Time and chance (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the lights are observed burning late in Number Ten nowadays, there is no reason to be worried about the Prime Minister suffering from insomnia. More likely he is sitting up with his advisers, juggling with the slide rule, metronome and egg-timer, trying to decide the date of the next general election.

There is, as usual, no lack of advice for him in this, from all those political hacks who earn their living writing clever columns in the newspapers, largely designed to show how basically easy it is to run British capitalism without all those tiresome crises and upheavals. But the timing of an election is more than a game; if the big parties need any encouragement to take it seriously they need only remember how Wilson lost power in 1970. When that campaign opened there was a pretty widespread assumption that the Labour Party was going to win and that the election was little more than a short break in Wilson’s administering the affairs of the British capitalist class. When they were defeated it was put down to a miscalculation in timing by Wilson, largely to do with some unfavourable trade figures which were published a few days before the poll.

The implication of this excuse was that, had those figures come out a couple of weeks later we might never had endured the Heath style of running capitalism. It enabled the politicians to ignore the possibility that Labour might have lost because of their record — their attacks on working class living standards, their support for the napalming Americans in Vietnam, their racist immigration laws, their whole dismal performance of fumbling through one crisis after another.

If this is remembered by Callaghan, he will be weighing up several factors, hoping that if Wilson did make a mistake he will not make it again. Some of the more recent by-election results may have given him some hope that, punch-drunk though they may be, Labour voters still have enough strength to bounce back off the ropes.

Then there are the official statistics, which regularly jerk out of the Treasury, the Department of Employment and so on, which are supposed to tell us how British capitalism is doing compared to its rivals. We have already mentioned the trading figures; there are others which tell how many of us are queueing up for dole money, how much we are paying in the shop for the necessities of life, how successful the government has been in its efforts to hold down our wages, by how much they have inflated the currency.

Workers are usually impressed by these figures, regarding them as something like the temperature chart at the end of a patient’s bed, except that the illness is in this case treated as if it were the patient’s own fault. But if Callaghan also thinks they are important, he is at once faced with a problem; he is dealing with the unpredictable.

No government is able to foretell the prosperity or the failure of its industries. They may guess and perhaps sometimes be right — which will allow them to claim special powers — but it all rests upon the market, which itself is anarchic and uncontrollable. Of course, when a government is able to publish figures which are seen as hopeful — falling unemployment or lower prices for example — Chancellors are quick to claim credit for them. It is only when the statistics tell a different story — when the jobless are increasing or prices spiraling — that governments take refuge in the excuse that they have been hit by the equivalent of a snowstorm in August.

But if the markets — which means the economy — of capitalism were controllable and could be predicted then most of capitalism’s problems would not exist. It would also mean that a lot of economic experts — perhaps even a Chancellor of the Exchequer or two — would be redundant, which many people might consider a small price to pay for such relief.

Meanwhile, as he is wrestling with the unpredictability of capitalism, the Prime Minister must also be keeping an eye on his calendar, aware that we are approaching the conference season. These events can sometimes be useful propaganda exercises to a party anxious to hide its record (although the miners’ conference, with its threat of a repeat of the 1973 confrontation with the Heath government was, at face value, anything but reassuring to the Labour government). There was a time when members of the Labour Party may have thought that their party conference mattered and that if they took policy decisions there they would be written into a Labour government’s programme.

There could be no other explanation for all the effort which went into those conferences, which voted for unilateral nuclear disarmament, or Clause Four, or for something equally unrealistic. But after the celebration of their victory in the vote, the delegates were confronted with the fact — by Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson — that Labour governments run capitalism as it has to be run — in the interests of the ruling class — and that this would not be affected by woolly minded resolutions from over excited delegates. In the practical world of capitalist government promise is one thing; performance is another.

There have been many such examples of Labour conferences being an embarrassment to their leaders in the hunt for votes. Callaghan will be hoping that there will be no repetition this year (he is, after all, acting with considerable dispatch in the matter of Labour campaigning for the abolition of hunting, not on the grounds that he hates foxes but that such a proposal is likely to lose Labour votes in crucial seats) and that the party will be able to hold a rousing event glittering with promises for the future. He may gain inspiration from the performance of Harold Wilson, at his first conference as leader in 1963, when he dazzled the assembly with his talk about the good life waiting for us in the technological revolution. It quite made the conference forget Labour’s record in office, their electoral humiliations and their internal disputes.

The Tories need have no fear on this score since their conferences are, almost without exception, hearty affairs with one leader after another stepping up to enthuse the faithful and to pretend that the microdot differences between them and the Labour Party are worth getting passionate about. Rarely is the boat rocked; everyone is given an ovation because the Tories love to clap and cheer. It is almost as if, after a long muscle-wasting illness, they have been advised by their doctors to get a little exercise about the hands and forearms.

While Callaghan is musing on these factors, timing his effort like a jockey waiting for the right moment to run for the winning post, few people are likely to be asking why he is so concerned. The simple answer, that Labour is hoping to get some advantage in terms of votes if they get the timing right, does not go far enough. After all, if Labour government is so good for us, should there not be millions of grateful workers ready to vote for another dose of it, no matter when the election happens?

We might do well to approach this question from another angle. The importance attached to the timing of an election implies that the voters will change their minds over a very short period (in the case of 1970, the argument runs, over just a few days) in response to some event or piece of information. Now what sort of influence is needed, to bring such a change about? We have already seen that the trade figures are supposed to have that effect. Another might be a political event — Powell’s advice, in 1974, to vote Labour is one. Another was the sudden change in the Russian leadership in 1964, which came during the general elections here and which had Wilson worriedly claiming to know Kosygin well and to be able to talk to him man to man. What could be more appealing, to a working class concerned that their masters’ interests should be adequately represented in the conference chamber?

Which brings us to the crucial point. Accepting that votes are influenced by the timing of an election, what sort of vote is it which acts in that way? What level of consciousness does it suggest, behind the swinging vote? A worker who is impressed by a set of figures about capitalism’s trade, or by a change in the dictatorship in another capitalist power, sufficiently to change his vote is clearly not about to use that vote to its full power; he is not about to use it to overthrow capitalism. He is voting in ignorance of his class standing, his exploitation and of the essentially anarchic and inhuman operation of capitalist society.

In that political ignorance he is open to any persuasion. He will vote Labour because his dad always did, or Conservative because he has moved to a semi in the suburbs. He will experience, and grow angry and frustrated under, the pressures of capitalism and he may change from one capitalist party to another in desperation that each cannot possibly be worse than the other. A kitten chases its tail to better effect.

A voter who thinks like that may well be susceptible to the skills of timing, which are supposed to be part of the top politician’s essential equipment. If there are enough such voters it may be worth Callaghan’s while to fix polling day so that it might bring in a bigger vote for Labour. But what is the end of it all? Such an appeal is to the politically unconscious; it is a deception, an invitation to trust blindly in leadership when all the evidence is that this is futility. As long as this attitude holds sway, capitalism will continue with its problems, its degradations and its repressed and frustrated workers.

There is at present little attraction for the working class in the appeal to reach out for something better, for an understanding of capitalism and of what it does to us all, of the cynicism of its politics. When the political parties of capitalism set out to manipulate the voters—with promises, flattery or the strategy of timing — they are expressing a contempt for the workers which, sadly, may be somewhere near realistic. The working class should resent this and determine to act for themselves. And this resolution should get through to Callaghan and his like so that in their preoccupation with fixing a date when we are to vote they begin to hear a far disturbance, and know that the bell is beginning to toll for them and for all they represent.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Countdown To The Election (2004)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have it on good authority – the man himself – that Tony Blair can always stifle any doubts he has about what he is doing by telling himself – and us – that it will all be sorted out, some time in the future, when he meets someone he calls his maker. That may be all very well, but the agenda for that meeting gets longer by the day. How will his maker deal with the deceit over weapons of mass destruction, the broken promises, the exposure of his image as the laid-back, informal, trustworthy favourite of the nation? Number one item to be discussed between Blair and his maker will be the question of what has been called his credibility problem.  Which, as it happens, will be central to his developing preoccupation with deciding the date of the next general election.

    

It was rather different in 2001, when the exact timing was not crucially significant because it was clear that whenever the voters were to be allowed to pass their verdict they would give New Labour another large majority. It is different now, after all those local and European election results and the recent by-elections in Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill which, however the government try to brush them aside as “a score draw”, do not exactly encourage Blair to be overweeningly optimistic. But to delay the election in the hope that things must get better because they can hardly get worse may leave the government, like Major in 1997, without any room for manoeuvre if things in fact get worse.  And there are some ominous precedents to help Blair make his mind up.

Wilson 1970

In 1970 Harold Wilson, looking back on events since his government’s crushing victory four years before, agreed with most of the “experts” that he was on course to make a final reality of his boast that the Labour Party he had fashioned had taken over the traditional Conservative role as the natural governing party of British capitalism. Just to make sure his government had taken some precautions, such as increasing welfare benefits and delaying constituency changes as recommended by the Boundary Commission which, the Tories peevishly complained, could have robbed them of up to 20 seats. “We are,” purred Wilson, “really asking for a doctor’s mandate. We’re the best doctors the country has got.” As it was World Cup year the country’s best doctor appeared on a TV sports programme as a football supporter. How many football-crazy votes would have gone Labour’s way, if England had won the Jules Rimet trophy?

    

The polls agreed – one put Labour as much as ten points ahead – and so did the bookies, who were making Labour 20-1 on for victory. On 18 June 1970 the country went to vote and on 19 June Wilson was leaving Number Ten. The Tories notched up 46.4 percent of the vote (more, in fact that New Labour in 1997 and 2001) and  a majority of 30. Ted Heath, who had been visited on the eve of poll by the Tory grandee Lord Carrington with the warning that if he lost the election he would be required to resign the leadership, was on the steps of Number Ten, thanking a somewhat stunned electorate. In fact Heath later claimed he had never doubted the result because, as he saw it, things were not all that favourable to Labour. A few days before polling the government’s complacency had been shaken by the news of a £31 million trade deficit for May (it was a time when the working class were encouraged to regard Britain’s trading balances as crucial to their interests). Heath also doubted whether Labour’s confidence about living standards was justified. On polling day unemployment was measured as the highest for 30 years. The Child Poverty Action Group (not a natural ally of a prospective Tory Prime Minister) found three-quarters of a million children living at or below the official poverty line and two million people homeless or existing in sub-standard accommodation. An unremarked error in Heath’s assessment was his assumption that workers vote straightforwardly in response to their living conditions; if this were so they would never support the Labour or Conservative parties for a start. But his is the kind of argument that suffices in the feverish, turmoiled delusions of a general election.

Callaghan 1979

In the late 1970s Jim Callaghan, whose exterior as a bluff, avuncular sailor concealed a ruthless political cunning, had to apply what might be called his talents to that same task of deciding when best to go to the polls. He could not, however, enjoy the same confidence as Wilson. In mid-1978 British capitalism’s trading balance had been superseded, as a diversion for workers who did not know where to put their cross, by the price rises which regularly eroded increases in their pay. At that time price rises were between seven and eight percent. The Labour government’s solution to the problem was to try to control pay rises as the cause of, instead of the response to, rising prices. There was much debate in the Labour Party about the advantages of delaying the election date over fixing on one in the near future. Callaghan’s government were about seven percent ahead in the polls, which also suggested that he was a more comforting figure as Prime Minister than Thatcher was likely to be. It was widely assumed the election would happen that autumn but Callaghan signalled this was not to be in typical style, when he sang to the TUC “There was I, waiting at the church . . . Can’t get away to marry you today; my wife won’t let me.” Heading a minority government, he was tired of the need to manage the persistent deals with the small parliamentary parties and hoped that by waiting he could ensure a majority.

    

But notwithstanding Callaghan’s serenade, he had miscalculated and Thatcher’s Tories came riding into power, with intentions to stop all the nonsense about wages and welfare benefits by battering the unions into compliance, with a majority of 34. It was in fact something of a continuation of Labour’s own policy in government so in that sense it was ironic that it should be the beginning of a long spell in the wilderness for Labour, with steadily increasing Conservative majorities including, in 1983, Labour’s worst result since 1931.

Blair 200?

So Blair and his analysts need to take great care, as they settle down with their history books and their statistical tables and their focus group results. They will need to balance precedence against present reality. They will need to look hard at wages, prices, mortgages, hospital waiting lists and crime. They will have no lack of evidence of capitalism’s inherent inability to work in the interests of its people, and that will be the material which they will fashion into another manifesto of promises to pacify the system’s ferocity. It is impossible to imagine them treating their labours as anything other than an exercise in sordid, power-motivated manipulation bolstered by their assumed ability to reshape facts to their own advantage.

They have,after all, had enough practice at that. Out of it all the decision will emerge, the election date will be fixed and Blair will parade it as a fearlessly generous opportunity given to us by a confident government to pronounce a verdict on New Labour in power.

    

And the voters – the working class – what about them? What do they think about the insulting assumption that they treat their right to vote so lightly that from time to time they will change it from one party to another, none of them at all effective, so that the timing of an election becomes vital to the parties of capitalism? We can do better than this, and human society is worth better than this. The next election will be a good time to start.

Ivan

Election Manifesto (1970)

Election Manifesto from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Election Results (1970)

Party News from the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The result of the election of the two seats contested by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the general election on 18 June was :

CLAPHAM

Skelton (C)       16,593

Pitt (Lab)         13,473

Thwaites(L)       2.982

Simkins (Soc)       220

Boaks(Ind)             80

HORNSEY

Rossi (C)           21,434

Pestell (Lab)      17,645

Brass (L)              3,755

Morris (Comm)      624

Grant (Soc)             156

The Socialist Party also contested a local by-election in the Town Hall ward of Haringey Borough Council on 4 June. The result was: Carnell (Lab) 1.234. Painter (C) 1,146, Buick (Soc) 11.

General Election — Comments (1970)

From the July 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a lot more to this election result than the overturn of smug opinion pollsters. Until a few short months ago, the record of the Wilson government seemed to have finished Labour off. They had tried to freeze wages, had introduced the first anti-trade union laws for some forty years. They had openly attacked working class living standards, had connived at the slaughter in Vietnam. Biafra and other places. They had presided over the highest stable level of unemployment since the war. Wilson was exposed as a tawdry trickster, whose deft hands had grown cranky through overuse, as the salesman nobody would buy a used bicycle from.

Then came one or two gimmicks, some of them — for example the sudden announcement of higher social security benefits — quite openly heralding the approach of the general election. The brakes came off wages — officially. There was an abrupt, strange solution of the foreign trade problems of British capitalism. Labour suddenly stopped talking about our spendthrift ways and started talking again about ideals and good living.

For some reason which they have yet to explain, the polls began at the same time to record equally sudden rises in support for the Labour Party and it was this, it seems, which persuaded Wilson to try for another term of office and to run the election campaign as if it was no more than a formal interlude between one Labour government and another.

This contradicted a trend which has been discernible in recent general elections. that a governing party’s fate is scaled a couple of years before polling. If there is any encouragement in this trend, it is that at any rate it makes it appear that workers judge a government on something like its record. If Labour had at the last minute pulled back all those lost votes, it might have been a sign that empty gimmicks and lies were crucially effective in an election. And, in terms of working class political awareness, that would have been especially depressing.

In the event, the working class have shown that once again they are disillusioned with Labour government. Wilson’s dream of turning his party from one which supplied administrations for British capitalism at times of risky, experimental interludes between the even running of Tory governments, is shattered. For Labour, now, the inquests, the recriminations — and the soft sound of knives being buried between someone’s shoulder blades. This is no time for Wilson to allow his back to get too far away from the wall.

This scene would probably have been witnessed in the Conservative Party, had they lost the election. The political parties of capitalism, whatever their protestations, exist with the object of winning power over capitalism, by any means they deem necessary. Failure to win power brings dire consequences for the party leaders. If Heath had lost, when so recently he seemed set to win. and at a time when he is under such pressure from Powell, it would have probably provoked one of the Tory Party’s historic crises.

The history of the Tory Party is spotted with such crises — and at each one it has been clear that the gentleman’s party is no stranger to vicious, ruthless infighting when the occasion demands it. Even after the victory, Heath cannot be safe; the power-hungry politicians of capitalism never give up their struggle. When Heath was first elected Tory leader, it was Iain Macleod who was reported to have said that this was not the end of the fight for the leadership, but the beginning.

After every election there is a period of honeymoon. We can expect the government to tell us that they have discovered a truly shocking mess left by the Labour men, like an absent landlord coming home after a long, riotous party in his house. They too will issue stern warnings about the state of the economy and about the need for the working class to tighten their belts to put the situation to rights. It will not be very long before the honeymoon sours and disillusionment settles in. After a time this will reach the pitch when the voters decide to experiment once again with another party in government — and if the Labour Party have not torn themselves to pieces by then they may come back to power.

The background to all this is the continued existence of capitalism. And capitalism carries with it the essential poverty of the vast mass of its people; the basic inability to control the anarchy of its market economy: the unavoidable continuum of its rivalry of interests which lead to war. The parties of capitalism promise to abolish the system’s problems, ignoring the fact that they are part of the system and will always defeat the reformers.

In this election the Conservatives, who wailed about Wilson’s patent dishonesty, produced a manifesto which overflowed with glowing promises to put right all our wrongs. So abundant, so extravagant, were these pledges (Edward Heath's word for them) that at times they read almost hysterically. But here is one short passage from the manifesto, which did something to summarise some of the wilder ones:

  A better tomorrow for all: for the families that are homeless today, for the unemployed, for the children still in poverty, and for the old and lonely.

There is no reason to think the Tories will be any more successful than their predecessors, of either party, at honouring their pledges. The phrase A Better Tomorrow, so hopefully bandied about now, will soon take its place among the embarrassing memories which the politicians would rather forget.

Each time a government changes, the working class are casting their votes in deception that new faces at Whitehall will have an effect on their problems and will bring them a better life. But each time they turn their faces against a fundamental assessment of their interests and their standing in society. They ignore the facts of capitalism and the record of futility and failure which accompanies Labour, Tory, Liberal and the rest. In 1970, as before, the workers voted in their millions for capitalism. On this particular occasion they fell for the promise of a better tomorrow. They could have—and should be working for now — the best possible today, tomorrow and always.

A ride on the merry-go-round (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taking part in a general election is rather like having a ride on a merry-go-round. It is noisy, gaudy, exciting. It has something to divert us, even though temporarily, from the problems of the day. And when it is all over and we get down from our horse, we have a distinct impression of having been here before.

The election programmes of the capitalist parties in 1966 all told us about their plans for dealing with certain social ills. They told us about building a safer world, where the weapons of destruction are kept firmly under control and where war is a disappearing fear. They had a lot about poverty and of how they had the final solution to want and insecurity. In some cases, they pinned it down to particular issues; like housing, which they said was a simple matter of trusting them to provide decent homes for everyone.

Any elector with a stomach strong enough could have ploughed through several of these programmes, all making the same sort of promises about the same problems. And any elector with a memory long enough could recall that he was served up with the same stuff in the election of 1964 — or 1959, 1955, 1951, 1950 . . .  and that in fact there had always been the same high sounding plans and empty assurances, for as long as there had been votes to win.

One thing which is absolutely certain now is that it will be no different in 1970. It does not need any talent for clairvoyance to know that in this election we shall be assailed by Labour, Conservative, Liberal, “Communist” with manifestoes which are blockbusters of promises. And they will be talking about war, poverty, wages, housing, insecurity . . .

Another certainty is that the voters, who are the working class, will be sufficiently impressed by these programmes to make their choice between the parties presenting them. The electors will actually consider whether they will accept the dud cheques of the Labour Party in preference to those of the Tories. They will argue about which capitalist party shall be given the chance to deceive them, exploit them and suppress them for the next five years. And having chosen they will sit up all night on polling day to watch open-mouthed for the result of this non-race.

Having done this, and having given power to one or other of the parties of capitalism, the working class will return to their problems — war, poverty, housing, disease and so on. Until the next election comes round, when the merry-go-round will start again and the manifestoes will come out telling us how easy it is to stop all these social ills.

One of the most dangerous features of the merry-go-round is that it is a diversion. The workers are impressed with the glamour of it all; they think it important, whether Wilson supports the right football team and whether Heath is married. They become caught up in the razzmatazz of the election and argue as if there were some fundamental difference between Labour and Tory and the others. They have their ride on the merry-go-round—and they pay for it.

In other words, among the confusion and the deception and the glamour, the real issues and the fundamental interests are submerged. What matters in this election, and in all the others, and in fact all the time, is not which party is given the job of running capitalism, reformed or unreformed. As long as capitalism continues so will its problems—and so far no one has been able to think up any way of having capitalism without war, poverty, famine and the like.

What matters is whether the working class will take this chance to look at a more basic programme — nothing less than dealing with the cause of their problems instead of meddling with their symptoms. This means a fundamental questioning of capitalism—its property basis, its privileges, its false principle of leadership. It would be a useful start in this, to look back at those old election promises, to compare them and the current ones and to contrast all of them with the facts of reality and achievement.

It is only the shortest step from this, to replacing capitalism with a society based on the common ownership of the means of production; to building a world without classes, frontiers, racial divisions, privileges; without want amid riches. The urgent problem for the working class now is to replace capitalism with Socialists—to stop the merry-go- round and get off.

*     *     *     *     *

The Socialist Party is to contest two seats in the general election on June 18 — Hornsey and Clap- ham, both in London.

CLAPHAM

Candidate: F. Simkins 

Election Rooms:

52, Clapham High St., S.W.4. 01-622-3811

HORNSEY

Candidate : E. Grant

Election Rooms:

159 Turnpike Lane, N.8

Members and sympathisers are urged to contact their nearest election room to help in this socialist election campaign.

Please send donations to the Parliamentary Fund, c/o Treasurer, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52, Clapham High Street, S.W.4.

The death of ideas? (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Sunday before polling-day, in his Letter From America, Alistair Cooke commented on the General Election by recalling the time, when against the odds, he correctly predicted a victory for conservatism. This was in 1970 when Wilson, who was expected to win, lost to Heath. Coming up to date Cooke again predicted a victory for conservatism but not for the Conservative Party under Hague. This was to be a victory for the conservatism of the Labour Party under Blair. Cooke has not been the only one to notice that leading politicians are more or less interchangeable. When the Labour Party sought to discredit Hague with a poster showing him with a Margaret Thatcher wig, the Economist replied by showing Blair with a similar Thatcher make-over. In his talk, Cooke described Blair as a “rightist liberal” and it is true that Thatcher, Hague and Blair have more in common than they have against each other.

Cooke also related these similarities to politics in America where there has been a similar obliteration of differences between the Republicans and Democrats. Both in the United States and Britain ideas and principles seem to have disappeared from the mainstream of public debate. This is being described as a time of “post-ideological politics”, or, perhaps more commonly, as the view that “all politicians are the same”.

And this was confirmed by the spokespeople of the three main parties who addressed the issues of the election not so much as people with differing ideas about the kind of world we should be living in but merely as accountants arguing over ways of managing the economy. The big questions were “should we have more tax or less tax”. “How can we make the system more efficient?” “How can we reduce tax and still spend more on health, education and the police.” The public view of politicians is already low. They are often seen as careerists and opportunists or even as liars and sleaze merchants. But with all the questions about how best to run the economy and the petty managerial differences that were blown up around them they have added to their dubious reputations by also becoming utterly boring. Never was politics less inspired.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
However, it is wrong to see all this as the death of political ideas. The fact that politicians have become mere state functionaries means they have come to share the same ideas. These assume a continuation of the status quo. During the election, it was massively agreed by all the main parties that whoever won or lost, the future would be capitalist business as usual. And whilst it has become common for politicians to be depicted in the image of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, what we don't see is very much analysis pointing to the reasons why this has come about. It is mainly because governments have to react to economic conditions over which they have little control and these pressures take no account of the aspirations different governments may have.

This economic framework within which governments have to act, which severely limits their political options and so tends to cast them in the same mould, was acknowledged by Tony Blair himself when he returned to Downing Street the day after polling day. He spoke of the challenge facing Britain in confronting “the forces of global competition and technological change”.

The capitalist system has swept aside the traditional ways of life of different countries and has grown to become a world-wide structure. This has happened in large part under Labour and Social Democratic governments. Part of the job of these governments has been to protect property rights, to manage the developing system of exploitation in a smooth and stable way, and to ensure that key services such as education and infrastructures are suitably developed so that within the patterns of national and international trade the economy performs as efficiently as possible.

Always striving for profit the system staggers along, subject to volatile market conditions and moving in an unpredictable way between growth, stagnation and severe slump. It is also subject to the conflicting claims of wages and profits and the need of governments to spend taxes on essential services, dole, pensions and the maintenance of armed forces and police, etc. Within this inherently chaotic system with governments reacting to conditions instead of creating them, short of extreme crisis there is little scope for running it in radically different ways. So its political managers are reduced to arguing out differences which are mostly minor or sham, about how best to spend the money that comes to them, depending on their luck with the economy.

And those who set out to change society through winning political power and reforms have had to accept what was always inevitable, that reformism is a graveyard for such hopes. This happens not because reforms have never made a difference to the way the system works. For anyone wishing to bring about a new and better world, reformism requires a pact with the devil where the forming of a government means being sucked into running the system. This is what has happened to the Labour Party. It has fallen victim to a corrupting process in which the allurements of government power have ruled out any realistic sense of what can be done with such power. As a consequence, the Labour Party not only accepts the capitalist system but it is now fully committed to managing its continued development.

Ritual of voting and blaming
But although the electorate are doing it in decreasing numbers, the ritual of voting one lot in and afterwards blaming them for failure and replacing them with carbon copies, is futile. In part this results from living in a society dominated by vested interests with immense power. This produces a culture of cynicism and blame in which an alienated population feel they have no real powers to bring about change. But the fact remains that in most developed countries governments are in office by consent and this brings responsibility back to the majority of people to do more than just vote and blame. They have to realise where their true interests lie, do their own thinking and act on their own behalf. For this, people have to re-engage with the battle of ideas. Despite the misunderstanding and distortion that confuses political debate, especially about what is meant by socialism, there is a clear contrast between the ideas that support the capitalist system and their political opposite, socialism.
Some of the language used by Conservatives or New Labour politicians may sound different. Conservatives may claim to uphold the best and most enduring values from the past, speak of the virtues and freedoms of economic individualism, and the merits of life in a property-owning democracy. From the mouth of Tony Blair we hear the aim of social equality expressed as “equality of opportunity” where “everyone gets their chance to fulfil their true potential” in a “meritocratic nation”. But in both cases the language expresses a shared support for the capitalist system whilst putting a gloss on an anti-social society that cannot work in the interests of the majority of people.

The reality behind the gloss is class ownership of all the means of producing goods and all resources. It means markets and profit deciding what can be done, a widening gap between rich and poor and the certainty that most people throughout the world will continue to live in poverty. It means the shackling of all the powers of human labour to exploitation and private gain. This is the out-dated world and the ideas that justify it that Labour, Tory and other reformist politicians now hold in common.
These should be contrasted with socialist ideas which emphasise and aim to build upon one human ability which is universal. This is the ability of every person to co-operate with others in a world-wide community of interests. Beyond the world of class divisions and its sub-divisions of colour, religion and nationalism, socialists uphold the ideas of unity, emphasising what we all have in common, and how on a basis of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for needs, we could release all that is best in the human make-up for the benefit of ourselves as individuals and others.

It is the ideas of capitalism that are dead because they have nowhere to go and represent an ideology that is incapable of being developed as principles for a better world. But the ideas of socialism are rooted in the constant need of all people to live in peace with each other and to co-operate in creating a life of material security. For this reason they will remain indispensable not just for clarifying the nature of problems but for setting out the only way to solve them.

Pieter Lawrence