Sting in the Tail: By-election Fever (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

By-election Fever

The Scorpion has just suffered three by-elections on one night, it was a TV extravaganza where a load of toadies tried to get their snouts Into the Westminster trough.

"Its a good result for us", says Nigel Preservative. "It proves what we always said", says Hamish McSporran. "Another nail in the government's coffin” says Trevor Lickspittle. "Its the turn of the tide", says Walter Camera-Angle.

"Its the turning of my stomach", complains Scorpion, crawling off to bed suffering from an over-dose of cliches.

A Slap Up Meal

Should you happen to be in the London area on the night of February 13 and find yourself a bit peckish here is a bit of good news for you.

Instead of going to Joe's Greasy Eats Cafe for a salmonella sandwich, go a bit up-market and visit the Park Lane Hotel. It will be a splendid affair. You will be rubbing shoulders with famous politicians, writers and the odd film director.

This dazzling nlght-out can be yours for only £500-a-head. The organisers of this gala night out? None other than those champions of the proletariat — the Labour Party!

The Mad Professor

In the May issue we reported that Professor David Marsland had won the Margaret Thatcher Foundation annual award. This genius had won this great honour for such progressive ideas as abolishing social workers, ending unemployment benefit and recruiting 11 year old kids for defence training corps in schools.

Continuing the good work the Professor has turned his cool analytical mind to solving the civil war in Yugoslavia. Writing In the New Statesman (1 November 1991) the good professor proposes that Britain should go to war with Serbia!

"British aircraft flying from Cyprus and Austria could destroy the Serbian airforce and fleet in one day. Tanks and military formation could then be wiped out at leisure from the air without much difficulty. Within a week, Croatia and freedom could be saved."

This modern day Napoleon has a day job; he is a professor of social science at the West London Institute of Higher Education. Higher Education? Scorpion is just thankful he left school at 15!

Dry Eyed Farewell

The gloom of 1991 was lifted a little by the news that Marxism Today had ceased publication. Over the years it's Marxist content was probably slightly less than the Dandy or the Beano, so it was good to see another voice of confusion silenced.

BBC2 (5 December 1991) decided to mark the death of Martin Jacques' rag in The Late Show with a slot entitled the ABC of Marxism.

Naturally it was up to the usual high standard of The Late Show. C Is for Castro ... L is for Lenin ... the usual junk.

At P is for periodicals we saw flashes of various obscure left wing journals. Of course we did not see the Socialist Standard. This journal has been consistently putting a Marxist view for only 87 years, and we don't expect the terribly well informed BBC types to have a programme about Marxism that actually deals with Marxism.

Dim Stars

Hollywood is well described as "the dream factory" but it surpassed itself recently when Oxfam America staged the "Hollywood Hunger Banquet" to promote the plight of the world's hungry.

Movie stars Mel Gibson, Cybill Shepherd, Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, etc., drew lots for the privilege of sitting on the floor to eat just rice and water. The luckless losers had to make do with salad, chicken, dessert and wine.

One observer of this farce said:

It's a typical manifestation of these people's blind obsession with themselves —- as If they could actually make any real difference.

The Guardian 18 November

The banquet organiser hoped the event would show . . . "that there's totally unequal distribution of food In the world and capitalism isn't working". Well stated, but pulling stunts like this does nothing to reduce world hunger and leaves intact the loathsome system which spawns It.

Lenin — Some Guy

Bonfire night on the village common, families parading with Chinese lanterns behind a Guy destined for the flames, but what's this? The Guy is wearing a fur hat and brandishing a red flag!

Organisers of the village club's fireworks party had decided to give this year's celebrations a political theme and mark the fall of Communism In Eastern Europe by burning an old-style party leader.

Maidenhead Advertiser 8 November 

When Lenin scathingly earmarked capitalism for "the dustbin of history" he little dreamt that the mighty organisation which so slavishly worshipped him would itself become history to the extent that it could be burned In effigy as a stand-in for Guy Fawkes.

Vive La Difference

Many people insist that socialism means we would all have to conform while capitalism opposes this and encourages individuality.

The visit to Britain by Jean-Marie Le Pen gave us some examples of how capitalism opposes individuality.

The Guardian (6 December) quoted some Britons who share Le Pen's desire to repatriate coloured immigrants. One said 'The point is, they don't behave the way we behave”, while another deplored ” . . . the failure of immigrants to Integrate Into the customs of the host society”.

And look at the disapproval most people show when they see youngsters with purple hair or wearing "outlandish" clothes. What chance would someone have if he / she turned up for a job Interview dressed as a Punk-Rocker? Nor does the public exactly welcome the different sexual preferences of homosexuals.

The truth is that capitalism dislikes individuality and loves conformity.

Let's Talk About The World (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Look, I don't believe in Utopia. My ambition is firmly rooted In reality. All I want is a decent, secure job that pays enough to guarantee a reasonable standard of living, sees the mortgage paid, runs the car, gets us a bit of a holiday every year . . . Well, you know what I mean . . . I suppose I would like the kids to get better opportunities than me . . .

That's not a lot to ask . . .

No, It's not, I suppose, but hold on, there are a few other things . . . Peace. I'd like to know that there'd never be war again and that all the violence that is now so much a part of our lives was ended. Mind you, I know that for me and my family to be happy other problems, like world hunger, would have to be ended. Not Just because it's obscene, which, of course, it is, but because it creates a dangerous situation, if you know what I mean. I suppose, when you think about it, the only way the prosperity and security of the individual can be secured is by having prosperity and security for everybody.

Do you think present society can guarantee the reasonably decent life you want?

Not guarantee. No, not when you think about It. I've seen too many people doing OK and then, through no fault of their own, some outside factor . . . recession, competition, bankruptcy — even, as we saw last year In the Gulf, war — and, whoosh! you're on the dole and the house is being repossessed!

That's a good point to start from. So you agree that our present way of organising society, the capitalist way, just cannot guarantee you — apart from everybody else — the material basis of a full and happy life?

I have agreed that, I suppose. It's a Jungle. We're all fighting to survive. And yet capitalism has improved things in many respects. Sometimes I marvel at the way the system has developed. We can turn out all sorts of complicated machinery . . . cars by the millions, washing machines, fridges, TV's videos. Even the agricultural techniques have been revolutionized to the point where we have to destroy foodstuffs and restrict food production. We can send people to the moon . . .

But we have not solved the simple problem of saving the life of a starving or sick child, whose parents have not got the money to buy the food or medicines which you, quite rightly, say capitalism can now vastly overproduce.

It's incredible, but it's true. But that still does not take from the fact that capitalism has developed the means for producing enough for everybody. I hadn't thought of it before in those terms but it is surely the means we employ to distrlbute the things that capitalism produces . . . If there were some other way . . .

You're right, of course. Capitalism has solved the question of production. It has created the potential to produce in abundance the things everybody needs but its method of distribution, the money system, denies the great majority of people throughout the world the opportunity to avail of the fantastic wealth which can now be produced.

But, if we solved this problem of distribution . . . You say it's the money system. Well, Just suppose we find another method that would allow everybody to benefit from the present techniques of production. There must be some process we could devise.

We could have free access. Everybody being free to take what they need.

As I was speaking I thought of something like that but It wouldn't work. There're a lot of reasons but the main one would be that you would need some method of restricting people. A form of rationing of some sort, and look at the problems that would bring.

Why? Haven’t we agreed that the productive techniques exist now to produce abundance?

Yes we have, but how would you prevent people taking more than they need?

Well, in the first . . .

No! Hold on — I think I've got It! No money means that people wouldn't want to take more than they need because . . . well, when they wanted more, they could get it! Yes, I see that, at least. We'd take only what we need because we would know that when we needed more it would be there for the taking. So everybody would be on the same social level.

Correct. No classes. It simply means that we would co-operate in producing the goods and services we need. Everybody who was fit to do so would have to be afforded the right to contribute in some way. I appreciate that this may create problems for some people when we remember that at present all real wealth is produced by a minority of workers.

A minority of workers? Surely workers are the majority of the population?

Yes, of course, workers form the overwhelming majority of people but only a minority are involved in producing socially useful goods and providing useful services. The majority of work performed today by workers is only necessary because of the way society is run. The buying-and-selling way: shops, banks, insurance, financial services, arms production, armed forces, crime . . .

I think we're on to something. This is a bloody great idea. There'd be no poverty or unemployment and all the waste that would be cut out, destruction of foodstuffs and all the fantastic wealth that goes into armaments and war, and cutting out all those useless tasks — everybody could be well fed, well housed and secure with less effort than it takes now. But there must be a snag! Why don't some of these experts, businessmen, economists, why don't they suggest this?

Because their training and their interests are concerned only with capitalism.

I think we're really on to something. I really do. The whole bloody thing is so logical! The implications are tremendous. Everybody would have a direct stake in society. The world would belong to us all; things like vandalism would disappear. A world without money! Without money and without class — and without wages, too, because there’d be no need . . .

And, of course, we are only scratching the surface.

A world-wide society where everything would be owned in common by everybody. Obviously we'd have to divide out the work as best as possible to give everybody a chance to contribute to production — but, of course, people would develop in other ways . . . education, travel, art . . . The interesting thing about this idea is that in such a world there'd be no incentive to corruption. Of course, it would have to be voluntary . . .

Democratic.

Yes, democratic. You just couldn't force this idea on people. To bring about a change to this way of living, to make it work, I mean, people would have to understand it and . . . opt for it politically. There'd have to be a political Movement, wouldn't there? Yes, and we'd need a name for the idea . . .

The Gulf: one year later (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the dust from Kuwait's burnt oil-wells barely settled, the race is on for UK companies to beat their rivals back into the Gulf, with rich pickings on offer from reconstructing Kuwait's war-ravaged economy and the return of local dictators to their old playgrounds. And just to show that the pursuit of profit knows no boundaries of race, religion or nation, British companies are again climbing into bed with the “bloodthirsty mullahs" in Iran, as they too seek to rebuild a country laid waste by Iraqi bombs and missiles— also supplied, of course, by US and British companies.

Last May, just three months after the Gulf War finished. US business announced the resumption of its offensive when Al-Ahlia-Gulf Line, bottler of Coca-Cola for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, commissioned the first modern, high speed multi-packaging machine in the Middle East. According to company general manager Jim Hill, this followed “extensive tests over the past 12 months in the local Dubai market". So even as US bombs fell in neighbouring Kuwait and in Iraq, the sharp suits from Coke were planning their own offensive on the pockets and teeth of Middle Eastern youth.

British companies could not take this sort of thing lying down. The massive participation by Britain in the Gulf War—where it supplied the second largest Allied contingent—was undertaken not for protecting Kuwaiti sovereignty, nor out of particular concern for its oil. British troops were in the Gulf to stop the domino-like internal collapse of Saudi Arabia and the other four states of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman—which could easily have followed an Iraqi victory and a triumphalist Saddam calling on the people of the region to rise up against their corrupt and despotic rulers.

And why this touching concern? Because British trade with the Gulf states is currently worth well over £4 billion a year, according to figures compiled by the Department of Trade and Industry. Last year, as the Gulf crisis was unwinding. British, companies did some £2 billion worth of business with Saudi Arabia alone. So now the British government is anxious that its support for the local dictators during the war results in adequate rewards for the British companies it is there to represent.

The first post-war move came from the Birmingham Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which organised a tour with the DTI of 32 British companies to Saudi Arabia, which returned in triumph with over £3.25 million in confirmed orders. “This was the most successful mission in 25 years of overseas promotion work,” Birmingham Chamber of Commerce leader Mike Turner proudly announced. A vast amount of restocking was taking place in the parts of the kingdom most affected by the war, a process being exaggerated as Saudi businessmen pump supplies into Kuwait, said Mr Turner. Interestingly, he also reported that members of the Kuwaiti elite, unimpressed by the money making opportunities in their shell-shocked native land, were to be seen wandering neighbouring states transacting all sorts of business there. Mr Turner’s advice to recession-struck companies in the UK was to visit the region in person—"the rewards are there for companies taking the trouble”.

Business interests

The government was not slow in taking up his suggestion. Whatever accusations have been laid against the DTI for “inaction" during the domestic recession, the same cannot be said for the way it sprang forward as the champion of British business interests in the Middle East, loudly announcing a Britain in the Gulf 92 exhibition to be held in Dubai at the end of April.

Any interested readers—and particularly those about to lose their homes through mortgage or rent arrears—should apply by the end of this month at the latest to take advantage of the very generous level of support being offered by the DTI. “Eligible British companies will recieve a 50 percent subsidy on the cost of a standard, 15 square metre stand”, proclaims the DTI's promotional literature. "This will include company name, carpet, flower arrangements, furniture (1 table. 3 chairs) and stand cleaning"—the latter presumably undertaken at competitive rates by some of the tens of thousands of Palestinians or other "foreign” workers expelled by the Kuwaiti leadership since its return from a heroic exile. In addition, the DTI offers a "subvention” (not a subsidy, you understand) to cover one third of the not inconsiderable costs of up to two representatives per company.

"In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Anglo-Gulf relations have never been better", enthuses Britain in the Gulf 92 News. "The DTI attaches the highest importance to sustaining and enhancing the level of British trade with the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council”. And it is not only the DTI which is involved in pushing British business in the region. “The campaign began in December and includes reports and special programmes through the BBC Arabic Service and the Central Office of Information". So much for BBC's lofty claims to "independence”—“Nation Shall Sell Unto Nation" should perhaps be its motto in the Middle East.

The Gulf War victory by the US and its allies has ensured that Dubai remains a safe place for UK business: "The pro-business policies of the government arc reflected in the liberal regulatory environments which include no taxation on profits or incomes, nor foreign exchange controls”, says the DTI. The good citizens of Dubai earned the undying respect of the DTI by ignoring the crisis enveloping the region last year and buying 13 percent more from the UK, bringing total exports to the UAE as a whole to £R600 million in 1990.

International Conferences and Exhibitions Ltd, which is jointly arranging the Gulf 92 exhibition with the DTI, was the only exhibition organiser in Dubai to carry out its programme of events during the Gulf crisis. And the response of a grateful Dubai business class to having their skins saved by British tanks, was to endow British firms at the Opportunity in the Gulf exhibition—held in Dubai three months after the ending of hostilities—with a further £20 million worth of orders, with the same amount again anticipated for the near future.

Gulf elites

And business opportunities in the region now extend much further that the basic construction, power and transport contracts of yore, argues the DTI. The Gulf elite clearly feels secure enough to enjoy the better things in life again:

The high level of government expenditure is fuelling a boom in private sector investment, reflected in a spate of new high rise office developments, five star hotels, apartment blocks, sports clubs, shopping malls and luxury villas, all of which require a full range of luxury fittings.

It also generates the need for a whole lot more services essential to the well-being of redundant oil workers, refugees and displaced peoples throughout the region—things like "printing, advertising and financial expertise”.The children of the rich are also back to unrestrained consumption, it would seem, with consumer spending being "stimulated to record levels on items such as clothing, domestic appliances, cars, food and drink, jewellery, sports equipment and overseas travel”.

A list of companies so far enlisted for the DTI's Gulf 92 extravaganza tells its own story. Starlite Chandeliers, for example, is exhibiting a range of crystal chandeliers and light fittings, while Gainsborough Silver Collections will be displaying "a selection of pieces from its comprehensive range of silver plated tableware”. The list goes on to include limousine converters and Moores of London's "corporate jewellery in solid silver and gold plate", and so on.

Finally, what of the Iranian connection?

The carefully planned visitor promotion campaign for the Britain in the Gulf 92 exhibition will cover the six Gulf Cooperation Council states and also extend to Iran, a country with which Dubai has close trading ties.

Could this be the same country the British government sanctimoniously severed diplomatic ties with after its leader issued a death threat against Salman Rushdie which has still not been withdrawn? Yes indeed, and here is the reason:

In addition to the massive rebuilding programme planned for Kuwait, reconstruction schemes in neighbouring Iran, only 40 minutes flight from Dubai, are also arousing unprecedented interest on the part of UK exporters.

So if the government starts to backpedal on its stance against Iranian state terrorism—by banning demonstrations by Rushdie supporters, for example, which it actually did in November—you will know the reason why.

Andrew Thomas

They said it in 1991 (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

JANUARY

The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, since when about 100 million human beings have been killed in wars—Army recruitment advert.

We no longer take American Express. Things are not what they used to be—Baghdad hotel receptionist.

Only God could have got rid of Margaret Thatcher—Ian Paisley.

FEBRUARY

Rationing of health care is nothing new: the NHS has been doing it for more than four decades—Robert Craig, NHS manager.

We are the ones who have been given a special mission by God—Major Mohammed Abu Amnah. Saudi Army.

We are depending on God—Saddam Hussein.

MARCH

Americans can move forward to lend, spend and invest—George Bush on the end of the Gulf War.

Luxury is buying a dear brand of toilet paper—Wife of an unemployed man, Crewe.

It does sometimes strike me that we are a privileged place—Eton schoolboy.

APRIL

I have too much. Its a terrible bind to be in charge of controlling and investing money—Duke of Buccleuch.

There's one law for the rich, one for the poor—Marquess of Blandford, after being disqualified from driving.

When I pass a belt I cannot resist hitting below it—Robert Maxwell.

MAY

1. The world produces enough food to feed all its inhabitants. 2. a child dies from starvation every two seconds—Christian Aid advert.

We didn't go to war to form a democracy. We never said one American was sent there to make Kuwait a democracy—US Government official.

I shall not stop making speeches—Margaret Thatcher, in Moscow.

JUNE

Like many other parts of the capitalist economy, such as property developers, banks do well under Labour-—John Willcock, Guardian financial columnist.

If you’re given the choice of being born either rich or smart, my advice is to be born rich—Professor Stephen Ceci. 

Organisers of strikes are breaking the law. Strikes interfere with Poland—Lech Walesa.

JULY

The sort of people you step over when you come out of the opera—Sir George Young, Minister of Housing, on London beggars. 

He was only there in the first place because they had oil—Mavis Cole, grandmother of soldier killed in the Gulf.

Of course we play the stock market fairly heavily—Canon Dennis Green. Ely Cathedral.

AUGUST

The ousting of Gorbachev was just politics, but business is business—Western business executive in trade with Russia.

I'm quite surprised because most of the people here don't seem to be affected by the recession—Visitor to Country Landowners' Association game fair.

I know the dangers, I‘ve been raped at gunpoint. But I need the money—Samantha. London prostitute.

SEPTEMBER

It feels as if someone is trying to break us— Marie Pender, mother of four children, living in bed and breakfast accommodation.

I am not proud of the part I played in this affair and I shall exercise some modesty in advising a later generation on what they should be doing today—George Matthews, ex-assistant general secretary of the Communist Party, on their subservience to Moscow.

You see families counting out the pennies to see if they can buy a tin of beans. I thought it went out with Dickens—Molly Woodhouse, Meadowell Estate, after the riot there.

OCTOBER

I don’t accept there is a class system in this country. There are gentlemen and women with good manners no matter where they are in society—Sheila Lawlor, Centre for Policy Studies.

In a capitalist country a classless society isn't possible—Marquess of Blandford.

A standing ovation without a speech. Isn't that marvellous—Margaret Thatcher on her arrival at the Tory Party conference.

NOVEMBER

We're talking hundreds of millions in lost business—Sidney Barthelemy, Mayor of New Orleans, on racist primary candidature of David Duke.

When it comes to freedom there were certain shortcomings in the Soviet Union—Russian spy Peter Kroger.

No farming system is sustainable unless it makes a profit—Derek Barber, President, Royal Agricultural Society of England.

DECEMBER

When I'm hungry I have a cup of tea— Single mother of three on ITV's First Tuesday.

Life is difficult and tough—Norman Lamont.

Well, I miss me too—Margaret Thatcher at New York diplomatic dinner.

Letters: Professor rebuked (1992)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Professor rebuked

Dear Editors,

Congratulations on the discussion and debate section in the December Socialist Standard, in which Steve Coleman repudiates the defence of capitalism by Professor David Marsland of the West London Institute.

It really is quite incredible that anyone with professorial status can say that property, wage-labour. competition, economic inequalities and money are part of the human psyche, and imply that any alternative to the capitalist mode of organising society is not consistent with human nature. The sad thing is that many are easily swayed by such arguments, spurious as they are. We live in a society in which those concepts and values are paramount, and we are, therefore, conditioned to act and think in a manner which make those values seem to be part of our nature.

Of course, jobs and wages are a natural consideration in our lives—we can’t live without them; of course we are competitive—we are taught to be so as soon as we leave the cradle; of course we regard economic inequality as inevitable because that’s the way things must be in capitalist society; of course money is important—we can’t do without it. and thinking in monetary terms becomes second nature to us. But. to say that these things are part of our natural make-up; that inherent in our genealogy is a crying need for money, wages, or social inequality, is to talk utter nonsense.

The status of professor implies the role of educator, leader of rational thinking. I think that Professor Marsland should be ashamed of himself for trying to lead us down a path of such false reasoning.

During the second world war I served in the Royal Army Medical Corps with the Middle East Forces. I was stationed in the desert in a base hospital about 60 miles from Cairo for 5 years. Thinking back on those days I am moved by the wonderful spirit of comradeship and co-operation that grow up in those circumstances. We all had a job to do. We all depended on each other. At the same time when off duty, we were free, and when circumstances permitted we were given generous leave to travel wherever we wished—it proved a wonderful opportunity to understand something of earlier civilizations. Travelling was no problem and quite free—all one had to do was go to the main road and thumb a lift. Money was of little importance and most members of the unit voluntarily chose not to draw full pay, saving it for spending on leave. Clothing, food, accommodation were, of course, freely provided. We became a close-knit community. Individual talents emerged and were used to develop educational and cultural activities for the benefit of patients and unit personnel.

Why do I tell you all this? Well, certainly not because I believe in wars, or want to suggest that society should be organised on army lines: no, simply because I think it helps to belie Marsland’s assertion of the implausibility of an elastic human nature. I think it shows that given a common objective we can strive for a better way of life, and work in harmony without monetary considerations.

There is one simple truth that the professor cannot deny and that is that capitalism's mode of production and dissipation of wealth is not designed to meet the needs of the people—all the people. That is why the socialist alternative is imperative.

George Pearson 

London SW20

BOB POTTER. Hove: We will reply to your letter on IQ tests in the next issue.

South-East slump

Dear Editors,

An item in the Observer (24 November) vividly demonstrates the tragic situation in which many workers now find themselves.

Two thousand would-be wage slaves queued for up to twelve hours, for just 127 jobs as packers and maintenance workers for around £300 to £400 a week, at Courages brewery, in Reading. Many of them, before becoming unemployed, had been company directors, former tradesmen and even university lecturers. Few, no doubt, would have considered themselves to be members of the working class, dependent on their abilities to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live.

“Welcome to Reading, Boom Town of the Eighties, Gloom Town of 1991", commented the Observer. Unemployment in Reading has more than doubled in the last year; more than 5,000 have lost their jobs. The picture is repeated across the south-east. It is the same in Crawley, Milton Keynes and even Tunbridge Wells. Here in Colchester, the so-called prosperous First Recorded Town in England, the position is much the same. Over the last few years, hundreds of workers have been made redundant from Paxman’s, Colchester’s largest factory. Only this week, the Essex County Standard reported that the Eastern National Bus company is to cut another 35 jobs. The redundancies will affect staff across the board.

As I write this (1 December), the same paper reports that "recession-hit traders in Colchester said yesterday they were seeing the first tentative signs of the much hoped-for Christmas rush". And the Co-op said there have been the first “nibbles". Nevertheless, as one walks around the Town, large numbers of shops, big and small, can be seen empty and deserted. The owners have gone “bust”, bankrupt.

Colchester Youth Enquiry Service says that they will be collecting warm clean bedding for the many young homeless people in Colchester. They cannot actually find homes for these people (although, as elsewhere, there are many empty properties in the area), but the homeless can go and "ask for advice, help and a blanket".

The situation is not, however, just local or regional, or even national. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are in dead trouble; and the United States has been in recession for some considerable time. And France too. A woman friend of mine in Paris has been unemployed, except for two short periods, for just over twelve months. Indeed, three million workers are officially unemployed in France. And it’s getting worse.

Will it ever end? Is massive unemployment here to stay?

Tragic as it is for those who lose their jobs or, if young, are unable to get a job in the first place, booms and slumps and unemployment, are a "normal” consequence of our present production-for-profit, capitalist, system. The owners of wealth-production will only invest, and employ us, if they think there is a good prospect of making a profit. And at the present moment, most capitalists prefer not (or are unable) to invest. Sooner or later, business will pick up. People will be taken on again, although in my view I think that large numbers of unemployed workers (a “reserve army of labour") will continue to exist, possibly well into the next century.

So, is there a way out? A solution?

Socialists say that workers, employed or unemployed, in Colchester or Reading, in Britain or Russia, or the United States, or France and elsewhere throughout the world, can solve the problems of not just periodic unemployment. but also poverty in a world of potential plenty, by organising to establish a new and completely different form of society of production of wealth solely for use and the satisfaction of needs. Such a society would not be Heaven on Earth, or Utopia; but it would soon tackle, and solve, the basic problems thrown up by capitalism. And that is more than enough.

Peter E. Newell

Colchester, Essex 

Dear Editors,

On the article in the December issue 'What Do We Mean By Class'. I would like to say that you can’t always leave your job if you don’t like it because of low wages, boring work. etc. Unemployment is so high that many people, if they are in their 40s or 50s, feel they will not get another job if they leave their employment. I have been in my job for 3 years. It is a job I hate. The first month that I worked there I wanted to leave, so any available time off I have looked for another job. I’ve had various interviews, but no luck.

Leslie Everard 

Borehamwood, Herts

Socialist Party Meetings (1992)

Party News from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: Prophecies on the Outcome of the War (1992)

The 50 Years Ago Column from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The facts are inescapable. What does "an Imperialist war" mean if not that the outcome determines which group of powers will possess the world's most fruitful imperial possessions? The chief concern of the British and American capitalists in the Far East is the defence of Imperial interests. The loss of strategic positions and the loss of political influence and control of key trading centres would destroy or considerably restrict the freedom to trade in the markets of the teeming millions in China, Asia and India. The chief concern of the British. American and Dutch capitalist class is to maintain and defend its existing privileges: the chief concern of the German, Italian and Japanese capitalist class is to wrest these privileges from them for themselves. Upon the outcome rests the power to derive profit and exploit the workers to the advantage of one group or to the disadvantage of the other. That is the simple position. This war is an Imperialist war.

[From Socialist Standard, January 1942.]

Your money or your life (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money: the curse of our lives. Waste your week working for it. Rush round the stores looking for the best ways of spending it. Waiting for the thud of the bill through the letterbox—now you have less of it. Dreaming of winning the pools. Dreading debt. Watching the newsreader talking about the basket of European currencies and the pound being weak against the mark. On the streets kids beg for it. Women sell their bodies for it; so do boys. Families break up over it. Street assaults to grab it; bitter strikes to drag out of the boss a few more pounds of it: the knock on the door from the bailiff to tell you the consequences of not paying it. Money stunts our lives until they are hardly lives at all but treadmills of money payments. Money cripples the creative into being “financially sensible”: mean and dull. Money afflicts the many and makes affluent the few.

The morally pure warn us of the perils of caring too much about money. These warnings are issued from tree-shaded vicarages where well-fed men in frocks eat full English breakfasts, read The Times editorial and then proceed to the study to write of how Jesus cared not for the things of this world. Newspaper editors, operated from strings held by millionaire press barons, urge us to abandon the path of greed and pull in our belts. The parasitic rich live in expense-account luxury, thinking little of a few hundred pounds for a business lunch. Mothers anguish over how to buy shoes for three pairs of children's feet. It is a sick set-up.

There can be no doubt about the answer. It is the only answer; the one workable alternative; the sane way forward which this journal will not shut up about. We must abolish money. More precisely, we must abolish the need for money. Money is only needed when some possess and most do not. Most must buy from some. Workers who produce must buy the necessities of life from the capitalist few who possess the worlds wealth. The right of the minority to own and control must be ended. Class division must be ended. Buying and selling must cease. Money will then be done away with. We will produce for use. The ingenuity of administering money madness can be devoted to the infinitely saner and worthier cause of organising world production to satisfy human needs.

Money must go
In a moneyless world there will be an end to the hardships which are faced by millions today as if they were a natural plague. No more starvation or homelessness or debt or repossession or cheap and shoddy bargain lifestyles. Humanity will gasp a collective sigh of relief.

The sadness which pervades this system—the money-mad world of paying to live—is that so many people have forgotten what it is to be truly human. In fact, we, the victims of this money-wrecked epoch, are all alienated from our humanity. The capitalist, with all his unearned fortune, does not know how to live as a decent social being. Because if he did he would have to confront, both economically and emotionally, the anti-social essence of his vulture-like existence as a robber of other people's creativity. The capitalist is forced to deny his social nature and surround himself with the mythology of "independence"—of needing no-one and caring for no-one. At best, he will drop a few pounds into the charitable begging bowl of those whose pockets he has systematically picked. At worst, he will be a callous, useless. self-indulging pig, sucking in profits and spitting out hatred for the “greedy” wage slaves who dare to challenge his might. Visit any gentlemen's club or Chamber of Commerce and see these rich humans turned into piggy banks; a sorry sight.

But we shall not romanticise “the good old horny-handed worker”. We members of the working class also are conditioned to know ourselves only through a slave consciousness which fights against trust and collectivity. Old are turned against young and white against black and men against women and fit against disabled—and all of these the other way round as well. The struggle to survive makes petty-minded money-fighters out of the best of us. The Great Class Struggle, so praised by left-wingers as if it is some kind of Heroic Drama between Good and Evil, makes us workers adopt the meanness of spirit and factional hatreds of our oppressors.

Freedom from money will mean freedom of access to all that we need. But it will mean much more. It will mean the freedom to be freely human; to explore our natures and to nurture our behaviour without pound signs forcing us to Keep Off the better areas of our potential beings. We shall be free to work not for money, but because we are social beings who express ourselves best through the expenditure of useful energy. We will be free to be more than just postmen or just mothers or just doctors or just painters: we will be free to be all of those things. The alienating division of labour will come to an end. It is humanity which will look after humanity, not a class whose function is to service higher (i.e. richer) forms of humanity.

Return to humanity
The struggle for a new system of society—for social revolution and nothing less—is more than a struggle for workers to "get more" out of society. A revolution carried out to let the homeless have shelter and the starving eat and the families on income support have video machines would be a huge step forward, but far less of a step than the leap which we socialists advocate. Ours is not a struggle for a few more “things"—or even a lot more. We do not seek a new world system which is just like capitalism only with more of everything for everyone. We seek—we demand—the freedom of all humans to have full control over society, for only then will we have full control over our humanity. We do not want more money, we want no money. We are not demanding welfare for the poor, but an end to the condition of buying and selling which necessitates poverty. We seek not a better-off working class but an end to the working class. We are workers who want to be humans, victims of wage slavery who will be satisfied with nothing less than an end to all slavery in all of its forms. Only then will we be free to live as true social animals: co-operatively, consciously, happily, in dignity.

Far from being some sort of dull economic determinist. as he is celebrated as being by so many narrow-minded leftists, Karl Marx understood that revolution will be more than a matter of changing the signs on the front of the banks. Consider these extracts from his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:

  The supersession of private property is, therefore, the complete emancipation of all the human qualities and senses. It is such an emancipation because these qualities and senses have become human, from the subjective as well as the objective point of view. The eye has become a human eye when its object has become a human, social object, created by man and destined for him . . . Communism is the positive abolition of private property, of human self-alienation, and thus the real appropriation of human nature through and for man. It is. therefore, the return of man himself as a social being, i.e. a really human being, a complete and conscious return which assimilates all the wealth of previous development.

Why should not the working class—the overwhelming majority who are treated as profit-churning idiots—demand the "complete and conscious return" of our own humanity? To demand less is an undignified submission to an inhuman rule of money-power. To become human we must abolish money: nothing less, no compromises.

Steve Coleman

Caught in the act: Whimper, Whimper, You're Dead (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whimper, Whimper, You're Dead

During two days which did not shake the world, the Communist Party of Great Britain put an end to the long agony of its dying and proclaimed itself dead. Said party secretary Nina Temple to their 42nd Congress in November: "We joined the Communist Party to change the world. We must recognise that it was part of a tradition that has failed". In its place there is a new tradition, vague and all encompassing, of ". . .  a new vision of a humane, green, democratic socialism".

When the "communists" had each worked out their own version of what that meant, did they not reflect that there are already plenty of other organisations campaigning on these issues —within their lights, effectively? Do capitalism's reformists need another one? Is there any chance of its making mark?

It is clear that the "communists" who have transferred themselves to the new organisation have learned nothing from the wretched history of their dead party. They still deal in what are politely called day-to-day issues, to case the odd problem here, to plug the odd gap there. So busy are they with all of this, they fail to notice that they are having no effect on the problems they profess to remedy.

The world today is no safer than it was when the CPGB was formed in 1920. According to one source, since peace broke out in 1945 there has been just one day when there has not been a war being fought somewhere. Tens of millions die every year from lack of food; there are millions of refugees, millions more without a house, millions more suffering avoidable disease — and then there are the hundreds of millions who endure the grind of everyday poverty.

If the "communists" had any commitment to eliminating these features of capitalism they would never have joined a party which, at the very best, stood for capitalism slightly modified by disjointed and piecemeal reforms — and at worst stood for cynical and ruthless human repression. They would instead have struggled for the revolution to a fundamentally different society.

That is what the word Socialism — habitually distorted and misused by Temple and the like — means. It is directly opposed to the grubby theories, the disreputable activities and the discredited history of the CPGB. They will not be mourned.

Coming Up In The World

There are no signs that the people who own Britain's industrial and commercial empires are thinking about throwing themselves off the top of a City office block at the prospect of a Labour victory at the next general election. In fact, the preparations they are making for such a result reveal a certain degree of confidence that a Kinnock government does not intend to damage their interests.

Of course, Labour leaders would be mightily indignant that any such anxiety should deflect the capitalist class from their business of making as much profit as possible from the exploitation of the workers. That is why they have been gorging so many banquets, making so many reassuring speeches and kneading so much overfed flesh among the rich. They are desperate to scotch the notion that a Labour government will take seriously all that nonsense in their consititution about common ownership.

This process has worked in the opposite direction as well. Some companies are willing to pay substantial money for the services of anyone who has worked closely with the people who hope to be ministers in a future Labour government. Aides of prospective Chancellor of the Exchequer John Smith and of Jack Cunningham, who will probably be in charge of their legislative programme, could ask for about £30,000.

Tony Blair is likely to look after employment and Gordon Brown industry so another high fee - about £20,000 - would be paid to anyone with inside knowledge of their work. And so on down the line, until we come to poor old Michael Meachcr whose interest in Social Security makes his helpers distinctly unsaleable to the tycoons.

The bribes are on offer in the hope of gaining some insight into, and influence over, the policies and actions of a Labour government. And the objective behind that is — well, it is not to implement Labour's supposed principle of ensuring a greater share of the fruits of their labour for the workers by hand or brain.

A Problem That Won't Go Away

Dogged by his own oratory, Aneurin Bevan was always liable to say something which he later regretted. One example of this was his declaration, when he was Minister of Health in the 1945 Labour government, that housing (which was one of his ministerial responsibilities) would not be an issue at the next general election.

What he meant was that the government would deal so successfully with the problem, which was blighting so many lives, that everyone would be living in stable, comfortable, affordable homes so that there were no votes in campaign promises about it. Well the problem persisted and. along with several others, it was an issue at the 1950 election. When Labour's majority was reduced almost to nil.

So how have things gone since then?

Des Wilson, a founder of the housing charity Shelter, recently reviewed the last 25 years: "In 1966 we highlighted that three million people were living in or near slums — Shelter argued it was a national emergency". Wilson now says there is another national emergency — three million are without a house. Since 1966 the numbers sleeping rough has risen from less than 700 to almost 3,000. The number of households in temporary accommodation — in other words homeless — has risen from just over 2,500 to almost 60,000. If this trend continues over a million families will be homeless by 1996.

Politicians who says they can solve problems like this are rarely at a loss to excuse their failure to keep their promises, they blame some sudden, unforeseen economic emergency, or a temporary need to give priority to some other need like fighting a war — or, perhaps, the perverse selfishness of millions of people who actually prefer sleeping rough or being crammed into some malodorous bed and breakfast hotel.

In spite of the politicians' words the problem endures because it is part of a wider condition of poverty which, inescapably, under capitalism, afflicts the majority of people. It can be solved only by conscious political action by the majority, to change society. Perhaps Bevan was too mesmerised by his own charisma to grasp this but the rest of us don't have even that excuse.

Ivan.

When Labour Ruled (3) (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In their wildest dreams—and some of them have been pretty wild—the Labour Party could not have hoped for more auspicious circumstances in which to contest a general election than they had in February 1974. Quite simply, the Heath government handed them victory on a plate, liberally garnished with enough propaganda material to satisfy the hungriest opposition. The Tories had won power in 1970, against most expectations, with what seemed a clearly-defined policy on unions, industrial disputes and state investment in industry. These were quickly modified, or abandoned. or applied with such purpose that the country was sunk into the misery of the Three Day Week—and that over Christmas.

In contrast to the Tories’ apparent yearning to return to the days of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Labour Party under Harold Wilson could offer the guarantee that their close relationships with the unions would get the factories and the power stations working again, the street lights and the television sets on. and the grateful workers co-operating by moderating their wage claims. What was surprising was that the Labour Party only just scraped back into office, as a minority government. Their eventual defeat five years later was not so surprising because by then they also were branded as a party of confusion and compromise and by the chaos of the so-called Winter of Discontent.

Familiar faces

But there was more to that defeat than the strikes and disruption of that winter. When Labour took over in March 1974 (a few days after the election were spent in Heath trying to survive in a coalition with the Liberals; as their leader then was Jeremy Thorpe it was probably just as well for them that the negotiations failed) they had a lot going for them.They were experienced and capable in the techniques of government; they knew how to run a ministry, deal with the higher-ranking civil servants, fight their battles in the Cabinet, persuade the working class that they were not doing what they actually were doing and so on. Such deceptions are always better received by the voters if they came from a familiar face and in people like Wilson. Callaghan, Healey and Jenkins Labour had some very familiar faces indeed. They had made themselves familiar during their previous spell in power, telling the working class that British capitalism was in crisis and they must tighten their belts to rescue it.

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

Barbara Castle, who was another familiar face mainly because as Minister of Transport she had brought in the breathalyser, excitedly confided to her diary: "We could turn out to be the most successful Labour government in history”. Harold Wilson promised everyone that the mistakes of the 1964-70 Labour government would not be repeated; for one thing he would confine himself to a relaxed vigilance to ensure that Labour carried out the promises in its election manifesto. On one past "mistake" he was specific. "A wage freeze is totally unacceptable. It would destroy this government", he informed the Cabinet in December that year.

Within three days of the return the government had ended Heath’s state of emergency and Three Day Week, mainly by settling the coal strike. The Pay Board, set up by the Heath government to check on wage claims which were above the official limits, was abolished and in July statutory wage restraint was ended. Other titbits were thrown to a relieved and expectant electorate—a freeze on rents, a promise to increase pensions, control prices and subsidise food. Museum admission charges were abolished—who now remembers that they were ever free?

Social Contract

Labour’s alternative to the Heath governments statutory wage restraint was the Social Contract. This was the central plank of their wages policy which guaranteed an end to strikes and other industrial disruption. "It is”, Wilson assured us in their manifesto for the election in October 1974, "about economic justice between individuals and regions. It is about co-operation and conciliation, not conflict and confrontation". In fact there was nothing new about the Social Contract since it was wage restraint by another name, based on the hope that the unions would moderate their wage claims in return for something called the Social Wage which covered things like state benefits, subsidies and rent control.

In October 1974, hoping that the workers would agree with their own assessment of their brief time in office (according to Wilson "no post-war British Government has achieved more in six months”) Labour called another election. Their hopes were not reflected in the re-election results; although there were 42 more Labour MP’s than Tories their overall majority was only three. To make matters worse the government was confronted with economic problems which made the Social Contract and the other promises in their manifesto look decidedly fragile—at a time when they could no longer blame the Tories for the mess they inherited.

Except that there was a different Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was like 1966 all over again. Early in 1975 Denis Healey was telling the unions, the Cabinet and anyone else who would listen that British capitalism's big problem was "inflation", and to beat it he proposed to cut public expenditure by £1 billion, including £62 million from the National Health Service. This was a bit puzzling to those Labour Party supporters who had believed their own propaganda that economic problems could easily be dealt with by increasing public expenditure. Some of them may also have wondered about Healey’s orthodox insistence that "inflation" was caused by excessive wage claims and his pressing for rises to be limited to ten percent which he knew, with prices rising as they were, would mean an effective cut in living standards of 2.5 percent. Was this, they may have asked themselves, what was meant by the Social Contract?

Soaking the rich

In any case the Social Contract did not survive for very long. In July 1975 the government more or less admitted that the whole idea was a lot of vote-catching nonsense when they announced a policy of virtually statutory wage restraint under which rises would be limited to £6 a week. The responsibility for such exposure of Labour's electoral deceits was. of course, laid on greedy and irresponsible workers, who may have been taken in by Healey's promise to squeeze the rich "until the pips squeak" and were unimpressed in a different way when he revised this, in February 1978, to "there is no way of avoiding (public expenditure cuts) by soaking the rich". Labour’s desperate excuse for their assaults on workers' living standards had always been that the alternative was even worse— mass unemployment. But this argument began to lose its terrors for the workers as, apart from what else was happening, unemployment began to rise—in January 1975 to 700,000 and a year later to well over a million.

Serious doubts about whether the government was losing their nerve were stimulated when, in July 1978, they produced a White Paper, Winning the Hattie Against Inflation, which announced their intention to hold pay rises to five percent and to impose sanctions against companies which settled above this level. In the circles where the pips were not yet squeaking—the CBI and the City—the White Paper's promise of tighter controls on wages got a relieved welcome. In other circles, especially those where the lower paid no longer had any pips worth squeaking, it was regarded as the last straw. At the end of 1978 there was a flood of pay claims way above the White Papers limit. Local authority manual workers put in for 40 percent, road haulage and tanker drivers 25 percent to 30 percent and Ford settled a claim at 17 percent.

The media, where there was general agreement that workers were readier to live nearer the poverty line, illustrated their point with poignant pictures of streets obstructed with uncollected rubbish and stories of bodies lying unburied because of striking gravediggers. Among such workers. whose interests the Labour Party had promised to protect with special tenderness, the bitter realisation came that they had been conned.

By-elections

The Labour government’s excuse for all this was that they were fighting a battle which, provided we all obeyed orders, would result in a final solution to the economic problems of British capitalism and so unprecedented prosperity for us all. The extent to which this was believed can by gauged by the succession of by-election defeats in safe seats such as Walsall North, Stechford, Roy Jenkins’s old constituency (he had shrewdly removed himself to a remunerative and insulated job in Europe), and. greatest blow of all, the mining seat at Ashfield. Labour’s response to this was not to stand by their principles, go down fighting or any of the things mentioned in The Red Flag. Instead they compromised all they claimed to stand for, including that precious manifesto, by entering into a pact with the Liberals. This enabled them to carry on for a while; they were not embarrassed at the price they had to pay for their wretched survival.

By the end of their time in office the Labour Party had proved as conclusively as possible that capitalism was out of their control. Many of the promises they had made in opposition could not be fulfilled; many others, such as the Social Contract, had been tried only to be abandoned as failures. They had failed to do the one thing—eliminate unemployment, which Healey had described when in opposition in 1972 as “by far the biggest single cause of avoidable human misery and suffering”. When they lost power in 1979 there were 1.5 million people out of work. In 1974 they had promised that they could easily deal with such problems. Confronted with their failure to do so they resorted to hysterical attacks on the working class, such as their encouragement to cross picket lines and report over-forceful pickets to the police.

Labour's time in power had prepared the workers into an acceptance of the Thatcher policies of so-called monetarism, cuts in public expenditure, screwing down state benefit claimants, restricting trade union power, and so on. The Tories exploited this situation to the full. Just as Labour had had victory handed to them on a plate in 1974 so the Conservatives had it five years later. There is a lesson in this, about the impotence of capitalism’s political parties in face of the system’s problems and their cynical response to it. Labour’s hope now is that we shall forget those lamentable years when they were the government and trust them to have a new approach, fresh ideas and a reborn determination not to make the same mistakes again. Well, whoever and whatever may be on their side in this, history is not.

Ivan

Moscow Gold (1992)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The late and unlamented British Communist Party— now renamed since its last Congress in November the "Democratic Left”—has recently opened its archives and revealed the extent of its subservience to Russia. George Matthews, a former Assistant General Secretary, wrote in the now defunct party’s now defunct journal Changes (14- 27 September 1991) that in June 1950 Pollitt was summoned by Stalin to draft a new programme for the British Party.

On 15 June 1950 Pollitt's report of his discussions with Stalin was put before the Party’s National Executive Committee who were reluctant to accept all of Stalin’s proposals because they were too controversial. During the next three months three drafts of a programme were prepared and on 20 October Pollitt took a few days’ holiday which in fact was a trip to Russia for further consultation with Stalin. A fourth draft was produced in December, and in January 1951 Pollitt paid another secret visit to Russia. After further consultations with Stalin The British Road to Socialism was published shortly after his return to London.

Secrecy was considered essential in the cold-war conditions of the early 1950s because of the risk of being linked too closely with Russian foreign policy or accused of being financed and manipulated by Stalin. George Matthews has shown moral courage in admitting his part in the secret negotiations between Pollitt and Stalin which occurred forty years ago:

The concealment of the role of Stalin by the party leadership, of which I was part, for so many years was indefensible.

Matthews takes the view that the Communist Party should have insisted that Stalin’s advice was acceptable only if it was public advice.

But he states:

It was inconceivable that in the conditions of 1950 the British party would have taken such a stand, and fruitless to speculate on what Stalin would have done if it had.

He who pays the piper calls the tune and the British Communist Party was too financially dependent on Russian money to resist Stalins demands. According to another former Assistant General Secretary, Rueben Falber, writing in the last issue of Changes (16/29 November 1991), the British Party continued to receive cash from Moscow right up until his retirement in 1979.

In stating "1 can only speak for myself in saying that 1 am not proud of the part I played in this affair". Matthews has publicly confessed his regret for being a party to the secret negotiations between Pollitt and Stalin and to relegating the Communist Party to a mere tool of Russian policy. But there seems to be little regret at the undemocratic and secret decisions made by the Communist Party on other occasions.

In 1947 a major policy change occurred with Pollitt’s pamphlet Looking Ahead in which he stated that it “is possible to see how the people will move towards Socialism without further revolution, without the dictatorship of the proletariat”. This change in Communist Party rules was made without debate of any kind. It is really beside the point whether this was all Pollitt’s own work of if, like The British Road to Socialism, it was dictated by Stalin. It revealed the sort of society the Communist Party wanted to see established in Britain: one where leaders would decide in secret the way it should be run.

Secret meetings

After Khrushchev's revelations about Stalin in 1956 Pollitt stated that "in condemning errors and abuses we must not forget that they occurred within the framework of socialist advance". But the rank and file were not to be given details of the “errors and abuses” because they were only discussed at a secret session of the British Communist Party in April 1956.

The history of the Communist Party was one that was dominated by secrecy; twists and turns of policy; decisions made by individuals or unrepresentative cliques; manipulation and financial control by Stalin; and a complete lack of understanding of socialist principles.

The rump of the old Communist Party may regret their past secrecy and subservience to Russia but they have yet to apologise for misleading workers or perverting socialist principles. And their recent pronouncements show that they still lack socialist understanding.

Carl Pinel

Editorial: Profit before need—again (1992)

Editorial from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Half of bedsit tenants live in unhealthy, unsafe homes, according to a report from the Audit Commission last September. At least 300,000 people in England are homeless, most in squalid bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but thousands live rough in such places as Cardboard City under Waterloo Bridge in London. Nearly 2.9 million homes are in poor condition, according to the last major survey in 1986. including 900,000 statutorily unfit. 460,000 lacking one or more amenities, and 2.4 million in poor repair.

Clearly, for millions of people their basic need for decent housing is not being met. There is an urgent need for existing houses to be improved and for new homes to be built. So why isn't this done? Why are the housing needs of so many neglected in this way?

One possible explanation would be that there is a shortage of skilled building workers to carry out the repairs and build the new houses. That this is not the explanation can be seen from the announcement last August by the Building Employers Federation that 150,000 building workers had lost their jobs since the middle of 1990 and that a further 100,000 would by the middle of 1992. So we are talking of there soon being a quarter-of-a-million unemployed building workers, not counting those who were already without work in 1990.

Perhaps there is a shortage of building materials? But this can't be the explanation either since "producers currently have almost 1.4 billion bricks stacked up in their warehouses—higher than in 1982, the nadir of the last recession, or in the mid-1970s, when the property market collapsed. That is enough to build 170,000 more houses" (Independent, 25 November 1991).

So what is the explanation? Simply that those who suffer from bad housing and those who have no home can't afford to pay for decent accommodation. A report in 1990 from the Audit Office on the homeless was quite explicit on this: “The link with poverty is underlined. The report says the average net income of homeless households in 1988 was under £100 a week, compared with an average income for all households in 1986 of £192 a week" (Daily Telegraph, 22 August 1990). The 1986 survey of housing conditions was equally clear: “78 per cent of homes lacking basic amenities had annual incomes of less than £6000 a year. The same was true for 69 per cent of households in unfit housing and 55 per cent of those in houses in poor repair" (Daily Telegraph, 12 September 1991).

What this means is clear. The resources—the materials and the skilled workers—to solve the problem exist but, under the profit-driven market economy, the incentive to do this is lacking. The capitalist economy only responds to paying demand, not real demand. Some group, such as the badly housed and the homeless, may have a need for something, even something as basic as decent housing, but unless they can afford to pay for this it will be neglected. The profit system only allows production to take place where there is a prospect of a profit being made. If this prospect is absent, then production will not take place. People's needs will go unmet.

This is why we have the obscene situation of hundreds of thousands of unemployed building workers and huge stockpiles of building materials along side millions of people living in bad housing conditions. It is further proof, not that any is really needed, that the profit system does not serve human needs.

The profit-driven market economy is not the end of history and pinnacle of civilization towards which humanity has been travelling since we came down from the trees, as some of its more lyrical defenders used to claim in the 1980s. It is a squalid system that is incapable of meeting even people’s basic needs in an adequate way. That is why it must go, and be replaced by a system of common ownership and democratic control of productive resources. This is the only social arrangement that will allow productive resources to be used for their proper purpose: to satisfy the needs of the members of society.

Recent Socialist Activities (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the title "Missed Opportunities. Shattered Dreams”, over two days last 16/17 November, the Socialist Party held a successful weekend of lectures and discussion on the lessons of 20th century politics.

On the Saturday, Dave Perrin opened with an account of the founding of the Socialist Party in 1904, the arguments between socialism or reforms at the turn of the century, and our early prediction that the election of so-called working class governments on reform programmes could not lead to socialism or to solving working class problems.

This was followed by Adam Buick dealing with the record of Labour governments during the years between 1929 and 1979. This showed how the Labour Party, through the fatal trap of reformism. became hopelessly enmeshed in the problems of running capitalism in the only way it can be run, that is, against workers and in the interests of the capitalist class.

On Sunday, Steve Coleman dealt with the elitist nature of Leninist politics and the contempt with which the leaders of Bolshevism regarded the abilities of workers to solve their problems. The so-called workers’ revolutions in Russia and Eastern Europe had been vanguard-led coups which had only led to state capitalist tyrannies.

The final discussion took up the ways in which reformist governments have steered the 20th century through a sequence of raised hopes followed by failure and disillusion. Pieter Lawrence pointed out that in all history no other century had seen as many deaths from war, poverty and disease. These had been the disastrous consequences of continuing capitalism during years when the socialist alternative had not been taken up. Despite this, because the spread of capitalism had resulted also in the growth of a common class interest amongst workers across the world, and such developments as world-wide communications, the means of building a strong world socialist movement have never been so close to hand.

Dick Donnelly reviewed the position of socialism in the 1990s and the gains that could arise from the new situation that exists. Now that the Labour Party had abandoned any pretence to be socialist, and now that the "Left” was unable to defend the late Bolshevik tyrannies in Russia and Eastern Europe, the political ground was more open to a better understanding of the genuine socialist alternative. There are now no mass parties that could possibly excite anybody looking for a change in society and this presented the Socialist Party with great opportunities.

Another education conference—this time on Democracy—is being held at the Socialist Party's Head Office in London on Saturday 1 February. For details see the Meetings Page.

Between the Lines: Timewasters 1 & 2 (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Timewasters: I

This year will see another gang of Labour fakers doing the rounds of kissing babies and promising the moon. Those who recall the records of past Labour governments will be insulted by such appeals; those who do not will be massively disillusioned if they place faith in Kinnock and Co. to build the New Jerusalem (or even a few more council flats) for them.

Those who fall for Major's smooth-talking deception about the creation of a classless society will be no less betrayed. Michael Cockerell's four part Class Rule (BBC2, Tuesdays, 9.50 pm) was a series which made great use of the archives to show how since 1945, British governments have repeatedly appealed to workers on the basis that they would abolish class, and have consistently confined such hopes to the empty realm of rhetoric.

After the Second World War Attlee defeated Churchill on what seemed to be a genuine tide of working-class desire for a more equitable society. When Labour won Hartley Shawcross is supposed to have said that "We are masters now", and Ministry of Information propagandists were paid to make films about how Britain belonged to everyone. Of course, the harsh reality of who owned Britain intervened and the Attlee government ended up using troops to smash strikes and telling the wage slaves to accept austerity for the sake of economic success -  for their bosses. Attlee was voted out and there then followed the thirteen wasted Tory years during which the aristocratic slob Churchill was removed and Macmillan, born into inherited class parasitism, posed as being an ordinary chap. The Macmillan Tories appealed to the One Nation fraud that Britain belongs to us all.

Cockerell's programme (number two in the series) showed how the Tories used sociologists to tell them that they needed to win over the skilled, aspirant workers if they were to hold on to power. In the "never had it so good" fifties the Tories built council estates for "respectable" wage slaves who would be bribed into submissive contentment. Tory MP's adopted proley tones for broadcasts which sought to depict them as just one of the lads - like vicars talking at youth clubs or Maxwell addressing his ex-employees at the pension fund meeting. It was all a disgraceful fraud. Unlike Maxwell, who had the fortune to drown before he was caught out as a transparent crook, the Tory Ministers were caught while still in office, and after Profumo the "we're all in it together" rhetoric of One-Nation Tories had an altogether hollow ring to it. In a desperate bid for sympathy the Tories appointed an unelected Prime Minister called Alec Douglas Home who did not know that feudalism had ended.

Home's undisguised condescension towards the lower orders was exploited fully by the super-opportunist Harold Wilson, a Labourite con-man who got to power by telling lies about the hardship of his miserable northern youth. (In fact, the liar had been an economics don at Oxford before taking up major criminal fraud in Westminster).

It is easy to forget that Wilson won the 1964 election on an appeal to working-class sentiments of wanting to do away with the rule of chauffeur-driven Lords and rich men. Today Wilson is a rich Lord and so is the fraud who followed him, Jim Callaghan. These lying tricksters perpetrated every known Tory stunt in their bid to run British capitalism on behalf of the minority owning class - yet it is a fact (not reported by Cockerell) that when Wilson beat George Brown for the Labour leadership in 1963 he was sent a telegram by the Central Committee of the Communist Party stating that at last a genuine socialist had become Labour leader!

Another fact missed by Cockerell, in an otherwise well-made series, was that Major was not saying anything different from Thatcher when he made his hollow promise about creating a "classless Britain". Often forgotten by political observers is a radio interview given by Thatcher in 1985 in which she said:

"I want people to have the right to property, the right to occupational pensions, the right to shares; the right to be the same as everyone as everyone else because they have that independence. That is my dream . . . Like Karl Marx, I want to get totally rid of class distinctions."

(Quoted in The Times, 6 May 1985).

Under Thatcher the number of people living in official poverty more than doubled. Major's efforts will be no different from that of Thatcher or of Macmillan; and who but the most naive expects the future Lord Kinnock to be any different from Messrs Wilson and Callaghan? The lesson of the Cockerell series is that this century has been one of broken political promises and shattered working-class dreams of equality. It is time for a change.

Timewasters: II

But still the pseudo-socialists emit their poisonous ideological gas. On Question Time (BBC1, 5 December) a faceless, nameless (at least, I have forgotten) Labour MEP spewed out the same old Labour cliches about how they would re-organise capitalism. On the panel with her was Tony Benn, who thinks that it is still 1945 and that what Attlee said he was doing was true. The MEP looked at Benn like something you scrape off your shoe; he sneered at her undisguised Toryism. While Labour's soul was being fought for all whispers of a socialist revolution were strictly off the menu.

Not so the following night when Timewaster III, Anne Murphy, appeared as one of the guests on the appalling midnight Channel Four phone-in show, Ring My Bell. Murphy is a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain -  that's right, the one that folded its tents and agreed to die of shame. Murphy's crowd want to hang on to the ghost of the old Stalinist monster, and in so doing she did more harm to the case for socialism in her replies to callers than MI5 could wish to do unaided. Murphy told callers that "under" socialism workers would be paid more and that, while we might be "critical" of Ceausescu, he was the leader of a good socialist country. Murphy plans to stand against Ken Livingstone in the next General Election as a Revolutionary Communist. Perhaps the workers of Brent East can hold a competition to decide which of them comes from a more dishonorable, detestable and failed tradition.

Steve Coleman