Lather and whitewash (1986)

From the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Power, sex. greed and money". Not another Sun story about an indiscreet bishop, but the necessary ingredients of a successful American soap opera — according to Leonard Katzman. a producer of Dallas. But for a low-temperature wash, many people prefer the more mundane soaps like Coronation Street. Harry Kershaw, one of its writers and producers, has attributed the programme's success to the fact that "it is a folk opera in praise of, for want of a better phrase, the ordinary people of Britain".

Do you follow a soap opera? Millions do. In California ABC TV broadcasts continuous soap opera from 11am to 3pm every day, while the daily output of Americas three network channels is 11 hours of soap with an average audience of about 35,000,000. In Britain, East Enders glues 23,000.000 viewers to BBC 1 twice a week. Coronation Street enjoys about 10,000,000 visitors and Brookside corners a respectable 7,000,000.

The label "soap opera" was first attached to dramatic sagas broadcast by American radio in the 1930s. Drama of this sort was found to be the cheapest way of filling in the gaps between the commercials for detergents which sponsored the radio shows. Many radio soaps are still very popular, including The Archers, which has a weekly audience of about 3,000,000. Some soap addicts can become a little over-credulous and write letters to the drama characters as if they were real people:

Dear Angie,

There's no doubt in my mind now what you should do about Den. Leave him and The Queen Vic and start a new life for yourself. When I left my Terry six years ago . . .

Every week, the television studios receive many letters of love, hate, advice and enquiry relating to people who do not exist. The deluded letter-writers may number only a few but there are undoubtedly millions of people who allow the characters and events of the soaps to become a part of their mental social circles. Whatever you think about soap operas, they are a reasonably influential medium in our society and for that reason, deserving of comment by socialists.

There are many television programmes in this category: Sons and Daughters, Albion Market, Emmerdale Farm, A Country Practice, The Young Doctors, Crossroads and so forth. They are a massively popular form of entertainment — mass commodities, as widely consumed as coke or crisps. But unlike coke or crisps soap operas affect us socially. They promote certain ideas as being worthy of our approval and certain ideas are dealt with in ways which subtly invite disapproval. Someone once described much of what is broadcast on television as "chewing gum for the eyes '. Following soap operas in a relatively uncritical frame of mind over a number of years by way of relaxation will fortify certain popular prejudices about the world. The boundaries of the television fantasies have recently been extended into an accompanying literature. There are over a dozen magazines in America devoted to providing gossip, interviews and story-updates connected with the TV soaps. Soap Opera Digest, the market leader in the USA has a readership of over 4.000.000. In Britain the tabloid press has widened its coverage of the private lives of the famous soap actors and actresses, sometimes going to extraordinary reaches of triviality to dredge up a story. Take as one example the front page of the Daily Star earlier this year — a colour photograph of East Enders Dirty Den (actor Leslie Grantham) meeting Coronation Street's Ken Barlow (actor Bill Roache). There was no real story of any consequence other than the fact that they met. One newspaper editor has suggested that.

Soap operas are as much a part of the national fabric as Sunday Lunch Our readers spend a lot of time watching TV (the national average is about 20 hours per week) and we reflect their interests; part of the success of East Enders comes from the very real characters and very real situations which our readers identify with. (Philip Walker, Deputy Editor, Daily Mirror)

Whether they deal with the pressures of life in a humdrum working-class community or the extravagant affairs of tycoon terrain, the purpose of the soaps is to portray what some drama critics have called a "slice of life". Before making comment on the social effect of these programmes a few observations should be made about life outside of the box. Slices of what, in other words, do the dramas seek to depict?

Life outside the box

The society we inhabit — all over the world — is completely dominated by the commercial system, the profit system. It is a class-divided society in which a very small minority of women and men, between them, own and control all of the world's resources. The majority of us own nothing to speak of except our ability to work. We therefore need to sell ourselves to an employer (a company, local government, the state) in order to earn a living. The minority are able to live lives of material luxury from unearned incomes through rent, interest and dividends. It is a society divided between those who produce all of the wealth and possess nothing and those who produce nothing but possess virtually all of the wealth. A class of legalised robbers control society and it is at their behest that we are thrown out of work when it no longer becomes profitable to employ us. It is also at their behest that governments pitch young men and women into war to slaughter strangers when their economic interests — trade routes, key areas on the trade map and regions representing important markets — are threatened.

If you are in any doubt about the nature of the class society you live in consider the evidence. In 1986 government sources show that the top 10 per cent of the population own 54 per cent of all marketable wealth, and most of the rest is owned by a small percentage of people directly below the top 10 per cent. If you are working-class in Britain today, your child is twice as likely to die at birth than children from the wealth-owning class. Richard Wilkinson of the Centre for Medical Research (University of Sussex) has pointed to "a clear widening of differences in death rates and in life expectancy between social classes. Infant mortality figures which have been released, show that mortality rates are now increasing in lower social classes while they continue to fall among the more privileged". A recent report by the Office of Health Economics suggests that up to 1,000,000 people in Britain are suffering from mild mental handicap because of poverty rather than any detectable brain damage. (Mental Handicap: Partnership in the Community? 1986.)

Capitalism is a society of contradictions because its main aim is the quest for profit and not the satisfaction of human need. There are now more "surplus" bricks in Britain than ever before. There are about 400,000 construction workers who want to work but who are prevented from doing so because it is not profitable for them to be employed. Alongside this stagnant potential — enforced by the economic interests of the construction industry shareholders — there are an estimated 70,000 homeless families. Earlier this year, in July, there was a move in the London borough of Tower Hamlets to "solve" the acute housing problem there by dumping many of the 650 desperately needy families into a redundant passenger ship in the Thames and calling it a "floating home scheme" While this piece of imaginative inhumanity was being seriously discussed by the local authority pundits in their forlorn efforts to patch up the perennial problems of the profit system, there was no shortage of luxury homes (for the right sort of person) being advertised in the "quality" press. From Berwick to Belgravia, 40 acres . . . 50 acres . . . 2,000 acres, swimming pools, private cinemas, all you need is a tidy £500.000 and that will do nicely.

Under the commercial system, the majority of people experience life in a weak and strenuous fashion, like a person with nasal congestion trying to breathe fresh air. We live in an atmosphere of stifled creativity where the human potential for imaginative flair is choked and suppressed by routine and wage-slavery. Gazing at soap operas, slumped in an armchair with a cup of tea, is an example of the perverse pleasures we are encouraged to enjoy.

What socialists want the working class to do — what we are organised to achieve — is to abolish this social system and establish in its place a classless, moneyless society. A society without property relationships, employers or employees — a society where the sole principle of production will be "from each according to their ability, to each according to their self-determined needs". No legislative reform can make any significant difference to the basis of class-society. Socialism is the only thing worth acting for. Do soap operas help or hinder the revolution in social ideas which is necessary for the majority of people to establish socialism?

Soaps as soap boxes for socialism?

Most soap operas have no distinct social message, let alone a message for social change. Channel 4's Brookside though, does have a reputation for advocating changes to benefit workers, or at any rate it is supposed to expose aspects of capitalism which cause working-class misery. Jimmy McGovern, one of Brookside's scriptwriters has said.

I can have more effect as regards the bringing forward of an alternative society than Howard Brenton (the playwright) could ever have. It's a cosy programme but a powerful speech coming from a character you know and love can have a great impact — there is a potential for really subversive drama and it's exploited now and again. There will always be the argument that it's losing its balls, but that will go on forever — and that's good.

(Guardian, 9 July 1986)

In my own view, Brookside usually produces a very high quality of drama but politically it clearly opposes socialist arguments. Several of the programme's scriptwriters are self-avowed supporters of the Labour Party and the continuing political implication of Brookside's script is that a Labour government replacing the Conservative one is something that workers should aim for. This message is not expressed to the viewer directly but by a subtle process of showing a selective series of workers' experiences, seen from a particular point of view and scripting the characters to form certain conclusions which their subsequent experiences demonstrate to be "right" or "wrong".

It should not be forgotten that the Labour Party stands for the continuation of capitalism. It professes to be able to preside over the profit system in a way which benefits employees and that is an impossible objective, like trying to run slavery in the interests of the slaves. Labour administrations have been in government for about half the time since 1966. During that time the basic wealth structure has remained almost exactly the same. Labour governments have developed the nuclear bomb, introduced the vicious Special Patrol Group (now re-labelled). broken strikes, frozen wages and sent workers to war to protect the economic interests of the bosses. Compared with the quality of medicine available in the opulent, high-tech private hospitals, the NHS only offers a second-rate first-aid service because of the financial constraints it suffers. This is not surprising when you consider that its purpose, as implied in the Beveridge Report which proposed the NHS, was to mend broken workers with as little cost and fuss as possible. Yet there is in Brookside a recurring innuendo that the NHS is essentially a good idea which just needs a bit more money.

It has also been argued that soaps about working-class life, especially programmes like Coronation Street, help foster a better class consciousness by allowing workers to see their own plight through other characters. at a distance on the box. With your own problems, the argument runs, you're so entangled that you can't really see the wood for the trees. Watching the struggles of wage-slavery as an armchair observer rather than a hassled participant is supposed to provide a sharper picture of what's wrong with society. The trouble is that there is absolutely no evidence to support this argument. How many socialists has 25 years of Coronation Street produced? There can be no substitute for direct and clear socialist argument. Before socialism can be established there will have to be a revolution in the ideas of the majority of people. Such a change of ideas will not come about if we rely on people reading between the lines of television drama and forming the uniform conclusion that wage-slavery must be abolished.

Then there are the American soaps. It has been said, perhaps not very seriously, that programmes like Dallas, Dynasty and The Colbys help fuel the class war by flaunting the ostentatious wealth of the privileged. By showing how the idle rich live, the programmes are alleged to be encouraging some viewers to see this social parasitism for what it is. Certainly, these serials don't skimp on the spectacular. Dallas (the most commercially lucrative programme in the world) is produced as five-star escapism. Chic fashion, lavish decor, sumptuous food and drink. All this interwoven with the torrid affairs of the tycoons, as active with their bed sheets as their balance sheets as they glide through the pleasures of their latest company merger.

We are invited to sit in poverty and peer at their prosperity. A prosperity which has been produced by us, not them. It's all a bit twisted when you think about it. Most avid viewers when asked for their opinion about this sort of programme reply along the lines of saying it’s exciting to watch and it would be nice to' have that sort of money. Nothing more or less than that. To have no ambition beyond getting vicarious pleasure from watching your exploiters revel in the wealth which we produce is to be played for a sucker.

It must be concluded that there is nothing to speak of in any of the soaps which does anything to promote the cause of socialism.

Soaps and brainwashing

Most soap operas, for most of the time, play a part in confirming social prejudices which support capitalism. Implicit in the drama, or as the critics say "written into the sub-text", are all sorts of notions about the world we live in. Many of these are quite wrong, would not stand up to scrutiny nor cope with the evidence of history, biology, anthropology or political economy. Yet tucked away securely in-between the lines they never have to come out to defend themselves. They satisfy themselves with being self-evident truths rather in the way monarchs who could think of no other justification for tyranny would claim to be ruling by divine right. What are these notions tacitly accepted by soap scripts? They include the ideas that people suffer from something horrible called "human nature" — an incurable condition which can only be softened or controlled but never removed. It means that people are innately anti-social and irrational. Other assumptions include the idea that the majority of people are not intelligent or responsible enough to exist socially without bosses, political leaders and police forces to keep them in order.

The television programmes reinforce the prejudices of the commercial system in two ways. One is by showing a picture of society in which particular institutions are presented, like day and night, as being a part of an inevitable scheme. So you get rich people and poor people, peace time and war time, palaces and prisons. You are encouraged to lament the worst horrors these contradictions cause but never to question the need for the institutions themselves. The other way that the programmes give a misleading picture of society is by what they don't show rather than what they do show. It is not just swearing (which is carefully edited out of the "realistic" soaps); neither the more gruesome parts of working class suffering nor the sheer bloody monotony of daily routine are presented on the programmes.

That the programmes create a sort of resignation in many people to the problems of class-society is not so surprising when you consider the essentially conservative outlook of some of the influential writers. Harry Kershaw has been involved in Coronation Street as a writer and producer since it began. Commenting on the Street's audience over the last 25 years he has said it

. . . may have become a little richer, a little healthier, and rather better informed but, basically, they still have the same worries and the same aspirations as they had 25 years ago. The car in the garage and the VCR next to the TV set may point to material change but the important factors of life remain the same.

(Coronation Street 1960-1985)

He may be right in the sense that politically nothing has really changed for the working class over the past 25 years but programmes like Coronation Street do nothing to alter the route of the grim march hitherto going nowhere.

Finally, consider the view of Agnes Nixon, a prolific writer for American soap opera and the creator of three of them from scratch. Barry Norman asked her what she thought was good about soap operas. "In soap operas" she replied, "everyday is a new day just as in our lives and we can't predict what will happen in our lives from day to day. We sort of think and plan, fools that we are. and think that we can have some control over our destiny and we have none." (Barry Norman's Guide to American Soaps, 1986). No control over our destiny? It's all in the lap of the Gods? There's one life for your JRs and one for your Jack Duckworths and there's nothing we can do about it — fools that we are? Are we? Are you?

Gary Jay

Blogger's Note:

On a related note, the following year Steve Coleman wrote a similar type 'soap operas are "chewing gum for the eyes" ' piece in his Between the Lines column and it was subject to a sneering smear attack from the Sunday tabloid, the Sunday People. For more background on what actually happened, click on the link. Sadly, I didn't see this hit piece at the time . . . we were a News of the World and Sunday Mirror household.

What their papers say (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a popular belief that certain newspapers report things "the way they really are" — without bias. In fact, there are no such things as neutral news items, recognisable entities independent of journalists. Rather, there are those incidents and issues which are perceived by editors as "newsworthy".

Journalists are trained to spot particular aspects of social affairs as suitable material to report on with a bias or “angle". Although we find a slightly different point of view in the liberal, "quality" press from that expressed in the rest, all newspapers have a common standpoint on the profit system — they support it. It follows that what they tell us about the world cannot help but be politically slanted. Last year thirty million people died through lack of food while mountains of beef were produced; thousands were slaughtered in wars while the combatants wished for peace; and millions remained homeless while palatial accommodation stood empty. The press was unanimous in ignoring these contradictions and reserving its astonishment and critical analysis for royal weddings and trying to detect a "new" SDP policy.

Before it is represented in the press, reality is put through the great distorting process. The four main journalistic devices are to personalise, trivialise, historically fossilise and moralise.

They personalise

Society is presently organised on the basis of minority ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Production is geared to profit for the few, not for social need. Problems like industrial disputes, unemployment and wars are consequences of our social system but the press encourages us to look at them in terms of individual responsibilities. Hence, Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as the demon who has somehow personally engineered the unemployment of over three million people, or else a triumphal heroine who will put "Britain" back on its feet. Strikes are blamed on the personal irresponsibility of reckless trade union leaders. Even self-proclaimed non-revolutionaries like the former Longbridgc shop steward Derek Robinson and the GLC leader Ken Livingstone come in for prolonged campaigns of abuse in which they are reduced to being known as "Red Robbo” and “Red Ken". A variation on this technique of masquerading social issues as personal is to actually personify territories and to speak of "Britain fearing the proposed EEC policy" or “France will be taking steps to ensure that . . .". The persons created by this linguistic trick embody the interests of various sections of the ruling class, so that "Britain’s overseas investments” are in reality the investments of a small minority of wealth owners associated with Britain.

They trivialise

The papers are always littered with inconsequential revelations. We are prompted to turn our heads away from the condition of the world, our poverty and insecurity and busy our minds with matters such as “Why the Duke of Kent is to visit Darlington”, the new rhinoceros at a famous zoo and a thousand other inanities. Socialists are sometimes accused of being killjoys for not wishing to participate in discussions on such matters. But stop to consider why. As they are sliding the neutron bombs into their launching positions are we really expected to open a copy of the Daily Express, read about the man who fell into a vat of custard and still be slapping our thighs as the radioactive dust descends upon us?

They historically fossilise 

Society is in a constant state of change. The institutions, social relationships and problems of today have not always been with us and are only transitory. Journalists give us a misleading vision of society because they have a “photographic” perception of affairs rather than an historical one. They try to present an accurate picture of “the way things are” but they tend to freeze what they look at without seeing each situation as part of a much wider set of social relations which are not only changing all the time, but which we are capable of shaping for our own requirements. Thus, nation states, armies, managers, police and the wages system are all regarded as part of the fabric of society which is beyond any critical comment.

They moralise

On many issues that they examine, journalists pass moral judgement. They try to persuade us that something is good or bad, but the point is that the morality which they peddle is one which favours our social superiors and flies in the face of our own interests. Their moral precepts contort to keep us in place. So strikers who seek a paltry addition to their wage to try and make ends meet are greedy, while business tycoons who acquire additional companies have praiseworthy initiative and enterprise. If a man murders people in North Yorkshire for no reason he is an anti-social wretched villain. If the same man, trained by the SAS, commits the same acts for H.M. Government with a uniform on he will be hailed as a hero. When wealth producers reclaim goods from the wealth owners without paying for them this is theft and is morally reprehensible, but when the capitalists steal from us the fruits of our labour this is making a profit and is seen as morally virtuous.

The press like any other industry is owned by a few privileged people. Three major companies (News International, Reed International and Associated Newspaper Group) own three-quarters of all British newspapers and each company has similar interests in book and magazine publishing concerns, television companies and independent radio stations. In 1948 Lord Beaverbrook said to the Press Commission: “I publish my paper (Daily Express) purely for the purpose of making propaganda and for no other motive”.

Earlier this year. Rupert Murdoch sacked The Times editor Harold Evans because he resisted pressure to take a more right-wing editorial line supporting Thatcher and Tory economic policies. According to Anthony Holden, the features editor, “Mr. Murdoch wants a poodle as an editor” (Guardian, 13 March 1982). The press barons still like to enjoy control over exactly which arguments, about how capitalism should be run, are put in their papers, but there is not a conspiracy of newspaper magnates and most of the time connivance in capitalist propaganda is less explicit.

Nevertheless, the propaganda is always there. Take June 28 this year when there was a brief strike by the National Union of Railwaymen. All the papers were against the workers and with varying degrees of openness took the side of the bosses. Reports were brimming with comments and views from David Howell, the Transport Secretary, Peter Parker, the BR chairman and cabinet ministers, but no report came anywhere near presenting an adequate account of why the workers were dissatisfied with what they had been offered. The Daily Mail displayed a headline “Britain WILL Get to Work” and listed the ways in which workers should attempt to get in to produce profits. On 7 May 1926 the same paper had a similar message for suffering workers: “If you must go about walk as far as you can . . . don't buy more coal than usual. Keep a stout heart and smile at your troubles”. The Sun headline on 28 June was “STRIKE RABBLE" while the Daily Mirror (the paper which claims to stick up for the workers!) spoke shyly about the urgent need to end the strike and for “increased productivity”. The tirelessly liberal Guardian was also urging the railwaymen to “give reality a chance” — in other words “get back to work and stop complaining”. The Times and the Daily Telegraph had identical lines, only couched in more stilted language, whereas the Star took a similar line but with a bare minimum of written language.

Apart from imparting news, the papers also vie with each other to cultivate and cater for a popular culture for their markets. They reinforce ideas about desirable lifestyles, from the adverts in the Financial Times for special credit cards “for people who travel and entertain around the world. People whose lifestyle and income requires and justifies an additional range of financial services" (28 June 1982), to the crude horoscopes and cheap, brash “lighthearted" pages in the gutter press. Pleasure is promoted here as a spectator sport, something you need to get with cash, something where you are “being entertained". The lowest common denominator of interest among an estimated readership is exploited to the hilt to maximise sales. This converts the paper into another type of mass entertainment to be mechanically produced for profit on one side and passively consumed for gratification on the other. As Richard Hoggart observes in his book The Uses of Literacy:

These productions belong to a vicarious spectators' world; they offer nothing which can really grip the brain or heart. They assist a gradual drying-up of the more positive, the fuller, the more cooperative kinds of enjoyment. in which one gains by giving much (p. 340).

The only paper which represents the interest of the working class, because it stands for socialism and nothing else, is the Socialist Standard. The press and the other means of communication can only be used for their proper function — the unrestricted dissemination of ideas and other information — when they, along with everything else, are commonly owned. Raymond Williams approaches this point when he observes:

The irony is that the only practical use of communication is the sharing of real experience. To set anything above this is quite unpractical. To set selling above it may seem normal, but it is really only a perversion to which some people have got used: a way of looking at the world which must be right and normal because you have cut yourself down to its size (Communications, p. 26).

Remember knowledge is power, and every new reader of the Socialist Standard makes the movement for socialism stronger.

Gary Jay

Your good health (1985)

From the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

How healthy are you? Good health and fitness have recently become a very popular pursuit and stylised in fashionable culture and music. We are progressively bombarded with adverts for commodities to improve our bodies with "one calorie per can. nutrasweet drinks, jams with "40 per cent less sugar", low-fat spreads and vitamin-fortified. high fibre cereals. The wholemeal market has expanded from the odd loaf to a wide range of breads, pastas and even snack bars. What were once fringe groups like the advocates of Ginseng or jogging are now part of a much larger social group seeking improved health. Sports wear, including hi-tech trainers, track suits and designer-label tennis shirts, has become a theme in contemporary fashion. Good health and fitness are. of course, desirable objectives but the problem is that so many aspects of our lives today militate against their attainment.

For the privileged minority of men and women in capitalism the achievement of good health, if desired, is no problem. The consumption of first rate cuisine, a hygienic and comfortable environment, plenty of exercise in pools and on sunny beaches and a stress-free existence are conducive of putting you in good shape. For the majority of us, however, things are a lot more difficult. With careful planning and dedication a certain number of workers do become quite fit; people with a passion for active sport for instance. But generally workers cannot enjoy a life fit as a fiddle. Pursuing a clean bill of health in capitalism is like trying to swim against the flow of a river. How, then, is your health damaged by the society in which you live?

Medical health

In a society where money speaks louder than need it is not surprising that the provision of medical care for the majority is in such a sick state. If you can afford the £1,000 a day charged by private hospitals such as Harley Street's London Clinic there is no real cause for alarm. But the majority of people are not in this situation. Hospital services for the wealth-producers are being cut because of the economic recession: 

Guy's hospital has agreed to axe 300 jobs and close 63 beds by the autumn to cope with the financial crisis. . . General Medicine and surgery units will suffer most. Their outpatients will be cut by 30 per cent and they will lose 42 beds, including some in the chest and infectious disease wards., (Guardian, 1 July 1985)

Department of Health figures issued in March 1983 showed that more than 2.000 medical doctors had been rendered socially useless, suffering from the economic illness of unemployment. To aggravate the problem still further, many medical brains have been bribed by the military services to help them improve the techniques of bacteriological and bio-chemical warfare, which in turn has drawn away many more medical brains from treating patients to research and compose reports about the predictable effects of a nuclear war. One such report, issued after "nearly two years' hard work", was produced by a team of highly skilled consultants. general practitioners and professors. Its findings are not relaxing to read:

Delay in treatment would result in a high incidence of wound infection. Ruptured drainage and sewage systems together with the presence of decaying corpses and animal carcasses would increase enormously the hazards of infection. Major radioactivity would add the problems of radiation sickness to those already wounded. . . The psychogenic effects of such a disaster can only be conjectured. . . It is apparent that any schemes in existence would be completely inadequate to deal effectively with such a situation. (The Report of the British Medical Association Board of Science and Education Inquiry into the Medical Effects of Nuclear War)

In the relentless quest for profit, medical drug companies have often been found guilty of gross negligence or rank unscrupulousness. The leading Swiss company Ciba-Geigy has admitted that it placed unprotected Egyptian children in a field so that a crop-spraying airplane could douse them with the insecticide Galecron. The object was to test the children's urine for toxic levels of the liquid, which was subsequently linked with cancer. The biggest chemical conglomerate in Britain. ICI, has also admitted that it promoted an expensive and dangerous anabolic steroid as a wonder cure for malnourished children in Bangladesh. And these are probably no more the only culprits of such malpractice than Richard Nixon and Profumo are the only dishonest politicians of our time.

The environment

The commercial profit system operates worldwide and. because it puts a priority on the making of a profit for the few, all other interests — including those of the majority of people and our environment — are subordinated to this end. If it is cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to pollute the atmosphere rather than to safely dispose of toxic waste, then the atmosphere gets polluted. The National Wildlife Federation in America reported recently on the increasing problem of acid rain. Sulphur-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants are damaging forests, fouling lakes and streams; in some parts of California fog is 2,000 times as acidic as natural fog and capable of burning the eyes and throat. More than 26 million tons of sulphur are emitted in the USA every year and the amount is increasing. Mr Kirk Willison, a spokesman for the Edison Electrical Institute, has opposed moves to ban such practices "because of the costs that pollution control would involve" (Daily Telegraph, 11 May 1984). Dangerous pesticides are often marketed with high pressure campaigns. with all sorts of dire results. DDT was withdrawn from the market last year but. as two investigators from Friends of the Earth recently discovered (posing as farmers). it is still possible to get this damaging substance from certain agrochemical suppliers. Chris Rose. FOE's countryside campaigner was reported in Farmers' Weekly as saying:

This was a question of cash on the counter and no questions asked. . . Allowing the sale of DDT is almost unbelievable negligence . . . obviously the company is keen on making a quick buck by flogging poisons even if they are banned.

Malnutrition

Not only do millions of people die from malnutrition each year (Oxfam has estimated the number of malnourishment-related deaths annually at 30,000.000) but millions more just "go hungry" or suffer the effects of an unhealthy diet. According to the United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund over 1,700 children die every sixty minutes (one every 2 seconds) from disease, malnutrition and war-caused disruption. This sort of sacrifice on the altar of profit also happens closer to home. Take one recent case. In August twin sisters aged 2½. died of malnutrition in Essex while their unemployed father was away from home, perhaps taking Norman Tebbit's advice, looking for work. The tragic twist to this particular story was the expertise of the unemployed father — he was a cook (Guardian, 3 August 1985). The social madness of such suffering is that, not only could we produce enough food for every human being to lead a healthy life (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that using current farming methods the world could produce enough food for 33.000,000.000 people — seven times the world population) but that even today so much food and drink is produced but left to rot or be re-cycled because it cannot be sold at a profit.

Millions of litres of surplus Common Market wine, equivalent in its present distilled form to the contents of 16.000 Olympic swimming pools, should be converted into boiler fuel according to a House of Lords select committee report. (Guardian. 25 July 1985)

The Common Market's butter mountain recently reached a record level of 600,000 tonnes, adding to the gastronomic scenery of milk lakes and beef mountains. Despite the enormity of suffering from malnutrition it is still conventional wisdom for the "experts" and their journalistic echoes to refer to such food and drink as "surplus stock". The measuring rod of need in capitalism is. necessarily, not what people need but rather what the market can absorb. The Live Aid concerts earlier this year highlighted the unnecessary suffering of so many people but. clearly, the occasional well-intentioned handouts to the starving cannot solve a problem which is endemic in a society which dances to the tune of the cash register.

Employment

Employment is a euphemism for exploitation. Selling your energies to someone else or a company for your whole vital life, so that the hirer can get wealthy from your efforts, is not the formula for a healthy existence. When people work at home for their families or friends it is usually rewarding and pleasurable. But being constantly alienated from what your efforts produce for your employer is a depressing experience. In the context of employment work becomes nothing more than the reluctantly performed grind necessary to earn a living. Wherever you work — office, factory, school, hospital or mine — the conditions are usually less than extravagant, aimed at maximum productivity rather than your best health and safety. Every aspect of most working environments, including lighting, heating and cleanliness, are not what they could be. Over 1,500 people die every year as a result of their work and courts are always hearing cases of industrial accidents which could have been avoided but for unsafe but cost-saving conditions at work. The independent Office of Health Economics has reported how fear of losing their jobs is forcing more sick workers to work.

Unemployment

Enforced idleness and social uselessness takes an obvious toll, not only on its direct victims but also on their dependants. A government report at the beginning of this decade showed how unemployment leads to increased ill-health, psychological disturbance and alcoholism. Symptoms detailed in the report include depression accompanied by "insomnia, loss or gain of weight, suicidal thoughts, impulsive or violent outbursts and an increased use of alcohol or tobacco". Among physical symptoms are asthma, skin lesions, backaches and headaches. Perhaps not surprisingly, this report was not made universally accessible — only 200 copies were printed and put on sale at £6 each.

Drug abuse

In all sorts of ways the profit system offers bleak prospects for most workers. Either the routine drudge of boring work or the frustration and hopelessness of life on the dole. The pressures become the more unendurable during a deep recession, especially for the millions of young people with so much potential creativity and energy. In this sort of setting the escapism afforded by mood-altering drugs is likely to become more popular. with all the misery that is its consequence. The proliferation of the use of heroin and of solvent-abuse over the last few years is a measure of the deep dissatisfaction an increasing number of people are feeling about the sort of society they live in. The suicide rate is dramatic enough — there are on average about 12 suicide attempts every day — but for many others the regular use of these drugs means life that is almost like suicide. The statistics are not very reliable but a figure of 50,000 heroin addicts in Britain is sometimes quoted. Addressing the drug dealers, Thatcher has warned "We are after you” and Edward Gardner, chairman of a recent House of Commons all-party committee. advocated that drug dealers should be hung (while army recruitment officers have medals put around their necks). But this sort of policy cannot be successful because it seeks to tamper with the symptom of a social malady rather than its cause.

War

Wars are the extension of the economic quarrels of governments over new markets to exploit, new territories rich in mineral deposits. trade routes and strategic locations on the trade map. It is not "human nature" which impels young men (and now, in many armies, young women) to go out and murder complete strangers; it is usually conscription or the fomenting of hysterical jingoistic fervour against "the enemy", as was seen during the Falklands war. From Belfast to Beirut to Baghdad and in a score of other current wars people are being killed and maimed every day, with all the grief and despair for so many others that this leaves in its wake. It has been estimated that "The number of people around the world who are involved in wars of the old-fashioned, death producing kind comes, at a rough count, to about 701,600,000 . . . (Sunday Times, 21 March 1982). The emergency children's fund, Unicef, working in 112 countries, has a total annual income equivalent to about 4 hours of world spending on the war machines. Capitalism is not about caring for people and therefore cannot put a priority on health. One army general is paid more than five state enrolled nurses.

Getting healthy

Socialists cannot object to workers trying to get as fit and healthy as they can. but it cannot be denied that the sort of society we live in makes this a very difficult task. Class-divided society, the rat-race, is a squalid struggle for most people and only with its abolition can we seriously begin to take pleasure in individually and socially enjoying robust good health. If music is the food of love, knowledge is the food of desirable social change. The socialist case contains no artificial flavourings or election promises, just wholesome food for thought. Bon appetit.

Gary Jay

Does the SWP have an answer to racism? (1993)

From the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The number of recorded racial attacks, arsons and killings has risen dramatically over the last five years as the economic recession has deepened. Is violent confrontation the answer?

The week after the Unity march was held in October to protest against racism and the BNP, the SWP organised a meeting at the LSE entitled "Why the police protect the Nazis". The speaker was the leading SWP member, Tony Cliff. Anyone attending this meeting to hear anything about why the police protect the Nazis, assuming as the title did that this was the case, would, though, have been very disappointed. The speaker, stupidly or dishonestly, thought that it was enough of an argument to shout to the audience (1) that most police are Nazis and (2) that the police had the constitutional job of supervising the Unity march, so therefore (3) the reason why the police prevented SWP members from burning down the BNP Head Office was that the police were Nazis.

This is what logicians describe as assuming what you are trying to prove. Cliff’s argument was about as strong in its structure as the argument that God is all powerful because created the Universe. Had he been putting this argument about the police being Nazis to an audience on Any Questions or Question Time or on an outdoor platform at Speakers’ Corner, he would have been quite rightly refuted and ridiculed by any cross section of workers.

As it was, Cliff’s audience, many of whom had attended the march, seemed content to wholeheartedly agree with Cliffs rousing oratory. One irony here is that after the contentious report (commissioned by the government from the tobacco magnate Patrick Sheehy) to run the police like a business, many police officers have been wooed by the stringent law and order promises of Tony Blair. Labour’s hopeful Shadow Home Secretary; the result is that come the next general election many coppers will be voting for the same party as the members of the SWP: the Labour Party. It is a point of historical record that at general elections, after lambasting the Labour Party and all its necessary shortcomings, the SWP asks its members to vote for Labour candidates as the election of another Labour government will give workers “an inch more space to manoeuvre" than under the Conservatives.

The Unity march had been organised in the wake of growing racism in Britain and across Europe. The number of recorded racial attacks, arsons and killings has risen dramatically over the last five years as the economic recession has deepened. Workers become desperate and often, ignorantly. look for easily identifiable scapegoats. Racism is thus adopted by them and exploited by those brighter, ruthless politicians who see votes and power in it. The real problem in Tower Hamlets in East London, where Derek Beackon was recently elected as a BNP councillor, is a housing problem.

Respectable racism

It is very important to look at how racism moves from being the nasty neurosis of a few frustrated fanatics and thugs to an idea which thousands of people begin to vote for. The problem in Tower Hamlets is not so much the few skinheads who sell the BNP literature on a Saturday morning — although the threat they pose to local ethnic minorities causes a lot of fear and misery — it is the thousand people with "respectable" appearances who voted BNP in the election and the tens of thousands in Britain who could soon be doing the same thing.

What did the SWP say about this problem at the meeting? What educational and argumentative ammunition did it provide for the eager young radicals who attended to learn about how to persuade fellow workers against racism? The SWP speaker said nothing about such arguments. Absolutely nothing. Instead the 30-minute talk was devoted entirely to repealing the mantra about the police all being Nazis, and to looking at half a dozen ways of using physical force against fascists. His tirade included all the vocabulary of "barricade storming" and the need to use guns against fascist thugs who have knives. Cliff’s argument was befitting of any angry young child who had not yet understood the rôle of ideas in politics.

Fascism personified

He saw fascism as an almost physical entity, a concrete part of society, personified in the small number of identifiable members or officers of the BNP. These people had to be "taken out" (physically deterred from being fascists, by being beaten up or, presumably, killed) and then the problem would be solved. You have to surgically remove the "bad apples". In one of many moments of flamboyant rhetoric he said:

"I'll tell you this. If you have a barrel of good apples but there is in the middle of the good apples one bad apple, the good apples will not make the bad apple good."

What followed from this simplistic and strikingly inappropriate metaphor, is that if the "bad apple" of fascism currently sitting in the middle of society could somehow be surgically removed, then all the good apples would be preserved Although Cliff’s language was riddled with references to force being used against the Nazis, he nowhere articulated with any precision how far his young acolytes should go in the furtherance of their aim to "remove the bad apple". Are the fascists to be simply threatened with baseball bats to relinquish their bigotries; are they to be rounded up and locked away to rot in some secret SWP political prison camps for workers with "the wrong attitude"; or was Cliff recommending that, ultimately, these political incorrigibles should he assassinated?

This meeting, like other SWP meetings I have attended, was rigged. It could not be described as an open, honest meeting designed as a genuine forum for workers to discuss the ideas put by the speaker. The rigging works in this way. The speaker addresses the meeting for half an hour. The chairperson then invites people from the floor for any questions to the speaker or points they wish to raise. Some of these questions, as you might imagine, raise points which are very awkward for the SWP. pointing to inconsistencies in its propaganda, undemocratic features of its organisation or clearly anti-working-class conduct it urges upon its followers. Rather than require the speaker to answer each point from the floor once it has been made (and thus allowing the questioner to come back if they are not satisfied with the speaker's response), the chairperson simply takes all the questions from the floor in sequence without any response from the speaker. When the chairperson thinks enough questions and points have been raised, he or she then invites the speaker to respond to the points collectively. This sinister technique thus permits the speaker to pass over any really troublesome points, damning them with feint response. Such meetings, in the best traditions of authoritarian, deceptive showpieces, give the appearance of being open because questions from the floor are allowed but in reality the questions that the SWP would prefer not to be asked of them in public are deftly avoided by their speakers.

That was exactly what Tony Cliff did at this meeting. One of the first questioners was a young man who identified himself as having been a long-time resident of London’s East End. He said that he could not really see any substantial difference between what Cliff had urged anti fascists to do (i.e., beat up fascists) and what the fascists were doing (beating up anti-fascists and people from ethnic minorities). If what the SWP objected to in fascism was it reliance on force to further its ideas, its bullying, threatening tactics, then surely it was wrong to employ exactly those tactics in opposing the rise of fascism? A few SWP members coughed and shuffled about at this point but Cliff was saved from having to enter into any serious debate with this man because the chairperson moved immediately to the next questioner. When the time did come for Cliff to respond to the six or seven points put to him. he dealt contemptuously with the point from the East Ender. The answer, in a few seconds before hopping on to a more friendly question with a much practised agility, was simply that the force of the anti-fascists was historically justified because (a) the other side started it and (b) the force the the fascists had used before (in the Second World War) and were planning to use again was of such a high order that it would be foolish to try and respond in the realm of ideas.

We were back to the principles of gangsterism. The talk of Robert de Niro playing Al Capone in The Untouchables. "If someone comes for me with fists, I answer with a knife. If he comes with a knife I answer with a gun . . ." Many people in areas like Tower Hamlets are living in desperate poverty. There is a housing crisis. Some people from ethnic minorities do have housing and so ignorant workers are left prey to the idea that if these "immigrants" were ail shipped away then there would be plenty of houses and jobs for "British" workers. What is the best way to argue against this sort of politics? Don’t ask Tony Cliff, he doesn’t seem to know or care. At least if he has any thoughts on these matters he was not disposed to share them with anyone at the SWP meeting. Cliff had other things on his mind and sounded more like Lennox Lewis’s coach than a political thinker.

Burn it down

One of the questions was from a young man from Northern Ireland. He spoke as a member of the SWP and was very keen that the meeting should focus closely on exactly why the SWP activists on the march had been prevented from turning down Upper Wickham Lane in Welling, towards the BNP headquarters "to burn it down". There was momentary unease from some at the meeting whereupon the questioner decided to be more up front: "I mean we might as well be clear about what we w'ere trying to do". He went on to fulminate against the police and how despicably pro-Nazi their conduct was in not permitting reasonable activists like himself to go about their proper civic business with cans of petrol and flame throwers. Clearly, the state was in cahoots with the BNP. Quite who the SWP would turn to for assistance if the BNP threatened to bum down its premises is open to question.

The interesting thing about the contribution of the young frustrated arsonist was that no one sought to dissent from the aim of the march that he avowed. Tony Cliff did not say, for example, in summing up. that the SWP had not formulated any such plan. The chairperson did not publicly proclaim that the questioner was, in fact, speaking for himself alone when ranting on about the need to burn things down. The young firebrand turned out to be the kid who yelled that the Emperor had no clothes on: the naive exposer of truth.

Workers from different cultures and ethnic groups have more in common that that which distinguishes them. They are all living in relative poverty and insecurity while they are systematically robbed by the owners of the means of producing wealth (owners who come from all sorts of racial groups). Racism has not tended to develop in times of economic boom; it flourishes when the going gets particularly tough for workers. With nationalist rhetoric of mainstream politicians, racist ideas being toyed with by Labour and Liberal local councillors, and a land where, for instance, the Minister for Education advocates that the Union Jack be unfurled from every school roof in the land, vicious racism is only one goose-step away.

The arguments against racism must be put on radio phone-in programmes, in local and national newspaper letters columns, in public debates, pubs and and during doorstep canvassing. But the only effective arguments against this ugly and recurrent feature of capitalism are those which are truly socialist. Not those quasi socialist SWP banalities which end with an embarrassed instruction "vote Labour with no illusions" at the next general election. It was a Labour government in 1962 which promulgated Britain’s first piece of explicitly racist legislation. Racism is born from the poverty and nationalistic tensions of capitalism; there is no such thing as a successful campaign against racism within capitalism. That this is so is testified to by the reemergence of racism with all its terrors after it had risen and then fallen in the 1970s. The Anti-Nazi League rather unbelievably claim that racism failed in the 1970s because it was stymied by the might of university students with yellow badges chanting to Clash songs in parks. The truth is that most National Front supporters or potential voters were absorbed into the Conservative Party, specially after Mrs Thatcher assured them all in a speech in 1979 that (a) she would not tolerate our culture being "swamped" by foreigners and (b) that unlike the relatively small and shabby NF, she had the power and real prospect of putting her prejudices into action.

The growth of racism will not be broken with brute force, only bones and hope will become fractured in such a fight. In open public debate, the ignorance and bigotry behind the arguments of racism can be easily exposed, at which point support disperses more quickly than the queue at the door of the surgeon who is exposed as an unqualified impostor with a penchant for learn-as-you-go quackery.

Gary Jay

Blogger's Note:

". . . It was a Labour government in 1962 which promulgated Britain’s first piece of explicitly racist legislation."

I looked for a correction in a later issue of the Socialist Standard, but I couldn't see one. The Labour Party wasn't in government in 1962. The legislation referred to from 1962 was the Commonwealth Immigrants Act which was a piece of legislation which ". . . entailed stringent restrictions on the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the United Kingdom."  The Labour Party in opposition, led by Hugh Gaitskell, opposed the 1962 Act.

What legislation Gary Jay was perhaps thinking of was the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968, which was a piece of legislation passed under Wilson's Labour Government. This was denounced in the pages of the Socialist Standard at the time as piece of racist legislation:

• April 1968: Labour's New Race Law by Adam Buick
• April 1968: 'Prejudice and Pride' by Ivan

SPGB Meetings (1993)

Party News from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

An audio recording of Kerima Mohideen's talk on Rudyard Kipling's Kim is available at the following link.

Ours and theirs (1981)

From the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The main points in the Bank of England Bulletin, which was issued last month, were well covered by television, radio and newspapers. Anyone taking what was said in these reports as what was meant would have been delighted with the good news. Here are some of the ways in which the news was reported: “Recession or no WE are getting richer abroad”; “According to figures assembled by the Bank’s statisticians . . . OUR external wealth was actually £4.3 billion more in 1979 than we thought it was a year ago”; “In 1980, for the first time, OUR assets abroad exceeded £200 billion ...” (Our emphasis).

Great, you might think. You can leave that dreary job, or stop looking for one. You can move out of your cramped home and move into spacious accommodation with pleasant amenities. No longer will your lifestyle be tethered by a meagre and insecure income. No longer will your impulses be repeatedly smothered by your poverty. So you get on the blower to the Bank of England, explain that you have heard the news about our great wealth which is invested abroad and ask how you might go about getting some of your share now.

Waiting for your reply from the other end of the line, the dialling tone, or worse, would be your signal that all is not as it seems. In fact what is described as "our overseas wealth’, if it was being reported from the point of view of the great majority, would be described as "their overseas wealth’. In Britain today, the entire pooled wealth of the poorest 80 per cent of the adult population amounts to less than that which is owned by the wealthiest 1 per cent (Report of Royal Commission on Distribution of Income and Wealth, 1980) and 93 per cent of adults do not own any stocks or shares. (CIS report, The Wealthy).

Meanwhile, in Japan the capitalist minority’s quest for profit continues with its inevitable disregard for the common social good. For many years a drug developed by a Professor Chisato Maruyama to treat terminal cancer has been dispensed at his small clinic in Tokyo. The vaccine seems to be regarded as effectual, at least by the hundreds of people who queue from dawn every day outside the clinic to collect a forty days’ supply for their suffering friends or relatives.

Research conducted at Tohoku University suggests that where the vaccine has been used in conjunction with other medical treatment survival rates in terminal cancer have much improved over treatment with other drugs. However, the small clinic cannot keep up with the demand and at the moment it is the only place allowed to dispense the vaccine. In order for the drug to become generally available it must be licenced by the Pharmaceutical Council of the Health Ministry. The Health Ministry usually rules on new drugs within 18 months but the Pharmaceutical firm making the vaccine first applied for licensing five years ago, and still no decision has been reached.

The issue became publicised after patients’ families petitioned the Ministry with 60,000 signatures, and the clamour could no longer be ignored by the government. The reason for the extraordinary delay in official approval being granted to the drug cannot be certain as deliberations of the decision makers—and this applies across the world under capitalism—are conducted in secret, or privately as they would prefer to call it.

But all of the available evidence suggests that there have been “close relations" between the Health Ministry and major drug companies. It seems that these firms are exerting strong pressure (the Yen variety) on health officials to block the commercial licensing of the Maruyama vaccine, which would present damaging competition to their own anti-cancer drugs already on the market. There is a trend for many senior ministry bureaucrats who are ‘co-operative’ with the representatives of large drug companies to be given highly paid appointments with the companies once they have retired from government employment. The rather well-titled ‘vice-president’ of one of the largest Japanese pharmaceutical companies was Deputy Health Minister a few years ago. Until the power of control and decision-making is withdrawn from the minority who now exercise it all over the world, society will continue to be run by us for them.

Gary Jay

SPGB Meetings (1992)

Party News from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (2001)

Party News from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Think Globally, Act Globally

Why local actions are no match for International capitalism

Socialist Party Day School

London, Saturday 24 February

10.30am—4.30pm

10.30: Welcome. Tea and coffee

11.00: Are you feeling sick? Medicine under capitalism. 

Why it's normal to feel ill in capitalism. by Stuart Watkins.

12.30—1.30: Lunch.

1.30—3.00: No Logo—a new anti-capitalist manifesto?

Paul Bennett looks at Naomi Klein's book which sets out the ideas of the new wave of "anti-capitalist" protestors.

3—4.30: Greens ain't got no class.

Bill Martin explains how those who work for green reforms, even by direct action, fail to realise that they are up against an entrenched class system where the profits of the few must always come first.

Manchester public meeting:

Human Rights

Monday 26th February at 8.00pm

Speaker: Gary Jay

Venue: The Hare and Hounds, Shudehill, Manchester

Briefing: What is Capitalism? (1984)

The Briefing Column from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money trick

All wealth is the product of labour. Every house, car, loaf of bread, everything that we use is brought into being by men and women applying their energies to the resources that other men and women have extracted from the environment. It is one of the contradictions of the class system, though, that the great majority of people — the wealth-producing class — consume and enjoy only the crumbs of the wealth they produce. The construction workers who build the palaces and the mansions return at the end of a hard day’s work to live in council hovels or at best an up-market suburban slum. The wealth producers are trapped in poverty because of the wages- system of legalised robbery. The factories, farms, mines, offices, communications systems — in fact, the means of life — are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world's population. The wages or salaries with which the wealth producers are fobbed off are worth less than the value of what has been produced, so that the boss receives a value from the efforts of the worker over and above what is paid for. The surplus value kept by the owners of industry becomes profit when the goods are sold on the market.

When the social system is looked at from this point of view, a couple of important points become apparent: first, that whether wages are “high” or "low" the people working for them are being exploited; and second, that it is the system of producing goods and services for a profit which condemns the majority to live lives of unnecessary poverty. Occasionally, the absurdity of the class system exhibits itself in stark madness. A couple of years ago the workers who produced the engines for the Concorde aeroplane were given a special concession by their bosses. The workers who, although they were responsible for making the plane would never be able to afford to travel in it. were permitted to take their families on a tour of their work for a price of 50p. The tours would need to be brisk as they could not keep the wealthy ticket holders hanging about drinking champagne in the departure lounges for too long.

Rolls Royce is now trying the same sort of thing:

A big pools win would be the only way most workers could get to own a Rolls Royce. but 3.800 employees at the firm's works in Crewe. Cheshire, now get a 90-minute taste of high life. (Daily Telegraph, 8 August 1984)

The scheme will operate for about 18 months while all the workers whose efforts actually produce the cars will be able to cruise about the countryside for an hour in a £56,000 ice-green Silver Spirit. The chief executive of Rolls Royce, Richard Perry, observed that: "People have worked here for forty years and have said afterwards that this had been their first chance to sit in one of the cars".

Capitalism commits a continuing con-trick on the working class every moment that it is allowed to carry on. It is only fallacy and prejudice that obstruct the path to a classless society.

False Images

From the time when we are first shown an atlas or a globe we are given a false image of the world. The map is divided into over 150 separate countries and we are indoctrinated with the idea that is is only right and proper to develop an allegiance to "our" country. We are taught that we should use possessive vocabulary in relation to the country although we own nothing of it. We are taught to have respect and admiration for a sterile, stately-home culture of which we have no part and most importantly we are taught to accept the possibility that one day we might be called on to fight and kill strangers (who will have been similarly misled) in furthering the cause of our bosses if economic rivalry is extended from the conference table to the battlefield.

There is one working class comprised of men and women all over the globe who share an economic condition: we own nothing except our mental and physical energies and we need to try to sell these on a weekly or monthly basis, to a boss, in order to make a living. We may have different languages and different cultures but what we have in common is much greater and more significant than how we differ. A print worker in England will share more experiences and problems with a French print worker than he will with an English Press tycoon. There are other illusions flowing from an image of the world as lots of independent nations. The world now has a highly integrated industry. The labour which goes into producing most articles is divided among many men and women performing specialised jobs. This fact, taken with the restriction of certain products to particular global regions and climates, means that the energies which go to produce a particular item can come from all over the world.

Take the example of a typewriter and consider what was needed to make it: the different types of metal, the plastic, the rubber and the technology of its design. Each of these could trace its origins to a different place and then the same analysis could be applied to the ships and aeroplanes which were used to transport the various materials and components around the world. Because of the way commerce and world trade operate, countries with apparently opposed political ideologies in fact are engaged in trade. American farm owners sell wheat to the Russian ruling class; the Russian ruling class colludes with its counterpart in South Africa to fix the price of diamonds on the world market and the Russian Empire even helps to arm American missiles by playing a part in manufacturing plutonium which is later used for American warheads. Western governments. including Britain, have been shipping uranium to Russia for enrichment (of the government as well as the uranium) knowing it was for nuclear warheads.

The Left Wing of Capitalism

"Yes. I agree that a classless society is a good idea but the reason I support the Labour Party is that while we have got capitalism things are marginally better if there is a Labour government.”

Socialists firmly reject this sort of argument. The profit system is a way of running society which is against the interests of the working class, the majority of people. It works on the basis of producing wealth only if there is the prospect of selling it for a profit on the market, not simply because there is a need for it. So if you have a need which you cannot afford to have satisfied then your need will continue. In this system there is a constant antagonism of interest between master and servant, or to use the more decorous expression for the same relationship, between employer and employee. The bosses strive to get as much as possible from the workers while paying them as little as they can get away with whereas the workers seek to reduce the extent to which they are exploited.

The Labour Party has never sought to do anything but run capitalism and consequently when it has formed the government (as has happened seven times) it has found itself doing all the anti-working-class things which it vehemently opposes when they are carried out by Conservative governments. Apart from supporting wars, introducing the atomic bomb in Britain and establishing the Special Patrol Group (SPG), the Labour Party does not enjoy a proud record on the industrial front. Labour supporters who are rightly sickened by the sort of problems being faced by the miners and the dockers would do well to look at their party’s record on these issues. The National Coal Board has plans to shut unprofitable or “uneconomic” pits for the same reasons that pits were shut before 1945 by private capitalist owners and for the same reasons that 48 Welsh pits were closed and 50,000 miners made redundant under the Labour government between 1964 and 1970.

Then consider the struggle of the dockers. The last time troops were used to break a dockers' strike anil unload ships was under a labour government during a spate of dock strikes in 1949-50. In May 1949, after an outbreak of unofficial strikes in support of Canadian dockers, the Labour government invoked Defence Regulation 1304 and used troops to unload fruit and refrigerated food at Avonmouth. The use of troops caused the strikes to spread. By July 8 10,000 men were on strike and the government announced that unless wage-slavery was resumed a state of emergency would be declared. The Labour government invited the King to sign such a declaration three days later.

Despite this, the number of men on strike rose to 15,000. Prime Minister Attlee became angry. Who did these workers think they were, telling the bosses they were not satisfied! Attlee proclaimed that he was prepared to send 35,000 troops into the docks and the strike collapsed within two weeks. Troops were used again by the Labour government in April 1950 when another strike was thwarted in the Port of London. Troops have been used by governments since then during strikes, for instance in the emergency services, but never for wholesale strike breaking. During the firemen's strike 1977-78 the Labour government again sent in the troops with the Green Goddess fire engines to undermine the industrial action of members of the working class struggling to stop their standard of poverty becoming even worse. The economic hardships of this society have not been personally engineered by Margaret Thatcher and cannot be talked away by Neil Kinnock. These problems are an intrinsic part of a class-divided society.

Inhuman priorities

As this social system grinds on the contradiction between a society potentially geared to abundant production and a society poised on self-destruction becomes more stark. We could produce so much. We could meet all the needs of the population of the world. But we continue in artificial scarcity and to add further horror to the nightmare we continue to amass the means of destruction.

According to Oxfam. (Guardian, 5 August 1981) over 30,000,000 people die of hunger every year, more than half of them children under five. Every year 780.000.000 people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. At the current rate these figures will have doubled by the end of this decade. In the last hour about 1,700 children have died unnecessarily, victims of malnutrition, disease and war. Figures are often formulated to express the grotesque priorities of the profit system by contrasting the expenditures on the industry of health and the industry of death: the Defence Research and Development programme of £1.8 billion is 16 times greater than that given to the Medical Research Council; one Army General is paid more than five State Enrolled Nurses; the upkeep of one nuclear submarine is greater than the annual cost of local authority libraries and UNICEF working in 112 countries has a total income of under £200 million which is the equivalent of what the world spends on military ventures every four hours.

These facts exemplify the priorities of capitalism. What should be done about this? Socialists do not advocate that more money be spent on welfare as a solution to the problem. Capitalism, based on producing for profit not need, creates these tragic disasters as a matter of course. Trying to solve them with charity or adjustments in spending cannot work, despite all the energy and drive which has been contributed by the people who work for the various voluntary and charity organisations. The way to solve these problems is to establish a society which will work on the principle of “from each according to ability to each according to need", a society in which our productive forces will be used directly to satisfy our needs.

Gary Jay

Who said . . . (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here are some quotations. See how many you can correctly match up with their sources.

1. “I want to earn an honest living”

(a) Prince Charles

(b) Lord Wilson

(c) Ronald Biggs

2. “The Pope’s got great charisma. I’d like to sign him up”

(a) The Reverend Moon

(b) General Jaruzelski

(c) Lew Grade

3. “We must show that we have positive policies which are based upon the implacable requirement that the interests of the British people must predominate”

(a) Winston Churchill

(b) Neil Kinnock

(c) Martin Webster

4. “Whether you call it surplus or profit it is necessary, whether we live in a Socialist economy, a mixed economy or a capitalist economy”

(a) HRH The Duke of Edinburgh 

(b) Milton Freidman

(c) James Callaghan

5. “Is any sick among you? Let him call up for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick”

(a) Norman Fowler, Minister for Health

(b) The Chairman of Mazola

(c) The Bible (James v. 13)

6. “No sensible person suggests that students should not learn about Marxism any more than that a Medical course should omit venereal disease”

(a) Alastair Burnet

(b) Professor C K Grant

(c) Kenny Everett

7. “The belief in progress, the belief that Man can manage his own destiny is the most appalling death wish that ever afflicted humanity”

(a) A Neanderthal man

(b) General Haig

(c) Malcolm Muggeridge

8. “I cannot say in all truth that I do look on capitalism and business with the same joy as in 1960”

(a) Richard Nixon

(b) Jim Slater

(c) Roy Jenkins

9. “The efficiency of a business is much more important than the question of who owns the shares”

(a) Yuri Andropov

(b) Reg Prentice

(c) Denis Healey

10. “I went to the Lords because I had nowhere else to go”

(a) Lord Shinwell

(b) Ian Botham

(c) Lord Gormley

11. “I used to say that politics was the second oldest profession and now I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first”

(a) John Profumo

(b) Shirley Williams

(c) Ronald Reagan

12. “Its (the workers’ state) officers are elected and subject to political control. All epaulettes and privileges of rank are abolished. . . All judges must be workers and subject to regular education”

(a) Monty Python record

(b) International Socialists Pamphlet

(c) A Bulgarian politburo brochure

13. “We demand therefore: abolition of incomes unearned by work. Abolition of the thraldom of interest. . . The ruthless confiscation of all war profits. We demand the nationalisation of all businesses which have been amalgamated. We demand that there should be profit-sharing in the great industries”

(a) A Militant editorial

(b) Manifesto of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)

(c) Programme of the National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazi Party)

ANSWERS:

1. (c). 2. (c). 3. (b). 4. (c). 5. (c), 6. (b). 7. (c), 8. (b), 9. (b), 10. (a), 11. (c), 12. (b). 13.(c).

Gary Jay