Editorial: On Banning the National Front (1979)

Editorial from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is wholeheartedly in favour of the fullest freedom of speech. This is because we hold that out of full and free discussion of today’s social problems only one valid conclusion can emerge: that Socialism alone will provide the framework within which they can be solved.

Full free speech means exactly what it says: any and every view should be allowed expression so that it can be examined and shown to be wrong. One of the more obnoxious views current these days is racialism, the idea that some human beings are inferior to others and ought to be treated as such.

Many well-meaning people, appalled at the growing support for the National Front and determined that a racialist party should never again be permitted to gain political power anywhere, have been prepared to listen sympathetically to those who call for the NF and its views to be banned. This is an understandable gut reaction but a little dispassionate reflection will show it to be wrong.

Would banning the NF lead to a diminution in racialist sentiments and ideas? Indeed, have the various Race Relations Acts banning the expression of racialist ideas in their cruder forms led to this? The anti-racialist legislation on the statute book has only led to racialists being more careful about the words they use. Ideas cannot be suppressed by legislation.

The real problem is why do certain sections of the working class hold racialist views and how can they be got to abandon them. It is fairly clear why certain workers entertain anti-black prejudices. Suffering from bad housing, poor hospital services, poor schools, etc., and having seen an immigration of black people into their areas they mistakenly link the two together to conclude that it is the coming of black immigrants that is the cause of their problems.

The various racialist Immigration Acts which have been passed by both Conservative and Labour governments to keep black people out have done much to give respectability to the view that immigration rather than capitalism is the cause of today’s social problems.

So workers with racialist ideas are workers who, in their search for an explanation of and solution to their problems, have reached a mistaken conclusion. How can they be convinced that they are wrong? If they can’t be convinced by legislation they can be convinced even less by the tactic of the Socialist Workers Party and others of insulting and even physically assaulting them. The only way is to try to demonstrate to them that their conclusions are wrong.

This is the approach the Socialist Party has always adopted and why, rather than physically fighting with the British Union of Fascists, the Union Movement or the NF, we have exposed their dangerous racialist nonsense before an audience of interested workers.

People who deny the validity of our tactic of combating racialism in calm, open argument are in effect denying that workers are capable of being convinced rationally of the error of racialism. Many of these people have been influenced by Lenin and his contemptuous claim that left to themselves the working class is capable of evolving only a trade union consciousness. They believe that the working class is only fit to be led, in one direction or another, by some minority or other, and so need protection from those who like the NF seek to “mislead” them.

The ultimate basis of all arguments for censorship (and the call for the NF to be prevented from expressing its views is a call for censorship) is such an assumption that people are too stupid or irresponsible or immature to make up their own minds and that some superior body must therefore decide for them. For the SWP and others this superior body is themselves—the self-appointed vanguard of the working class. If they ever came to power the application of this claim to decide what the working class shall and shall not hear would mean the end of free speech for workers just as it did in Lenin and Trotsky’s Russia.

Mere anti-racialist propaganda on its own, unlinked to propaganda for socialism, can’t be effective. It offers no solution to the problems and frustrations which drive some workers to embrace racialism. It leaves unchallenged the cause (capitalism) while trying to deal with the effect (racialism).

The only effective way to combat racialism, then, is to propagate socialism.

Diary of a Capitalist (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

SUNDAY

Been making arrangements for my next little trip abroad, a three-month world cruise in the P&O flagship Canberra, starting on January 6. I’ve got one of the cheapest two-berth cabins for my wife and myself, for about £6000 (Observer, 19.11.78). I’ve got a good management team, and they’ll keep my businesses running nicely until I get back.


MONDAY

I keep reading of alleged incidents where companies have to pay compensation for “wrongful dismissal” to people they have sacked, or where they have to make “severance payments” when they close down a factory. All that the relevant Acts of Parliament do in effect is to help weed out the less crafty capitalists, which of course helps capitalism generally to run better for the capitalist class as a whole.

Why can’t these people remember that any worker on strike can be sacked forthwith, without any comeback? And any employer worth his salt can bring about a strike whenever he wants one. I’ve often engineered a strike when stocks have been high, and I have wanted to close a factory down for a spell without any labour costs, particularly where the shop stewards have been getting above themselves. Nothing is easier. If the weather is cold (as it is two-thirds of the year in this country) the manager goes into the works one evening or weekend, and unfortunately the central heating breaks down, and the defective part can’t be obtained under two months. Or the local team is having a cup replay one evening, and the manager tells everyone they’re on compulsory overtime until the match is over. Or you get a quality inspector to reject a whole batch of work from one assembly line, so bang goes their bonus.

Or the lavatories and wash-basins keep getting blocked up, or the tea-break concession is suddenly withdrawn, or the man who's just been elected an official of his union branch is by a pure coincidence moved to a worse job the very next day. The number of possible dodges is endless—it’s like taking candy off a child. Then, when your stocks have run down a bit, and the workers have been slated solidly as idle, good-for-nothing layabouts by the press, radio, and TV (everyone from ministers, MPs and editors down to flat-capped comedians getting into the act), you generously let them crawl back to work on your terms.

So to avoid any "wrongful dismissal” nonsense you just provoke a strike over any issue you want, and then sack the lot. You can't sack only some of them, because the Labourites put through an act saying that would be victimisation : so you sack every last striker— as George Ward did at Grunwick, or the Margolis family did in the Garners Steak House dispute, both struggles over whether the workers could be represented by a union or not. (They had to find out the hard way.)

What I love doing as I issue dismissal notices is to say how much I would have liked to take the strikers back, apart from one or two ringleaders, of course, but unhappily the Act of Parliament passed by the very Labour Party their union supports makes it quite impossible. Then I make some crack about most of them being good chaps at heart, but sadly misled by their shop stewards, who have inveigled them all into a strike which has only had this sad result — the sack. That’s a shrewd blow at all the union enthusiasts.

The pleasures of being a capitalist are not limited to merely grabbing all the profits!


TUESDAY

Talking of provocation, I was in two minds about the pronouncements recently made in Washington by John Toland. the historian (Daily Telegraph, 1.12.78). He said that President Roosevelt enticed the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbour in 1941, thus beginning the American-Japanese War. Now we members of the ruling class all know that a country goes to war to defend its interests as a capitalist state, and that the carefully prepared story that it has no option, in face of the foul and unprovoked aggression committed by the bestial enemy (a story put out by both sides, and equally firmly believed by the populations of both countries) is so much bunkum. I know Toland went on to say that Roosevelt had done it for the best of reasons, getting America into the war in a way that circumvented the objections many Americans would have had, but, even supposing Toland’s theory is correct, should one ever be so frank? My friends tell me that it doesn’t matter now—it was nearly forty years ago, and the workers are too stupid (after undergoing their brainwashing in our educational system) to draw any parallels the next time it happens. But I don’t know, I don’t know. Some workers may be brighter than we think.


WEDNESDAY

Another old friend of mine in trouble! He is a wealthy entrepreneur in his fifties, owning a number of London restaurants, and “living in style” (Daily Telegraph, 1.12.78). Part of the style was a model and actress in her twenties, who agreed to become his mistress. He bought her a £25,000 house, paid her bills, and made her regular payments of £75 a week (at 1973 prices). Then she became pregnant. To my friend’s dismay, she made the ungrateful decision that she wanted to have the baby, instead of disposing of it by an abortion. Here was a rich man paying her for performing a certain role (which is one of the fundamental relationships of our society), and she was allowing her maternal desires to spoil the whole thing. She was putting humanity before her rich friend’s interests. That kind of thing is immoral, in my opinion. Naturally he stopped his weekly payments, and tried to get her out of her home. She went to the High Court, and asked them to say the house was hers. My friend told the judge he was “very upset” about the pregnancy; "there was no reason for her to go on and have the child” (Daily Telegraph, 2.12.78). However, his ex-mistress has been given the right to stay in the house—until she marries or finds another man who will support her.

As I always say to my friends: enjoy your pleasures, certainly—it’s your right as a capitalist in a capitalist society, where everything is available, thank God, to those who can afford it —but make sure you can clear off without trouble when the time comes. In the same circumstances, for example, I always fix up a rented flat, rather than buying a house.

THURSDAY

I’m still getting together a few sticks of furniture. At the sale-room today there was rather a splendid table—the so-called Combe Abbey Library 'I'able, made in 1754, and attributed to Thomas Chippendale. I bought it for £100,000 (Daily Telegraph, 2.12.78). If you want the best, you have to pay for it

Saw Harry Hyams, the property man (Centre Point and all that), at the sale. He bought a 1740 giltwood chandelier for his place down in Wiltshire. He only gave £59,500 for it. I condoled with him on having to go for the cheaper stuff, and offered to lend him his trainfare back home. Jokingly, of course.

FRIDAY

At the Dorchester this evening for the unveiling of a new portrait of the Queen commissioned by the officers of the 16th/5th Queens Royal Lancers (Daily Telegraph, 30.11.78). The painter was telling all and sundry that when he turned up for the first sitting, he said the regiment had asked him to paint the Queen in a green dress. “I was taken to see her wardrobe, and there were at least 110 green dresses.”

 

Now we all know that the Queen has a large wardrobe—if she has 110 dresses in only one colour, how many has she altogether?—but this affair was badly managed. The painter chap should have been shown say a dozen or so green dresses—a normal kind of number for a well-dressed woman about town, when you allow for other colours and other kinds of outfits. Then he wouldn’t have been making such a sensation of it in the Dorchester. Even there some inky scribe might hear of it and put it in the papers. Then workers might be tempted to calculate that the whole lifetime’s earnings of a skilled man—if he never bought any food, or clothing, or housing, or anything else, for himself or his family— would hardly be enough to buy what is currently in the Queen’s wardrobe.

It’s not what we do that we have to worry about: it’s what people get to know that we do.

SATURDAY

Got an unostentatious little gold necklace with carved lapis stones for the wife’s birthday, £575 (Daily Telegraph, 22.11.78). Then bought myself a dozen bottles of Chateau Lafite 1945 (Daily Telegraph, 1.2.78). for £1900, or about £158 a bottle. It really is splendid stuff. How can so many people drink this cheap rubbish one sees about, at £10 a bottle or even less?

Alwyn Edgar

Trade Unions—the Birth of a Policy (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much irony in comparing the history of trade unions with their present status. Whereas formerly Governments and employers hounded and persecuted workers for forming unions their modern counterparts now welcome their co-operation. The stage has even been reached where capitalist employers and government departments are compelling unwilling workers to join a trade union under the threat of dismissal if they do not comply. This patronage gives the mistaken impression that all previous differences can be sorted out so long as all are united in the common aim — the prosperity of British capitalism. Unfortunately for employers and politicians, it takes more than the willing co-operation of the trade union leader to avoid strike action by their members when economic pressures become too great to be alleviated by the trade union leader’s oratory.

Friendships and alliances tend to collapse when the forces of the class struggle assert themselves. The conflict between capital and wage labour forms the basis of all social antagonisms. We agree with Mr. Callaghan, the Prime Minister, that strikes are a wasteful and obsolete means of conducting industrial relations. However we go further and state that the capitalist relations of production in their entirety are themselves wasteful, harmful and obsolete; that they are a positive hindrance to economic and cultural development. Employers, wage labour and trade unions represent a social system which has outlived its usefulness.

The class struggle is both political and economic in character. It is political because workers to gain control of the world’s economic resources, that is, the means of production and distribution must first capture the machinery of government. It is economic because workers must resist the power of capital, in day to day struggles over wages and conditions. Trade unions cannot progress towards any goal because there is no goal for them. They are born out of the conditions of the class struggle, and can only exist in a class divided society.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain laid down its attitude to trade unions in our first manifesto in 1905, re-printed in 1909.

  The basis of the action of the trade unions must be a clear recognition of the position of workers under capitalism and the class struggle necessarily resulting therefrom. All action of the unions in support of capitalism, or tending to sidetrack the workers from the only path that can lead to their emancipation, should be strongly opposed; but on the other hand, any action on their part on sound lines should be strongly supported.

We did not, and do not, take the view that trade unions should push their interests, to gain favourable legislation through the Labour Party, and we condemn any action by trade unions which is reformist and consequently non-Socialist.

A few years later in the May Socialist Standard of 1912, a correspondent asked the question “I should like to know what you would call ‘sound lines’ ”. The following reply was published:

   Sound lines means that while fighting the daily battle, the toilers must adopt a policy of no compromise. They must have no regard for their masters’ interests or property. Conciliation and arbitration schemes and long notices must be strenuously opposed. They have got to teach their members that the interests of workers and employers are in direct opposition. Above all, trade unions must use all their powers to increase the solidarity of the revolting working class, and show the need for the toilers acting as a class. There must be no blacklegging of one section upon another, and the grievance of one part must become the interests of all. Thus only can the unions be moulded into a body capable of assisting in the revolutionary change.

Again, we did not believe that trade unions should be free to carry out their activities without regard to the overall interests of the working class. The employers had to be attacked on both economic and political fields. In Britain at that time there were about 1¾ million workers in trade unions, that is about 4½ per cent of the population. Today there are about 11¾ million workers in trade unions, approx. 50 per cent of the total labour force. The whole approach of the SPGB was that workers in trade unions should learn to control their own organisation, and get rid of the so-called trade union leader who, for the most part, was more interested in the politics of the Labour Party than in trade union affairs. This anti-leadership view lies at the core of our whole approach to trade unions and other political parties.

In 1907 the SPGB opposed the action of the Executive of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and its secretary Richard Bell, in accepting an arbitration award against the decision of the membership. The Socialist Standard carried the headline: “Found out — Labour leaders sell the union members and their apologist gets a warm reception’’. On this flimsy ground Bell sued the Party for libel, and was awarded £2 damages by Mr. Justice Darling. Anderson and Fitzgerald, the then editors of the Socialist Standard represented the SPGB, as we were unable to afford Counsel. Both were unemployed. Needless to say, no order was made for costs as it soon became obvious that we had nothing. In reporting the case, the August 1907 Socialist Standard said “This is our first libel action, but it may not be our last. We will take that risk and others that may arise”.

For several years we criticised the leaders of the Railway Union. In the Railway strike of 1911, which we supported, Asquith’s Liberal government used troops and backed the railway directors. Several railway workers were imprisoned. The dispute was over wages and hours of work, and for recognition by the employers of the union’s right to negotiate. The Socialist Party stated that the railway workers should have formulated substantial demands: First, the release of all imprisoned strikers as a preliminary, then improved hours and wages, and lastly recognition. The workers put recognition first, thus allowing the leaders to negotiate on that issue. The Socialist Standard commented that recognition was unnecessary, for a union which can win a strike for shorter hours and increased wages is sure to be recognised. It added that the union, which appeared to consist of officials, should recognise the members.

In the November 1910 Socialist Standard the question of the political levy first arose out of the Osborne judgement. Briefly, the Osborne judgement declared that political action to be outside the scope of legitimate trade union activity, and that consequently the members may not be levied for such a purpose. Then, as now, the political levy was being paid to the Labour Party, and was helping pay the expenses of Labour MPS, the cost of elections, and also salaries at that time. The General Federation of Trade Unions, with the enthusiastic support of Ramsay MacDonald, and the Labour Party, were endeavouring to overturn the judgement. The Socialist Party referred to them as “Labour ghouls” and a “gang of place hunting tricksters who have now fastened their hungry jaws on the vitals of the Labour movement”.

We welcomed the judgement, and said that those responsible for it had done no harm to the working class or to Socialism, because without compulsion Labour MPS salaries could not be raised, and this was no bad thing.

These outspoken criticisms of the shortcomings of the Labour leaders did not endear us to these individuals. In 1913 the Socialist Standard was blacklisted by the London Society of Compositors on the spurious ground that it was not set up in a Fair house, that is, works where the employer pays the wages and fulfills the conditions approved by the London Society of Compositors. Our Executive Committee met Mr. Davies, the union organising secretary, who admitted that the LSC did not know where or how our journal was produced, and it would have been better had they found this out before blacklisting us. It was pointed out that the LSC Fair house definition could not apply to the Socialist Standard. Mr. Davies was asked to publish a retraction and an apology. He declined to do this, and said he would use his influence with the editor of the London Typographical Journal to publish a letter, the text of which was agreed between him and our Executive. The letter appeared, but with a dishonest comment by T. E. Naylor, LSC Executive member, that while the party had not deliberately used an unFair house, negotiations were under way to resolve the matter, in the meantime we must remain on the blacklist. Naylor, and many of his fellow Executive members, were Labourites and the Socialist Party accused them of deliberately trying to damage the sale of our journal:

  Although our organ is not set up in a non Society office, and although it is actually printed in an office that has for years appeared on the Fair List of the LSC, we wish it to be clearly understood that we do not worship at the shrine of trade unionism, most certainly not at that of such a perversion of trade unionism as is typified by the LSC.

The article went on to expose the practices of the LSC in allowing their members to pose, during hard times, as non unionists and obtain work in non union shops below union rates, and by restricting membership of the union. By keeping out strangers they were condemning them to perpetual unemployment, or making them blacklegs. The article concluded:

   They put us on the objection list, we return the compliment. We put the LSC and the Typographical Journal on our objection list. In view of the above, we object to Messrs. Naylor & Co interfering with us. To the rank and file of the LSC we say ‘read the Socialist Standard and think for yourselves’. Soon you will arise and sweep out the Augean stables of St. Bride’s Street—the sooner the better, if you wish to save your society for trade unionism. (Socialist Standard, August 1913)

Not to worship at the shrine of trade unionism is only logical to an independent revolutionary socialist organisation. The tremendous development of the trade union movement in the last 70 years has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in class consciousness. If anything there is more muddle and confusion as rival political groups fight for control of the unions. The utterances of most of the leaders on the economics and politics of capitalism are as stupid as they are ignorant. Witness the unending drivel about inflation, and the futile “cures” for unemployment. Yet trade unions, with all their bureaucracy and pigheadedness, are still the only effective organisations workers can use to fight the employers over wages and working conditions. Our regret is that they are not more class conscious.

The working class both inside and outside trade unions are ignorant of the Socialist case, and trade union militancy is not going to alter that. There can be no Socialism without majority understanding. Isn’t it about time the trade unions made some contribution towards this?

Jim D'Arcy

Letters: Sectarian Semantics (1979)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sectarian Semantics

You defend your party’s policy of allowing only, as you term it, “conscious socialists” into membership. Really, this is not unlike the practices of the religious sect, the Exclusive Brethren. They only allow their members to partake of the rites peculiar to that body.

Your pamphlet, “The Communist Manifesto and the Last Hundred Years” is, one assumes, a faithful exposition of your party’s policy. Anyway, it is complete with the secular nihil obstat of your Head Office address.

Tenet No. 8 says:

The SPGB, therefore, enters the field of political action, determined to wage war against all other political parties.

How differently did Marx and Engels view the way Communists should behave towards their own class members.

In Section II of “The Communist Manifesto” they wrote:

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.
    They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
  They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The thoughtful reader, thus, is forced to question the standpoint of tiny, impotent organisations like the SPGB. SWP, IMG, and similar small bodies calling themselves Communist/Socialist. It seems evident that they are mere sectarian organisations and, therefore, anti-Marxist.

If we are to accept what Marx and Engels said in the above passage, we should be a member of the main working-class party of this country, the British Labour Party. Any refusal to do so means sectarians have interests separate and apart from the proletariat as a whole. What is that? Big fish in small streams?

H. C. Mullin 

Glasgow

Reply:
A Socialist party must admit only conscious Socialists to membership for the simple reason that to do otherwise would attract people of all sorts of political opinions; people interested in anything but Socialism. To do this would destroy our character as a Socialist party. And we don’t have any rites—our sole reason for membership is to propagate the idea of Socialism.

Clause 8 of our Declaration of Principles is, in fact, in line with the passages quoted from the Communist Manifesto (although if it were not, this would not make it wrong; we don’t accept everything which Marx and Engels wrote, which would be pure dogmatism.)

There are no other working class parties in this country if by that term we mean parties which stand for the interests of the working class. A working class party must have as its object the only political object in the workers’ interest — the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by Socialism.

To describe the Labour Party as a “working class party” is to ignore their long record of opposition to working class interests—wage restraint and inflated currency (which, in effect, means a fall in real wages), racist immigration laws, production of nuclear weapons, fighting British capitalism’s wars in Korea, Malaya and the like. The list of Labour’s attacks on the working class is very long.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties abroad stand in direct contrast to this miserable record. We have always kept our object clear. This is not sectarian—it is consistent and principled.

Guilty By Association

The profound truths of the Socialist Standard are legion, whilst the humour, quite rightly, is rare. It was however with some amusement that I learn from “Question and answer” page 227 Dec '78 that the Railway Clerks Association (RCA) later became the Russian news agency TASS, instead of the Transport Salaried Staffs association, (TSSA) or Tessa.

No wonder Railway men have been called a bunch of Commies.

Yours fraternally

R. A. Hale 

London E.10

AB of Leeds
We are still happy to publish readers’ letters, with our reply—see this issue. Recently, for some reason, fewer people have been writing to us. We don’t publish anonymous letters, though —nor, of course, can we reply to them. If you will let us know your name and address we will reply to your points.

Editorial Committee

Rolling in Poverty (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

To most people the word ‘poverty’ means one of two things. Either life below the breadline, such as experienced by many in this country in the last century and by millions still today in the less developed parts of the world. Or simply being badly off, of having enough to live on but not being able to afford the extra comforts which most other members of the community enjoy. Socialists also discern poverty of a third kind, of which however more later.

Looking at the first type of poverty, where people actually suffer sickness or death from undernourishment, we find that it has virtually disappeared from Britain and the other economically advanced countries of the world. The second type however is still rife. It exists among various sections of the population, the low-paid, the unemployed, the old, the disabled. Government statistics describe as “poor” families whose net income, less housing and work expenses, is less than 20 per cent over the Supplementary Benefit rate. In Britain 5 million families, and altogether 16 per cent of the population, fall into this category.

If the first type of poverty has been wiped out, why then should the second type still be so prevalent? After all we are no longer in the dark days of the 19th century when wealth was limited and goods seemed scarce. Today our local supermarket bursts at the seams, gleaming newly-designed cars fill the showrooms, huge £2 million airliners carry large numbers of people from one country and one continent to another. Why in the midst of all this plenty does there still not seem to be enough to go round with fair shares for all? Why this continual inequality?

While the conditions in which people lived and worked 100 years ago now seem a far-off nightmare to most of us, the lives they led did have one thing in common with those we lead today. They, like us, depended for their livelihoods on selling their energies to an employer for a wage or salary. Under far worse conditions admittedly, but the very fact that their existences revolved round the fact of having a job meant that their standard of living, like ours, was determined by what today is termed the job market. If the economy, particular industry or occupation in which they were engaged went into decline or needed fewer workers, they ran the risk either of a reduction in real wages or of unemployment. And for them this could mean poverty of the first kind, or starvation. The same situation exists today but with the obvious difference that the low-paid and unemployed, instead of being left to starve, are “cushioned” by state benefits of various kinds and hence suffer the second kind of poverty, having less to spend than the average worker. Yet this promotion from absolute poverty to state-defined poverty does not hide the fact that the economic basis of society, the competitive lines along which the world is run, has not changed since the 19th century. The need to make profits is still the dominant feature. As long as an enterprise is profitable (or “viable” in the language of state-run concerns) jobs remain and wages can even go up. But as soon as, for any reason at all, profits fall or become losses, lower real wages or unemployment result. A change of attitude on the part of governments in recent years means that such economic downturn does not bring the absolute poverty of former times. Governments have learned from experience that a large destitute work force is both potentially explosive and in the long term a neglect of a valuable resource. So they now prefer to take a more active part in the management of affairs and to keep their low-paid and unemployed workers physically and mentally fit. For when next there is an expansion of trade and profits to be made, their abilities can again be put to work. As neither governments nor employers can forsee periods of boom and recession in the market, labour, trained and untrained, must be ready at hand to exploit the upturn when it comes. Otherwise opportunities are missed and the markets go to foreign competitors who have been quicker off the mark.

So if the “poor”, the 16 per cent are still with us, it’s not because there isn’t enough to go round (with today’s technology and expertise, resources, if used rationally, could be easily sufficient to satisfy all people’s needs), but because the anarchic, uncontrollable nature of the economic system under which we live does not allow for the elimination of poverty, only for unpredictable ups and downs in the production and distribution of the world’s wealth.

The vast majority of this wealth anyway is concentrated in a small number of private hands. What all those who sell their bodily and mental energies for money (the vast majority of the population) get, unevenly distributed among them, is the tiny amount of wealth remaining. And here we have a third kind of poverty, the one mentioned at the beginning as being discernible to socialists. It is neither complete destitution nor life on low pay or the dole but the relative poverty of all the world’s workers, those who run the system from top to bottom and yet, whether “high- paid", “low-paid” or unemployed, see only a tiny fraction of the wealth they produce. In absolute terms they are far better off than their fellow workers of the last century, but in relative terms they are worse off. Their percentage share of the total wealth is considerably lower than that which went to their 19th century counterparts.

This helps to explain why workers’ pay never seems to be enough. Even on high wages, the drabness of their lives and the comparative shoddiness of their possessions are as nothing compared with the vast wealth on view everywhere around them and, in particular, with the supreme comfort and luxury in which the small minority who own most of the wealth and don’t depend on being employed for their livelihood, are able to live. Not of course that the attainment of wealth necessarily leads to great personal satisfaction. But this is the illusion that everything in our competitive set-up, in particular advertising and the media, conspires to create. Furthermore to a society permeated by economic insecurity (how many of us do not tremble for our jobs at some time in our lives?) and the mentality of getting ahead at the expense of others envy and the urge to get as much money as possible “behind you” while the going’s good is a perfectly comprehensible reaction.

As an alternative to the system which produces and perpetuates poverty we have a completely different kind of society to propose, one which will do away with poverty in all its definitions. We propose a world community in which all the resources at man’s disposal are used to satisfy the needs of people, not of profits. There will be no poverty of any kind quite simply because all wealth will be owned in common and all persons will have free access to all goods. There will be no money, no employers, no wages, no frontiers. Only voluntary cooperation and economic equality In a society in which what you need will be readily available when you need it the “I want more” mentality will inevitably be absent. To achieve this change of society we need a revolution in ideas followed by a political revolution in which people by majority vote (not by minority violence) will usher out the present world system of buying and selling.

Howard Moss

50 Years Ago: Why Workers Save (1979)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the early days of capitalism it was possible for the man with small capital to set up in business with some chance of climbing to the top, and in consequence saving ranked high among the capitalist virtues. Out of this developed the silly theory that the possession of wealth in the modern world denotes "abstinence” and “self-denial" on the part of the possessing class. It was effectively answered by the late Sir William Ashley, economic adviser to the Conservative Party. In his Economic Organisation of England he says: -

  Phrases like these have occasioned no little mirth; it is hard to discover self-denial or parsimony as the world understands these words, in the processes by which modern capital is most largely accumulated.

Capitalist savings result mainly, not from self-denial, but from having incomes so large that it is difficult not to save. Knowing this, and overlooking the fact that the position of the workers is essentially different from their own. it is a common error for wealthy bankers and Cabinet Ministers to assume that the accumulation of funds in savings banks indicates property among the workers. 

Every worker appreciates only too well that the necessity of putting something by, out of wages already inadequate for decent comfort, is the result, not of prosperity, but of the insecurity of his existence. It is therefore interesting to see that Major-General J E B Seely, Chairman of the National Savings Committee, has realised this. In a speech at Leeds on December 12th he said that in November 1928 more Savings Certificates had been sold than in any November since 1921.

  As unemployment and distress grow, savings have increased. The reason is that the British people, when they are up against something, are determined to lay something up against the dangers looming ahead. Households now living on 30/- a week are saving more than they did when they were earning £7 or £8 a week.

(Daily Mail 13 December) 

And what a commentary on capitalism. Here we have one of the wealthiest ruling classes known to history financing a huge national organisation in order to persuade its wage-slaves, starving on 30/- a week, that they ought to save.

(From The Socialist Standard, January 1929)

Running Commentary: Golda Meir (1979)

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

Golda Meir

The death of Golda Meir released the predictable flood of crocodile tears from her fellow leaders in various capitalist states throughout the world. From some of the tributes which were paid to her, it would seem that her death was a shattering blow to all who care for the human race.

The truth, as might be supposed, was rather different. Golda Meir was a very tough lady indeed and was always ready to do anything, no matter how dirty, which her job as Israeli Prime Minister required of her.

She was Premier during one of the crucial periods of the build up, and the assertion, of Israeli military power in the Middle East. In that she was as ruthless as she needed to be; and that also describes her attitude over the Palestinian refugees, whose suffering has been one of the side-effects of the war there.

So there is no reason for any member of the working class to mourn Golda Meir. In any case, she has already been replaced by others equally eager to carry on her work.

One other thing needs to be said. Women political leaders, even Prime Ministers, are becoming more common but it was not so long ago, before the first one—Mrs. Bandaranaike in Ceylon — came to power, that a baseless theory circulated about them. It ran like this: the world is in a mess: the world is ruled by men; therefore men cause the mess; therefore women rulers would bring a better world.

Well our experience since then has exposed that for the myth it is; not just in Ceylon but in Israel with Golda Meir and in India with Mrs. Gandhi. The capitalist social system is responsible for the problems of the modern world and it matters not which sex the people holding the seats of power happen to belong to. If the time of Golda Meir helps to drive home that fact, it will not be entirely wasted.

Violent City

With the killing by a policeman of an armed robber in South London, and the massive display of armed force to capture the two young men besieged in a derelict fire station in Highbury, the police of London have given notice that they are in open warfare against the capital’s heavier criminals.

Or perhaps there are other motives. The siege at Highbury looked, on television, suspiciously, like a rehearsal for some other, more threatening, occasion —against the IRA or some other band of urban guerillas.

The escalation of violence on both sides of the law is a chilling matter. People who rob banks have brought the techniques involved—requiring swift, carefully planned violence—to a fine pitch of efficiency. In response the banks have strengthened their security and the police have readier access to firearms, with a number of specialist units—Special Patrol Group, and snipers—to move in where they are required.

This does not present a happy prospect. If the escalation goes on, London may begin to rival some of the other champions in the violent cities stakes. In Los Angeles, for example, more policemen are killed or assaulted in attending to domestic problems than in facing armed criminals. The widespread possession of firearms in America is probably responsible for this particularly nasty trend, which is fair comment on the argument of those—now seemingly to include the London police— who want to meet violence with greater violence.

Crime will continue as long as capitalism lasts. The entire system rests upon a legalised theft and it is entirely natural that some people, among the disadvantaged strata of capitalist society, should try to grab a little more wealth for themselves and to initiate the life style of their masters, even if they have to try to circumvent the legalities of capitalism in order to do so. Add to these ambitions a background of violence which is an unvarying factor in any larger city and we have the ruthless criminal, displaying in his profession many of the qualities which capitalism lauds in the board- room.

Post Profits

In recent times the Post Office has done a lot to destroy the old, cosy image of the happy smiling postman bringing welcome letters and exciting, mysteriously wrapped parcels to the door. Now it has a reputation for charging a lot more, for delivering a lot later, than ever before. Victorian England, with its slower means of transport, did it faster; and up until the last war it was common to send a postcard to let someone know that you were not, after all, coming to see them tomorrow.

But one thing the Post Office cannot be accused of and that is operating at a loss. Its latest accounts, in fact, announce a profit of £170,200,000 —a figure which excludes £206 million which has been set aside to cover the costs of inflation.

 

Anyone who is able to digest those figures, with all the naughts in them, may wonder why a state industry should make any profit at all. State industries, after all, are supposed to be owned by the people and it is the people who pay the Post Office to deliver their mail. So the massive profits are being made by the people out of themselves.

In the same way, the people have been forcing themselves to pay higher prices to themselves and have been cutting back the service they give themselves.

If this sounds like nonsense, it is only so because the entire theory of nationalisation being common ownership, or something to do with socialism, is nonsense.

The Post Office was one of the first concerns to be taken into state control; a few years ago there was a change in its structure which made it rather different from nationalised concerns like the coal mines but it remains, in essence, an example of a state industry.

And like all the others, it operates on the same priorities of capitalism. Its workers are exploited, and resisted when they try to improve their wages. The driving force of the entire operation is the making of a profit, for profit means success while loss means failure.

By these standards, the Post Office is a howling success but it also shows up the confidence trick of nationalisation which was foisted upon the workers so long ago, and to which they are still vulnerable.

More hard labour (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Originally the ideals and aspirations of the Labour Party were lofty. It claimed to be anti-Liberal and anti-Tory, opposed to war, in favour of higher wages and trade union demands, and in the forefront of pressure for social reform. But what has happened in reality when the Labour Party has found itself in power?

Firstly it has supported two world wars in coalition with the Tories and the Liberals and has been an active party to other localised conflicts like Biafra and Vietnam. After preaching disarmament it has supported the building and testing of nuclear weapons and imposed conscription in peacetime.

Secondly, on the wages front, it has consistently practiced policies of “wage restraint” while unemployment has grown steadily (reaching its post-war maximum with the present administration) and prices have risen rapidly. In 1949 and 1967 Labour deliberately raised prices by devaluing the currency. Four months before the 1967 devaluation the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, had said in Parliament that such a measure was unthinkable as it would necessarily cause “a reduction in the wage levels and real wage standards of every member of the working class of this country” (Hansard, 24 July 1969 Cols. 99- 100). To efforts by workers to defend their living standards the Labour Party has replied with the use of troops (docks and fire services) and in 1950 even went as far as to put on trial gas workers and dockers striking in defiance of an old Act of Parliament.

Thirdly, on social reform, the Labour Party, after setting up the National Health Service as envisaged by the coalition government during the war, passed an Act of Parliament levying prescription charges and in 1951 imposed charges for the supply of health service dentures and spectacles. (Harold Wilson resigned over this issue by the way, then later as Prime Minister endorsed the charges and increased them). At the beginning of their immediate post-war administration Labour had also promised to solve the housing problem. Aneurin Bevan made the hopelessly optimistic claim that “when the next election occurs there will be no housing problem in Great Britain for the British working class” (Hansard, Vol. 453, Col 1202, 1946). Over 20 years later they were still at it when the then Labour Secretary of State for Wales (now speaker of the House of Commons), George Thomas, said of the 1968 Rent Act: “Within 10 years of this Act no one in Wales should be living in an unfit house”. (The Times, 31 Jan. 1969).

To all these charges the Labour Party would reply that they couldn’t help themselves. They didn’t want to support wars, keep down wages, see prices and unemployment rising and not be able to house people. Everything that happened, and still happens, is due to circumstances beyond their control — the state of world trade, the actions of other governments, and so on. Quite true, but the point is that when a Party, whatever label it gives itself, takes power with a mandate to administer capitalism, it will have very little choice about how it does the job. It will be subject to the fluctuating economic conditions of a world governed by impersonal market forces and divided into separate states, each one competing with the other to earn profits for its business interests. What seems “sensible”, therefore, and in the general interest in a Party’s pre-election manifesto, will soon fall by the way side if found to be contrary to the imperatives of production for profit.

And any of the early illusions the Labour Party had about “taking the profit out of capitalism” have long since been dispelled. It found that even nationalised industries had to be run on profit-making or cost-benefit lines and that its aim to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor had to be abandoned. It proved impossible to impose egalitarian principles on a system which, by its very nature, dictates that the vast majority of the wealth will be owned by a small minority of the population.

So it is not for their good intentions that we have disagreed with Labour supporters, but for their false presupposition that once in power their Party could and would reshape the capitalist system to their heart’s content. Now, however, with the Labour Party so much in power in recent years and having so little to show for it, even among the keenest Labourites this belief is beginning to wane. How much longer for them to see that, instead of the Labour Party gradually changing capitalism, capitalism has gradually changed the Labour Party?

What then is our alternative to voting Labour (or Tory or Liberal for that matter) in the next election? A vote for the set-up Labour (and the other big political parties) stand for is a vote to remain enslaved. Enslaved by the wages system and the world market which, regardless of government action, decree unemployment, slumps, trade wars sometimes leading to real wars, destruction of food “surpluses”, mental anxiety, wreckage of the environment, adulterated food, shoddy houses and ugly cities. The only worthwhile vote is for a political party having as its sole aim the replacement of this system by another, one which we call Socialism and define as a world of common ownership, democratic control, production for use and free access. In this country this means voting for the Socialist Party of Great Britain where it presents candidates and, where not, registering your view by writing the words WORLD SOCIALISM — SPGB across your ballot paper.

Labourites may say that the kind of world we propose is what they themselves favour in the long term and what, bit by bit, successive Labour governments, if given a chance, will move towards. Meanwhile, however, they must deal with real immediate issues.

Let it be said unequivocally that Socialism will not arise naturally “bit-by-bit” through the policies of parties elected on a programme of reforming capitalism. It will only be introduced when the majority of people turn their backs on the inevitably vain attempts of the capitalist parties to tinker with the present system and cast votes for a world of real democracy, real equality and real cooperative human activity.

Fallen Idols (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard 

An endless job for Labour historians is the expunging of inconvenient memories, of which their party has more than the most industrious of harlots. Some memories, from Labour’s earlier life, have been successfully blamed upon the treachery of MacDonald, Snowden and the other villains of that time. Their more recent experiences are proving more difficult.

The 1964 Labour government came to power, as they never tired of telling us at the time, after thirteen years of Tory misrule. Their election programme had opened like a bugle call:

  The world wants it and would welcome it. The British people want it, deserve it, and urgently need it.
   And now, at last, the general election presents us with the exciting prospect of achieving it.
   The dying months of a frustrating 1964 can be transformed into the launching platform for the New Britain of the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

And after a brief description of this New Britain, the manifesto trumpeted:

   The country needs fresh and virile leadership. Labour is ready. Poised to swing its plans into instant operation.

Well, not enough workers were frightened by this and Labour won the election but now that we are in the late 1970s it is clear that something went wrong with their plans because, as Callaghan and Healey are continually reminding us, the New Britain is still not due to arrive. In fact, Harold Wilson in 1964 made rather a bad start at it; although he had spent a lot of time grumbling about the alleged overmanning in industry, he contributed his bit to this process by appointing one of the biggest governments in recent history, with over a hundred people in it. And he obviously did not take the words “fresh and virile” to mean youthful; the average age of his Cabinet was 56, compared to the Tories’ 51.

This must have been disappointing to all those workers who were keen to be led to the New Britain as quickly as possible, but they could still keep faith; Wilson’s government included a lot of people who were supposed to be both talented and dedicated. Who would have thought that so many of them would have become, in one way or another, disillusioned, disaffected, or discredited?

By Elections
One of the first to go was Christopher Mayhew, whose resignation was greeted with the response “Christopher Who?” Mayhew left the government in 1966 when Denis Healey, who was then Minister of Defence, decided that British capitalism must defend its interests without the benefit of aircraft carriers (Mayhew was responsible for the Royal Navy). In 1974 Mayhew joined the Liberals, although there was no sign of their having a big aircraft carrier-building programme, declaring that Labour was “too vulnerable to the extreme left and too dependent on the unions”. He handily filled the role of Liberal spokesman on the forces but since 1974 he has been out of Parliament. He is not, as they say, sadly missed.

Roy Jenkins was rather cleverer; he had, after all, prepared himself for his part in the revolution by getting a First at Balliol, where everyone is said to be imbued with “effortless superiority”. Jenkins seemed to agree with this; he joined a couple of the best clubs in London and was in the habit of offering his opinions as if they were a glass of the finest sherry. During his time he was Home Secretary (a very “liberal” one, of course) and Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he would fill the television screens with doleful rebukes to the workers who, although they could not run to membership of expensive clubs, were living so riotously on the council estates that they were selfishly delaying the achievement of the New Britain. Jenkins left Parliament in February 1977 for the job of president of the European Commission. Some thought he had got out while the going was good; others that he was signalling his abandonment of all ambition to become Prime Minister. There were gasps at the high wage he was getting for his new job and any envy among his former colleagues was not mollified when his seat at Stechford was lost in a by election on a 17.6 per cent swing to the Tories.

Another by election defeat — with a swing of 22.5 per cent — was at Walsall North but in this case the ex-member had left Parliament for the less well paid job of sewing mail bags. John Stonehouse was one of Labour’s rising stars until the pressure of his job and of organising a number of complex financial frauds brought a mental breakdown and a warrant for his arrest. For a long time, while awaiting trial, he refused to resign his seat. The embarrassment this caused the Labour Party was not eased when, in April 1976, he joined the other misfits in the English National Party, whose members like to dress up as Beefeaters. Stonehouse, who might justifiably complain that he is one of the few crooks in Parliament to have been caught, got seven years, which effectively removed his seat .from under him.

George Brown

In the case of George Brown events followed a different sequence; he lost his seat before he left the Labour Party. Although he was one of Wilson’s deadliest enemies, Brown held some important jobs in the government — Minister for Economic Affairs (in which he promised to plan British capitalism into a new shape) and Foreign Secretary (where he was inclined to enjoy himself too much at official functions). He was also rather touchy, given to resigning whenever he thought his contribution to the New Britain was being undervalued. Wilson affected an air of weary patience with all this: " . . . sooner or later”, he wrote in his memoirs, “one of George’s late night resignations would stick”.

The one which did stick, in March 1968, was provoked by, wrote Brown, ". . . the way this Government is run and the manner in which we reach our decisions.” At the same time he pledged his future loyalty to the Labour Party but in the subsequent general election he lost his seat at Belper, was kicked upstairs to the House of Lords and, apparently forgetting that he had climbed to power through the trade unions, resigned from the Labour Party in March 1976 over their policy on a part of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill.

Up to the present Brown has not actually joined the Conservative Party but it is not his opinions which prevent this. In an article “If Winston Could See Britain Now” (Sunday Express 3/12/78) he bemoaned the decline of British capitalism, blaming this partly on the power of a minority in the unions “to obstruct and destruct (sic) our essential industries and services” and what he called this “ignoble period in British ‘Foreign Policy”. These sour ramblings, which might have been written by a member of the Monday Club, came from a man once thought of as a future Labour Prime Minister.

Gunter and Prentice

Considered by some to be cast in the same mould as George Brown — and by Marcia Williams to be “a latter day Nye Bevan” — was Ray Gunter. Whether these assessments were intended to help Gunter’s career is a matter for speculation. Gunter always looked as if the frustrations of getting the workers to man the barricades was about to bring on an apoplectic fit; he growled or bellowed rather than spoke and his dumpy, restless frame exuded irascibility. When Wilson made him Minister of Labour he snarled at the reporters outside Number Ten that he had been given “the bed of nails”. Soon after Wilson took the job away, demoting him several places to Minister of Power, Gunter resigned, writing huffily "I have to inform you that I no longer desire to be a member of your government”.

He then sulked on the back benches until, in February 1972, he left the Labour Party over membership of the common Market, with a parting shot at Labour’s “middle class intellectuals” (whoever they are) who seemed by then to be infesting his nightmares. A couple of months later he relieved his constituents in Southwark of the unusual experience of having an Independent MP.

A worse record for desertion was that of 1964-70. The personalities of politicians — whether they are clever or stupid, honest of corrupt — are of little account. Capitalism deals with them all in the same way. But the first government of Wilson’s came in on such high promises that their exposure had to be that much crueller. Who can doubt that had they succeeded, even by their own standards, there would not have been such a bitter, disillusioned procession to leave?

Nobody should conclude from this that the answer is another sort of government, composed of more stable personalities. No government has ever “succeeded”; Wilson's ministers, for example, were grappling with problems basically the same as those which broke Macdonald’s men in the thirties. For capitalism does not discriminate in what or who it destroys; its history is studded with politicians who became discredited in their efforts to deceive the rest of us that this is a benign, caring, humane society.

Ivan.

The Times Lockout (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

When The Times and Sunday Times suspended publication on 30 November, the owners had given all the unions involved a time limit to accept a new and wide-ranging agreement, while the National Graphical Association, the union whose members stood to lose most by the new printing methods, was refusing to negotiate at all “under duress”. Fears were expressed that the papers might disappear like the News Chronicle, Daily Herald and Star. Indeed, the General Secretary of the NGA declared: -

It appears that Lord Thomson and The Times are determined to act as executioners in the killing of The Times and Sunday Times. We are to be cast in the role of undertakers—which leaves us with no alternative but to bury it. (Daily Mail, 5th December 1978)

But this last ditch declaration did not reflect the realities of the situation, which pointed to the employers’ aggressive action securing for them the substance of their demands while conceding something to the NGA, as has happened in the resumed negotiations.

The dispute attracted quite exceptional publicity, suggesting that it was one entirely without precedent. Apart from the claim that The Times itself is something special, there was nothing in this, for the dispute did not involve anything that has not happened before. It was just the old familiar ugly face of capitalism.

Lockouts are as old as capitalism, including those aimed at forcing unions to accept new production techniques; like the great engineering lockout of 1897. Lord Thompson’s stand is just the same as that of the then engineering employers with their declaration “we will be masters in all our shops”.

Every generation has seen workers who had acquired high skills robbed of their jobs and livelihood through the development of new techniques: the hand-loom weavers ruined by power-driven factory textiles, the canal boatmen and the drivers of horse-drawn vehicles driven out by the railways; the morse telegraphist hit by machine telegraphy and the telephone, the railwaymen in their turn squeezed out by motor transport. Printing itself had the problem of manual typesetting displaced by the steam press, the rotary press and the linotype machine.

In its defence The Times says that it offered relatively generous redundancy pay and that all redundancies will be voluntary; but this only meets part of the workers’ problems. Men with specialised skills who have worked at them for years and have taken pride in their work lose what, to many of them, has come to be regarded as a way of life. Even if they get, and like, another sort of job — and many cannot hope to do so — it is likely to be at lower pay.

All of this has happened many times before. What shocked journalists and printers on The Times was that it should happen to them; some even thought that Lord Thompson was bluffing.

The technical developments behind the dispute concern the new computerised process which enables those who use the keyboards to set the type directly, thus eliminating the old type-setting by the printers. The National Graphical Association said they accepted the new methods but demanded that all, or most, of the keyboard work should be done by their retrained members. According to the Observer (3 December 1978) the NGA was prepared to allow a limited amount of the work to go to clerks handling advertisments, but wanted the practice of journalists directly type-setting some of their own articles to be deferred for five years. A complication is that some of the journalists want to take over the work from the NGA members; one of them is reported to have described the NGA claim as being like a claim that “horse-drivers should be the only people driving cars with combustion engines”.

In a lengthy statement The Times (24 November) set out what the owners regarded as the three main issues. The first related to the increasing number of unofficial strikes which have interrupted production. The Times demanded a return to the situation as it existed before the early 1960s, when the union executives were able to exercise control over their members and prevent unofficial walkouts. This is what The Times means when it says it wants to deal with “strong Trade Unions”.

The second issue named in this article was the new technique. “The electronic process is more efficient, more flexible, cleaner and much less expensive”. Unless it is adopted, says The Times, they cannot compete with their rivals and cannot make adequate profit. The third issue flows from the greater efficiency of the new method, in the form of greater productivity and consequent big reductions of staff — with the promise of higher pay for those who keep their jobs.

It was in this situation that Times Newspapers decided to shut down unless the unions would accept the new agreement by 30 November, with the implied threat (in spite of Lord Thompson’s denial of any such intention) that in the last resort the suspension would become permanent. There was to be no repetition of the action of the late Lord Thompson, who met a £3 million loss out of the family fortune. So the owners were prepared to lose much more than £3 million in order to coerce the unions. An important factor in the struggle was that they were financially able to stand a long struggle. It was reported in the Observer (3 December 1978).

The International Thompson Organisation, run by Lord Thompson from its base in Toronto, is expecting to declare £45 million after-tax profit this year. Most of that comes from North Sea oilfields which will soon reach peak production.

Publishing The Times is only a small part of their activity: if need be they could give it up altogether.

Two incidents early in the dispute deserve comment as illustrating the naive attitude of some workers towards capitalism. The General Secretary of the NGA appealed to Lord Thomson to negotiate over the heads of the management, a request that was refused. And The Times correspondent, Mr. Clifford Langley, in a letter to the Guardian (4 December 1978) deplored the action of the management and of the editor “who has allowed his staff . . .  to be exposed to the intolerable threat of dismissal, against an impossible deadline”. He said that the staff had “lost all confidence in the management” and called on the editor to resign in protest at the management’s attitude.

What makes the NGA General Secretary and Mr. Langley think that “the management” and the editor have some sort of independent authority? The Management is there to carry out the owners’ policy and if the editor refused he would be sacked like any other employee. This is capitalism; in The Times as in any other organisation run for profit.

And what is there in the belief that The Times is in some ways special? It rests on the claim that the newspaper has a high standard of objective reporting, allows critics access to its columns and puts the wellbeing of “the people” before party advantage and private profit. There is something in the first two points — after all, the ruling class have needed to know what is really going on in the world — and that newspaper is one of the few which has, on rare occasions, allowed us space to put our case in our own words. But the present dispute shows how ruthless they can be when their own capitalist interest is at stake.

Edgar Hardcastle

General Election . . . 1979 (1979)

Party News from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington Branch, with EC approval, will contest the next General Election in Islington and Ralph Critchfield has been nominated as our prospective candidate. It had been the intention of the Branch to contest the Election had it been called last Autumn. It would have given us little time to launch a satisfactory campaign; may Jim be thanked for postponing the date!

Now we have time in hand. A manifesto has been approved for publication. The Branch and Parliamentary Committee are in the process of finalising plans for canvassing, literature selling, meetings etc. Fuller details will appear in subsequent issues of the Standard. In the meantime, members and sympathisers who can help, (there are jobs that can be done prior to the election) are requested to send their name and address to Ian Westgate, 1 Helix Gardens, London SW2.

We can then advise you of our plans, together with a note of what you can do.

Islington Branch

Lenin's Legacy (part 1) (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The purpose of the following article and that in next month’s issue is to examine aspects of Lenin’s political theory and discuss his role as revolutionary leader. In disagreeing fundamentally with Lenin the Socialist Party of Great Britain is marked off from almost every avowedly revolutionary party since 1917, including most of the left in Britain today. Within the obvious space constraints, we will seek to expose some of Lenin’s errors by reference to his better known writings. (All page references, unless otherwise stated, are to the One Volume Selected Works, Moscow 1975.)

Lenin as Political Thinker
In What Is To Be Done (1902) Lenin—correctly— wrote: “Without a revolutionary theory there can
be no revolutionary movement”; it is our contention that his incorrect political theory led to his incorrect practice. Lenin’s work illustrates well the impossibility of introducing a society based on free co-operation without an understanding by the working class of the tasks involved. It is true that he often talked in terms of mass participation (witness for example his slogan “to the masses”) and even believed that he had the support of the majority of workers and peasants. Almost four years after the Bolshevik coup he said:

We were victorious in Russia not only because the undisputed majority of the working class . . . was on our side, but also because half the army, immediately after our seizure of power, and nine-tenth of the peasants, in the course of some weeks, came over to our side.

and

For victory and for retaining power, what is essential is not only the majority of the working class—I used the term working class in its West European sense, i.e. in the sense of the industrial proletariat—but also the majority of the working and exploited population.

(Collected Works, Vol. 32 pp 471 & 475)

But in fact the majority of Lenin’s writings deny the need for socialism to be a mass movement and support the belief that it can be established by a minority of determined revolutionaries.

The need for capitalism
Marx held that without the presence of capitalism, socialism was not on the agenda. He maintained that capitalism is necessary to develop the means of production to the extent that would allow a society based on human needs to be established. Lenin too appreciated this. In Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905) he refuted the view, held by his Menshevik opponents, that the bourgeois revolution can only benefit capitalists:

It is quite absurd to think that a bourgeois revolution does not at all express proletarian interests . . . this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development . . . it follows that the idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. (p76)

Lenin is here arguing for the capitalist revolution, the Russian equivalent if the French revolution of 1789-93. He is arguing for it out of necessity, acknowledging the requirement of capitalism at the particular time he was writing.

Nor did Lenin always confuse socialism with state control or nationalisation. He was fully aware that any form of large scale ownership, be it state or private, is still capitalism. Just before October 1917, in The State and Revolution, Lenin thought it necessary to emphasise this point because of "the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can be called ‘state socialism’ and so on . . . (p309) Furthermore, he was quite clear that the revolution he was advocating could only hasten the process of capitalist development and not of itself introduce socialism. The revolution would be unable to affect the foundations of capitalism: "a victory will not by any means transform our bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution.” (p 82)

And that is roughly the position. Lenin is there talking like any "progressive” politician. In the work from which the last quote comes (Two Tactics . . .) he offered the workers and peasants improvements in their standard of living and greater freedoms (the irony here is of course enormous). This being capitalist progress, as Lenin himself frequently acknowledged, what is all the fuss about? Capitalism throughout the world is a system of comfort and privilege for the rich and toil and misery for the poor.

“But wait a minute” Lenin answers. “Of course I introduced socialism. Our Marxist revolution established a form of society fundamentally different from capitalism!” “What!” we might reply in disbelief. “You mean that having talked about the establishment of capitalism you are going to call it socialism?” In Left-Wing Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality (1918) he wrote that what they had done was to “establish ‘state capitalism' which under Soviet power represents the threshold of socialism, the condition of its firm advance ” (p449). His claim was that the revolution had created a new form of social organisation fundamentally different from that which existed in the West. The details of this can be more clearly understood if we turn now to a second aspect.

The So-Called Transition

Much of the theoretical confusion that abounds in Lenin’s work relates to one question: Is it possible to go directly from capitalism to a socialist (or communist) society as defined by Marx? Lenin’s answer was a very definite “No”. His view was that it was necessary to have an intermediate stage (“the dictatorship of the proletariat”) which he called socialism (notwithstanding that, as already shown, he admitted that this stage was in fact capitalism). He claimed it would operate on the principle: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” Only after this form of society was well established would it be possible to move to the higher stage, which he called communism. Here, said Lenin, the principle would be: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The Russians claim to have reached the first stage, although the former principle bears no more resemblance to the reality of Russia than it does to society in the West.

Lenin partly justified the claim that the revolution would need two stages by reference to various passages in the Communist Manifesto and the Critique of the Gotha Programme. In The State and Revolution he argues the case at length. On the question of Marx’s (rare) references to a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, we would contend that the phrase is synonymous with the conquest of political power by a socialist working class, and cannot be quoted as justification for repression. This is not to say, of course, that Marx’s holding of a particular view necessarily makes it correct. Socialism (or communism) is a classless, propertyless society, in which wealth will be used for the benefit of all. There is no possibility of achieving this in stages. Marx talked of stages because the means of production had not in his time reached the level required for the establishment of a society of free access. In Critique of the Gotha Programme he states that “defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development is conditioned thereby.” At the time of the Russian revolution (42 years later) there was no further justification for the two stages distinction, society being technically capable of creating the necessary abundance of wealth.

Lenin, however, needed the two stages idea. Somehow or other he had to convince the people in Russia (and elsewhere) that what had been achieved was more than a bourgeois revolution. He had to satisfy his own “subjects” that the suffering and deprivation, past and to come, were acceptable because they were building a better future. (How many other politicians have made similar claims!) So, Lenin was able to speed the process of capitalist accumulation in the name of communism. “Until the ‘higher' phase of Communism arrives”, he wrote in The State and Revolution, “the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption . . .” (p331). In other words, the workers would be forced to work and strictly rationed in what they could consume. All good capitalist principles. And the fact that he went on in the same sentence to say “but this control must start with the expropriation of the capitalists” is little more than window dressing. It is true that some capitalists did find their property expropriated; but from the workers’ viewpoint what happened was that one group of exploiters took the place of another.

After the revolution, Lenin had the functions of a ruler to carry out. In The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, written in April 1918, he claims that a socialist revolution has been achieved (p399) and goes on to say that the task now facing the Bolsheviks is that of organising the administration of Russia. (The same problem, incidentally, that faces any minority that wishes to impose itself on the population.) Listen to the capitalist slogans he offers:

Keep regular and honest accounts of money, manage economically, do not be lazy, do not steal observe the strictest labour discipline—it is these slogans, justly scorned by the revolutionary proletariat when the bourgeoisie used them to conceal its rule as an exploiting class, that are now. since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, becoming the immediate and the principle slogans of the moment, (p 401/2)

Confronted with severe economic problems following the revolution (one of them inflation!), Lenin introduced the infamous “New Economic Policy”, claiming that this would be “a totally different method”. And what was this new method? Was it some way of advancing socialism? Did it promote an understanding of the requirements for the overthrow of capitalism? Not likely! It meant entrenching capitalism! The new method would be:

. . . a reformist type of method: not to break up the old social-economic system—trade, petty proprietorship, capitalism,—but to revive trade, petty proprietorship, capitalism, while cautiously and gradually getting the upper hand over them . . . (p647)

Presumably the idea of “getting control” over the workings of capitalism was a joke (and not a very funny one in the circumstances). Lenin knew full well that capitalism by definition was uncontrollable.

May people still think that Russia is, or was, something to do with socialism, and that Lenin was a socialist. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ronnie Warrington

(to be continued)

Political notebook: Cynically Confounded Confusion (1979)

The Political Notebook column from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cynically Confounded Confusion

Politics is a baffling business these days. It certainly baffles the politicians. Reggie-the-sleeping-Maudling (a politician not known for his perspicacity) when asked to clarify the position says: “I am sorry but I am afraid I cannot; nor I think can anyone else . . .  At the moment, I fear, politics in this country are (sic) trying to advance by progressively obfuscating the questions”. (The Times 29.11.78)

The plot for confusion goes something like this: The Labour Party (in government) stands for a maximum 5 per cent wage rise. The TUC supports the Labour Party. Most of the TUC is opposed to the 5 per cent. The TUC does not support the Conservative Party which however, is also opposed to the 5 per cent. But some sections of the Labour government and much of the party are also opposed to the 5 per cent. Furthermore, (if you are still with me) sections of the Conservative Party are in favour of the 5 per cent. So, for the mathematicians the equation might look like this:
PRO—5 per cent =
Most of the government, some of the Labour Party some of the Conservative Party and some of the TUC.
ANTI—5 per cent =
The rest of the government, most of the Labour Party, most of the Conservative Party and most of the TUC.

No wonder the Daily Mirror commented. “If you dig beneath the rhetoric and dissect the cliches there appears little to choose between the policy of Mrs Thatcher and the TUC”. (17.11.78) If you add to that the Labour Party for good measure you are just about home. I suppose it would be cynical to suggest that this shows that there is no real difference between the lot of them . . .


How Jim Fixes Things

Any doubts on that score would have been ended by a couple of articles in recent editions of the Observer (26 November and 3 December), in which Kenneth Harris fed Jim Callaghan with a succession of sycophantic questions and received some answers blindingly illuminating of how close the Labour Party is to the Tories. For example on the unions:

Question: I have heard it said by many who should know that no PM in living memory has got on so well with the unions . . .

Answer: Well, I'm not sure that it would be true . . . Harold Macmillan got on very well with them, although he wasn’t a trade unionist.

For example on racist immigration controls:

Question: If the Conservatives came to power, say next week, would there be much difference in their immigration policy and yours?

Answer: Not in the numbers allowed to enter . . .  I guess that they would make very little change in the numbers arriving in this country . . .

For example on the supposed ideological divide, on Labour’s commitment to a fundamentally different society:

Question: Some Labour Party members . . . say ‘The Labour Party is no longer Socialist.’ What do you think they mean by that?

Answer: . . . ‘Socialism’ has always been a matter of controversy in the Labour Party, and there are millions of Labour Party supporters who aren’t Socialists and never have been . . .  The Labour Party has become—I think Harold Wilson used the word—a Broad Church.

Callaghan has in his time had many an adjective tacked on before his first name—Sunny Jim, Humble Jim, even Honest Jim—but so far nobody has called him Silly Jim. We must assume he knows what he is doing, when he insists that there is so little to choose between his party and its principal opponents. He intends himself no harm; he is, after all very fond of being Prime Minister.


Waiting at the Church

Meanwhile, back at Number Eleven, the Chancellor, Denis Healey was left waiting at the Church . . . There was he, trumpeting his agreement on wages with the TUC. On Monday The Times writes that: "Agreement has been reached between the Cabinet and the TUC Leaders on a new form of words after a month of talks . . . The six—man TUC team . . . has finally given its blessing to a document that will go first to the TUC Economic Committee tomorrow morning before being endorsed by the General Council later in the day.” (13.11.78) On Tuesday morning Denis says he will announce the agreement at 5 pm. However, the TUC did not endorse the agreement after all. Come 5.10 pm on the Tuesday and a rather sheepish Denis is heard saying “I was rather surprised at the turn of events . . .  I only hope it is fairly calm weather while the dust is falling.” (The Times 15.11.78)

Hope for calm weather is about as useful, as hoping for calm seas in the Bay of Biscay in March. Still Denis’s efforts are not totally wasted. He still hopes for some agreement to sell the workers lower wages.


What a waste

While on waste, here is a little puzzle. What have the following in common: 30,000 tons of cauliflowers, 23,000 tons of tomatoes, 60,000 tons of peaches, 41,000 tons of apples, 16,000 tons of oranges and 28,000 tons of mandarins?

Give up? Answer: They were all surplus produce of the EEC last year (See The Times 14.11.78) Some of it was sold off, but the majority was simply destroyed.

Funny system really; plenty of people are hungry, there is a huge world food shortage we are told, and one corner of the world spends some £1860 million in disposing (euphemism for destroying) of surplus food. Still it gave the Prime Minister an added opportunity to sound off about how unfair the EEC was operating for Britain (euphemism for the British capitalists). Speaking at the Lord Mayor of London’s banquet in November last year (a place not noted for its food shortage) Jim thundered about Britain paying too much to the EEC and getting too little in return. Good for votes, that one Jim! Jim did not explain that one of the reasons for Britain entering (and staying) in the EEC was the hope that it would in the long term keep prices down; that would mean lower wages can be paid; which is part of the object of the whole thing; which is where we left our Denis . . .


Watergate — South African Style 

From the other side of the world, a South African Commission of Enquiry has reported that Ministers in the South African Government have been responsible for a huge amount of bribery and corruption. The scandal has already been christened “Muldergate” after the name of the leading politician involved. The report actually suggested that Dr. Mulder, the former Minister of Information (George Orwell should be living at this hour) had been guilty of concealing the truth. If all politicians who were guilty of that one were prevented from continuing to act as politicians there would be none of the breed left.

Ronnie Warrington