Politics and You (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

No doubt many of you are increasingly indifferent to politics and hold most politicians in contempt. This is understandable — the politicians make promises which they do not keep, and so more and more of the electorate adopt a cynical attitude to it all.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain do not blame the politicians for failing to “deliver the goods”; in fact our case is that they cannot. Surely if they could, they would, because this would be a certain recipe for retaining political power.

What we in the Socialist Party say, in other words, is that present-day society we live in cannot be shaped or directed at will. Merely because a politician pledges to reduce inflation, cure unemployment or solve the housing problem does not mean that this can be done. Most of you are becoming aware that far from governments controlling events, the reverse is true.

All right then! This calls for a basic examination of present-day society — which most people accept, and bemoan the inevitable consequences.

It calls for a recognition that in a world of competition turmoil is inevitable, stability impossible. In the existing economic system, which operates throughout the modern world regardless of political labels, goods and services are produced for a market, sale with profit being the only motive for production.

A rational and human attitude to resources, technology and the needs of mankind cannot be brought about within a society of money-dominated production and conflicting nation-states.

We all know that the British economy is facing the twin problems of inflation and slump. These problems are facing other industrial countries. The great argument and competition among them (USA, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Britain and the emerging industrial countries, not to mention the Soviet Union etc.) is who are to be top rats in one gigantic rat-race.

In every country the workers are being told that they must work harder to make the national economy more competitive than its rivals.

The exhortations to work harder (to those in employment) are particularly prevalent in this country. Such is the nature of the capitalist system that the problems facing the successful economies like Japan are just as pressing. Their very growth of productive capacity means that they require a large slice of the world market (at the expense of the other industrial countries). Yet we are told that the only solution to British problems is “growth”.

The following figures demonstrate the irrational world of capitalist competition in (for instance) shipbuilding.

Japan cutting shipyard labour force by 25,000, France 6,000. West Germany 4,000, Sweden is cutting by 30 per cent, Holland’s shipbuilding is only at 10 per cent of full capacity. Australia is closing 3 of its 5 shipyards.

(Daily Telegraph, 8th December 1976)

It is interesting to note that these various countries have different political parties in power operating supposedly different economic policies (Australia replaced their Labour government last year with a Conservative one, likewise Sweden): but with the same result.

Going back to October 28th 1976, the Daily Telegraph (City page) had the following statement on shipbuilding:

The oil crisis has been merely the catalyst for the shipbuilding crisis, which has been looming since 1969-70. Any expansion beyond that date has been irresponsible.

It was forecast that shipbuilding world orders may drop to 13 million tons whilst the production capacity being worked now was 33 million tons. With the increasing development of shipbuilding in countries like South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil capacity could be raised to 53 million tons.

Against this background of so-called “overproduction” and the subsequent frenzy to survive, are the millions even in the advanced countries who live sub-standard lives and the teeming millions in the “Third World” who live in the direst poverty.

In this country the slump has hit the building industry. Side by side with homelessness and slum living are unemployed building workers. Likewise large classes in schools with poor facilities and unemployed teachers.

Then there is the obscenity of food surpluses in one part of the world and starvation in another part. Even in those countries where the mountains of food are stored there are many ill-fed people: look at the world’s richest country, the USA .

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not seek votes in a futile attempt to administer the existing system. The problems facing mankind can only be solved on a global scale upon the basis of worldwide common ownership and production for use. This means the ending of the whole paraphernalia of wages, profits, taxes and money. The end of state coercion, of leaders and led (the blind leading the blind).

It requires the urgent marshalling of resources to meet human needs. The introduction of free access: “from each according to his (her) ability, to each according to his (her) needs”. A change of this magnitude can be brought about politically, through the ballot box and using Parliament to lay the foundation stone of Socialist society. At the same time breaking down centralized government and replacing it with real democracy. This form of decision-making can only be decided by the majority of the population.

The various Socialist administrations in the different countries would then have to co-ordinate their activities so as to have a world approach to world needs. No doubt many of the existing forms like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation could be adapted to this end.

Too tall an order, too vast a dream, too naive a hope? We think not. There is no other way to safeguard mankind’s future survival. You know the problems are real enough. There never has been a period in man’s history where the survival of our species has been so thoroughly discussed and society’s contradictions so thoroughly exposed.

Men and women of the working class, YOU in conjunction with your fellows abroad are the ones who can change things. The politicians are caught up in the power struggle within the present system. The industrialists, the wealthy in general have a vested interest in capitalism.

The working class have to bear the brunt of today’s problems and they are the majority.

If you agree with the World Socialist position you will wish to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It would not want to have you for any other reason.

Frank Simkins

Them and us (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The popular souvenir of coronations etc. is a decorated pottery mug, and for last month’s royal jubilee a not-too-tawdry one cost about 80p. That is one-fiftieth of the common sort of net wage. On 5th June The Observer mentioned some more expensive souvenirs. Harrods had sold “a silver fruitbowl supported by a silver Lion and Unicorn rampant and bearing the Jubilee hallmark” for £8.750; Asprey’s had “a silver cigar box with an engraving of the Palace of Westminster on the lid and a lining of Macassar ebony” for £4,750. On the one-fiftieth principle, these would be bought from disposable incomes of £437,500 and £237,500 any week.

Doesn’t it make you angry? This is the flesh on the bones of statistics of the distribution of wealth. Fat smirking politicians and industrialists rise from banquet-tables to pronounce that the sun will set on civilization if the workers’ greed for another £5 a week is not contained. Meanwhile the privileged ten per cent (who are there applauding) live with an unstinted prodigality which speaks contempt for the millions whose labour provides it all. Perhaps the High Street mugs were devised as an upper-class joke, like sweets for the sweet.

Pelf on parade

Look down the advertisement columns and notices in The Times on any day: 8th June. There are houses to let in London—£140 a week, £225 a week; or a flat at £90. For those who prefer the country, a house at Purley is advertized at £75,000 (which used to be the amount of the top football-pools win, the worker’s dream of riches); or at Wentworth (“on the edge of the 17th Green of this renowned golf course”) for £100,000; or Windsor, £85,000. Servants are essential. “Responsible cheerful nanny required to take full responsibility for 4 mth-old baby”; “One experienced Butler & 2 domestics and a qualified cook”; “mother’s help/housekeeper” (£20 to £25 a week).

This is not pre-1914, the world of Upstairs, Downstairs: it is 1977, in the epoch of the Social Contract. Nor does the working-class kind of racial prejudice get in the way. Agencies offer “Best Filipino domestics”, and “experienced maids, couples, housemen” (English-speaking) “from Philippines”. It would be interesting to know the wages paid—and to hear these householders titter at the naïveté of Enoch Powell and the National Front. There are other services too. Working-class children of “low attainments” go down; upper-class ones go up to Oxford and Cambridge, with the help of the tutors and coaching establishments that advertize in The Times.

Then the endless luxury expenditures. What about a piano for £2,200, or a mink coat at £2,900? A pair of ornamental stone griffins for the gateposts, £2,000? The reports of auction sales which go on all the time—oriental rugs, pictures, gewgaws at several thousands each; wining and costly dining; prolonged cruise holidays; the waiting lists for public schools whose annual fees are more than the majority earn. Contrast this with the self-congratulation of the ruling class at workers possessing colour televisions, refrigerators and cars; “you never had it so good” (sotto voce: “you undeserving swine”). Yet the total at cost of practically any worker’s possessions would be no more, and probably much less, than two or three thousand pounds—say, his year’s wages; it would not buy one article the upper class thinks worth having.

Get it right

It is mistaken, however, to think of this as injustice or maldistribution. Reformers who believe that have been trying to change things for a hundred years. They have failed because they are wrong. The monopoly of wealth comes from rhe ownership of the means of production and distribution. In the capitalist system, a single class owns them; and wealth takes the form of commodities—articles produced for sale at a profit. Take away the greater part of the owners’ money in taxation, and they still have the means of going on acquiring more. Moreover, because their activity constitutes “the economy” everything is done to facilitate and protect it.

The majority, the working class, because they do not own the means of living can get nothing beyond wages and salaries. The price of labour-power, like the prices of all other commodities, expresses its value: what is required to produce and reproduce it. This is what makes have-nots of nine out of ten, while the owning class are haves. There is no point in calling it unfair; it is capitalism, and cannot be changed while the system continues. If the revenues were not spent on ostentation and indulgence they would still be there, extracted from the labour of the working class.

Oh yes, anger is in order. But let it be turned in the proper direction: not at the pudgy hands which place the mouldy cheese on the spike, but at the existence of the trap itself. There is an alternative. The trap is class ownership; it can be ended and replaced with common ownership of the means of living. Make a new social system on that basis. The fat of the land will not vanish but increase, and who will get it? The owners—everybody'

Robert Barltrop

Soviet Jews and emigration (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Russian annexation of Polish territory in 1654 gave Russia its first large-scale Jewish communities in towns like Minsk, Polatsk, Kiev, Brest and Vilkh. Other towns containing large numbers of Jewish inhabitants also came under the rule of the Tsar. Some years earlier in 1648 the Cossack leader Bogdon Chmielmicki led a revolt against the Polish gentry. After the defeat of the Polish army, his followers turned against the Jews; over 100,000 Jews were killed between 1648 and 1651, and others tortured and ill-treated This was the first large-scale massacre by the Cossacks. However, as early as 1545 Jewish goods from Poland were burnt in public, and Jews forbidden to enter Moscow. In 1563 Tsar Ivan IV ordered that all Jews who refused Christian baptism should be drowned. They were debarred in 1823 from owning land in White Russia by Tsar Alexander, and from following certain trades, and subject to immediate deportation and repeated pogroms. The word pogrom is Russian for a violent attack carried out against a section of the community.

Under the laws of 1793, Jews were mainly confined to the Pale of Settlement—an area which stretched from the Black Sea in the south to the Baltic provinces in the north, to Kalisz and Warsaw in the west and Chennigoy in the east. Even within the Pale of Settlement certain towns would only admit Jews as a special privilege. By 1897 there were more than 5 million Jews in the Pale, and a further 322,000 living outside. Moscow had 9,000; St. Petersburg 21,000; Krarkov 14,000 (official figures 1897).

In the population census of 1970 (before the emigration campaign) the number of Jews living within the USSR, excluding Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, was 2,150,707—less than 1 per cent of the population and twelfth in size of the 104 USSR nationalities listed (Insight No. 7, “Soviet Jews,” Oct. 1975).

In 1917 the Bolshevik revolution nominally removed many of the disadvantages suffered by the Jews, including the abolition of the Pale of Settlement. However, the pogroms re-commenced and continued until the outbreak of World War II. With the death of Stalin these were halted and the persecution of the Jews changed its violent character. It has instead become a political weapon in the present Russian government’s dealings with American capitalism and the US satellite in the east—the Jewish State of Israel, proclaimed as the Jewish national home.

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 gave fresh impetus to the Zionist movement everywhere, including Russia, but significantly the wealthier Jews, British, American and Russian, are not in too great a hurry to take advantage of it. All Jews are not Zionists; on the contrary. Zionism has the appeal of a happy land far far away, an appeal which becomes stronger as the economic and social conditions of Zionists in other parts of the world become worse. Undoubtedly the Soviet government consistently refuses to advance Soviet Jewish culture. The teaching of Yiddish is not encouraged. In fact, only 25 per cent. of the Jewish population speak Yiddish; 44 per cent., mostly women, being over the age of 60 and 75 per cent. over the age 40. (Insight, No. 8, Oct. 1975). Religious ceremonies such as circumcision require special permits. There are no longer any exclusively Jewish schools and practically no Jewish newspapers. The Russian government openly discourages Jewish culture (although a large number of Jews are following the footsteps of their British and American counterparts, where religious practices are observed only by a small number of orthodox Jews).

Since 1970 when the agitation for Jews to emigrate to Israel commenced, until 1977, approximately 5 per cent of Jews (118,000) left the Soviet Union, and a further 55,000 were waiting for visas in 1976. (The Jews of Russia, Martin Gilbert.) The rate of permits granted was 14,200 a year (National Council for Soviet Jewry circular, Feb. 1977).

Of those who emigrated since 1970, many went elsewhere. Some actually returned to the Soviet Union. The campaign for emigration which is promoted both by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the National Council for Soviet Jewry, is a demand not for the right of Jews to emigrate to any country of their choice, but that they should emigrate to Israel. The promised land has lost much of its attraction for Soviet Jews. The Yom Kippur war, compulsory military service for men and women, inflation, low wages and rising prices, and all the familiar problems of capitalism, are present in Israel. In addition, constant threat of war with the Arab states has placed the Israeli economy on a regular war footing, and it is anything but a secure and permanent home. According to an article in The Times (12th May 1977), of the Jews who left Russia in 1974, 20 per cent. sought destinations other than Israel. The following year the proportion rose above 50 per cent., and in April 1977 it increased to 70 per cent.

One of the drawbacks which future emigrants will have to face is the prospect of being deprived of financial assistance by the international Jewish organizations if their final destination is not Israel. The view of the Chief Rabbi of Rumania, Dr. Moses Rosen, is that it is Judaism that is threatened, and that emigrants should only go to Israel where they can lead Jewish lives. They should emigrate for “spiritual” not economic reasons, otherwise they should not be helped by Jewish public funds (The Times, 12th May 1977.) This will obviously affect the poorer Jews. Even if a visa is granted the Soviet government charge 900 roubles (£1,000) for every member of the emigrating family. This is a severe financial burden, and goes some way to explaining why only 7½ per cent of Russian Jews attempt to emigrate. A well-qualified professional Soviet citizen receives 160 roubles a month, and this is considered to be a good salary. In fact a number of Russian Jews who have settled in Israel want to move on elsewhere.

A further complicating factor is that despite the freedom of movement of Soviet citizens proclaimed under the Soviet Constitution, Russian workers whether Jewish or not are not permitted to emigrate, and the Soviet government claims to be making a special concession in the case of the Jews. Like all capitalist governments it does not wish to see its skilled labour force seek higher wages and better working conditions abroad. In this they are following the pattern set by the British government in the anti-Combination Laws of 1799-1824, which forbade the emigration of skilled workers in addition to prohibiting the formation of trade unions. For all practical purposes the Russian equivalent of the Combination Laws is still in force. Fear of opening the door to mass emigration lies behind the reticence of the Soviet government to allow unrestricted emigration of Jews. Also it is against the interests of Russian capitalism to help to build up present Israeli capitalism and its USA parent by allowing highly skilled workers to emigrate to these countries. Russian Jewish workers are no exception to the general rule prevailing within wage labour and capital relations. Dominated by the need to get a living in the only way workers can, by selling their labour-power, they will seek the best terms and social conditions for employment. Migration is part of the history of the working class. Workers have come and gone to all corners of the world in their attempts to find work and peace. Some countries refuse them entry, others refuse them exits. The Jewish workers are looking for the philosopher’s stone if they are looking for ideal conditions abroad.

Like any other workers, they cannot continue to live in the past, and must play their part in the removal of religious, nationalist and racial prejudice and the creation of a world in which there are no restrictions on people—freedom in the fullest sense of the word. Freedom from the domination of capital and wage labour; freedom from want, and freedom to extend the latent productive capacity which exists, and of course, freedom of movement. Socialism embraces all of these. Control of the world must be removed from the capitalists and the system abolished. This is the task of a class-conscious working class who are not divided amongst themselves on the basis of nationality, race, religion or sex.

Jim D'Arcy

The great education debate (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

To a socialist the name of that true-blue servant of capitalism, Peregrine Worsthorne, does nothing to inspire respect. However, the reactionary outpourings of such as Worsthorne are often quite revealing of what constitutes the true, if publicly unexpressed, thinking of our — and their — capitalist masters.

In the Times Educational Supplement of May 6th under the headline “Why not cut back when so few get anything from school”, we have laid before us the crude reality of education under capitalism. On Tuesday 3rd May Worsthorne addressed a conference at the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education. The following is a part of what he had to say:

It is extremely important that education be geared to ’the needs of society, but we need to be brutally realistic about what the needs of society are. It will always be a minority who take the decisions and the rest will have to accept them. You may jigger about with the means of choosing the élite as much as you like but now, as never before, society has to face the inescapable necessity for the development of a formidable élite.

As if this were not enough, Worsthorne proceeds to really rub our noses in it:

Industrialization meant that most people needed practical intelligence less than ever, and education aimed at encouraging personal development was of the wrong kind for an overcrowded world.

And later:

Most people are going to have to live in a subordinate role, however we dress it up.

And to crown it all:

It is difficult to admit that the great majority will not have satisfaction at work or in other parts of their lives. Politicians and journalists cannot do much about it. Teachers are asking for trouble if they think they can. To encourage children to believe it is all going to be different when they grow up is wrong and will cause a great deal of unhappiness.

Now, the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education represents only a relatively obscure élite in itself, a factor which may have contributed to the onset of Worsthorne’s attack. However, his honesty on this occasion is indeed refreshing.

He is stating what is true under capitalism. Independence of mind breeds thought and thinkers tend to ask awkward questions — too awkward, that is to say, for those who own the means of production and distribution. Their survival as capitalists depends upon the disciplined and acquiescent wage-labour of everybody else, including what that means in the deliberate restriction of working-class education.

Richard Cooper

The Politicians and the crisis: Part 1 (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday May 8th, in London the seven-nation conference of heads of state ended. Present with their aides were the Prime Ministers of Canada, Italy, Japan, UK, the Presidents of USA and France, and the Chancellor of West Germany; and on the final day Roy Jenkins in his capacity as President of the EEC.

The Conference was the latest of a series of similar conferences to appraise and look for solutions to the very real and increasingly dangerous problems facing the West European industrial countries, North America and Japan, and the rest of the avowedly capitalist world, i.e. Australasia. Latin America and so on, plus and by no means least the primary producing countries of the “Third World”, who are themselves at various stages of industrialization.

The problems discussed were primarily the world trade recession, with its unemployment. particularly amongst the young, inflation, energy, imbalance in international payments, the expected $45,000 million surplus of the oil-producing countries grouped in OPEC, the debts of the developing (non-oil producing) states, the “necessary” increase in nuclear energy (and its attendant dangers, political and military), “aid” to developing countries in which the Eastern (Soviet) bloc trade organization Comecon was urged to follow suit.

Carter, the US President, also raised the question of illegalities which had hitherto been condoned in certain banking, multi-national business and political circles. (The former Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Tanaka, in relation to bribes from the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was very involved.) This latter matter was not mentioned in the final declaration of “7 Pledges” to revitalize capitalism’s ailing economies, possibly because although not unimportant, it was regarded as peripheral to the major problems. To raise it officially would have also meant an explicit reference to companies and individuals. But does the conference have any significance for the working class of the world?

It can be safely said that modern society rarely appears to have stability for more than about two consecutive fortnights at a time, and that countless conferences and meetings have come and gone. Like many things it is all relative . . . and yet the newspaper headlines must at least have indicated something of magnitude — e.g. “7 Pledges to stop chaos” (Daily Telegraph, 9th May) and the politicians’ view on what could happen if these problems are not solved, must mean something. Put it this way: Carter, Callaghan and the rest wish to present as good a face as possible on the existing system whether they choose to call it capitalism, the “mixed economy”, a “free market”, a “social market” economy, the “free world” (i.e. capitalism with some sort of parliamentary democracy), partly because they are obliged to continue with it and also perhaps because they like the trappings of political power. As Carter said at the end of the conference: “We have to remember that making decisions, even unanimously, is not a guarantee that our decisions will be consummated. In many ways our own reputations are at stake.” As an article in the Daily Telegraph on Friday 6th May (the day before the beginning of the heads-of-state meeting) under the heading “Outlook for the World Summit — Hidden Threats to the World Economy” stated in its opening paragraph:

Chancellor Schmidt probably expressed the inner thoughts of all the European leaders when he said on Wednesday that he was looking to the London summit this weekend, mainly to bolster confidence. By this he meant the leaders' self-confidence and their electorates’ confidence in them, both of which are indeed at a low ebb.

Why this dual lack of confidence then? Because the politicians always aim to convince themselves and in turn the electorate that the capitalist system has found a way of stabilizing itself, and that despite its many imperfections it could at least avoid a catastrophe of the 1930s’ slump dimensions. They imagined that with their versions of Keynesian economics they had eradicated the deeper troughs of the business cycle.

However, from the mid-sixties onwards their policies have been demonstrated to be futile and unsound. It has been a gradual process, this dawning on the part of capitalism’s politicians.

Perhaps more to the point, among their advisors in the corridors of power, the higher echelons of the Civil Service, this bewilderment was exemplified in an article entitled “Whitehall at its wits’ end” (Sunday Telegraph, 24th April):

‘Everyone is baffled’ confesses one Permanent Secretary. “The old levers just don’t do the trick any more. We’re living in a world we didn’t make and don’t understand’. The Treasury has according to one senior Labour Minister (unnamed) ‘a very marked loss of confidence’, which reveals itself ‘to the discerning eye’ by the presence of competing economic ideologies. Before the Treasury served up only the pure milk of Keynesianism; now Keynes and Friedman are both on offer.

Graham Turner, the author of the article, states that “Whitehall is at its wits’ end . . . like the rest of us — they have not the faintest idea where Britain is going”.

The British politicians, their advisors and their counterparts in other countries may not know where the British and world economies are heading, but they do know, from personal experience and from the reading of history, where the 1930s’ crisis led.

The fact that they spoke at the Summit conference as candidly as they did demonstrates the seriousness of capitalism’s present difficulties.

The Japanese Prime Minister said “the world economic situation was now as serious as that of the early 1930s when leading industrial nations failed to act in time to prevent a slide into the 1939-45 war. History should not be allowed to repeat itself. Western nations had to co-operate more energetically in tackling economic problems” (Sunday Telegraph, 8th May).

He also recalled the fiasco of the 1933 London Economic Conference when no agreement was reached and a communique not even issued. “The difficulties today are greater and are compounded by new problems”.

The French President, Giscard d’Estaing. recalled that the ending of the 1977 conference coincided with the anniversary of the end of the 1939-45 war! “Sombre and pessimistic pictures were sometimes drawn of the present state of the world, but the cooperation at such conferences make it possible to avoid the mistakes [!] that helped to bring on that war.”

Helmut Schmidt of West Germany spoke on similar lines and “thought that they had avoided the results of complete selfishness” — by avoiding the “traps of the 1930’s.” President Carter like the other heads of state was concerned that decisions reached should not be merely pious, but recognized that making decisions and implementing them was not one and the same thing. "Sometimes heads of State tend to over-emphasize their own importance,” he said.

Callaghan considered that continuing unemployment carried political risks, not merely by the replacement of one party by another (naturally he does not want to lose his job) in Parliament — but that political democracy could be threatened. He is obviously concerned regarding the growth of the National Front, with racialism as the main plank of its support, and it is obvious there is a parallel here with the Nazis’ anti-semitism, which was copied in this country by the pre-war British Union of Fascists (although in recent years Sir Oswald Mosley has tried to obscure his organization’s former position on this subject).

It would seem inconceivable that the British working class could en masse support an organization tainted with fascism. Some of NF’s leaders were given to dressing up in Nazi-style uniforms before the organization was formed, and their arguments for economic nationalism — “self-sufficiency” — were advocated by the Nazis. However, it seemed improbable at the time that the Nazis would make much headway.

It can be justifiably argued that Britain in the 1970s, even with inflation and high unemployment is not the same as Germany in the early 1930s at the height of the depression with 6 million unemployed and the dire poverty it meant. However, in spite of the lower percentage of unemployed compared with that period and the lesser relative hardship of today’s unemployed, there is apathy and cynicism to politics and politicians generally, which though understandable is far from healthy — and also a good deal of resentment on the part of some of the young. This is why the established politicians are concerned wondering whether, if the crisis continues irrespective of the party in power, some of the youngsters might transfer their violent support from football teams to organizations like National Front. After all most of the workers of today know little of the 1930s; they make comparisons within this period, and as to whether the politicians’ promises and policies ring true. Over 400,000 of the present unemployed in Britain are in the 16-to-25 age group. In the rest of Western Europe the percentage is a little lower, and in the USA it is higher than in this country.

The major parties of British capitalism are discredited and the growth of the National Front directly arises from this. It is a particular indictment of Labour-style reformism and its inability to deal with capitalism’s problems, heightened as they are in times of crises.

Frank Simkins

(To be continued)

So They Say: Non-starters (1977)

The So They Say Column from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Non-starters

The Labour Party is always assuring us that they stand for a “fairer and more just society” (Mr. Ron Hayward, General Secretary of the Labour Party, 15th March) but we think it reasonable to add that all of the parties who try to run capitalism would claim the same. Circumstances however always seem to intervene before they, or the others, can actually put their words into action. As unemployment and prices rise, as they have done under the Labour Government, and wages and public services fall, there are the men like Mr. Hayward talking about the unfortunate circumstances which newly confront us and so prevent “the fairer and more just” from taking immediate effect.

Were a bookmaker to assure his clients that he stood for “fairer and more just” racing results so that all of them would win, they would know that something was up. When the Labour Party does it, and explains the inevitable losses in terms of circumstances—the going as usual got rougher than we thought and you’ve all lost again—it should signal the time to stop betting on these three-legged creatures.

Winning

To be fair to Mr. Hayward and other members of the Labour Party, they do not give pride of place to this notion of a “fairer and more just society.” This is usually thrown in as an after-thought, and Labour supporters should not put too much weight on it. They would be best advised to put none at all, which would at least make honest men and women of them. Mr. Hayward has identified the fundamental objective of Labour.

Membership of the Party involves joining an organisation whose objective is to win and retain power in order to reform our society in the direction of our democratic socialist beliefs and ideals. Let me emphasise that objective—to win and retain power.

News Release:  Party Information Dept. 15th March 77

And having won and retained it, to let the workers face the circumstances.

The Self-Interest Thing

The director of the US Office of Population is concerned about “over-population”—a term used in capitalist society to justify the starvation, or near starvation, of millions, while alongside them exist the privately owned means to meet their requirements of food, clothing and shelter. Overpopulation to the capitalist and his well-fed entourage refers to those who cannot be used in the process of accumulating wealth. Dr. R. T. Ravenholt, the aforementioned Director, describes as his office’s aim the creation of medical technology to render infertile 100 million women in developing countries. This they call “advanced fertility management” and the programme they have launched will operate over the next nine years.

Although different people will draw different moral conclusions on the correctness of the programme, this should be seen for what it is, a capitalist “solution” to a “problem” which has arisen because the capitalist mode of production denies access to the means of life, unless it makes a profit for someone. That the means of life are in existence, or could be readily brought into existence, is irrelevant in this society.

The US Office of Population does not plan to limit future generations in an attempt to curtail misery from any moral standpoint however, their Director was most explicit on the intentions: Population control was needed to maintain

the normal operation of US commercial interests around the world. Without our trying to help these countries with their economic and social development, the world would rebel against the strong US commercial presence. The self-interest thing is a compelling element. If the population explosion proceeds unchecked, said Dr. Ravenholt, it will cause such terrible economic conditions abroad that revolution will ensue.

London Evening Standard, 11th May 77

Confessions

There is a strange figure who occasionally appears in detective stories and radio plays, best described as "the innocent man who proclaims his guilt.” Inevitably towards the end, this gallant red-herring is discovered, and receives a minor ticking-off because he had acted from the best intentions. How then are we to take India’s Prime Minister, Mr. Maraji Desai, who gave a press-conference on his way to the Commonwealth Conference.

Would India sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Certainly, he replied, when those asking me decide to give up nuclear weapons. Those who commit thefts have no business to tell me not to be a thief.

The Times, 8th June 77

Mr. Desai, it will be remembered, is not a character in a radio play.

Of his own colour too

One of the more colourful scientific debates centres around the probability of 100 chimpanzees, who are confined in a roomful of typewriters together with an endless supply of paper, being able to bang out by accident the entire works of Shakespeare within a given period. Although highly improbable, it is generally conceded that the task is not impossible. The odds of success for the chimps are in fact infinitely higher than those of the eight international economists who have been confined for some time deep within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s centre in an attempt to find “a path out of the economic quagmire which threatened to end more than two decades of growth and high employment.” They have been working on the premise that it is possible to remove capitalism’s problems, without removing capitalism 

The chief primate in the group, Mr. Paul McCracken, has offered their version of “the complete works” after only two years confinement, which, as far as probability goes, is stretching belief. We do not know how many typewriters they had at their disposal, but this is the result.

Fitting budgetary targets into regularly revised medium term projections would provide the required flexibility to adjust the longer-run budget posture to unexpected events and changing public preferences with regard to longer-term economic and social priorities.

The Times, 10th June 77

Roughly translated this means that their solution, in Shakespeare’s words “is shaped sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is and moves with its own organs; it lives by that which nourishes it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.” These economists are learned men indeed.

Alan D'Arcy

Letter: The Root of Roots (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Root of Roots

Your article under the above title, written by Harmo, caught my attention as I feel it misses the particular significance of the “roots phenomenon” in race relations in Britain today. The quotation your correspondent gave from Kautsky that “the study of the past, far from being mere dilettante antiquarianism, will become a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present . . ." is indeed apt, but he did not, it seems to me, draw an important conclusion from it. I don’t believe that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity” as is implied by your writer who correctly points to the miscegenation which has existed from time immemorial. The point is that the slave background, common to so many in the USA and the Caribbean, has left black people with a feeling of disorientation, not of belonging—in short, of “rootlessness”.

Historically therefore the story of slavery is important in leading present day peoples to struggle for real equality, but psychologically the study of one man’s own history may be equally important in helping oppressed groups not only to a better awareness of the injustices of the past and the need for social change, but also to a confident awareness of their own great cultural tradition which is only slowly but surely becoming evident particularly in studies in the African continent. Thus the study of history may not only be informative but also may have a profound psychological part to play in the struggle for equality.

D. C. Mayer

Romford

Reply:

Our article did not imply that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity”—the reference was made to Haley (the author of Roots) and militant “Afro-Americans” who do pursue this line, and who invariably do so for commercial or political reasons. You say black people have a “feeling of disorientation” and "rootlessness” and if we are, for the sake of brevity, to assume some positive meaning from such phrases, is not this “feeling” common to the Irish, Polish, Italian and other elements —including the native Indian—which go to make up the American population?

The mistake is made by some in assuming that "a feeling of disorientation” reflects a form of almost instinctive desire to get back to “roots”. As our article pointed out, this is likely to prove a most difficult exercise in itself. It also fails to take into account the effects of capitalist society which, with its lack of social plan, its requirement for the free movement of labour coupled with reversals in this policy, so-called national rivalries and shifting alliances, in itself creates insecurity among members of society as a whole.

We have always stressed the need for men and women to both study, and learn from, history. Any real study will reveal that the vast majority have a common solution to problems, including racial problems, which in capitalism are falsely made to appear as group problems to be dealt with in isolation. If you feel that there is a psychological barrier to be overcome before members of the working class can understand and work for the establishment of a society based on common ownership, it is not one erected by Socialists.

Editors.

Letter: Class & Understanding (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class & Understanding

I must concentrate on defending the reputation of the late Harold Walsby against your mud-slinging. Your article “Question of Intelligence” mentioned the view “that a large proportion of the population were constitutionally incapable of learning much or running their own lives”. Challenged to give even one of these examples which, you said, “appeared in the work of Harold Walsby” you quote F. A. Ridley and the Sunday Chronicle. You do not give one example from Walsby.

You say. “If . . . the statements in SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? do not say the working class is mentally inferior, what the devil are they supposed to mean?” If the statements you mean are those quoted in “Question of Intelligence”, then the only reference they make to the working class is to say the SPGB “mushily vacillates . . .  about whether the workers have or have not the intelligence to establish Socialism”. This gives no ground for the charge that Walsby held the workers to be mentally inferior. If you want to understand SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? (and Walsby’s other ideological work) read it again with the idea that although there is a minority accepting Socialism and a majority rejecting it, the division between them does not correspond with the division between workers and capitalists. A small minority of workers accept Socialism, the great majority of workers reject it. A small minority of capitalists accept Socialism, the great majority of capitalists reject it. In acceptance or rejection of Socialism there is no significant difference between workers and capitalists.

My letter said the overwhelming majority of those who have heard the Socialist case have rejected it. You seem to think you have dealt with this by saying “the overwhelming majority of the working class have not heard it”. This is not an answer. And by attempting but failing to answer the point you acknowledge its validity. The overwhelming majority of those who have heard the Socialist case have rejected it. What grounds have you for believing the response will be different in future?

G. W. Walford

London N1

Reply:

The substance of your defence of Walsby appears to be that his remarks quoted in “Question of Intelligence” referred not to the working class but to workers and capitalists alike.

The quotation was taken from Chapter 2 of Walsby’s pamphlet SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? which is headed, specifically, “Why don’t the workers accept the socialist case?” The opening of the chapter is a sufficient rebuttal of the assertion that we “vacillate” about the workers’ intelligence. Walsby says: “If we ask the SPGBer ‘Can the workers understand Socialism?’ his almost invariable answer is a very confident and emphatic ‘Yes!’”

Throughout the chapter Walsby makes clear that he is talking about the working class and no-one else.

What is the real answer, then, to the question, ‘Why don’t the workers accept the Socialist case?’ Could it possibly be that ‘working class intelligence’ is not equal to the task, and cannot ‘rise to the height’ required for understanding Socialism?

Among other examples, he says: "So far, then, working-class intelligence has not risen to that elevated level”. The quotation used in our article—"the actual statistical-psychological investigations by Prof. Burt, Thompson, Cattel and many others”—goes on to state that “the average human intelligence is on the decline”. Since the working class is nine-tenths of the population, it must dominate any “average”.

There is no mention whatever of the capitalist class in Walsby’s pamphlet, or of the argument you attribute to it in this connection. Indeed, your remarks generally are difficult to take seriously. You call SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? an "ideological work”, implying a high level of theoretical debate. In fact it consists to a considerable extent of personal abuse of SPGB members.

The principal task of the SPGB lies in the fact that the great majority of the working class have never heard of it. You do not dispute this, but say it "is not an answer”. On the contrary, while that is so, your assertion that "in acceptance or rejection of Socialism there is no significant difference between workers and capitalists” is absurd; and your insistence that the majority who have never heard the Socialist case will reject it when they do is, presumably, blind hope.

Our previous reply pointed out that when workers do hear the Socialist case it is usually under disadvantageous conditions. If, for example, we are allowed to give one broadcast in several years, it is preposterous to say its outcome is that thousands have heard the Socialist case and rejected it. In everyday experience, persuasion and the resolving of differences may and do require several excursions into the subject. We note you share this view yourself. Following our previous reply, you did not settle for having had your arguments rejected, but had another go. To quote your own ending, what grounds have you for believing the response will be different in future?

Editors.

Letter: Marx and Inflation (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Inflation

Would you please quote me chapter and verse from Marx and Engels’s writings where permanent inflation which seems universally prevalent in all 1st world countries today, is predicted? To answer successfully this paramount question, you should appreciate in itself will constitute a monument to the prestige of Marx and Engels’s writings!

May I take the liberty of asking why your committee or other of your scribes object to, or else fail to compose, aphorisms accentuating hundreds of aspects of Marxian doctrine? I have repeatedly offered my work (to your brother body the WSP also) in this connection, but have been inevitably revolted by your wilful omission to put the cause of Socialism first and foremost, under the characterless excuse bound up with your passion for the pseudo-democratic that you don’t take writing from non-members.

T. K.

Northants 

(name & address supplied)

Reply:

There is no “chapter and verse” predicting permanent' inflation. What Marx provided was a detailed analysis of capitalism, including explanations of why unemployment, crises and inflation take place. Inflation is not a permanent condition; it results from government policies adopted to try to overcome other problems, and is ended by further government action. It would have been impossible for Marx to predict this. His analysis of the cause of inflation—the result of the excess issue of an inconvertible paper currency—is the only correct one; but present-day economists do not want to know about it because it points to the insolubility of the problems of capitalism.

Contributions to the Socialist Standard are accepted only from members of the SPGB and its companion parties because the Socialist Standard exists to propagate their views and no others. If you are so determined to "put the cause of Socialism first and foremost”, what about your "wilful omission” to become a member of the Socialist Party?

Editors.

Letter: Big is Beautiful (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Big is Beautiful

In reply to my letter ("More Impact, Please”, May SS) you say it would be a wonderful thing if the material and economic conditions of capitalism did turn the workers into Socialists, and I am sure it would be an equally wonderful thing for your party and Socialism if the conditions produced the stimulus for the British working class to develop Socialist ideas. How then does the SPGB explain the fact that after nearly two hundred years of capitalist development the working class have no desire for Socialism at all?

You say that history shows us that before there can be a fundamental change in society there is a long period during which the ideas and attitudes necessary for the change are fully developed. But the stimulus you write about has not enabled the British workers to turn into Socialists, even after two hundred years. And even today when you expect the development of Socialist ideas to be much shorter you can produce no real evidence for saying this of the British workers or the workers of any other country.

Your reply to my letter only produces some evidence of the perversion of the word Socialism by Labour Social-Democratic parties, but absolutely no evidence at all why the long period of capitalist development in Britain has produced not even the slightest movement towards Socialism by British workers. So neither the economic conditions of capitalism, or the Socialist propaganda from your Socialist Standard has had any real effect on the British working class. How then does the SPGB account for that?

Ian Campbell

Dundee

Reply:

It is quite untrue that the working class "have no desire for Socialism at all” and that there is “not even the slightest movement towards Socialism by British workers”.

The purpose of the references to Labour and social-democratic parties in our previous reply was not to reiterate their perversion of the word Socialism but to point out the reason why they use it: that many workers associate it with changing the present unsatisfactory order of society. The Labour Party started its manifesto in the election campaign of 1945 by announcing itself “a socialist party, and proud of it”, in the belief that this would appeal strongly to workers. Obviously the supporters then and at other times have been disillusioned, but Labour and the other parties think it important to go on trading on "socialism”.

The Socialist movement is alive and well: here you are, writing to its journal which has been going strong since 1904. You are, in effect, demanding to know why we are not bigger. We note that you avoid saying whether the Socialist Party is correct in your opinion—your previous letter said “the working class of Britain have never taken the SPGB’s case against capitalism as being the best way”, without indicating your view. Is it that you identify correctness with a large body of support?

Our reference to history aimed (it seems unsuccessfully) to draw your attention to the fact that a developed Socialist movement arose not automatically at the outset of the Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago. but after a hundred years in which capitalism was itself developing. Present-day methods of communication mean that information and ideas can be disseminated swiftly all over the world, once fuller access to their use is obtained. We have never under-estimated the obstacles to be overcome, whereas you speak as if they did not exist in judging our ‘'impact” on the working class. The fact remains that workers continually react against the conditions of capitalism and look for an alternative; to the extent that the Socialist case can then be presented to them, the Socialist movement progresses all the time. “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable”—a quotation from a Smith of two hundred years ago.

Editors.

Letter: What's the name (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What's the name

I noticed in the article “Queen Capital’s Jubilee” (April SS) that you refer to the future King George V as George Wettin. I am curious as to where this name originates. I was told it should really be Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Did the writer of the 1911 article make a mistake which you have followed, or was he really George Wettin? I am writing on behalf of other people besides myself who are curious about this.

F. S., Newcastle 

(name & address supplied)

Reply:

Your letter raises a very interesting point.

The name Wettin goes back in European kingship to the year 997. Frederick, one of the two sons of Dietrich, received lands taken from the Wends, including the county of Gau of Wettin on the bank of the Saale. A succession of kings added to these lands. Thimo (1104), cousin of Henry I, built a castle at Wettin and he was called by this name. In 1288 the county, town and castle of Wettin were sold to the archbishop of Magdeburg and later incorporated in the kingdom of Prussia.

By the time of Frederick the Warlike (1381-1428) the lands of the Wettins stretched from the Oder to the Werra and from the Erzgebirge to the Harz mountains. It is from the son of Frederick that two branches of the family descend, the Ernestine and Albertine. To the former belong the dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The kings of other European countries came from this line, including Belgium from 1831 and Great Britain from 1901.

Source of information: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 23 o. 551.

Editors.

The Economics of Capitalism (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The commodity is the cell form of capitalist society. It contains the social substance which is described as human labour. This gives it Value. The amount of human labour is not measured over single commodities or groups of them, and this is not possible. The commodity is a social product, and the substance of Value is social: one uniform, or homogeneous, labour-power embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society under normal conditions of production.

Individuals or groups produce commodities, but not the Value of commodities. Society determines the Value of a commodity, and the Exchange-Value of a commodity, through the process of determining the amount of socially-necessary labour involved in their production, i.e. the labour-time socially necessary for their production.

The Value of commodities will fluctuate according to the productiveness of social labour at any given time. It is not fixed or intrinsic. The law of Value lies behind every exchange of products, but the exchange relation is a relation between products. Human labour-power creates Value but is not in itself Value unless it is congealed or embodied in objects of Value, which can be used to express the Value of other objects of Value.

The social relation of Value comes into being at that point in social production when Use-Values are produced for the purpose of exchange, and this form has become dominant. Value is inseparable from its magnitude, and the social relation is basically an exchange relation. Exchange-Value has no existence separate from Use-Value (but Use-Value can exist without Exchange Value). The productive relations of men in a Socialist society will result in the production of Use-Values, articles of utility specifically produced for consumption and not exchange. The social relation of production will be a direct relation between individuals consciously producing for each other and not producing for an anonymous market. The social powers of production will also be under the direct control of society. The point is that there will be relations between people manifesting themselves as relations between things.

Obviously this description of Value cannot stand on its own, and requires explanation. The Marxist position is that labour-power has a two-fold character: on one hand it produces articles of utility, and at the same time it produces Value; that is, concrete labour becomes the form under which its opposite abstract labour manifests itself.

1. The substance of Value.
2. The magnitude of Value.

The twofold character of labour power cannot exist in a Socialist society — the subjects of labour will not come into the Exchange relation because wealth will not assume the commodity form.

We have always stressed the need to abolish production for exchange, together with the monetary system which is the highest manifestation of the Value relation. In doing this we have always pointed out that men stand behind all forms of social production and distribution, and that wealth need not take the commodity form. We claim, with Marx, that when the products of labour are brought into the exchange relation of Value we are equating the different kinds of labour embodied in them. We are, in effect, exchanging one man’s labour for another man’s labour, and that all commodities, as social products, are the material expressions of the human labour spent in their production. To endow inanimate objects such as commodities with powers outside of the human agency is absolute nonsense.

The historical development of Value as a social relation is completed when the amount of labour spent in the production of useful articles is socially expressed as a quality belonging to the article. In section III of Capital on commodities, Marx makes the following statement: 

“If however we bear in mind that the Value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they assume this reality only insofar as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical substance, viz. human labour, it follows as a matter of course that Value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.” 

Capitalism has separated persons from their products, and the social relation of Value is a monetary relation between things of Value.

Marx was always concerned to separate the discussion of political economy from philosophical propositions, although inevitably there is some overlap. To this extent he was concerned with the social relations between things. “The relations of the producer to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation existing not between themselves but between the products of their labour” (Capital, Vol. I, p.85, Kerr edn.) Exchange establishes the direct link between the products, and indirectly through them, the producers. “The relation connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appears not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but what they really are, material relations between persons, and social relations between things”, (p. 78, Lawrence & Wishart edn.)

One thing emerges, and that is that Marx considered that social relations existed between things. Any investigation of capitalist society would have been impossible had he taken any other view. Marx obviously knew that human labour stood behind all production in all stages of society. It was only through the analysis of prices that the Value relation was discovered.

Jim D'Arcy

Price Increase (1977)

Party News from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

From September the price of the Socialist Standard will be 15p. We regret the increase and have held the price at its present level for as long as possible. However, as many readers know, the journal is run at a loss, and with continually increasing costs the deficit is now more than we can support. Subscribers will be advised of the new rates.

Appeal For Funds (1977)

Party News from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the beginning of this year we made an appeal for money. The response to it was very generous, but we now have to appeal again. We hardly need to tell readers how quickly money is consumed in a period of rising prices. The Socialist Standard runs at a loss which has increased sharply because of higher printing costs in the last three years. In April and May we conducted highly active campaigns in the Greater London Council elections, which put the Socialist Party’s name before large numbers of people who had not heard it before. We never stop work for Socialism — and it all costs money.

Our outstanding need at present is for funds for the General Election which will almost certainly take place soon. Readers of the Socialist Standard and people who have attended our meetings often write in to say how impressed they are: why do we not put up lots of candidates? The answer is that we do everything we can from limited resources. We aim to have candidates in London in the General Election. The deposit and the election literature by themselves are big expenses. We must not miss any opportunity of presenting the Socialist case because we cannot afford it.

We ask all of you to give as much as you can — for Socialism. The address is A. Waite (Treasurer), SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN; mark the envelope “Parliamentary Fund”.

SPGB Lectures and Meetings (1977)

Party News from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The guest speaker at the Westminster Branch of the SPGB, Tony Bunyan, speaking on the subject of 'The Political Police in Britain', was the author of the book of the same name. It was reviewed in the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Where to buy the Socialist Standard outside London (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: Is a socialist policy applicable to America? (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers in USA offers no permanent hindrance to our socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas amongst the masses is a phase which is true of every country for a time.

★ ★ ★

The comparatively recent industrial growth and commercial expansion of the USA offers one reason for the so-called ‘better conditions’ of labour. This is partly responsible for the lack of interest in social change amongst the workers there. This lack of interest, however, is not simply a reflex of ‘better’ conditions but a result of capitalist propaganda by press, priest and schoolmaster, which is more powerfully and carefully used in American life than perhaps any other country, to mould the working class millions to capitalist views. The extremely careful selection of and control over teachers in school and college to avoid any advanced political views being taught, is notorious.

★ ★ ★

The primitive and highly-organized and well-financed religious bodies of America still have a remarkably large influence in USA. These agencies of propaganda employed to keep the workers submissive, are effective because temporarily the conditions in the United States have not caused deep and lasting discontent.

(From an article by Adolph Kohn, Socialist Standard, July 1927.)

A Look Back (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently there has been a good deal of looking back, recalling the events and atmospheres of the past quarter-century. Most people find pleasure in it because of personal associations — friends and places which have vanished now. In the clutch of present-day inflation it is remembered that everything was laughably cheap twenty-five years ago (without remembering that wages were correspondingly lower and bought no more). Society is the sum of relationships within a given structure. Has it altered? Did many hopes of 1952 come true? What kinds of fruit were borne by changes of government, technical advances, reorganizations, plans? We make our own brief survey.

War and Peace

Although only a few years old the United Nations was looking a little tarnished in the early 50’s. Formed after the devastation of the 1939-45 war, much lip- service was given to the concept of peace. But good intentions and pious talk are not enough it seems, for during its existence war has never ceased in parts of the globe. Korea, Malaysia, Aden, Hungary, Cuba, Congo. Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, Chile, Cyprus, Angola, Vietnam. Lebanon—that list is still not complete. The world is divided into three power blocks all armed to the hilt, and each possessing the ultimate weapon—the H-bomb. Many of these struggles have been civil wars with a rising capitalist class striving for power against the entrenched rulers, or between rival groups of capitalists for control. They have thought it worthwhile to expend their labour force to gain their ends, notwithstanding the terrible modern weapons that industry and science have produced. Sadly, they have been able to persuade deluded peasants and members of the working class to fight for them. The USA and her allies, Russia and satellites, China and SE Asian block stand by, interfering with arms or men in order to gain influence as each new flare-up occurs. The thought should not be overlooked that one of these could ignite another global war.

British troops, like others, have not been retained just for ceremonial purposes. By 1952 they had seen service in Palestine and Korea and were being used in Malaysia. They have since been involved in several of the conflicts as parts of the former Empire have broken loose, including the role they are performing in Ulster at the present time.

Health

In 1952 the National Health Service was in its infancy but there were already rumblings of discord. The alleged object of this reform was that treatment would be available to all on the basis of need only. It was assumed that under those circumstances health standards would so improve that in the course of time expenditure on the service would decrease. The image of a “free health service” was sacred to certain Labour Party notables. Aneurin Bevan resigned in protest at a shilling prescription charge.

By now charges for dentistry, spectacles, and prescriptions are well established. While waiting lists for hospital treatment grow these establishments are being asked to reduce the length of stay of patients, hospitals are being closed as “uneconomic”, and there are cutbacks in building and modernization. The largest group of sick people are those whose malady can be loosely termed as mental illness—suffering from stress, anxiety, depression. Every year there are 20 million prescriptions (not pills) for barbiturates issued, and 6 million Phenothiazine tranquillizer tablets swallowed (Sunday Times 30th Jan. 1977). Relative health standards generally have not improved. The better-off still have better health, live longer, and spend more time in consultation with doctors than the poorer social groups. Medical research is hampered by lack of funds, and some of the advances made involve equipment and methods that are costly in money terms. Doctors have the harrowing decision of whether or not to give expensive treatment to patients. Some people die because the NHS cannot afford to save them.

Education

By 1952 the 1944 Education Act was coming into full swing. One of the catch-phrases of this Act, which was regarded as a great step forward, was “secondary education for all”. It was argued that this would lead to better realization of abilities among the working class. The Act was enforced by raising the school-leaving age to 15 after the war, and by literally rubbing out the word “elementary” on the existing schools and painting in the word “secondary”. The type of education offered, and the status of the new secondary school, hardly differed from what had existed before. An 11-plus selection procedure was used, and it did not take long for the idea to develop that those “selected” for the Secondary Modern school had failed. It is interesting to note that the number of children thought suitable for a grammar-school education always exactly tallied with the number of places available, and whether or not a child passed the 11-plus depended on the area in which that child lived.

Comprehensive education was then devised to avoid the 11-plus selection, although whatever label it receives there is usually streaming inside the Comprehensive school. The school-leaving age has now been raised to 16, but learning skills have not risen in proportion to those extra years spent in school. Educationalists, unable to see further than the ends of their noses, have cast around for reasons, tinkering with different teaching methods.

Nobody is happy about education today, teachers, parents, or pupils. The false hopes of the early 1950s are gone. Now there are protests from some large employers about the educational standards of young people approaching them for jobs. Here they are contributing hundreds of millions a year to prepare their future work-force and their reason for education is being overlooked!

There are two changes which are of some significance. Teachers have become “militant”. One did not expect to see teachers going on strike twenty-five years ago. Once the conventional, respectable pillars of the establishment, they have learned that their position as salaried employees in “safe” jobs is no more sacrosanct than that of other workers. They are being forced to acknowledge their part in the class struggle. Secondly, their pupils have become more difficult to handle. Young people are no longer submissive, they are reflecting the pace and turmoil of life today.

Housing

This perennial problem was flourishing in the 1950s. It had been increased by the destruction in the war. Squatting had taken place in the late 1940s. when homeless families took over army nissen huts that were scattered about parks and open spaces. There were long waiting lists for council housing, and in 1951 the Conservative Party came to power with a promise to build 6 million new houses and solve the housing problem.

Their success can be measured by looking around today. Prefabs erected in the early 1950s with an estimated life of ten years have done stalwart service. Some are still in use! The foundations were laid for today’s detested tower-blocks. Council housing lists are longer than ever. Rent legislation has succeeded in drying up the supply of private rented accommodation. Workers who have managed to become owner-occupiers have crippling mortgages and high interest rates. According to the latest Shelter report the number of homeless people has trebled in the last ten years.

Everywhere you look

Other aspects are unemployment — there were those who claimed that the problem had been solved in the 1950s — industrial strife, pollution, inflation, racial tensions, crime. Not only have the measures taken by successive governments failed, many of their attempted remedies have thrown up further problems.

Is it then a catalogue of woe and nothing else? No. All through, there runs the desire of the great majority of working people to make as decent a life as they can despite the odds. The disharmony and mess are not their choice. On the contrary, they seek almost universally to make unpromising surroundings agreeable, to be good neighbours, to provide the best possible future for their children. It is precisely this desire for something better that makes them vulnerable to promises and enticements: only give me your vote today, says the Honest Man or the Strong Man or the Amazingly Clever Man of capitalism, and you shall have jam tomorrow.

The gap in realization is very small. Workers are not fools. Often they more than half know they are about to be sold again; but — it is thought and said — what else is there to do but take the least of three or four evils? Often too they are aware that an alternative does exist, but hang back from going against what appear to be stronger forces of opinion. Only a little more understanding and a little more will are required: and the next twenty-five years can bring a life altogether different.

The problems of society lie in its structure. While ownership of the means of life remain in the hands of one class it means the consequent enslavement of the non-owning class. There is a continual conflict of interests between those who produce wealth and those who possess that wealth. The solution to that conflict can only come by converting the means of production and distribution to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole of society. The understanding required to abolish capitalism and institute Socialism is within the capability of all workers; and the working class who run society from the top to bottom for the capitalist class now, are more than capable of running Socialism for themselves. The quickest way is the only way to Socialism, and that is by a majority of the working class understanding and wanting that change in society, organizing politically for the capture of the powers of government, and using that instrument for its own emancipation.

Turn your backs on despair and disillusion; and join with the world’s Socialist Movement to sweep capitalism from the face of the earth!

Alice Kerr

The Roots of Violence (1977)

Book Review from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Context of Violent Behaviour by Emanuel Marx. Routledge & Kegan Paul, £3.50.

“Human Nature" is the oldest and stubbornest cry against Socialism. It is stubborn because the arguer believes he knows things about human beings that make a harmonious society of equals impossible: either too many are perverse, or the whole lot of us have greed and aggression built in. It is not a matter of well-known monsters — Jack the Ripper, the Moors murderers, the Kray brothers can be accepted as exceptional cases — but of familiar conduct like vandalism, bullying and truculence. They ruin good relationships today; the “human nature” argument is that they would ruin Socialism if it were tried.

The Socialist answer is that “human nature” is a misnomer. What is being described is human behaviour, which (with estimates of particular kinds of it as “good” or reprehensible) continually changes. Man is a social being whose strongest tendency is to co-operation and order, or we should not be here today. Against examples of the “bad” can be set countless opposite ones. Yet everyday anti-social expressions are a fact in present-day society, and their causes are other social facts.

Dr. Marx’s book is an analysis of personal aggression and damage to property in a small Israeli town called “Galilah” from 1964 to 1966. The examples given are of the sort which may get briefly reported in local newspapers in Britain. Domestic beating-up; a man smashing things in a café; threats and assaults. A case-history of each is given. Some, says Marx, are “sound, rational and deliberate action” — violence is the way for the offender to get what he wants or needs, and it follows rules he has learned from his masters. Chapter 2 is about legal and moral attitudes to violence in various societies, and the writer argues that the more a ruling class monopolizes force the more it disapproves of fisticuffs among individual citizens.

There is also what he calls “appealing violence”, where individuals are frustrated into irrational acts towards their families and the public. The old-fashioned name for this is “taking it out on the cat”. Marx sees it as a cry for help. But it is not necessary to follow psychiatric arguments to understand what he is saying: that violent personal behaviour is not “human nature”. It is a reaction forced out by social conditions, and its manner is on the lines of accepted social formulae. In Galilah he attributes all of it to “the near-monopoly of a handful of officials over the material resources available to the inhabitants” — which is close to a description of any class society.

The book ends with a request for more research into violence. On its evidence, a demand to organize for the abolition of the causes is far more to the point.

Robert Barltrop