francis Pym, Conservative front-bencher, has added what he sees as the dread cause.

Ceaseless party crossfire was the main cause of Britain’s poor economic performance in recent years.

The Times, 14th July 77

On form to date, it is possible that one of the Labour windbags will soon propose more “crossfire”(?) as a solution. However Mr. Pym seems to have short-circuited this possibility by remarking:

There was more in common now between the millions who voted Conservative, Labour and Liberal than the issues which divided them. Many did not seem to like the choice offered and feared that whichever they chose, they might get an unsatisfactory result.

Mr. Pym may not know much about capitalism’s economics, but when it comes to the choice which voters are faced with, he knows exactly what he is talking about.


Make us an offer

And Mr. Pym is not alone. Stung by Conservative taunts that the Liberals had made their agreement to vote with Labour on purely opportunist lines, Mr. Emlyn Hoosen (Liberal MP) surely disarmed critics in Parliament with his candour:

The present government had behaved very badly for their first two years in office and there was little to choose between the red devils opposite and the deep blue sea on the other side of the House. Their past behaviour had put the leader of the Liberal Party in a dilemma.

The Times, 12th July 77

The dilemma being that the Liberal Party, like a tick bird, has to fly from hippo to hippo to gain sustenance. The notable difference being that the tick bird does serve some useful function.


Hoots

This writer once had a canvasser call who, when asked about the candidate’s particular policy, replied immediately that she didn’t know much about it— the candidate was her son and she was only helping him out. The Scottish National Party canvassers clearly run into similar problems on the doorstep and this provoked someone into writing the SNP Canvasser’s Manual—their equivalent of “How to make friends and influence people.” It gives mock questions, together with sample answers; and techniques on how the SNP canvasser might “convert” the listener. One ploy is to throw yourself into it—think in terms of

The person coming to this door is going to be the most interesting person I’ve ever met . . .
   Never attack something a man says he had admired, it was better to agree and then to add: Pity he’s in the wrong organization.

The Times, 6th July 77

The SNP however have been caught with their kilts down as Labour and Conservative MPS, none of whom is short on hypocrisy, make hay with this sort of pandering technique and SNP have pulped the unsold copies in embarrassment It seems a pity to add to their discomfort, but one piece of advice contained in the manual struck us as particularly unnecessary:

It might be valuable for the canvasser to explain his own reasons for joining the party. But do not talk about seeing the light or make it sound like a new religion.

If nothing else the SNP have added A new dimension to their much loved phrase—Scottish oil.

Alan D'Arcy

Gentlemen and players (1984)

Editorial from the August 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Assiduous image-building has succeeded in presenting Margaret Thatcher as a remarkable, even unique, political leader but there is one way in which she is tediously conventional and outworn and that is in the delusions she has nurtured among the people of this country. Delusions like patriotism — the idea that British people (assuming there can be a satisfactory definition of them) are worth at least ten of any foreigner, particularly of French and Argentinian people; or that something manufactured in Britain (even if it is made from parts and material originating abroad) must be much better than a similar article from overseas. Delusions like the insistence that the nuclear, monogamous family offers some inherent benefits and that we should therefore discipline ourselves to live within its repressions, as the people who suffered Victorian England are (mistakenly) supposed to have joyfully lived. Delusions like the propaganda that irresponsible wage claims of greedy workers inevitably result in an inflated currency, which acts like some cancer on society and which must be cured if we are to experience the prosperity which the politicians have been promising us for so long — whether there has been an inflated currency or not. And finally, the delusion that Thatcher's strong leadership has brought a new, stiffer purpose to our lives when before we were spinelessly preoccupied with selfish indulgence of our reckless whims.

It can be said about these delusions that they are at least obvious and defiantly stated; Thatcher seems to take much pleasure in her reputation as an Iron Lady whose stare can dissolve opponents in all the capitals across the world. But one effect of this has been the promotion of an opposite image and of the equally false idea that this offers a useful alternative to Thatcher. Partly because of her ruthless dismissal of her opponents from the Cabinet and partly because of an opportunistic anxiety that Thatcher’s attitudes and image will in the end erode the Tories' support, there has grown up on the back benches a kind of shadow Conservative government made up of sacked or disgruntled politicians. There are people like Francis Pym, whose credo The Politics of Consent was recently published and who was himself once the beneficiary of another's sacking — that of Lord Carrington, who is also among the shadows along with his henchman Ian Gilmour. Then there are the foppish St. John Stevas and the emphatically non-foppish William Whitelaw. Of course we should not call Whitelaw by that name; he was not formally sacked — nothing so terrible could ever happen to so comfortable a figure — but subjected to being brusquely kicked upstairs to the House of Lords.

By any standards these sacked ministers make an impressive bunch of what the political correspondents might call administrative talent (which means that they get into the same mess as the others, but have a talent for it). It all shows that Thatcher does not look at all kindly on any hints of doubt or disloyalty from her henchmen. no matter how popular they may be in the party. Harold Wilson (another one we should no longer call by his common name) who was noted for a squeamish reluctance to throw anyone out of his governments. must be looking on in wonder.

The shadow Conservatives share some notable characteristics. Some of them are aristocrats; their families have for a long time been called by peculiar names and titles and they are allowed occasionally to dress up in an especially strange way. They are all very rich, often with huge land holdings. And they are all gentlemen, with courtesy oozing out of every stripe of the old school tie. They are sure, one feels, to look after their servants and their tenants and they probably think of all that wealth they own. and the luxurious life style that goes with it. as a trust which they hold on behalf of the less fortunate in society. Of course if any of the less fortunate should try to improve their luck with a bit of direct, acquisitive action, or suggest that their masters and mistresses might lay down the onerous burden of their trust, there will be trouble in which courtesy will not be too much in evidence. But for the moment that does not happen and the alternative Conservatives can present themselves in this avuncular light, as the standard bearers for the true, historic Toryism which is supposed to be based on everyone being secure and taken care of in their allotted station in life (even if it is not clear who did the allotting). This is not at all the style of the brash, self-made representatives of Thatcher Britain like Lawson and Tebbit with their rather cruder ideas on the unequal ownership of wealth in capitalist society.

The alternative Conservatives make their appeal — which again is conventional and outworn and is actually very popular in the Labour Party — that the present state of British capitalism results from a deliberate act of policy by Thatcher and her crew. The government, runs the argument, does not have to be as it is; neither does the Conservative Party; neither does capitalism.

If this were true things could be very differently arranged. If Thatcher and Tebbit could by an act of will create a slump it must follow that they could by another such act end it and instead create a boom. We would have the sort of capitalism which has not yet been experienced, totally under the control of the experts and the politicians. totally predictable. In fact none of them have ever been able to do this; it is largely a matter of luck, which reputation a politician gets stuck with in history, dependent on which phase capitalism is going through when they are in power. Politicians must operate within the economic laws and motivations of capitalism; their role is largely to respond, in varying degrees of confusion, to events rather than to fashion them. This is as true for the gentlemen wets like Pym and Carrington as it is for the bone-dry Tebbit and Lawson.

So is there, to adapt a well-known phrase, no alternative? For so long as the working class support capitalism’s existence, the answer to that question must be that no, there is no alternative. There is no benefit in the working class changing their support from one set of politicians to another. Capitalism is not like some benign country estate and it cannot be organised as if it were. It cannot put human welfare in the forefront of its concerns. It cannot be controlled by any leader or expert. It must produce problems like poverty, sickness and war. Workers who are seduced into thinking that things would be different under a government of less abrasive personalities are deluding themselves.

Those few who are not so deluded have the alternative. The problems of capitalism — and among them we can count the system's politicians both roughly obnoxious and smoothly devious — will be abolished by a social revolution which will make the means of life the property of the human race. That revolution must come as an act of will of a politically conscious working class, who understand the choice before them: will it be the anarchy and chaos of capitalism or the order and abundance of socialism? To opt for socialism w ill be a decision for plenty and human harmony. It makes a healthy contrast to what is on offer from all the politicians, whether in power or out — a world of misery and suffering, where our very survival is in doubt.