The Stall (1998)

A Short Story from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday 1 November an Alternative Politics Fair was held in Norwich and three of us decided to go along for the day to run a couple of stalls. We set the stalls side-by-side with one section piled high with copies of the Socialist Standard, including some free back numbers, and the other with literature, books, pamphlets, and leaflets of a radical nature.

Norwich (for those of you who have never visited it) is a colourful and cosmopolitan little city and political people know one another, either by sight, shared experience or reputation, so as we gathered in the auditorium of the Norwich Arts Centre there was no lack of co-operation between stall-holders as stalls were set up and boxes were carried into the hall. A general atmosphere of camaraderie reigned and some curiosity shown for other stalls. The Anarcho Syndicalists were there, a Disabled Rights Group, Friends of the Earth, Black Womens Rights, Ethical Investments—don’t ask me, I was told it was to do with investing ethically which is much as I thought. At ten thirty we opened to the public and waited for the surge.

The surge did not come and there were no hordes but there was a steady trickle and people did look round and some left laden with books and leaflets. Interest was shown in the Socialist Party stall and explanations required as to our political colour. We had to refute that we were anything to do with Militant Tendency, Socialist Workers, the Independent Labour Party or Arthur Scargill. Helpful discussion ensued from this but the idea of a system without the use of money was usually greeted with smiles of disbelief and some people said it would be very nice but . . .

The main problem for people seemed to be “human nature”. Fortunately the Socialist Party’s leaflet on the human nature question was included in packs of leaflets and Socialist Standards and handed to everyone who came to the stalls.There were the usual arguments. People would not work if food and shelter did not have to be struggled for. There would always be people who would grab more than others. We have to have leaders to represent us. Some people are bone idle and would live off the backs of those who worked harder. We endeavoured to deal with these arguments as they cropped up, but I have always found when talking to people about the abolition of money that they are, on the whole, not comfortable with the idea, seeing themselves as perhaps bereft without cheque books, wallets and purses to carry about with them. There is a general ignorance about the part money plays and a belief that it is money that is valuable and not the goods which are produced by people's labour. In fact I suspected that in the minds of some people money had been raised to that of almost supernatural status.

October's Socialist Standard was snapped up, the illustration on the front cover about Class War spotted immediately. We were asked what had happened to them. People agreed that in theory Class War s aggression had been unacceptable, but glints in the eyes of people told me that they found it exciting and satisfying, in some way responding to anger and frustration about the capitalist system. I found no-one to support anything the Labour government is doing and no-one who expected it to do anything other than it has done since it came to power.

It was a good day and Alistair sold many books on his stall, but disappointing to find that reformism is still depended on and money is still seen as the best means of exchange apart from perhaps the LETS system and bartering. A little sadly, I think, we packed our literature away and dismantled the stalls until the next time.

Heather Ball

US flexes its muscles (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we mention in our editorial, at the end of October 1997 another crisis emerged in the Middle East when Saddam Hussain banned Americans from the UN Special Commission (UNscom) charged with monitoring Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. A further conflagration threatened when Saddam promised to shoot down any US reconnaissance planes flying over Iraqi airspace.

Within days, US forces were put on alert with Britain’s Labour government offering wholehearted support.

What became clear as the waiting game unfolded, and perhaps surprisingly so for US Middle East watchers, was that the US and Britain were alone in their stand that Saddam should again have his ass kicked. Not only was caution urged by France, China and Russia (who together with the US and Britain make up the UN Security Council), but condemnation of US belligerence came from normally pro-US states such as Egypt (the second biggest recipient of US aid), Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

While Russia and France feared another US strike would jeopardise potential oil contracts and the recovery of old debts, Arab states’ reasons were two-fold.

The first had nothing to do with support for Saddam, but was more an alleged empathy with the long-suffering Iraqi people, still awaiting the lifting of UN sanctions that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands from malnutrition and disease since 1991.

The second is that many Arab rulers see the US as reneging on a post-Gulf War promise to deliver a Middle East peace settlement and because of the sanctions the UN refuses to impose on the Middle East’s other villain of the piece—Israel.

It is no secret that the US still bankrolls Israel to the tune of billions of dollars each year—a country whose nuclear arsenal is clouded in mystery—and in spite of US foreign aid legislation from 1977 barring funds to any state secretly developing nuclear weapons. Moreover, while Iraq’s flouting of one UN resolution can plunge the region into a long and protracted war, Israel is still in breach of six UN resolutions (338, 465, 476, 672, 673 and 681).

We might add that while the US is desperate to prove to the world that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, it is silent on its own chemical weapon stockpiles, and just as it can turn a blind eye to Israeli bombings of Libya in 1982 and 1996, so too can it ignore Turkey’s frequent over-the-border incursions to murder Kurds and the oppression Indonesian forces still carry on in East Timor.

All of this can be set against President Bush’s Gulf War Orwellian double-speak that “America stands where it always stands—against aggression”. Interesting words indeed from the first ever head of state to be condemned by the World Court, for “unlawful use of force against Nicaragua”.

The whole episode should make it immediately clear that the latest round of US sabre-rattling has less to do with any perceived threat Saddam poses to the present world order and rather more to do with US hegemony and US control of world oil supplies.

This is perhaps why Tony Blair could announce at the recent Lord Mayor’s banquet: “When Britain and America work together on the international scene, there is little we cannot achieve . . . we must not reduce our capacity to exercise a role on the international stage” (Observer, 18 November).

What Blair’s overt support for the US reveals is an all too common acknowledgement by the British elite that Britain can only ever move forward in America’s shadow.

Meanwhile, UN inspectors have since returned to Iraq, but with a reduction in the proportion of Americans represented. The US alleges that Saddam will have exploited the UN absence to conceal Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and insist they will not stop until all of Saddam’s weapons and related facilities are uncovered and the world is again a safe place to live in; a hollow sounding notion considering Russia and the US still have 5,000 nuclear warheads pointed at one another.

In the immediate future we can expect further military stand-offs in the region, with the working class hostage to the ongoing power struggle over control of the world’s centre of oil extraction.

John Bissett

Africa and the reality of capitalism (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Africa, a continent with virtually all the resources it takes for development, is the worst hit by hunger, starvation, armed conflicts, instability, displacement and abject poverty. Politicians, jockeying for the little resources left by the capitalist class, display the politics of hide-and-seek, repression and oppression.

This is mainly because of the system that encourages capital accumulation and profit-seeking. The cumulative effect is flagrant corruption, deprivation, wastage and impoverishment which intensifies underdevelopment.

Worst of all, as Africa is helplessly dragged into the global free trade championed by the IMF and World Bank, Africa’s natural resources are further exposed for deep exploitation by international capitalism, which deteriorates the woes of the already impoverished African working class. This shows that the objective conditions of African socio-economic formations do not favour capitalism.

Capitalism and imperialism are perceived as the major cause of the current underdevelopment in Africa. Capitalist development has tended to reinforce the exploitative dependence that enables underdevelopment to persist. The fact remains that Africa will never witness any meaningful development under capital accumulation and market profit-seeking which breed dissension, division, greed, selfishness, tribalism, ethnic chauvinism and the like.

Recently, after the just concluded 22nd ECOWAS Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, one African president identified division and the exposure of the region’s economy (market) to the Western capitalist class as the major source militating against the development of the region. But this is the base of capitalism—market profit-seeking and exploitation. It is not enough to identify these problems but more so to resolve them by helping to abolish the system that creates them.

The African working class have the cards in their hands for socialism if only they want it. Indeed, African conditions have revealed capitalism in its harshness and brutality: inequalities are too glaring. In the face of extremities of want and a meagre surplus, it is difficult to sell the idea that those who are in positions to accumulate should take what they can and leave the rest to suffer what they must. Africa’s ruling class has run out of ideas for fashioning and inspiring a functional development strategy, limited as it is by the constraints of working with ideas compatible with the maintenance of the existing property relations.

The evils of capitalism are conspicuous in Africa and Africans have lost confidence in capitalism, exemplified by the renewed springing-up of working-class consciousness in South Africa, The Gambia, Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and others but are choked by the external forces of capitalism. Again, another problem of the state of the development of productive forces in Africa is that it turns even the best of intentions into caricature. The lack of the development of the productive forces appears to encourage political authoritarianism and reduces “Socialism” to the management and redistribution of poverty.

But underdevelopment will surely persist if the existing capitalist relations of production are maintained, and if the dependence of Africa on international capital continues. Therefore, the overturning of the existing relations of production is necessary for overcoming underdevelopment. Socialism is inevitable if development is desirable.

It is obvious that in the event of protracted futile developmental efforts, the politics of anxiety has become institutionalised and increasingly the ruling class is displaying signs of paranoia while the subordinate classes have become frustrated, demoralised and available for induction into extremist movements as in Algeria, Senegal, Burundi, Rwanda and the like. The ruling class is fast psychologising failures which lie in the economic sphere.

The fact is that Africa has less hope of development if the property relations of production and distribution and the market system continue. The reverse is the solution—socialism abolishing capital accumulation and market profit-seeking and embracing production for need. The time is now to co-operate with fellow workers all over the world to establish global socialism.

JohnBull Nwarie

The Greasy Pole: Trust Me, I'm A Labour Politician (1998)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Labour. New government. New ruses. New lies. It takes us back to those times—not so long ago—when John Major put on his King Canute act, as the tides of sleaze washed all around him, denying that he was drowning in corruption or, if he was drowning, there was nothing wrong in that.

When Tony Blair was confronted with the evidence which suggested that, in response to a £1 million donation from the Formula One millionaire Bernie Ecclestone, the government had changed its mind over banning tobacco advertising on the racing cars, his response was to say that it was just crazy to even think that Labour ministers could be guilty of such a thing. When it was put to him that there was a little—how do we put this— inconsistency between government taxation policies and the way the Paymaster General manages his considerable wealth, Blair’s response was again to describe such an allegation as scandalous, incredible. So that’s all right then—except that in neither case did Blair’s apparent indignation allow him to answer the question.

During Prime Minister’s Questions on 10 December Blair’s comment to an intervention from William Hague about Tory and Labour MPs voting together to cut single parents’ benefit was “I’m sorry (which is not to be taken as meaning that he actually was sorry) but he is simply wrong. “ And when Hague gave examples of the assurances given by some ministers, before they got into office, that they would not implement the cuts designed by the Tory government, Blair snarled that, again, he was “sorry but that is simply not correct".

Women MPs

In fact, both Blair and his Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman went on record against the cuts in lone parent benefit when the Major government decided to implement them in November 1996. Labour’s election manifesto New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better had one brief paragraph on lone parents which set out plans to help them get jobs, which sounded very caring and supportive but forgot to mention about making them even poorer in the process. Of course there are other Labour MPs whose behaviour has been equally cynical. Chris Pond, for example, made his name as Director of the Low Pay Unit and in those days he was never backward in making scathing, well documented comments on Tory proposals to make the lot of poorer workers even worse. Pond was quite clear about the proposal to cut single parent benefit: — “particularly spiteful “ he called it and, just in case we had missed the point, “[the cut] will make it much harder for families to make ends meet “.Well since then Pond has become a Labour MP and he has voted for the cut in benefit which he labelled as “spiteful “.

Another Labour MP—a woman, and we all know how enthusiastic the Labour Party was about getting women into Parliament so that they could run capitalism more humanely and sensitively than men—was anonymously quoted in the Observer of 23 November, spouting the kind of unfounded bigotry about poverty which is supposed to be confined to the shriller kind of saloon bar Tory:

“These [single mothers] aren’t desperate people. Most of them have got men somewhere in the background. “

Without pausing to supply evidence of the existence of the high-living benefit scroungers, this architect of Labour’s New Britain showed what value she puts on election promises and how she regards the people who elected her party to power:

“There were some people who voted for me who thought we could make a difference.They didn’t understand.”

Perhaps this is the kind of attitude Tony Blair had in mind when he wrote, in his preface to Labour’s manifesto, that it was “hardly surprising” that “People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises.”

Scroungers

In fact the cut in lone parent benefit is not likely to be the end of the matter.The signs are that this government has more plans to eradicate these scroungers who threaten to undermine the very foundations of this country so that people like Bernie Ecclestone will not be able to invest so much in Formula One races and others like Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson will have to think twice about involving themselves in offshore trusts. Perhaps we may soon have special fraud squads to question anyone found by themselves pushing a pram.

Meanwhile there is Frank Field, who also came up through the poverty lobby and who is now Minister for the ominously titled Welfare Reform, refusing to rule out plans to impose further benefit cuts on single parents who don’t knuckle under to the government’s pressure to find a job—any job, no matter how bad the conditions or pay. Then there are all those other bloodsuckers like old-age pensioners who at present can backdate a benefit claim for a year but who, under Tory plans which Labour will implement, will now have to do it within one month—a measure described by Age Concern as “mean and certainly not in the spirit of Labour’s pre-election pledges’’

Of course it could be that the benefit rates are so generous that the people who live on them are emerging as a newly enriched privileged class, living in luxury while the likes of Ecclestone, Robinson and Blair scavenge in dustbins for their next meal to give them the strength to plan further benefit cuts. The organisation Justice, a human rights group, recently compiled some figures about conditions in this country. Justice says that the benefit for lone parents are £23 a week less than is needed; that one-in three children and 65 percent of disabled people live on or below the poverty line; that nearly 1.5 million homes are unfit to live in. And so on. Take your pick of the evidence, both statistical and anecdotal. It tells the same story and it is different from the one told by that Labour MP, who said the voters didn’t understand when they elected a Labour government.

Perhaps the voters did not understand; they didn’t understand that the real issue was not whether British capitalism should be run by the Conservative or the Labour Party but the urgency of replacing capitalism by socialism. One thing is certain: a proper understanding of what is at stake and how we can authentically change society can only be helped by the exposure of the contemptible creeps who tell us that under Tony Blair things can only get better.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: The Gravesend By-Election by Eye-Witness (1998)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour victory in this hotly-contested by-election—we were told at almost every meeting that the eyes of the world were on Gravesend—must have been a surprise to the Tories. They believed that the discontent of the masses with their living conditions would assure them of victory; but two things the Tories forgot: first, that the workers have a memory which they sometimes use and secondly, that the Labour Party are at least their equal at pulling stunts out of the bag.

The main issue of the election was "Which party can better administer Capitalism, the Labour Party or the Conservatives?” Throughout the campaign, the question of Socialism—the abolition of private ownership of the means of life and the consequent ending of wage-labour and capital—was mentioned by neither party (...)

The Labour Party flattered the electors by telling them that they were intelligent people and able to use their reason in deciding which party to support. And yet they did not shrink from making the biggest emotional appeal either party attempted. With about 3,000 present at a meeting, lights were put out and a miners' choir, complete with helmets and little lights shining, entered the hall from the rear, walking in single file and singing as they came.The applause was tremendous, as it was after each hymn and song rendered by the choir in the darkened hall. Sympathy of other workers for the miners had been won and, in the speeches which followed, the audience was told that every Tory vote would be a smack in the face for those miners. As an emotional appeal this was terrific and worth many votes to the Labour Party. The Tory stunt of carrying around a potato, dressed in Conservative colours, was puny in comparison.

(From an article by C.A., Socialist Standard, January 1948)

Party News (1998)

Party News from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classic Reprint

Common Ownership in New Zealand have reprinted the 1910 Socialist Party pamphlet Socialism and Religion with a short modern introduction.

This pamphlet, which can be described as a socialist classic, has long been out of print. It proclaimed and argued for the complete incompatibility, in both theory and practice, between socialism and religion and was issued, in the words of the Preface to the 2nd (1911) edition.“not as the view of an individual, but as the accepted manifesto of the Socialist Party on the subject”.

In its time Socialism and Religion was a best-seller not only in Britain but in North America too.There it received a boost from an eccentric Episcopalian bishop. William Montgomery Brown, who reproduced extensive passages from it at the beginning of his book Communism and Christianism, which went through twelve editions between 1920 and 1928, and whose front cover proclaimed "Banish Gods From Skies and Capitalists From Earth".

A limited number of copies arc available in Britain on a first come, first served basis. Send cheque (made payable to "The Socialist Party of Great Britain") for £2 (plus contribution for postage) to: Literature Dept, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

What’s in an oath?

In the House of Commons on 18 November Tory MP Alan Clark said that Sinn Fein MPs Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness should be able to take their seats in the House of Commons despite refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen.They refuse because they would prefer to swear allegiance to a different capitalist state, an Irish Republic in 1904:

It is perhaps worth recalling the Socialist Party’s position on this question as worked out in the early years following our formation in 1904:

"At the Annual Conference of 1910 electoral matters had a long discussion on a resolution from Manchester Branch, 'that any member elected to Parliament shall not take the oath of allegiance'. That this resolution was tabled in spite of of decision by the 1909 Conference, 'That the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, in reference to the oath of allegiance to Parliament, is that oaths and forms imposed by the constitution shall not be allowed to prevent elected representatives from taking their seats’ showed the interest aroused by the issue. A resolution to send the question to branches was lost by 14 to 13 votes. Conference finally endorsed the 1909 ruling, and this was endorsed by a poll of the party and still stands os the Party position to-day. ”

(Socialist Standard, September 1954).

Editorial: Gulf Crisis (1998)

Editorial from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month’s Gulf crisis demonstrated once again that the alliance for the Gulf War effort has effectively crumbled. Saddam Hussein expelled US/UN weapons inspectors from Iraq leading to the US, supported by Britain, threatening military action. But states such as France and Russia sought to undermine their stance–culminating in Russia offering Iraq a diplomatic way out of the crisis.

Since the end of the Gulf War the sanctions imposed on Iraq have really taken their toll on the Iraqi economy and the working class. This, of course, could potentially threaten the regime and Saddam needs to get the sanctions lifted as quickly as possible realising that the Gulf War alliance has ended and that any crisis would create a split between states such as France and the US. His ability to play off one against the other worked as once again the desperate Iraqi situation has been put on the agenda with France and Russia (amongst others) keen to bring Iraq into the world economy and moreover to provide capital to invest in Iraqi oilfields.

And here is the rub. The Gulf situation is just an expression of the competitive rivalry between the major powers in the age of “each against all”. By keeping Iraq as a “bogeyman” it allows the US a legitimate interest in the region. It’s always worth remembering that just prior to the Gulf War Iraq was backed as the region’s policeman–primarily to contain Iran. Despite everything, this is still the case. The US needs Saddam and has no intention of getting rid of him. The US strategy is one of keeping Iraq weak but just strong enough to handle any internal or external threat to the regime.

The idea that the US–backed by Britain–is the true defender of democracy against dictatorship, of civilisation against barbarism, is the sickest of jokes. Saddam could not have survived without the protection of the world’s largest gangster organisation–the United States. And just as in the Gulf War it is the impoverished and half-starved Iraqi working class that has paid the price. Like the working class everywhere it has no friends either in barbarian dictators or their supposedly “democratic” and “civilised” opponents.

Voice From The Back: The cost of living (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The cost of living (1)

A Smethwick woman who was heavily in debt plunged 100 feet to her death from a tower block flat seconds after council bailiffs called to evict her. (Evening Mail, 5 November.) Police and Sandwell Council officials said that the woman owed nearly £1,500 in rent arrears alone and her death was being treated as suicide. Council bailiffs discovered the woman’s body outside the Ashcroft tower block off Windmill Lane, Smethwick, after forcing the door of her 11th floor flat to evict her.

The cost of living (2)

Diamonds are supposed to be a girl’s best friend, but they are also a cat’s. (Daily Telegraph, 7 November.) Leah, a lilac Burmese, has just taken delivery of a £20,000 diamond-encrusted collar.The collar, of 40 diamonds on a 24 carat strip, is a gift from her owners, David and Jill Atkinson. They initially contented themselves with a diamante version, but then became convinced that a cat raised in luxury at their home in Pendle, Lancs, would quickly realise it was a fake. There was also the fact that Leah’s canine companions, two afghans, a borzoi and a black labrador, had £2,000 coats.

For the record

A recent study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, Inequality in the UK, says that on virtually any measure poverty has increased dramatically over the past two decades, hand in hand with affluence for some.The richest 10 percent of the population now enjoys the same level of income as that brought home by all the poorest half of the country’s households put together.

The peacekeepers

When the UN went to war against general Mohamed Farrah Aidid, between June and October 1993, American helicopters fired on hospitals, houses and civilian crowds, killing hundreds of unarmed people. After an attack in which 71 died, the head of the UN mission, Admiral Jonathan Howe said, “We knew what we were hitting: it was well planned.” When Alex de Waal challenged a US military attorney on these points, his answer was that the Geneva Convention did not apply to UN forces, on the technicality that the UN itself was not a signatory to the Convention (Guardian, 30 October).

The market lures, ko

This brings us to the Eighties and Nineties. For the first time this century, investing truly became a one-way bet, regardless of when the investment was made. Due to this incredible rally, price-earnings ratios rose to abnormally high levels. Dividend yields, which is how the City relates the size of the dividend to the price of the share, hit abnormally low levels normally associated with the start of a stock market collapse. In the past, such excesses were always followed by a large drop. But financial commentators invented fanciful theories such as “new paradigm”, high productivity and global competition to suggest that this would not happen this time. Last week it did so (Financial Mail on Sunday, 2 November).

Where now?

Perhaps Ecstasy doesn’t make you depressed; perhaps stress and frustration are just symptoms of late 20th-century living. And at least Ecstasy provides a temporary escape route. But when kids are smoking puff by 14 and dropping pills by 16, they may also be disillusioned by 19 or 20. And if the Ecstasy dream really is over, if clubs are no longer our temporary utopias, if the drugs really don’t work any more, where do we all go now? (Big Issue, 3-9 November).

Stifling protest

Last summer, a new import from the USA reached these shores: ”strategic law suits against public participation BP launched a lawsuit against Greenpeace for the £1.4 million it claimed it had lost as a result of the group’s occupation of a test-drilling rig near the Shetland islands. If the organisation would not pay, BP said, it would hold three members of Greenpeace’s staff personally liable. American companies tend to charge protesters with defamation, conspiracy or criminal liability, and the cases can drag on for years.The courts often dismiss them, but the legal costs and the charges themselves are increasingly enough to deter protesters and stifle dissent. This is why they are popularly called “strategic” law suits. Big corporations, like McDonalds in their suit against the two campaigners, can afford the costs. Reformists can’t.

Very fishy

A report published recently by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food found that taking cod liver oil at the recommended dose would more than double the exposure to dioxins and PCBs for toddlers, school children and adults. (Earth Matters, Autumn 1997.) But the MAFF report concluded that despite its findings, it was still “safe” to take cod liver oil. Dioxins and PCBs are not only carcinogenic but have been show to disrupt our hormonal systems.

Only kidding

Even as Tony Blair is calling on Britain to become a “beacon for the world”, the Guardian (2 October) reports that quite legal orders are being taken in a Hampshire town for UK-made mortar launchers, voice-print truth phones, grenades, disrupter cannon, carbon dioxide guns, explosives, “blunt trauma vests” and civilian surveillance systems.

That Sinking Feeling (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there is one thing that the current British Chancellor and his predecessor are agreed about it is that Britain currently enjoys the most favourable economic conditions witnessed in decades. Around the wider developed world, economists and politicians of various kinds have been speaking of the dawn of a new golden age, based on an economic and cultural paradigm shift never previously encountered.

Anatole Kaletsky in the Times has summed up this prevailing economic orthodoxy well:

  “. . . new paradigm theories can be divided into two quite separate kinds. One type asserts that the long-term sustainable rate of growth in the American (or British or world) economy has increased because of globalisation, technology or some other exogenous boom. The other type claims nothing about the trend rate of growth, but merely says that economies can now operate at lower levels of unemployment than in the 1970s and 1980s without inflation getting out of control” (12 September)

The first of these theories is the most exciting, but at the same time, the one that is most obviously and demonstrably false. No-one who has examined growth statistics for the major capitalist states since World War Two could possibly think otherwise unless their job was to provide propaganda and not dispassionate analysis. Growth statistics for the world’s oldest capitalist state–Britain–and for the world’s largest economy–America–give the lie to this misleading propaganda straight-away, demonstrating a post-war trend observable in most other major states too. The long-term growth rate for the major world economies has not been rising–it has been falling fairly steadily. This is illustrated in the table below:

In what are now the European Union countries annual GDP growth averaged nearly 5 percent in the 1960s. During both the 1970s and 80s this had fallen to under 2.5 percent. This decade it has so far been barely 1.5 percent.

Much has been said about the now dilapidated state of many of the so-called “tiger economies” in recent weeks. Falling growth rates in Japan are a good illustration of the underlying difficulties that are now rising to the surface in the entire Pacific Rim. Japan’s heady 1960s annual growth rate of 10 percent had declined by the 70s and 80s to the 3-4 percent range. Average annual growth so far in the 1990s is under 1.5 percent.

The world growth rate has also fallen, though not by as much as in the major economies because of the comparatively sharp growth of some the remaining Asian states and a handful of developing states in Africa and South America. It is these states which have been able to undercut the major economic powers in the production and sale of many primary and manufacturing products, largely because of the subsistence wages paid to the working class there.

Prices

The idea that the major economic powers can now operate at lower levels of unemployment before inflation takes off is also incorrect. It is in part based on the erroneous belief–introduced into bourgeois economics by the “Phillips curve” analysis beloved of economics students everywhere–that somehow a trade-off exists in the capitalist economy between unemployment and price rises. This was in actual fact an analysis discredited in the 1970s and which is no more relevant now than then.

Persistent price rises in the capitalist economy occur when the government pushes more currency into circulation than is warranted by increases in real growth. In other words, more token representatives of value are pushed into circulation than new value actually produced. Under the influence of John Maynard Keynes economists and governments across much of the world since the Second World War have persistently issued an excess of currency, leading to rising prices year on year. Coupled with the massive oil price hikes this led to particularly large price rises in the 1970s and 80s. Price rises in the 1990s have tended to be more modest on average. This has principally been a product of the world slump and the massive indebtedness still overhanging the world economy, which has acted as a drag on accumulation. If it was not for the continuing process of currency inflation going on in countries like Britain, prices would actually have been falling not continuing to rise slowly. In effect, currency inflation has outweighed what would have been the negative effect on prices during the slump. (A similar process took place during and after the 1974-5 slump and then 1980-2). This time, the amount of unliquidated debt is so huge that the overall price level, relatively, has only crawled upwards, while some prices such as in the property market, have fallen significantly.

Unemployment rates

The view that unemployment rates are somehow lower now at each peak of the economic cycle is pure fantasy. Unemployment across the EU is currently running at about ten percent. This is not historically a low figure. Compared to the 1950s and 60s it is positively astronomical. The countries most successful at reducing unemployment have co-incidentally been the countries which have made the most significant changes to the way in which the unemployment total is calculated. These are the United States and the UK. After 30 changes in the UK alone since the mid 1980s the claimant count is now significantly lower than the unemployment total otherwise would have been. The official unemployment figure is just under 1.5 million at the time of writing, though the real total is commonly estimated as being 150,000-300,000 higher (some put the true figure much higher still). To put this into perspective, when unemployment rose to over 1 million for the first time in the UK in the post-war period, during the early 1970s, there were mass demonstrations across the country.

Huge numbers of the jobs actually created in countries like the US and UK have been part-time or short-term contract jobs. In the US in particular, millions of part-time jobs have been created while the take-home wages of huge swathes of the American working class have declined even on their levels of 20-5 years ago.

Paper tiger

There has, of course, at least until recently, been the dynamism of the so-called “tiger economies” in the Far East for the supporters of capitalism to point at. They do not seem to be pointing in their direction at the moment, however. The growth of these economies has been very real and much that has been said about them is true–or at least was. The problem is that no capitalist state can seriously expect spectacular, or even uninterrupted growth, in anything like the long-term. The history of the capitalist system demonstrates that a time always comes when the drive to expand production and profit in some sectors of the economy comes up against the limits of the market at any one time. The difficulties created by excessive and disproportionate growth in these sectors can be papered over for a time by the extension of credit. This is stored up capital gleaned by the financial institutions from previous circuits of production and which can then be redistributed and used as an advance against the sale of future commodities. It is, in effect, an advance of stored-up value against the anticipated production of new value.

The advance of credit mostly keeps capitalism running smoothly and speeds up greatly its circuits of production. The problem arises when–as always happens as the boom reaches its peak–credit is being advanced effectively as a life-belt to those enterprises in serious difficulties because they have produced too much for their available market. The more credit is advanced, and the longer this process continues, the more serious the necessary “correction” will have to be. If financial institutions keep extending credit to unprofitable enterprises, they will all go under, not just the latter. This is what has happened in the Far East.

The bubble burst initially in the regions strongest economy, Japan, at the turn of the decade where the stock market fell by over 60 percent, property prices collapsed and where short-term interest rates were reduced to 0.5 percent in a futile attempt to stimulate economic activity. But still the banks and brokerage firms ploughed money into essentially unprofitable schemes and enterprises. The result has been, after a period of apparent abatement, bank collapses and failures among the brokerage houses. Japan’s fourth largest brokerage house, Yamaichi, recently collapsed with liabilities estimated at $24 billion, followed by Japan’s seventh largest bank. Several other banks and securities firms are reported to be in severe financial trouble.

The same difficulties that have beset Japan have spread alarmingly among the other Far East economies, particularly Malaysia, Thailand, Kong Kong, and worst of all, South Korea. The financial bubble in these states, which has been an integral part of the so-called “Asian Way” of economic development, is now exacting its revenge. Legendary Morgan Stanley investment strategist Barton Biggs has summed up the situation beautifully:

  “The heralded Asian Way is something of a joke. The Asian Way, it turns out, has a lot less to do with education, hard work and family values and a lot more to do with pegging your currency, borrowing a lot of money in dollars, plowing it helter-skelter into relatively unproductive capital investment and real estate projects of dubious merit owned by the elite, corrupting your politicians by involving them in the stock market bubble and assuming everyone is going to live happily ever after” (Guardian, 24 October).

Ridiculously overvalued stock markets in Asia and in many other parts of the world are a reflection of the fact that financial speculation and growth in stock market investment bears no real relation to value production in the real economy. The stock markets may have boomed, but the productive economy has not entered into some golden new period, has not experienced a ‘paradigm shift’ and has not been able to supersede the boom-slump cycle.

At some time the world financial bubble will burst, bringing stock prices back into line with the slothful realities of the productive sphere of the economy. Stock markets growing at 20 or 30 percent annually when growth is barely two or three percent (and real manufacturing growth less still) is simply not something that is going to last. Sooner or later–as on all previous occasions–there will be a correction. Whether the situation in the Far East will be the catalyst for this process or not is impossible to say. What can be said with a fair degree of certainty, however, is that the more the fault lines are papered over and hidden, the greater the eventual damage will be.

Dave Perrin

Chinese capitalism (1998)

Book Review from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Chinese Provinces in Reform’, by David Goodman (ed). Routledge, 1997.

One consequence of the change from state capitalism to a mix of state and private ownership that has been taking place in China over the last few years has been an increase in decentralisation. There is now more political and economic decision-making at the provincial level—but since many provinces have a population of over 40 million, this means it is still a long way from local policy-making. It is the aim of this book to study some of the differences in political and economic impact of the reforms in various parts of China. Through the thicket of statistics and acronyms, some interesting points do emerge.

Provinces in the north have generally received less in the way of investment from abroad than southern provinces which are nearer to overseas markets. Liaoning, for instance, has a lot of state-owned heavy industry which is inefficient and has large debts. Some such factories have been made bankrupt, and since unemployment pay and pensions are basically provided by enterprises rather than the state, past and present workers inevitably suffer. In other state-owned factories which provide accommodation for workers, flats went unheated in the winter because the companies could not afford to buy coal. No wonder there were some (small-scale) demonstrations by workers. But the coastal city of Dalian has become a centre for Japanese investment: it is only four hours from Tokyo by plane, and offers cheap and well-qualified labour—some companies like Canon and Toshiba have set up factories there.

Shanghai, the largest city in China, in effect has provincial status on its own. Between 1990 and 1994, over half a million people there lost their jobs in state companies through redundancy. A kind of unemployment benefit has been introduced, but it is not enough to support a person. So inequality has increased noticeably, with the other end of the scale perhaps being marked by the one percent of Shanghai’s population who have mobile phones. Interestingly, though, there are not yet enough wealthy consumers there to support up-market department stores.

But no doubt, as China’s private capitalist class expands, there will soon be a Harrods to satisfy their whims.

Paul Bennett

“Their Country Needs You” (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the moment we have adverts appearing on television, encouraging young people to join the armed forces, each one portraying the state killing machine as a force for worldwide benevolence.

The Air Force’s advert, which contains the above slogan shows scenes of helpless civilians, clearly meant to be in the former Yugoslavia, being helped by a British air force aid drop. Isn’t it lovely? “Join the Air Force, save the world.” But let’s look further into what the armed forces really are doing in the former Yugoslavia, and exactly how benevolent the military presence there is.

First, we have to penetrate the fog of media obfuscation and deceit on these matters. There are two big lies, that mutually reinforce each other. The first is the idea that the people of Bosnia are like mad dogs, driven by centuries of ethnic tension to hate and kill one another, and that it was only the suppressing force of the Titoist dictatorship that stopped this war from erupting sooner. How often have we seen British journalists on our screens resignedly despairing at the war, and wondering how people who used to be friends and neighbours could suddenly turn upon one another, and perpetrate such gross atrocities? How often have they glibly explained it away as part of ancient ethnic hatred, spreading back to the Middle Ages? This hides the real cause of the war, and thus protects those truly guilty from facing the accusation of responsibility.

The Second Big Lie follows on from this: that the only way to bring peace to the region was to return a suppressing force, and to enforce a deal upon the peoples there, a benevolent military intervention with the sole aim of bringing peace and rebuilding the devastated region; that “we” are only interested in helping the poor and afflicted of the region, and “our” military presence is a truly selfless act (just as the US invasion of Vietnam was a selfless act to bring peace and freedom there); their country literally does need us, and without us the mad dogs will be at one another’s throats once again.

Local power elites

To dispel the first lie requires a simple examination of the recent history of the former Yugoslavia. In the early eighties Yugoslavia was a relatively prosperous state-capitalist country, with strong, functioning federal institutions, and a decent welfare state. However, its economy was on the wane, and so it was forced to take an IMF loan, which came with an accompanying economic restructuring scheme that involved selling off state assets. Repaying the loan and meeting the interest payments meant that the state had to cut back on welfare benefits, as we have seen happen in so many other countries.

Many workers went without wages, the welfare institutions began to crumble, and as industry after industry began to falter an increasing proportion of the working population found themselves unemployed, leading to a strong degree of discontent. These are precisely the conditions in which hatred can find a good breeding ground, as desperate workers search around looking for someone to blame for their misfortune.

This situation need not have developed into war since working class hatred does not lead to war, it is the conflicting interests of the ruling classthat does this. As Yugoslavia became more and more impoverished the Federal government had less and less money, and began to deny funds to the regional state governments–a clear threat to the power elites of each of those states (since the power elite in a state capitalist country is dominated by the political bureaucracy, which relies on this money for its economic and power base). Economic impoverishment, plus a denial of their source of power, left the political elites with little room for manoeuvre. They hitched a lift onto growing popular discontent, and used the helplessness and despair of the workers to their own ends.

The spate of nationalist secessions (some of which worked to the favour of Western capitalist interests, such as Germany, which hastened to recognise the breakaway Croatia) brought the local elites into open competition for the region’s resources, and as is often in capitalism competition escalated to its ultimate expression, warfare. The so-called ethnic war in Bosnia was essentially a war over property (as all nation states are just an expression of property).

None of this in itself proves that the West is being anything less than benevolent by intervening in Bosnia. There are however, three very strong reasons why this intervention is based on more that simple kind-heartedness.

First, the need for regional stability. The chaos and potential danger of the Balkan war escalating and dragging other people in was too great. The potential for having even more refugees coming across the borders and flooding into Europe was too much for our masters to bear. As long as the region remained unstable and politically tense it was a threat to the local markets, and to our masters’ sources of profits.

Second, there are the power games of our masters: imperial spheres of influence. Each imperial nation/bloc has an area that the others recognise as its zone in which to operate, and traditionally Yugoslavia and eastern Europe has been the stomping ground of the USSR/Russia. Remember the way in which President Yeltsin warned against NATO military intervention? This was an area where his bunch of capitalists were supposed to be in charge. The US, however, have long had a policy of penetrating their influence into Eastern Europe, and since 1980, particularly Yugoslavia. In this respect the Western occupation of Yugoslavia is beneficial more to the US world political hegemony than it is to the inhabitants of that country.

Third, there is the usual and most elemental reason for any activity by capitalist powers: profit. As noted above, the Yugoslav economy had collapsed, and was now open to penetration by Western capital. Most of the former Yugoslavian states are heavily in debt, in fact Bosnia and Croatia will be heavily in debt until the middle of the next century, becoming debt-slave nations. British forces have been sent in to re-enforce Western entry into that sphere of influence, and guarantee their markets for British business.

Occupation

Bosnia is now effectively under Western occupation. The fig leaf of Bosnia’s democratic procedures falls apart very quickly under any form of scrutiny and shows itself to be an even greater pretence than elsewhere. Whilst there is a parliament, the supreme arbiter on the Dayton agreement, and therefore of any executive decision in Bosnia, is the Western appointed High Commissioner. Further, as part of the enforcement of the Dayton principles, foreign police (the IPTF–International Police Task Force) are being used rather than locally accountable forces. When a country is ruled by an appointed foreign bureaucrat, and their laws are enforced by foreign police, most people would call that colonial rule.

The amount of imperial penetration into Bosnia is even greater, because the local ruling class has been stripped of control over its own economy: all the financial institutions of Bosnia are Western controlled, and the Bosnia governments has no control over fiscal policy. Western capital is remaking Bosnia in its own image, and only when this is finished will it leave the new economy to run itself.

It is curious, given the importance given to the whole Bosnian war and its outcome by the Western media, how few of the details of Dayton were examined by mainstream journalists. We were told it would end the war, and that it would partition Bosnia, but the rest was left unexamined. Could there be some reason for this?

The Bosnian Serbs, and their “hard-liners”, have become the official enemy for daring to call the NATO force in Bosnia an occupation force. As far as Socialists see it the Serb hard-liners are just as bad and exactly the same as their imperial rivals, except they’ve lost out. So we now see them vilified in the Western media. At the moment there is a new film out in the US in which it is a Serbian terrorist that has got hold of the nuclear missile that the hero has to find. It makes a change from Arab terrorists. Serbian protesters in Bosnia are “thugs” while democracy campaigners in Belgrade are “demonstrators”. This is not to say that they are not, but to draw attention to the difference in treatment those who oppose and those who favour Western interests receive.

Western forces seized the transmitters to Bosnian Serb television, because it was “controlled by hard-liners”. It did this to ensure “fairness” in the elections there, because biased television was a threat to the victory of Plavsic, who the West supported. The amount of double-think required to report this must have been terrific: NATO is interfering in the elections, to ensure “fairness” i.e., that their chosen candidate had a better chance of winning!

Neither when NATO broadcast counter television signals from planes, nor when it shut down the television stations did Western journalists raise any objection based upon the freedom of the press. They just went along with the line that it was necessary to do this to protect the “peace process”. The truth is that NATO forces were being used to interfere in the elections to try to ensure a friendly government was put in place, and weaken the grip of a hostile local power elite, to ensure that Western market penetration could continue. Speaking of market penetration, Volkswagen have just opened up a factory in Bosnia, using the empty space in the Bosnian economy to get hold of cheap resources, and even cheaper, desperate, workers.

The Yugoslav war has been a twentieth century tragedy. The tragic heroes (the ordinary people) denied a voice, a role even, left just to die in silence while a whole cast of villains marched around the stage. There can be no doubts about who and what is to blame for this war. Behind the masks of kindliness worn by the villains of the piece lay the identical and twisted face of the god of Mammon, of capitalism. This war was a natural part of the continual war of capitalism, and its victims sacrifices to the cause of profit.

Pik Smeet

Moscow's orphans (1998)

Book Review from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The British Communist Movement and Moscow’, by Mike Mosbacher. Libertarian Alliance, 1997.

Have you ever wondered what became of the Communist Party after the collapse of state capitalism in Russia and East Europe? This short pamphlet will tell you.

The official Communist Party – or Communist Party of Great Britain, to give its full name, by which it was only known on formal occasions and in an international context – in effect dissolved itself in 1991 when it changed its name to Democratic Left and became a trendy left green-feminist-gay pressure group. Its previous policies, however, were kept alive by the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) which broke away in 1988 and which still publishes the Morning Star. In Scotland another group of ex-CPers set up the Communist Party of Scotland in 1992. An earlier breakaway in 1977, the New Communist Party, still exists but has become, according to Mosbacher. little more than a group denying the atrocities that occurred under Stalin in the same irrational way as Nazis deny those that occurred under Hitler.

Immediately after the CPGB changed its name to Democratic Left in December 1991 this name was taken up by a group which had no historical, political or, for that matter, legal right to do so. The organisation that goes under this name, and publishes the Weekly Worker, is in fact a super-Leninist sect, apparently originating as a splinter from the Turkish Communist Party, which employs the same unscrupulous tactics of infiltrating other organisations (at the moment Scargill’s SLP) as the Trotskyists; indeed, according to Mosbacher, it does have Trotskyist members.

Mosbacher, surprisingly perhaps for a supporter of the mad free market ideas of the Libertarian Alliance, has produced a useful and well-informed little pamphlet. He gets our position right too when he states:

  “The Socialist Party of Great Britain takes the view that the Soviet Union never was socialist in the first place. This has been its position since 1917. In a way this party goes further than any other on the revolutionary left in criticising the Soviet Union, in that it views Leninist principles and modes of organisation as non-socialist, indeed anti-socialist”.

Adam Buick 

Letters: Why Socialism Must Be World Wide (1998)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Socialism Must Be World Wide

Dear Editors,

I have read the articles in the November Socialist Standard setting out the basic socialist philosophy with much interest and benefit.

In its articles on Russia the Socialist Standard pointed out, in 1934, that socialism “is impossible in one country alone, owing to international economic interdependence”.

This fact still applies, so how would a socialist Britain, having abolished money, exchange goods with a predominantly capitalist world?

Bryan Fair, 

Dorchester, Dorset

Reply:

A “socialist Britain” is an impossibility for the same reason that a “socialist Russia” was in 1934: capitalism is a world system into which all countries are locked and from which none can escape on its own.

Various countries, beginning with Russia but also others like Cuba and Nicaragua, have tried to escape from the laws of the world market economy but only at the price of establishing a state capitalism which in the end has had to take into account world market pressures anyway.

In fact it could be said that an isolated “capitalist Britain” is just as impossible as an isolated “socialist Britain”. Ever since capitalism first began to develop about 500 years ago it has involved multi-lateral trade between different countries so making them mutually interdependent; in fact one definition of capitalism is that it is the world market, the world trading system.

As capitalism has developed countries have become more and more interdependent. International trade on which all parts of the world now depend for the daily lives of their inhabitants (just think what you had for breakfast) reflects the underlying fact that production itself involves working on materials that have in part come from different parts of the world.

At one time the typical pattern was that raw materials would come from one part, be worked up into a finished product in another, and then sold there or in some other part. Nowadays, not just raw materials but also parts and semi-finished products are exported and imported. The best known example is perhaps the “world car”, as most cars now are, whose various components are produced in a number of different countries and which is only assembled in one particular country.

So “interdependence” is the key fact of economic life today. Because capitalism is a world system so must be socialism, the system which will replace it. In fact, socialism recognises that all parts of the world are interdependent today and seeks to bring social and institutional arrangements into line with this underlying productive fact by establishing a worldwide democratic community with, besides local and regional (“national” in today’s parlance) administrations, a world administration. Frontiers become obsolete, as does adherence to a particular nation-state. We all become citizens of a united world, Earth-people not “British” or “American” or “Russian” or “South African” or whatever.

Trade, as the buying and selling of goods, ceases to exist but not of course the transfer of goods from one part of the world to another. This will still take place, even if the people of socialist society might decide to produce everyday items of individual consumption more locally than at present. This won’t be trade because it won’t be an exchange of equivalents measured in monetary terms. It will just be the transfer of materials and products from one part of the world to other parts where they are needed, without anything needing to be transferred “in exchange”

Editors.

A Stalinist Writes

Dear Editors,

I saw your review of the book Children of the Revolution; Communist Childhood in Cold War Britain and read it with interest. I must now buy the book, although I anticipate being enraged.

Being born in 1940 I well recall my childhood and teenage years as the son of Communist parents. Wonderful, loving Stalinist parents. Stalinists they must have been because they refused to go along with the demonisation of Joe.

I was brought up on the Daily Worker and books were always plentiful. I could go my own way, I was just one of the fortunate few with access to both sides. After a brief mid-teen crisis when I wanted to be the “gum-chewing good guy” and not a “gook” or an automaton under the control of “State Capitalism” I became a Communist.

Like your reviewer I too joined first the YCL and later the CP. However, I never quit. I went instead from believing that Stalin was of his time to now knowing that Stalin was right. He remains right to this day.

I remember telling my Dad that I wanted to go to Sunday School with some of the kids. This Stalinist said “go ahead”. I went once, never again. I remember too, being on a train with him in 1956 when a man came in the carriage asking for cash and help as he was a poor Hungarian on the run from the Russian hordes. My Dad put his glasses in his top pocket and told him “there are two ways to leave this carriage, by the window or the door, take your pick”. Predictably, this fighter against Red tyranny scurried through the door.

Because, comrades, sometimes the tanks have to be sent in and if the Hungarian counter-revolution had succeeded or the Czech one in 1967 [sic], the chaos that is now Eastern Europe would have occurred sooner with other generations suffering what is being suffered now thanks to revisionists, counter-revolutionists, traitors, the weak, corrupt and the liberal.

And who is counting the dead now, as they pile up all over Eastern Europe. But it’s OK, Wall Street and the CIA, the controlled media play it down, because after all, no-one’s nationalising anything without compensation. Nothing to worry about. Business as usual.

And when the cattle cars are filled again it will be that much harder to defeat the enemy next time without Joe and his Red Army.

Paul Barrett, 

Penarth, Mid Glam

Reply:

We have no reason to believe this letter is a spoof. It confirms the view about the “New Communist Party” expressed in the pamphlet by Mike Mosbacher reviewed on our books page and explains why they are known as the “Tankies”. Such people have done the cause of genuine socialism no end of harm by associating it with the vicious one-party state-capitalist dictatorship that existed in Russia under Stalin and where people were also transported in cattle cars to slave-labour camps where they died in their millions.

Editors.

Rise and Fall (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 of this article can be read here.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does society. As every political trend or moral code becomes outdated and is abandoned, another fills its place. The recession was a turning point where many of society's preoccupations changed. In the second of a two-part article we examine what's new.

Sociologist Ulrich Beck asserts that we are faced with "manufactured uncertainty" because of the growth of human knowledge. In other words, the more we learn, the more uncertain we become of our achievements. In the past we could rely on social institutions to provide us with some certainty. As these institutions--organised religion, the welfare state, trade unionism, the left/right divide, state capitalism--become increasingly dated or discredited, humanity has had to find a new moral framework.

So much of what we took for granted is in decline, but we are not heading towards anarchy. General government expenditure as a percentage of GDP has continued to increase since the 1950s. (Social Trends, 1996.) The programme of privatisation means the state has been receding in its more direct economic involvement since the 1980s, but at the same time it is increasingly reaching into areas of our lives previously left alone.

Throughout this century the state has played a role in trying to impose a moral code for society to compensate for the decline in institutionalised religion., but while religion offers supernatural explanations involving unknown powers, state-led morality is weaker because it comes directly from those with similar failings to our own trying to work with a system which can't fulfil our needs. We don't need to cast our minds too far back to remember the hypocrisy of the Conservatives espousing "family values" amid continual sex scandals. A stronger example of the state attempting to impose moral authority is the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994), which tightened up existing legislation concerning large public gatherings, police powers and the rights of travellers and police powers. More recently we have been introduced to zero tolerance zones, jobseeker contracts, increasing numbers of CCTV cameras and the possibility of identity cards. Since the late 1980s, concentration on individual behaviour and identity has overshadowed many wider issues of government and society.

When Tony Blair said that drug abuse was as important in Britain now as poverty had been in the past he encapsulated the way of thinking which now predominates. Today's assumption is that society itself is uncontrollable, and poverty, homelessness, crime and pollution are permanent, so all we can do is tackle the effects of these problems rather than their causes. In the past, governments have tried to give the impression that they are approaching problems at their source, even though history has proved them impotent. The emphasis today is not on how the individual can affect society, but how society affects the individual.

Increases in disposable income and the expansion of the mass media have meant that individuality is now more likely to be expressed through lifestyle choices than in any wide-ranging ideas, whether trade unionism, Christianity or politics. Any desire for social change has to be expressed through a collective mechanism, otherwise it is ignored or unfocused.

As a result the individualism of the 1980s has turned into the powerlessness of the 1990s. The supposed hallmark of the "Caring Nineties", that greed is no longer good, is only a convenient moral by-product of the recession. When material wealth is viewed as a reward for effort, then the attitude that wealth is destructive is more likely to lead to increased deprivation than a society where wealth is organised equally. Socialism is about wanting access to more and better, not accepting less and worse. In the early years of this decade the justification for reducing consumption was the threat of environmental destruction. But this particular ideology was a victim of the austere social and economic conditions which had created it.

The overriding feeling that society cannot be changed fundamentally has led to a proliferation of single-issue political parties, including the anti-abortion Pro-Life Alliance, the Referendum Party and, most successfully, Martin "anti-sleaze" Bell. Previously, such groups would have tried to influence one or more of the main parties. Now their opinion seems to be that the political system is so worthless it is best used to advertise a moral standpoint. They may be exercising a democratic right to attract support, but they show a dangerous lack of interest in wider political theories, of whatever kind.

The main political parties are leading this trend of simplification. The establishment of a Cabinet Consultative Committee (with Liberal Democrat participation) reflects Tony Blair's desire to "usher in a new era of politics" in which the government co-operates with other parties which share its views. In theory, the dynamic of politics is in the competition between differing parties to attract support. In Labour's new era the movement appears to be towards making the government as dominant as possible in parliament, leaving less room for parties representing opposing views. The first subject this particular unelected committee will discuss is electoral reform.

The possibility of a Lib-Lab pact against the dwindling Conservatives is evidence of a centrist consensus in parliament, rather than a one-party state. No major party now offers a distinct vision of the future, but instead aims to do its best within unambitious limits. The election campaign was based around promoting the "best" people, rather than the "best" political ideology. Since then, we have seen a number of measures concentrating on the image and behaviour of politicians. The ministerial code of conduct published on 31 July highlighted the government's mistrust of its own members. And the day before, the Blairs rubbed shoulders with their most image-friendly supporters, including Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Wallace and Gromit's animator Nick Park and Angus Deayton of Have I Got News For You.

In a way, this reflects an honesty not seen before in mainstream politics. The grip of the economic system is too tight to allow politicians much leeway, and the increasingly widespread perception of parliament as an unworkable technical process is a realisation of this. It is impossible for them to reform the governmental system to work for the benefit of the majority, so they find themselves trying to reform its image.

All the institutions in decline are based on appreciation of some sort of collective activity, while those rising to prominence encourage individualism. Activities or social structures which involve widespread interaction are being perceived as irresponsible or a threat. The Internet is a rare example of something which is both isolating and interactive and, undoubtedly, it is an excellent tool for streamlining global communication, but it has quickly gained a reputation as being an outlet for pornography reserved for computer geeks. While any scientific advance is open to question there is now less optimism about technology compared to the 1950s or late 1970s, despite the advances being made. The scientific developments grabbing the most headlines are those often perceived as amoral or unethical, such as sheep cloning or fertility treatments.

Even as western society moves away from recession, we still live in pessimistic times. The pre-millennial mood is that we have come too far for our own good. We find safety in nostalgia and risks in anything new. The fantastic achievements humanity has made in the realms of communications technology, space exploration, medical science and even in drama, music and the visual arts aren't celebrated enough. Humanity's view of itself has been tainted by a harsh economic and political system unable to keep up with our potential.

Mike Foster

A Bit Iffy . . . (1998)

TV Review from the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Years ago Channel Four used to run a much acclaimed (and for that matter, much derided by some) late-night live discussion programme on Saturdays called After Dark. For those who didn't see it, it was an open-ended programme whereby seven or eight invited guests sat in comfy leather chairs discussing matters of grave importance or, sometimes, of the utmost triviality. It typically ran for three or four hours, until the guests started repeating themselves, somebody got upset or somebody else got drunk (in this respect at least it was just like real life).

On Saturday 29 November Channel Four began a new mini-series of studio discussions called the Big If . . . Discussing the same sort of topics as After Dark typically addressed, and in the same late Saturday night slot, it lasts only an hour and is heavily edited in parts. Given the contributions made in the first programme, however, this is entirely understandable.

The subject matter, interestingly enough; was What If Marx Was Right? Frankly, this is a topic which no TV programme can hope to cover adequately in an hour minus two advertising breaks, and needless to say, this programme did not cover it adequately at all.

It would seem a bit of a prerequisite that the studio guests should be familiar with the subject under discussion. Would they ask someone who knew nothing about religion to discuss ecumenical faith? Someone who hadn't been to school and couldn't read and write to discuss issues affecting modern education! Of course not. But that didn't stop them inviting a couple of guests onto this programme who had quite evidently never read a word of Karl Marx in them life.

Technocrap

One particular guest claimed that technology was solving most of capitalism's problems, even though he didn't seem to think there was such a thing as capitalism anyway and who didn't care much about its problems and those who suffered because of them. If he had read anything at all written by Marx he disguised it brilliantly. Another guest— an historian of sorts—was able to demonstrate that he knew lots about the old dictatorship in Soviet Russia but next to nothing about Marx or genuine socialism.

And then there was Paul Foot of the SWP. He is, as my mother would say, a nice man, but that alone does not make him a socialist, and his attempts to defend state planning and control through weasel words and euphemisms were transparent and reprehensible. For such a lucid writer and journalist he often demonstrated a peculiar inability to explain concepts basic to the Marxian position in clear, unambiguous terms, and this despite the fact that he has written some books on the subject which are at least in part, not all that bad. He had been little better on the previous week's Question Time.

Another guest on the panel was Susan George,, famous for her books on Third World poverty andl development politics. Her interventions criticising the market economy were more lucid and telling, but her prescription for its, supersession vague and inoffensive, about people alII over the planet already “doing things for themselves”, whatever that means. (For one thing it carries the unhelpfuI connotation that it stands opposed to the idea off people sometimes doing things for others).

The token neo-Marxist psychologist present provided a good coherent critique of the capitalist economy without suggesting anything nearly as coherent by way of replacement for it. It was left to journalist Charlotte Raven to hit the nail on the head, repeatedly. Raven took the closest thing on offer to a Marxist position and as a result was somewhat marginalised in the discussion. She was, nevertheless, the only guest to state openly that capitalism could not be reformed to work in the interests of the majority, that it was past its sell-by-date in all its various forms and incarnations and should be replaced by something which sounded fairly close to genuine socialism. We can only hope that her interventions are not going to harm her journalistic career with the Sunday newspapers.

Hopefully the programme might have given her a few ideas for articles. One could be on the same theme as the programme itself—was Marx right? Even more importantly, are those who stand in the Marxian tradition right today when we say along with him that capitalism is a system dependent for its survival on the exploitation of the many by the few, that it is a system which creates artificial scarcity, which is racked by periodic world crises and wars and which must be overthrown through democratic socialist revolution? And if Marx's prescription of a moneyless, stateless world community is not the way forward, what is? After she has written it she might post a copy of her article to the other panellists who will then be better informed in case they should be asked to appear on any such programme again.

Dave Perrin