Moneyless or not (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“While there is money, there is scarcity”. “. . . Work itself becomes voluntary. The new incentives will be pleasure, pride and social responsibility”

These are among the ideas expressed in the final chapter of the book Play-power by Richard Neville, one of the editors of OZ convicted of producing what the Law regards as an obscene publication.

Quite true; men could use modern technology to design and construct machines to do the boring and repetitive jobs involved in the production of wealth, thus freeing human beings to engage in interesting, creative work of their choice. Employment could be abolished and work become voluntary.

But before this could be done the machines and the other means of production must have ceased to be the property of a privileged minority and have come instead under the democratic control of all the people. Only then could they be used to turn out an abundance of good-quality consumer goods and services which people could use to satisfy their needs. Money would become redundant.

There is no doubt at all that in writing about “a moneyless society” Neville was directly influenced by the ideas of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. For he was quoting with approval from one of a number of articles that have appeared in OZ written by a Socialist (‘The Food Explosion” OZ 19 and 26. See also “Smash Cash” OZ 17).

The only trouble is that Neville isn’t consistent and so gives the impression of having used our arguments merely to justify shoplifting and fare-dodging. People who do this, he says “are training themselves for a moneyless society”. There is of course nothing “immoral” in these practices but they have nothing to do with a moneyless, socialist society, and are practised by many others besides Socialists and those Neville calls “drop-outs”.

Neville’s inconsistency comes out on the very next page where he uses a quite different argument to justify the practice of non-employment (what is sometimes called “refusing to work”). He conjures up the vision of a society where, in order to maintain consumer demand in the face of growing unemployment caused by automation, the State pays everybody a guaranteed income. This would presumably be paid in money, so what became of the moneyless society Neville was supposed to be training for?

We can only say that, if Neville really does believe in a State guaranteed income, he is way behind the times. In this age of potential abundance nothing short of free access to wealth will do. He was right the first time: future society will have no need for money. Today’s notes and coins—dollars and cents, pounds and pence, roubles and kopecks—can be relegated to the museums alongside the Romans’ coins and the South Sea Islanders' cowrie shells.

Make-Believe Revolutionaries: Two Case-Histories of Direct Action (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

A commonplace response to the Socialist case, by people who find it unanswerable, is that it is “all right in theory”. The implication is that there is something separate from and superior to theories, called Practice. This is, to start with, a misunderstanding of the nature of theory. Theory does not precede or stand apart from practice: on the contrary, it is the conclusion from practice — from what has happened and what is observed.

The sort of Practice implied, therefore, is action which does not give a hang for the known facts. The practitioners never state it like that, of course; they are Getting Things Done, and Striking a Blow for this or that. In recent years its special manifestation has been Direct Action, the doctrine of people taking things into their own hands and launching themselves against the system. Looking at some well-known instances, it is possible to see Practice in practice. Does direct action work?

Squatting

The squatter movement began in 1968, as a venture by the East London Libertarian Group. “Venture” is an accurate enough term: it was preceded by agitations over housing conditions at Coventry Cross, conditions in an unmarried mothers’ home in Walthamstow, and claimants’ grievances at the local Social Security office. For several weeks the squatter campaign consisted of Sunday afternoon visits to examples of inequality in housing. Invited groups of libertarians met without knowing where they would be taken — mystery tours, as a delighted anarchist described them without qualms over the leadership principle.

The general history of the squatter battles at Ilford and derivative episodes elsewhere, when the occupation of empty property began, is well enough known. Demonstration about homelessness became an infection in the Left; the north-west anarchist federation’s bulletin described it as “the highest form of revolutionary activity possible in Britain today”. But in fact the campaign’s first casualty was the proclaimed revolutionary content, the deadest mortality the anarchist slogan “Do it yourself”. For the avowed purpose was to promote direct action among the working class, and it never happened. The families which squatted in empty houses were taken to, installed and defended in them by the libertarian groups. No one did it himself.

Scalps & Souls

The Ilford episode ended in a treaty with the Council, which undertook — on certain conditions — to make condemned houses available for homeless families. The terms re-invoked the original presumption of the mystery tours: they were made not by the house-seekers or by collective decision of the agitators, but by the East London Libertarians’ leader Ron Bailey. Among the conditions was one that the houses where the siege had raged were to be given up, including a house in which a group of libertarians had made their own commune. On their eviction Freedom had a bitter, passionate article headed “The Soul of a Movement”. It was, they felt, as if the Redskin chief had started trading his own braves’ scalps to the white man.

Freedom Press was enthusiastic for squatting, and for the London hippies who occupied buildings in the Drury Lane-Piccadilly area: the “commune of the streets”. In 1969, after successive evictions, some of the hippies went to Freedom, cited the paper’s persistent encouragement of them and pointed out that the Freedom/Express Printers building in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, had empty rooms galore. The building had been acquired and renovated in the previous two years. The Freedom group felt a moral compulsion — they had supported, vindicated, egged-on; so they let the army of hippy squatters in. In the next two weeks, the building was turned to a shambles. Hell’s Angels stood guard, demanding subscriptions from anarchists who went there. The culminating incident was lead-stripping — from the roof above, from the printing works below. Describing it all in an article, the Freedom group asked unhappily: “What were we to do?” The movement’s soul was certainly a soul in torment.

Uncritical Support

At its height, squatting had a great deal of public sympathy. It had the Left and libertarian groups working together; and it illustrated succinctly all their misdirections and failings. “Direct action” failed, in circumstances most favourable to it. Indeed, the term “squatting” was a misnomer, implying people spontaneously taking possession. As has been said, that never happened: “installation” would have been more accurate. Nor is this mere carping. What has to be seen is that the do-it-yourself revolution was a myth, and the reality was a series of simple charitable acts. And today the energy and good intentions of the squatter movement appear to have made useful auxiliaries for local councils in their housing administration and welfare services.

As for the hippy squatters, it may sound ungracious but is true to say they were not homeless people at all. In general, they had homes but chose to be away from them; perhaps with reasons, but that is a different question. Their being on the streets was due chiefly to the demise of the Drury Lane Arts Laboratory, where anyone and everyone kipped. But the Freedom Press dilemma — “What were we to do?” — originated in uncritical support for any semblance of direct action. Otherwise, it would be hard to account for the presence on Freedom’s doorstep of Hell’s Angels, who are the nearest thing to pre-war Fascist youth in Britain today.

Bombs & Bullets

The most recent demonstration of direct action has been the “Angry Brigade” bombings. There is, no doubt, a division between those who would actually have done this kind of thing and those who would not; but there is no doubt either that it had the sympathy of practically all direct-actionists. A pamphlet published shortly before the Old Bailey trial, by the “Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group”, tries hard to suggest that bombs and firearms are now the method of radical activists at large:

The state is also alleging that bombings and shootings claimed by the First of May Group, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Wild Bunch and Lotta Continua are also part of this conspiracy. In fact just about every single guerrilla action undertaken by groups from very different political areas within the movement over the past four years has been put down to them. The prosecution is attempting to create falsely the image that the political offensive carried out by the movement in the past four years is the work of a very small isolated gang of madmen.

Grand Delusion

What is a “political offensive” in these terms supposed to achieve? The authors of the pamphlet, which is called A Political Statement, assert that the Angry Brigade’s terrorism was an integral part of a working-class uprising:

Being part of their revolution they are sensitive to the needs and desires of that revolution. On January 12th we had a one day strike, we went on huge marches all over the country, we planned strategies for the future and we bombed Robert Carr.

The implication intended is of a massive number of workers united in all those activities. But one has only to ask who are the “we” of the dramatically italicized sentence, and its meaningless ranting is immediately exposed. On January 12, 1971, some trade unionists demonstrated against the Industrial Relations Bill; Left-wing groups distributed leaflets and had euphoric syndicalist dreams; and, in complete dissociation from all of that, a secret handful planted bombs which caused outrage but little harm.

The absurd delusion of a grand “political offensive” is further emphasized in a photograph of Carr’s front door, under the heading “The Minister’s Palace Destroyed”: which is quite untrue. Indeed, if the object of the “bombing and shooting” has been to kill representatives of the State, its incompetence is almost comical. The pamphlet claims at least 107 bombing episodes: not one person was hurt by them, it seems. If, on the other hand, the aim was not to kill but to alarm, that is even more ludicrous. It is reminiscent of the old yarn about the man who, finding his wife in bed with the milkman, went outside and kicked the milkman’s horse. What sort of “offensive” is that?

Serious Questions

Nevertheless, behind the puerile fantasy lie serious political considerations. At a simple everyday level, those most likely to be killed and injured by bombing are not establishment-figures but working men and women; Northern Ireland, to which the pamphlet refers repeatedly, demonstrates this only too well. For all the cant about “we” and “the movement”, bomb-planting is the negation of class-consciousness and democratic practice. Anarchists and direct-actionists may approve of the faits-accomplis, but that does not alter the fact that at the time they had no knowledge or control of what was being done in their name. Early in 1971 when publicity for the Angry Brigade explosions was at its height, the libertarian gossip and speculation were that the bombs were the work of agents-provocateurs with the object of raising public opinion against the Left. So much for “we”!

The knowledge that opinion — and repressive measures — are thus raised is another reason why terrorist tactics should not be supported. The State and the newspapers do not distinguish between “pretend” revolutionaries and real ones: direct action has done great harm to the growth of the Socialist movement. The “political statement” pamphlet complains of these consequences of the actions it is acclaiming:

This is a long hard struggle . . . It will be even more difficult in face of attacks from the political police which have grown enormously in organisation and number in the past year. The fact that there have been so many raids, the fact that they now habitually seize all political documents that they come across in their raids. The fact that innocent brothers and sisters arc locked up, some of them for many years.

Up to recent times anarchists were wont to respond to the traditional accusation of bomb-throwing by saying they had given it up because they had learned that governments did it better. That was at least a realistic view. The “urban guerrilla” and the saboteur may be problems to the state, but there is no question of their being able to match or weaken its armed power. Engels was able to point this out in military detail to would-be insurrectionists in 1895, in his preface to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. Speaking of the German bourgeoisie’s readiness to let rebels engage in physical battle with them, he said: “We are not so stupid.”

The State

The most important question of all, however, is: who are the enemy? Against whom is the “offensive”? The Angry Brigade’s targets were representatives of the State. The “political statement” of their supporters has not a single reference to capitalism, but insists on the state as adversary:

It began when it became clear that the state can and will smash the movement if it feels it can win. The bombings started.

And when he [Heath] talks of civil war, he is talking of a military/political offensive against all who oppose the corporate state.

The Stoke Newington Eight are . . . militants who have been active in the resistance to the corporate state and in the revolutionary movement.

Six years ago anarchists were wearing badges and carrying banners which said: “The state is your enemy”. And it is wrong, wrong, wrong. The deprivations, conflicts and miseries of the world we live in are caused not just by governments but by capitalism. The State’s rôle is to enforce them with the coercive machinery against which direct-actionists stub their toes and knock their heads. What the working class has to do is organize to abolish capitalism — by gaining control of the state machine with conscious intent to that end.

Consciousness

Socialists have no sympathy with those who believe bombs contribute to a social revolution. Of course rage and the desire for reprisal are emotions we have all experienced — who has not felt something like the poet’s “Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough/It isn’t fit for humans now”, or wished to kick-in the huge grinning teeth of some inflated politician? But the futility and self-destructiveness are clear. Indignation becomes constructive only when it is translated to consciousness. The direct-actionist asserts that consciousness can be a result of the act, that to cajole or push people into being hammered by capitalism’s force is to spread comprehension of what it is all about. There is not a shred of evidence that this has ever happened. On the other hand, the evidence provided by case-histories of direct action and terrorism is that they are at least fatuous and at worst horrifyingly pernicious, and always anti-working-class.

The means to change society exist and wait to be used, as Engels went on to say:

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the 'revolutionaries’, the 'rebels’—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt . . . we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

Robert Barltrop

Letters: Who are the cowards? (2000)

Letters to the Editors from the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the cowards?

Dear Editors,

There could hardly be a better symbol for how governments treat their mass public, than the 306 “cowards”, executed by British authorities during the First World War. Nothing has changed, either. There is no essential difference between the military, flexing its muscles, or the Thatcherite revolution throwing people out into the street, or even a Blairite dogma to “modernise”, but actually preparing everyone and every aspect of life to be merely the plaything of global capitalism. Then, if war is an extension of diplomacy, and business is a substitute for war, all this becomes more understandable, but not defensible, given the catastrophic effects on society’s weaker members.

The incompetent Earl Haig treated his troops as cannon fodder; Thatcher said there is no such thing as society; and Blair’s modernity will expose the unwary to a life of being only a marketing statistic. All these three were, and are, immune to the shock imposed on others less able to defend themselves, by pursuing their social revolutions. They also maintain their advantage, through an elite status. Hence, “deserters”, the dispossessed and disabled, or the incapacitated, are treated by their elected leaders as inferior, and therefore, fair game. These people are losers, and consequently seen by the elite as an embarrassment to their inflated opinion of themselves—and here we have the underlying reason for New Labour’s attitude to voters in wheelchairs: punish them.

Jeffrey Wheeler, 

Nuneaton, Warwicks

The Morgenthau Plan

Dear Editors,

The article “Why war is no accident”, (August Socialist Standard) claimed that “on the eve of allied victory the leaders of the victorious countries accepted a plan drawn up by . . . Morgenthau to de-industrialise Germany” Not so. The Quebec Agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt on proposals to de-industrialise Germany was “initialled” (i.e. agreed to informally) by them on 15 September 1944. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt had with them their top advisors and there were no representatives present from the Soviet Union, the third of the wartime alliance.

British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and American Secretary of State Cordell Hull were “horrified” by the proposals. Eden recalls in his Memoirs “I did not like the plan, nor was I convinced that it was to our national advantage.” Hull rejected it as being “a plan of blind vengeance.” The American Secretary of War Henry Stimson also strongly opposed it; it was “just fighting brutality with brutality.”

Historians have variously characterised the Morgenthau Plan as being “still-born”, “abandoned”, “pigeon-holed”, “did not…become official policy” and was “never put into effect.”

It was realised that a weak Germany with high unemployment brought about by de-industrialisation would be prey to political extremism (as it had been in the 1920s and 1930s) and liable to fall into the Soviet camp. American policy-makers planned for an “open” Europe of free trade which would be a market for US produce.

It has been suggested that Churchill had been reluctant to go along with the Plan but did so because he was at the time in negotiations with Morgenthau over post-war Lend-Lease arrangements. Britain had been offered $6.5 billion post-war credit and he did not want the promise jeopardised. His claimed that the Morgenthau Plan would leave Britain “chained to a dead body”. Although a de-industrialised Germany would remove an economic rival it would also entail the loss of a lucrative market for industrial goods produced in Britain.

A Germany integrated into a “United States of Europe” would be economically more efficient which would in turn (in the view of the US Department of State Division of Economic Studies at the time) give higher levels of real incomes leading to an increased demand “for imports of raw materials, food, and manufactured articles, of which the United States would be the primary beneficiaries.” (In 1937 Europe had been the destination for 41 per cent US exports and the source of 27 per cent of its imports).

It was these arguments that eventually won the day. Germany was not subject to “ongoing economic attacks” as the launching of the European Recovery Programme (the “Marshall Plan”) in mid-1947 demonstrates.

By 1946 there were an estimated 14 million “displaced persons” (i.e. refugees) in Europe—10 million in Germany (7 million in the Western Zones.) Deaths “may have been anything between 2 and 3 million” according to Hugh Thomas (Armed Truce). In their two volume study A History of West Germany D.L. Bark and D. R. Gress estimate that two million Germans died as a result of the immediate post-war disruptions. It is not clear on what authority the author of the article bases his claim of 5 million deaths and on what evidence it rests.

John E. Farquharson (in The Western Allies and the Politics of Food.) shows that the Allied system of food rationing was a continuation of the German one already in place. Ration allowances were supplemented by theft, forgery of ration documents, barter, recourse to the black market, self supply (e.g. allotments), and additional allowances for those employed in heavy work. In one area of occupied Germany the number of ration cards presented in one accounting period was twice the number officially issued. Less than a quarter of the population of the Western Zones were “normal consumers”, the majority claimed supplements of one kind or another.

This not to say that hunger and malnutrition did not occur, it did. However the “hard” figures represented by official ration issues for calories per day do not represent the true state of affairs. In the circumstances the Western Allies did what they could and it is incorrect to state that the Allies imposed blockade and starvation upon the defeated German nation. We do not need to exaggerate to make out a Socialist case against the pernicious nature of capitalism and its wars.

Gwynn Thomas, 

Colchester, Essex

Reply: 

Thanks for your interesting and useful clarification. The article’s main point was that blockading a rival state is a policy capitalist states are prepared to consider (as the existence of the Morgenthau Plan shows) and to implement (today as in Iraq) regardless of the consequences on the civilian population. And, as your letter brings out well, again as in Iraq, those capitalist politicians who oppose this option do so because they are more interested in export prospects than in the plight of the population. The source of the 5 million figure was the book Crimes and Mercies by James Baque, mentioned in the article.

Editors.

How I became a socialist

Dear Editors,

In the beginning, way back in the 1960s, I became, in my late teens, a so-called “hippie”. The hippies were a more progressive, creative and imaginative development from the beatniks in the USA—who were basically scruffy, layabouts, poets and artists. I remained in the hippie phase for about eight years, until the early 70s, when I changed my outlook gradually and became, so to speak, politically “radicalised”. I began to support the left wing, and joined CND, voting Labour, attending meetings, and taking part in protests and demonstrations.

By 1979 I grew deeply disillusioned with Labour and rejected its policies and ideology: I was then far-left in outlook. Almost a Trotskyite, in fact. It seemed to me that only a violent mass movement would change society, and that “direct action”, including the general strike and armed insurrection, could and would overthrow the state and ruling class.

This barricades mentality persisted in my mind until the mid-1980s, when I began to study the various “schools” or styles of anarchism. Reading the works of Peter Kropotkin, Michael Bakunin, Errico Malatesta, Emma Goldman, etc, etc. I became a militant anarchist. I was very determined and began fighting the police; even after several jail terms (in which I fought the screws), I persisted and persevered in anarchism. But by 1986, grave doubts and misgivings surfaced; I discovered serious flaws and errors in anarchist theory and practice. My conclusion was that it actually leads nowhere and achieves nothing but more bloodshed and frustration.

So, early in 1986, I abandoned anarchism altogether. A few months later my attention was drawn to some examples of Socialist Party literature. By chance, I came across a few issues of the Socialist Standard. After reading carefully and reflecting on it, I accepted the concept of socialism. Then I obtained some of the works of Karl Marx from a public library—in particular, the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

This really transformed my whole outlook on history, society and politics. Marx profoundly impressed and inspired me in a way no-one and nothing ever had before. Thus, acquiring a Marxist understanding and analysis of capitalism and of how to get rid of it, I became a scientific socialist by the spring of 1986: after which I contacted the Socialist Party, and subsequently joined.

The one thing about the Socialist Party that persuaded me, above all else, to join, was that all its literature is strictly honest, truthful and accurate; also that the party is fully and truly democratic in its organisation and activities. This meant a lot to me: I realised that here was one political party which not only had genuine principles but stuck to them through thick and thin without any compromise or “sell-out”.

So that is how and why I became a socialist, fourteen years ago. I lapsed from membership some time ago—but that is solely due to chronic, incurable disabling illness and my personal circumstances, which make it impossible for me to travel around and attend its debates and meetings. The only sort of contribution I can make is by writing articles and collecting the party’s audio tapes. I also argue the case for socialism with friends and acquaintances—and, occasionally, with strangers I meet in pubs, cafés, etc. (I’ve made a lot of enemies this way!)

Through the years, I have amassed a great deal of vital information on many subjects—including political history, religion, ecology and conservation, anthropology, the history of the socialist movement, and so on—and have written a book on the origins and development of capitalism, comparing it with the only sane alternative, World Socialism. My final draft typescript of this book is now in the possession of the Socialist Party’s archivists. I hope some day that it will be published.

In conclusion, I want to express my gratitude to the Socialist Party for providing me with the understanding and insight I sorely lacked before; and to Karl Marx too, of course: we all owe him a great debt for the tremendous work he did and his great achievements. We can’t all be like Marx, but at least some of us might approach his level of intellect if we make the necessary effort. Marxian knowledge can increase intelligence, I have found: and it produces the “quantum jump” in consciousness among workers everywhere which makes socialism possible. Speed the day!

David E. Finlay, 

Brighton

Labour history

Dear Editors,

I am writing on behalf of the North West Labour History Group. As part of our work in popularising knowledge of labour history we publish an annual journal and I would like to appeal to your readers for contributions to two forthcoming issues, one on the 1960s to be published in 2001 and one on the 1970s to be published in 2002.

We believe the time has come to examine the radical social, political and labour movement of those decades in the North West. We invite anybody interested in writing an article to contact us in the first instance at: North West Labour History Group c/o Working Class Movement Library, 51 Crescent, Salford M5 4WX.

Michael Herbert, 

North West Labour History Group

Letters: Internet hype? (2000)

Letters to the Editors from the June 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Internet hype?

Dear Editors,

I’m not sure what Paddy Shannon has been trying to tell us in his articles on the internet and capitalism over the last four months (Socialist Standard, January to April). In January we learned that “the world is still largely unprepared for the scale of the communications revolution overtaking it”. In February we were invited to ponder whether the internet will destroy capitalism or rejuvenate it (the possibility that it will do neither was overlooked). In March we were warned that “the internet does not promise to give revolutionaries their socialist society on a plate”.

April saw the end of Paddy’s sustained hype for the internet (notice that I don’t capitalise it as if it were a god). He examined its possible effect on community. Much of what Paddy writes about the loss of community has the ring of reality: the strangers who live next door, our scattered and distant friends, the isolating and alienating TV.

Paddy recognises that “revolutions are made by people, not machines . . .[but] the revolutionary potential of the internet may be storing up its greatest surprise” (March). In April we had a clue to this surprise: “The real revolution of the internet isn’t online, it’s offline, in the world of the ‘homeworker’.” There are now about one million home or teleworkers, and it’s predicted that “52 percent of the working population will be homeworking by 2010”. Take that with a hefty pinch of salt. In the 1960s it was predicted that by 2000 most of us would be working 20-30 hours a week, with long holidays, sabbaticals and early retirement. We aren’t.

More importantly, what has the way we are employed got to do with working for socialism? Paddy seems to think it will be a good thing if “local people will once again be able to work together locally”. Apparently, half of us will “walk the five minutes to their local telecentre . . . sign on to their individual company” and this will be called “the communalisation of working”. It still sounds like capitalist employment to me. Global it may be, networking it may include, but I can’t see it’s any overall improvement on the non-telecentre, away-from-home employment that the other half of us face the prospect of continuing to have.

In a things-will-get-worse-before-they-get-better vein, Paddy foresees that “the internet may finally precipitate a wholesale flight out of [terminal retreat into virtual reality]”. In other words, our old friend increasing misery. The internet and associated new technology will prove so unsatisfying (calamitous?) that we’ll react against it and experience “a new flowering of community working and activity”. Forgive me for wanting to dodge the misery and go straight for the new flowering.

I’m glad that Socialist Party members are being recruited via the internet and I do believe we should use every available and effective technology to build the socialist movement. But let’s keep a sense of proportion. The work required to meet the needs of billions of the world’s population for food, shelter and health services is not just looking at screens, tapping keys and moving mice. Computers transmit information very fast but they embody all those aspects of our thinking that are automatic, deterministic, algorithmic. Against the people Paddy quotes, I’d like to endorse what S.L. Talbott says about education in The Future Does Not Compute:

“The teachers we remember for changing our lives did not convey some decisive fact. Rather, we saw in them a stance we could emulate, a way of knowing and being we could desire for ourselves . . . This is why computers have so little to offer either teacher or student. If the student’s greatest hope is to learn from his teacher what it can mean to be a human being facing a particular aspect of life, then the implications of wholesale reliance upon computer-mediated instruction are very grave indeed.”

Stan Parker, 

London NW3

Paddy Shannon replies: 

What the articles set out to do was not “hype” the internet, nor suggest it would do our work for us, but to discuss even-handedly a new significant development in capitalism which socialists ought to know about. We don’t think it’s a god, (current word-processing software doesn’t agree, since it tries to capitalise it for you!) nor is it the nemesis or salvation of capitalism. It’s what we make of it. It is not suggested that homeworking is somehow a liberating development. It’s still capitalist employment, of course. But the way we are employed has, we think, got a lot to do with working for socialism—just ask any overworked socialist who doesn’t have time to do Party work because of pressures of employment and commuting. To say that we would derive no benefit from being able to work locally is to respond to perceived hype with anti-hype, an equally indefensible extreme.

The “wholesale flight out of virtual reality” quote seems to have caused confusion. This was intended to counter those pundits who see computer-based virtual communities as somehow a step forward. There is no disagreement with Stan here. Indeed, the article argues that present Western society is already largely virtual (a bad thing) and that teleworking will encourage more physical community (a good thing) and thus precipitate a change from an alienated social environment into a more human and humane environment. Not increasing misery, then, rather the opposite.

The idea that the work of running the world can be reduced to “looking at screens, tapping keys and moving mice” is a caricature. For one thing, mobile phone technology is swiftly disposing of the old desktop geek image of the internet. The future of the computer is not in the foreground, giving us all eyestrain and sleepless nights, but in the background, in your clothes, your house and even your wallpaper, just as presently you are surrounded by microchips you know nothing about. There is no reason at all why a hi-tech socialist society couldn’t look for all the world like the quaint medieval society William Morris described in News From Nowhere, if that’s what humans really wanted. Technology tends to be at its most intrusive only when it is new. Stan presumably isn’t bothered by the presence of telephones, TVs, stereo hi-fi’s, fridges and a host of other useful tools we rely on but otherwise ignore as incidental accessories.

Finally, on the socialising and humanising role of teachers. We should no more expect this sort of thing from a computer as we should expect to ask a washing machine for advice on fashion. It would be a big mistake if humans ever proposed to replace human interaction with computer interfaces, but it seems highly unlikely that humans need to be told this, given their social and gregarious characteristics. The fear that computers will somehow dehumanise society has as little basis in fact as the once common view that the phonograph would lead to the destruction of social communication.

An ex-hippie confesses

Dear Editors,

What are we going to do about drugs? Illegal ones, that is. To legalise or not to legalise? Big stick or kid gloves? The hang-’em-and-flog-’em brigade, having learned nothing from all the years of experience and statistics, insist on heavier penalties for drug-takers and pushers, despite the known fact that, in the face of all punitive measures taken in recent decades, the overall incidence of drug-taking has gone on increasing in the UK and USA at a rapid rate.

Speaking from my own experience as someone who, way back in the Swingin’ Sixties, was once a very stubborn, determined pot-smoker and LSD “tripper”, I am convinced of several things: (a) so-called “soft” drugs such as cannabis and Ecstasy do not lead on to narcotics in the vast majority of cases; (b) no amount of harsh treatment by police, and stiffer sentencing by courts, actually stops or prevents people using drugs; and (c) drugs of all kinds have been used all over the world since time immemorial, and it was never seen as a social problem until relatively recently.

In reality, it is not the drugs themselves which are the real social problem, but the hysterical neurotic, knee-jerk reaction to them in the conditioned mind-set of society.

During my years as a “hippie”, travelling around from one commune or squat to another, I lived among many hundreds of dope-smokers, pill-heads, speed-freaks and heroin addicts: they were, on the whole, quite harmless and touchingly naïve. They did no harm, posed no threat to other people (aside from petty thieving and shoplifting that is).

We would do well to look carefully at the legal drug-peddlers in society—the pharmaceuticals companies and chemists in every High Street. What about them? Aside from the tiny minority of narcotics addicts in Britain, there are several million perfectly legal junkies: “respectable” housewives who walk around stoned on tranquillisers like Valium (now known to be highly addictive and fatal in many cases). Plus the hordes of businessmen and professional people who use both sleeping pills (i.e. barbiturates) and stimulants in their daily routine. But they aren’t criminals, are they?

So what’s the difference between one junkie and another? One gets his “fix” on prescription, the other doesn’t.

As for the legalisation of cannabis, I can vouch for the fact that this substance is not at all addictive or harmful: its worst effects are to make you lazy and unable to concentrate your thoughts for a while. LSD and Ecstasy are another matter: both are very harmful indeed and can result in death. But then, so can alcohol and cigarettes.

In a socialist society, the drug problem will not exist. Its cause will have been eradicated—the chronic alienation, isolation and loneliness created by capitalist conditions of life, plus social deprivation, poverty and dissatisfaction among the young. Once these factors are removed, the symptoms they produce will disappear along with them.

This is the real answer to the hangers-and-floggers, and to the wet liberal reformists as well: a sane and healthy social environment will produce sane and healthy individuals.

David Finlay, 

Brighton

Reply: 

Shoplifting may be a victimless crime, but “petty thieving” by drug addicts isn’t—it’s one of the additional problems workers have to face under capitalism-Editors.

Reformist NGOs

Dear Editors,

I am currently a student at the University of Southampton studying for a BA in politics and philosophy. I have subscribed to the Socialist Standard for a couple of years now so I am familiar with the distinctions you make from other “socialist” parties. My reason for writing is that I am faced with a question on the effectiveness of NGOs on international organisations such as the World Bank and the WTO. The question asks whether NGOs are transforming or reforming international organisations as regards environment/sustainable development values. My essay will argue that NGOs can neither transform or reform because of the nature of capitalism be it global or otherwise. I would be very interested to hear what you have to say on the matter as I could use your examples to illustrate my argument. I have read Marx for the philosophy side of my course, and from this have come to the conclusion that unless capitalism is abolished any kind of civil action will, unless geared towards ending the system, only at best delay the destruction of the Earth.

Daniel Lawrence (by email)

Reply: 

It sounds as if you’ve worked out things for yourself and don’t need our help-Editors.

Notes from an ex—hippie (1992)

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

During the 1960s, I became what was then known as a “hippie”. I grew my hair long, and wore some rather odd, shabby clothes like old, tattered blue jeans with flared bellbottoms and fringes, brightly-striped tee-shirts, Indian love-beads, Afghan coats and so forth. I went travelling around England, drifting from town to town, from squat to squat, and from commune to commune. In 1966 I smoked my first joint of cannabis, outside a pub in the West End of London. I met many beatniks and hippies; they told me things I d never known before about society, the law, politics, the police.

We did have some good times, we had plenty of harmless fun; we didn’t hurt other people. The "Beat Generation”, as it was called, were all for Peace, Love and Brotherhood—but things didn't turn out the way we planned.

Our movement soon came under the scrutiny of the police; politicians of the day such as Harold Wilson and his Home Secretary regarded us with profound hostility and contempt, but then, the feeling was mutual!

Among the things I learned from the hippies was that human beings are capable of living together peacefully and harmoniously on a basis of co-operation—if there is no impediment such as property or class division in the community to cause deep contradiction and strife. The hippies also taught me that all politics and governments are bad, they cannot find real solutions to society’s problems and only pretend that they can. That was why I didn't vote at all for many years, until I learned about Socialism—the only thing worth voting for.

I once encountered a certain police officer in London who showed a little more sympathy for us than most. He wasn’t too bad. When he asked me where I was going late one night in Trafalgar Square, I said, “I’m just going to sit down for a while. I'm tired.” We had a bit of a chat for a few minutes. I asked him, “What made you decide to be a copper, then?”

He said immediately, "Because I wanted to do something good for society—to protect honest people against criminals.”

I said, ’’But couldn’t you do something better than put people away in nick? That doesn’t solve or prevent crime; and it doesn’t protect anyone either, because there’s always more crime going on the whole time. D’you think there’s an alternative?”

The young copper scratched his chin and said, “Not really . . . What else can we do?”

I said, “Well, for one thing, you only get crime against property if society has property as an institution in the first place: if there were no such thing as minority class ownership there’d be no crime either, would there?”

He shook his head. “But there’s always been murder and violence; you can’t stop that—it’ll go on anyway, and if there weren’t any laws, it'd be even worse.”

“It doesn’t follow,” I replied patiently. “The historical records show that in past ages, when there were fewer restrictions and less property law, serious violence in society was much less a problem than it is now. And the primitive tribal societies arc known to be far more peaceful than our most advanced ones. They have virtually no crime at all; they rarely kill one another. Haven’t you seen David Attenborough’s documentaries on TV?”

“Well ... I grant you that . . . But—”

“But what?”

He pulled himself up to his full height, and turned away. “Mind how you go," he said over his shoulder as he strode off across the square.

I never saw him again.

D. E. F.

50 Years Ago: Hippies: An abortion of Socialist Understanding (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since the explosion of “Flower Power” in Summer 67, the world’s working-class has been aware of the Hippy movement, or as it is now more frequently called, “The Underground”. Attitudes to the hippies have varied from amused fascination to angry revulsion. Many people have grown more hostile to them over the past two years, as their emphasis on such harmless-sounding words as “Love” and “Beautiful People” has declined, and their tendency to smoke pot has become more widely publicised.

In Britain the occupation of 144 Piccadilly confirmed the hippies’ bad reputation—though the occupiers were not typical of the Underground by any means. TV news announcers put on their frowns for this item, were careful to identify the occupation with soccer hooliganism (both were “violence to property”), and equally careful to avoid dragging in irrelevant details like the fact of empty houses alongside homeless people.

A wave of horror swept the country at the realisation that there were people who not only wore long hair (and obviously smelt foul, as anyone could see by looking at their TV screens), but actually believed they had a right to live without working. In one television programme, David Frost, Hughie Green and Robert Maxwell—those highly productive labourers who toil so usefully to justify their existence—led an attack on the hippies for their conscientious objection to work. When Richard Neville (editor of the Underground magazine Oz) suggested that the idea of work as a duty hadn’t a very ancient historical pedigree, that work in the modern world was “really a form of slavery,” and that with today’s productive techniques there could easily be more than enough wealth for everyone, he was devastated by Frost’s crisply intelligent retorts: “Very high‑ flown I’m sure” and “I really am an old fuddy-duddy you know.”

The hippy phenomenon is a movement, a set of attitudes, a subculture or a nuisance, according to your point of view. It consists of several hundred thousand people, drawn mostly from the working class, in the advanced regions of Capitalism. It is vaguely defined, fuzzy-edged—no one can draw up a hippy manifesto; no one can specify who is a hippy and who isn’t.

(From the Socialist Standard, December 1969)

Hippies: An Abortion of Socialist Understanding (1969)

From the December 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everybody seems to think I’m lazy. I don’t mind – I think they’re crazy. Running everywhere at such a speed. Till they find there’s no need . . .

Ever since the explosion of “Flower Power” in Summer 67, the world’s working-class has been aware of the Hippy movement, or as it is now more frequently called, “The Underground”. Attitudes to the hippies have varied from amused fascination to angry revulsion.  Many people have grown more hostile to them over the past two years, as their emphasis on such harmless-sounding words as “Love” and “Beautiful People” has declined, and their tendency to smoke pot has become more widely publicised.

In Britain the occupation of 144 Piccadilly confirmed the hippies’ bad reputation—though the occupiers were not typical of the Underground by any means. TV news announcers put on their frowns for this item, were careful to identify the occupation with soccer hooliganism (both were “violence to property”), and equally careful to avoid dragging in irrelevant details like the fact of empty houses alongside homeless people.

A wave of horror swept the country at the realisation that there were people who not only wore long hair (and obviously smelt foul, as anyone could see by looking at their TV screens), but actually believed they had a right to live without working. In one television programme, David Frost, Hughie Green and Robert Maxwell—those highly productive labourers who toil so usefully to justify their existence—led an attack on the hippies for their conscientious objection to work. When Richard Neville (editor of the Underground magazine Oz) suggested that the idea of work as a duty hadn’t a very ancient historical pedigree, that work in the modern world was “really a form of slavery,” and that with today’s productive techniques there could easily be more than enough wealth for everyone, he was devastated by Frost’s crisply intelligent retorts: “Very high‑flown I’m sure” and “I really am an old fuddy-duddy you know.”

Hippy characteristics

The hippy phenomenon is a movement, a set of attitudes, a subculture or a nuisance, according to your point of view. It consists of several hundred thousand people, drawn mostly from the working class, in the advanced regions of Capitalism. It is vaguely defined, fuzzy-edged—no one can draw up a hippy manifesto; no one can specify who is a hippy and who isn’t. It differs from country to country: in America, for example, there are relatively fewer semi-hippies or weekend hippies than in Britain, for the simple reason that long hair is a much greater obstacle to getting a job in the States than in Europe. All the same, we can list some of the features which distinguish hippies from what they call “straight” society.

First, there is age—or rather, youth. Hippies are predominantly under-thirties. Second, they have an unorthodox pattern of drugs consumption—mostly pot, with occasional recourse to acid (“pot” is now common parlance for cannabis (marihuana), and acid for lysergic acid (LSD)) and minor use of amphetamines and other pills. Or as “straight” society (gaily swilling down immense quantities of alcohol, nicotine, barbiturates, aspirin, etc.) usually puts it: “Hippies take drugs.” Whatever may be the medical properties of the hippies’ chosen stimulants, they do have the important social property that their use is, for the time being, prohibited by the State.

Third, hippies possess a typical style of appearance: long hair, casual-to-scruffy clothes, beads, etc. And fourth, like all minority groups they have their own language: “mind-blowing” (stimulating to the point of powerful hallucination); “hang-up” (unfortunate disturbance of tranquillity); “fuzz” (policemen), and so forth. It is a measure of the commercial cashing-in on hippies that virtually all of their jargon is very widely-known through its dissemination in pop music. Most of it was borrowed from other sources, not coined, by the hippies.

Fifth, hippies are preoccupied with certain forms of art, for example beat music accompanied by displays of coloured, flashing lights. Sixth, they aim at an inversion of the values of “straight” society. They embrace spontaneity rather than self-control; childlikeness rather than sophistication; love rather than power; “dropping-out” rather than careerism; “doing your own thing” rather than imposed uniformity; admiration for the destitute rather than for “affluence”; disorder rather than method—and of course, Indians rather than cowboys. Seventh, hippies often show a greater than average susceptibility to superstition. They are generally against established “organised religion,” but fall for all sorts of religious and mystical clap-trap which have an exotic flavour ; astrology, transcendental meditation, palmistry, sunspots, or Krishna-consciousness.

Lastly, many hippies advocate a revolutionary change in society, though both the manner of achieving this, and the nature of their proposed new system, (sometimes described as “tribal” or “communitarian”) are extremely vague. An example of this vagueness was the slogan advanced in one Underground paper: “Alternative Society Now!”—its urgent tone somewhat cancelled out by the woolliness of its descriptive content, which could scarcely be less informative. At least many hippies are clear that the major social evils of today are all bound up together, and can be removed only by a total social change. Both of the important politically-oriented offshoots of the hippy movement, the Diggers and the Yippies, make specifically Socialist proposals, such as the abolition of wages and of money. In our opinion, both these groups are doomed to futility because of their methods, but they do constitute an advance on the previously fashionable assortments of youthful radicals. This groping towards Socialist understanding is particularly impressive when set against the temporary direction of trendy Leftism in the US: flirting with black racism, romantic idolising of Guevara and similar state-capitalist prophets, or the demagoguery and vanguardism the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Causes of hippies

The Socialist argument that the majority of workers must arrive at a clear understanding of Socialism before they can get it, that a Revolution in ideas must precede the Revolution in politics and economics, is often sneered at by those who say that the mass of the population (except, for some reason, the extraordinary people who make this statement) are brainwashed robots, puppets manipulated by TV, and the press.

But Capitalism is not a conspiracy. It cannot be controlled by set of individuals, not even the Capitalist class.  Current ideas provide a support for capitalism (though the “mass media” are only a part of their reinforcement), yet Capitalism is dynamic, constantly advancing and frequently unpredictable in detail. The very ideas which defend capitalism have to be adjusted or replaced, to fit new conditions. Workers must be trained, not only to do their jobs, but also to be versatile, because their jobs are changing all the time, and also to make radical criticisms of the way capitalism is run, because otherwise inefficient and unprofitable blunders would result. As the Communist Manifesto put it:

  The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production . . . All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their trains of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned . . .

Today, traditional ideas about work, leisure and “the purpose of life” are under attack, and in retreat. Capitalism has killed God stone dead, and is stamping on the twitching corpse. Capitalism extends the juicy carrot of the “Leisure Society”—a golden age of short working-hours and automated abundance, which is ever imminent yet never arrives. Capitalism holds aloft an image of glamour, high-powered pleasure, rest and freedom—whilst the worker’s mind and body are reduced ever more thoroughly to instruments of accumulation. From the belief that work is a grim duty, consumption its reward, capitalism is shifting emphasis to the view that consumption is a duty, work something to be made rewarding.

It is in this context of irresistible change that confused vortices of rebellion like hippyism must be seen. The hippy movement has been centred in California—the most technically advanced region of the world, the window on the future. That is not an accident: it is just what Socialists and historical materialists have predicted. The embryo of Socialist ideas is constantly gestating in the womb of advanced capitalism: the foetus is aborted repeatedly, but the fertility of working‑class consciousness cannot be lost, and the insemination of Socialist organisation must grow more copious. The hippy movement is one of those abortions.

Hippies are a product of the youth cult, the commercialisation of young people and the “generation gap.” But this gap is not only a construct of the publicity men: the new generation does live and think differently from its elders. Many of the things our fathers and mothers were grateful for (and that is a measure of the servile depths to which the working-class has sunk), we take for granted. Young people in the advanced countries have never been brought to heel by a major slump, nor by a war at home.  Their standard of consumption has generally risen steadily throughout their lives, and they confidently expect it to go on doing so indefinitely. Given this outlook, mere technical progress and fatter wage packets lose their capacity to impress. Young workers are more likely to ask “What’s it all for, this endless treadmill? When do we start to live?”

The rapid dissemination of hippyism throughout the advanced world is a consequence of the similarity of conditions in these counties, plus the globe-shrinking communications network: any fad, fashion, doctrine or cult, once it has popped up in one nation is almost instantly mirrored in all. This buttresses our case that the notion of a Socialist revolution in a single country is ludicrous.

The hippies’ deliberate irrationality, and their earlier Love worship, are a protest against “straight” reasonableness and logic. (In fact the very term “straight,” like the archaic “square” reveals this). Capitalism manifests very thorough rationality in the service of inactive irrationality—scientific means to insane ends. Those who don’t understand capitalism’s structure often find its “logic” oppressive, and retreat into gooey, mindless sentimentality. This is a very common modern theme, exemplified in things like Godard’s early films, such as Alphaville.

Mysticism is favoured by a reaction against modern institutional Christianity, seen as a cover for the “straight” virtues of ambition and conformity, and mysticism links up with drug-induced hallucinations which provide escape from an aimless and insecure reality. It is romantically pretty, a source of poetry, in attempt to give back to life a lost “depth,” and in its imported forms it has the flavour of more primitive societies in which alternatives to the score-card mentality of “straight” achievement compulsion can be found.

The hippy movement is now virtually finished. Certain aspects—the dress, the jargon, the music—are steadily incorporated into a much broader and less rebellious area of commercial youth culture. “The Underground”, always a term with a more political slant, becomes infiltrated by Leftist reformists and insurrectionaries. It is to be hoped they will learn something from the Underground, for they have little to teach it. (1) A feeling of community, and a common set of values, will persist among those who smoke pot (and therefore dislike policemen), but this becomes vaguer as the habit spreads. The really important question of future movements, perhaps partly hippy-derived, perhaps bigger, perhaps more explicitly antagonistic to the economic system.

Criticism of hippies

A few young workers, whose anti-Capitalist tendencies were initially stirred by the Underground have progressed in their understanding to the point of embracing revolutionary Socialism, and joining the Socialist Party of Great Britain.  But much more could have been accomplished if there had existed a bigger Socialist movement with the resources to put its case more loudly. As it is, a potentially fruitful upsurge of critical and anti-authoritarian idea has in the main been diverted into reformism, anarchism and mysticism.

The hippies’ emphasis on a style instead of a programme, whilst in many ways endearing, and possessing an obvious advantage for propaganda, is a grave obstacle to their progress in understanding. Distinctions of dress, hairstyle and musical taste are, after all, fairly trivial—and many hippies come dangerously close to regarding them as fetishes. Flickering lights, a psychedelic design, a whiff of incense, a Clapton guitar phrase—such things can be combined into a powerfully unified appeal to all the senses, yet Capitalist society has no difficulty in prostituting this as it prostitutes all art and all enjoyment. Whereupon the market, having squeezed the Underground dry, moves on to the next short-lived modish fad. As Wilde put it, the trouble being very modern is that you become old-fashioned very quickly.

With the first, naive realisation that a new society is necessary, three elementary errors are committed in turn. First, it is supposed that the adoption of attitudes appropriate to the desired society will bring it closer—hence the “Love” phase. This is quickly seen to be largely unsuccessful, since the conditions of the present system generate completely opposed attitudes. To the extent that it is successful it merely helps to reconcile people to the existing state of affairs. The next stage is to go beyond mere attitudes, to try and act as though the new society were already here. This is like trying to get out of a prison by ignoring the bars, and equally futile. After this, attempts are at last made to overhaul the system, but only piecemeal, by changing bits at a time.  However the nature of the bits is mainly determined by the nature of the whole, not vice versa—as student militants are among the most recent to discover. Thus, what started out as something really radical, and in its implications revolutionary, has been shepherded back into the fold of orthodox reformist politics. Only clarity of thought, and courage in the face of the jeers about “sectarianism” which are always hurled at revolutionaries, can break out of this vicious circle.

Now the Underground veers between two courses of action: assaults on Capitalism and attempted withdrawal from it: respectively symbolised by the occupation of 144 Piccadilly, and the move to Saint Patrick’s Isle. But Capitalism will not fall before sporadic demonstrations and happenings, however defiant or amusing these may be.  Neither will it let anyone drop out.

It may be argued in defence of the Underground that this is the age of exploration rather than of Principles, and that there is much value in looseness, informality, and even incoherence. But exploration is worthwhile only if it leads to discovery, looseness if it leads to firmness, informality if it leads to definable formal organisation, and incoherence if out of it emerges a new coherence. The Underground is incapable of making these advances because, though often expert at dramatising its criticism of “straight” society, it seems quite incapable of criticising itself.

Hippies then, are only the symptoms of a sick society: Socialists the cure. Yet to those workers infuriated by the hippy way of life, we say: Don’t look for scapegoats. A few “spongers” are nothing compared to the vast wastage of Capitalism: the arms/space race, built-in shoddiness, the unnecessary monetary system, the “sponging” of the owners of industry. To blame hippies (students, immigrants, unofficial strikers) for your troubles is to lose sight of the actual cause—which is precisely what your masters the capitalists want. Anyway, the view that people ought to work to “earn” their subsistence is out-of-date in a world which could easily provide more than enough for everybody, with a tiny fraction of the work done today. Everything should be free; all work should be voluntary—that is Socialism.

To hippies themselves, we say: Pulling faces at Capitalism is not enough. Even talking about “tribal” alternatives is not enough. An uncompromising stand on Socialist Principles is required before we can start to bring about the new moneyless world society.

David Ramsay Steele

………………..

(1) One of these Bolshevik reactionaries, D. Widgery, recently remonstrated with the Underground, via the columns of International Times (Oct. 10):  “IT would still be publishing its twee pop-star interviews two months after workers’ soviets were declared on Merseyside and Clydeside.”  Widgery’s delusional system is so fantastic that he imagines an administrative apparatus which was a symptom of Russian backwardness half a century ago has some relevance to the working-class problems in the 1970s!  Notice how his two chosen regions are centres for manual workers, that proportionately declining  section (soon to be a minority) of the working class – a section which the Bolsheviks invest with unlimited Romantic potential.  Compared to the fairytale world of the Bolsheviks, Tolkien’s fables are scientific sociology, twee pop-star interviews the last word in revolutionary politics!

Panic in the Fields (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The severity of a crisis cannot always be gauged by a government's public response to it. That is why, at times of obvious threat to our well being, we might be officially assured that there is no great cause for concern.

This is the case with the current level of unemployment, which is tightening the screw of poverty ever tighter on the working class but which merits the attention of only a minor minister, whose main function seems to tell us about the latest additions to the dole queues. It also applies to world famine, which needlessly kills tens of millions a year but which can apparently be left to be solved by charitable joggers and rock music devotees. The unimaginable menace of nuclear war need not deprive us of any sleep because wise Ronald Reagan and resolute Margaret Thatcher have got the balance of power into so fine an adjustment that the weapons will never be used. The explosion at Chernobyl caused a few worried moments but, after all, human beings were being bombarded by natural radioactivity long, long before anyone had even heard of the atom. In any case nuclear power stations in this country are (like Windscale) Made In Britain, which means they will never blow up or leak or run out of control.

So don't worry, is the official message. The public should keep calm. There is no reason for undue alarm.

And then somebody called "the hippy" bursts on the scene, causing feverish panic where before all was tranquil reassurance. Hippies, we are told, are a cause for concern. They are like a plague sweeping across the country. They seem to have taken all those Thatcher speeches about individual liberty a bit too seriously. They choose not to wash or comb their hair, they don't send their children to school to be indoctrinated into an acceptance of wage slavery. They don't live in mortgaged semis or in council high rise estates, they don 't stuff themselves into rush hour trains and buses and traffic jams. They don't have a regular job in factory, office or supermarket. Clearly, they are a menace to civilised society and every right-minded Britisher will agree with the government taking the most stringent measures to suppress them.

It is true that hippies sometimes join up in a convoy of slow, ramshackle vehicles which is liable to block the road and they pitch in fields without the owner's permission, perhaps leaving the place in a bit of a mess. One of the gutter press drew on its resources of instant hysteria to describe them as "the world's most famous blot on the landscape"—worse, presumably, than the effects of the military practising their tanks and guns over vast tracts of the countryside, worse than the ripping out of miles of hedgerows and the ploughing up of ancient downlands by farmers who, in their lust to climb aboard the grain subsidy bandwagon, create huge eyesores of prairies.

Douglas Hurd, who is said to be a kindly, moderate man. did his kind, moderate best to stoke up the panic about the hippies by likening them to medieval brigands. This phrase should come easily to an aristocratic, ex-Etonian, member of the British ruling class, who may be gratefully aware that some of his class owe their privileged position to the activities of medieval brigands. Others came to riches through the pitiless enclosures and clearances of the land in other words, stealing it from the local people Then there was the slave trade, which enriched ports such as Bristol. London and Liverpool, which built many an opulent mansion among lush landscaped estates and which provided some of the capital for the Industrial Revolution, with its slums and its ruthless working of pregnant women and children, literally to the point of exhaustion or even death.

It is an affront to all workers, that a member of the class whose position originated in these offences against humanity should presume to denounce this small band of ragged people.

In any case, what does this hippy threat amount to? There is no evidence that they are dangerous criminals; so far none has been arrested for murder, or mugging a pensioner. or raping a child. Even their efforts to claim Supplementary Benefit are hardly likely to bankrupt the DHSS. So why has there been so hysterical a response? Even a government as quick as this one to harvest the votes which sprout from the issue of Law and Order can hardly justify the large, relentless and meticulously organised police operation to drive hundreds of people, including their children, into homelessness. How can a government which has pledged itself to "fight crime" justify sending hundreds of police to deal with these uncriminal. unresisting people? In such situations, it is not uncommon for the police to commit illegal acts and for Chief Constables to reveal some alarming ambitions about curtailing civil liberties. But even at that the government have some very far-fetched plans, including a new law which promises to be so catch-all as to affect the tradition that a hunt may trample wherever they will.

The hippies will reply that all this is happening because, yes, they are a threat to property society. They have, they say, seen through it all and have dropped out of the sham material obsessions which dominate the lives of the majority. No-one can be criticised for doubting the morality of capitalism, based as it is on the class ownership of the means of life, the production of wealth for sale and profit and the exploitation of the majority by a parasitic minority. But it is not possible to opt out of the system, in fact the hippies don't even try, since they know they depend on many things—modern communications. services like clean piped water, the internal combustion engine—which capitalism has developed. They must buy and sell, or scrounge, in order to survive. In spite of what they think, somewhere they are on file. Like some other socially peripheral groups, the hippies attempt to blanket their confusion with religious and mystical obscurities, in idle debates about ley lines, reincarnation, the phases of the moon . . .

But none of this can be remotely construed as a threat to capitalist law and order — to the property rights which it is the job of the police to uphold and defend. It is difficult to believe that any government would seriously regard this pathetic, impecunious bunch as any more than a minor eccentric nuisance, not worthy of being spoken of in Downing Street as public disrupters in the same breath as miners or print workers. The real menace of the situation is more likely to be that hippies have made themselves available as convenient scapegoats for workers who are mindful of poverty, famine, the nuclear threat and who are too ready to displace their fears and confusion onto someone. Scapegoats, like royal weddings, like the sick hypocrisy of the media, are useful to capitalism because they divert attention from the real problems of this society. That is why the hysterical panic about the hippies will be matched by a hysteria of false joy when the two foolish parasites Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson—who live off a different type of social security—get married.

The problem with setting up scapegoats, however, is that the campaign against them may get out of control and lead to capitalism being organised almost exclusively in panic. Nazi Germany is only one example of this. All workers, then, would do well to ponder what is implied by the persecution of the hippies. So should the hippies themselves; whatever it is they aspire to, cannot be realised under capitalism, which dragoons us all into some measure of wage slavery. Indictment of what this society does to people is not enough; opting out is an admission of failure. Success means organising together to end it and all its inhuman works.

Ivan

Motives of militarism (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is just over ten tears ago that peace time conscription (one of the Attlee government’s steps towards socialism) came to an end (by order of a Tory government). For the most part, National Servicemen agreed that the time they spent in the forces was a stilling bore. Some swore that they spent almost the entire two years sitting around with virtually nothing to do; others, that any sporting prowess was the passport, through a corrupt adjutant, to a cushy posting.

The surprising fact was that so many of these men, after their demob, could recall the episode without experiencing an overwhelming urge to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Very few were really angry about those wasted months; they looked back on it all with an amused tolerance, perhaps even with some affection.

They remembered the time spent square-bashing under roaring NCOs, the kit inspections with everything moronically clean and laid out in monotonous pattern. They swapped memories of barrack room japes and booze ups as if service life was one long revel. Many a demobbed clerk used to announce his morning arrival at the office with "Orderly officer! Stand by y’beds!” It was almost as if, in very drab lives, being plucked out into the service was one isolated, treasured patch of colour.

Perhaps those gentle memories were a rationalisation of what was actually an unpleasant experience, which the conscripts could not contain or justify in any other way. If there is a massive guilt complex at large, it has probably been successfully projected; a recent Opinion Research Centre poll said that 43 per cent of those questioned about conscription favoured a return of it.

At this time of long haired, protesting, questioning, free-loving, delinquent, youth — a return of conscription? It is useful, to take that as a starting point.

If we played the old psychological party game and asked a collection of people what word came immediately to mind when we said “Army”, a fair number would reply “discipline". And it is discipline, with elements of orderliness, smartness, cleanliness, which present day society is supposed to lack. A large part of the Services’ efforts goes into this discipline business and the instilling of it is the basis of all those parades, saluting, stamping, polishing, shining, folding, adjusting . . .

A plainer, but more accurate, way of expressing this is that it is intended to induce a state of mind in which the disciplined ask no questions. They obey — even the word of an ignorant, bull-headed man whose only advantage is in the stripes on his sleeve. Men who can be trained to co-operate enthusiastically in pointless activities like making sure they walk about a barrack square in exactly the same way as a few hundred other men can also be trained to give of their best in other, equally pointless, activities. They will, for example, if the man with the stripes tells them to, do their best to kill some other, equally disciplined and conditioned, man who is wearing a different uniform.

Once in that mindless mob action, it takes some courage to make a stand. Conform — that is the password. When you are in the mob you take everything like a soldier. That includes your work (which may mean killing your fellow conscript on the other side), your punishments, your drink. Even your sex. The old conscripts may backlash, now that they are in their thirties and forties, at the so-called Permissive Society and the current attempted ventilation of some of the more suffocating phobias of sex. It was different in their day, when a soldier was applauded for taking a local wench upright in an alley at the back of a dance hall. That, after all, was the soldier's way . . .

This professed contempt for women is in fact part of an obsession which finds its place conveniently among the myths of capitalism. That is the obsession with manliness, the notion that a man must act in a particular style and must confine his interests to particular fields. Thus in advanced society a man may be employed in a factory, he may relax in some sports, he is pressured to adopt certain dress styles, even to like particular drinks (like in the T.V. ad for Courage bitter). To step out of this pattern — for example for a man to put on an apron and do the housework while his wife goes out to work — would be to put doubt on his sexuality, even his sanity.

There is of course a vast amount of research which destroys the idea that the respective roles of men and women in society are fixed and necessarily logical. In fact capitalism allots to them the roles which fit in with the system’s needs and priorities. Predictably, capitalism justifies this with a campaign which glorifies the roles it has allotted and by erecting a huge edifice of prejudice. In this way, manliness and militancy are connected; the soldier stamps his way around, he shouts his commands. He demonstrates strength.

The crucial point here is that the reactions and the disciplines which are instilled by military life are in their way very useful to capitalist society outside. Capitalism is a social system of privilege in which the vast majority are underdogs. If they ever realise their sheer power, if they ever see through the system’s deceptions, then the days of privilege are numbered. A great propaganda effort is devoted to delaying the day of reckoning.

Workers are taught that in many things conformity is a virtue; they are taught that mass production is good because it is more profitable. The ideal which is dangled before them is to live in one of a regiment of semis, with a Ford in the gutter outside and two point three (or whatever point it is) children to take out an endowment insurance on. They are taught docility, that the life of the worker who accepts his lot is good (those endowments mature someday) and getting better. Anybody who gets impatient at the slowness of the “improvements”, or who wants more than an improvement, must be a neurotic, a long hair, a hippy. It would obviously do him good, knock all that nonsense out of him, if he had to go in the Army. A pity they don’t bring conscription back . . .

This is no more than an attempt at an easy answer to all the doubts and questioning about capitalism and its effects. Militarism is itself suppressive, an attempt to harden bodies and brutalise minds to the point where they are ready to obey any order, tolerate any obscenity. But the questioning will go on and militarism is no more than an obstacle to be surmounted. If there is no discipline in this it is not the discipline of the barked command, the automatic obedience. It is the discipline of knowledge and in the struggle between the two there is no doubt about which shall overcome.

Ivan

Looking at Hippies (1969)

From the November 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the sociologists, psychologists, criminologists and indeed anyone else who is on the mighty bandwagon called the Behavioural Sciences, obsessions come and go. The latest is the probe for reasons behind the hippies, to ask why they should want to drop out of this great, beneficient society we live in. This is an interesting, and by no means simple, question. Another, less fashionable but with more value, is, what are the reasons behind the people who have not, in one way or another, dropped out?

By this we do not necessarily mean people like Reginald Ethelbert Seaton, who retired from the chair of the Inner London Sessions in September and who told the Daily Telegraph before he went: “Show the birch to a hippie or a Skinhead and you have shown him the light and the way back to respect for himself and the law.” We really mean the millions who applaud that sort of statement and whose reaction to the hippies, whether they are occupying empty houses or just flopping on the ground around Eros, includes a perceptible element of hysteria.

We have seen this kind of ugly mood before, and seen it turned against other non-conforming minorities, and watched it being titillated by what are called the organs of public opinion. For example, the joyful press reports of the court attendant at Folkestone who sprayed the courtroom while the hippies were there. That proved they were all dirty and verminous. Then there was the newsreel commentator who sounded on the verge of an apoplectic fit when they showed the board outside 144, Piccadilly asking for, among other things, a colour television set. That proved the hippies were all shameless scroungers—or at least it did to anyone who refused to recognise that the request was obviously meant as a joke.

This kind of malice is aimed not just at the squatters. Another of its targets was the crowd outside the house; it was meant to reassure them that the values of property society are eternal, that they are respectable in a good cause, that their degrading docility makes sense. It is only a short step from this to reject—angrily, even violently—the minority who do not accept property values, and who do not want to be respectable or docile.

There is, of course, a lot more to it than that. A hippy spokesman (accepting that there can be such a thing) at 144, Piccadilly said that they were standing against the routine degradations of work (by which he meant employment) and the straight society. Perhaps the resentment against this would not be so pronounced if these opinions could be nicely pigeon-holed into one of the usual explanations for deviant behaviour. But the hippies, or most of them, come from families which one of them called in New Society (9/10/69) “White collar workers: anything from badly paid office staff to teachers, scientists and lower executives.”

Now by rights the hippies should think and act like impoverished clerks and teachers. When they refuse to do this, when they begin to perceive some of the unpleasant facts about capitalist society, they appear to be traitors and let-downs and, because the facts they perceive are so uncomfortable, they are also a challenge. They challenge the automatic acceptance of wage-slavery— the rush-hour backwards and forwards the forelock-touching, the scheming and grovelling for an extra few shillings on the salary cheque—and the gratitude for it all.

They challenge, too, all those values of what they call (and it is not a bad term) the straight society. They do not regard the law as an eternal morality, they do not worship manliness and organised, military brutality. “Get your hair cut and get to Vietnam” snarled one of the spectators at 144, Piccadilly. He was frustrated at the hippies’ preference for love before war. What greater treachery could there be ?

What the hippies are up against, whether they realise it or not, is the support which the working class give to capitalism. This support need not be a directly conscious business expressed in the language of the politico; it is more of a general, almost a conditioned, acceptance of whatever capitalism demands— poverty, disease, war. Those who so bitterly criticise the hippies would do well to look at what they themselves support.

At this year’s Labour Party conference, for example, Harold Wilson was speaking for the straight society. What did he make of it? We have, he said, a two-fold task :

. . .  to remove the scars of nineteenth-century capitalism — the derelict mills, the spoil heaps, the back-to-back houses that still disfigure so large a part of our land.
   At the same time we have to make sure that the second industrial revolution through which we are passing does not bequeath a similar legacy to future generations. We must solve the problems of pollution —of the air, of the sea, of our rivers and beaches. We must also solve the uniquely twentieth century problems of noise and congestion . . .

It did not seem to strike anyone in the hall that, typical of a capitalist politician, Wilson was promising to solve the problems of capitalism today at the same time as he was admitting that the problems of capitalism last century are still with us. But there was more to come, as Wilson wound up with these words:

We go forward today into the year ahead, into the Seventies. We have the faith. We have the vision. We have the means to make that faith, that vision, a reality. We cannot fail.

Now, even those who are hardened to the regular debasement of words by a politician must have thought that this was going a bit far. It might just have happened that the Labour delegates, remembering all that has passed these last five years, would have wanted something more from their leader than stale platitudes. One or two of them might with reason have laughed, or fainted with surprise, or been sick. But they did none of these things. They stood up and applauded. For a minute and a half.

Such is the straight society. If the hippies are revolting against the spectacle of workers asking for more from the men who cheat them, lie to them, exploit them and even kill them, then clearly they have a point.

Should we, then, all rush off to join the nearest squat? The weakness in the hippy case is that, assuming they are consciously rejecting the values and priorities of capitalism, they have no notion of how to deal with the system. Capitalism is rotten but it is here — kept here by the working class who, although they are a conforming, politically ignorant mass, cannot be ignored. The hippies could be turned out of their squats because behind the police who got them out were all those millions of people who support capitalism and who stand for the values, disciplines and degradations of the straight society.

This is one fact which it is impossible to opt out of. One of the hippies’ much publicised plans, for example, was to buy St. Patrick’s island off the Irish coast and there establish a community of love and harmony. This is the sort of dream many of us have had at some time or other but the hard, sad fact is that on St. Patrick’s the hippies would have been no more insulated than they were at 144, Piccadilly.

On their island the hippies would have had no choice but to deal with capitalism outside. They seem to recognise this at the moment; Frank Harris, one of their leaders, told a local meeting that they would buy produce and contract their construction work at the nearby resort of Skerries (which pleased the local tradesmen) and later talked about methods of financing the venture. (The Guardian 7/10/69). But to deal with capitalism means that the relationships the priorities and the values of the system would, sooner or later, be admitted to the island paradise.

Capitalism does not exist by accident. It has exhausted its usefulness to human society but it lives on and the simple reason for this is that the majority of people want it to. Indeed, when we get down to it, even the hippies eventually end up on that side. They are not the first group to hate the effects of capitalism at the same time as they misunderstand the basics of social change. The hippies deny the need for political action, for a conscious majority in favour of a revolution. Their theory that it is possible to insulate ourselves against the effects of capitalism denies the need for a revolution and in that very fact supports capitalism’s continuing.

And so, paradoxical though it may be, the hippies are on the same side as the men with the bowler hats and rolled umbrellas. There is not, yet, a revolutionary situation and until there is we shall never have a fuzz-free London and there will continue to be the theft of property.

Ivan

See also:

Socialist Standard December 1969: Hippies: An Abortion of Socialist Understanding