How do we change things now? (1987)

Editorial from the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 1987 general election will probably be remembered for the fact that the Labour Party pinned their hopes on a slick, three weeks campaign to wipe out workers' knowledge of what sort of party they really are. They seemed to hope that it needed only meticulously planned, leader-obsessed rallies for people to forget the chaos and conflict of their last time in power. Soft-focus shots of Kinnock slaving through the night at his papers were intended to obscure the history of the support he gave, as a back-bench Labour MP, to the Callaghan government during the winter of discontent. A glossy manifesto was supposed to paper over the broken promises, the internal feuding, the wretched abandonment of what Labour was once proud to call its principles.

It is difficult to believe that the Labour strategists really thought, in the face of all the evidence, that they might overturn that massive Tory majority from 1983. More likely, they reasoned that the best they could hope for was to win enough Conservative seats to secure Neil Kinnock as the Labour prime minister after the next election and to give them a springboard for victory at that election. Their failure to achieve even that may well mean they are in for more of the agonised inquests which followed the defeats of 1959 and 1979. As a capitalist political party, Labour exists to win power over the system, to run it in the interests of the capitalist class. Nothing secures a leader like electoral victory; nothing menaces them like defeat. This applies equally to the Alliance. All their optimism, their promises, their posture as the caring, rational, moderate new departure have come to nothing. They have suffered a mauling from which they may never recover.

The Thatcher government were condemned for deliberately closing down huge swathes of industrial activity, for creating unemployment thereby, for slashing back the Health Service and for tightening the screw of poverty on the most vulnerable people in society. In fact the Labour government which preceded Thatcher in 1979 themselves carried out such policies — not as voluntary, deliberate acts but in response to the recession which was in its early stages. Healey, the last Labour Chancellor, began the programme of restrictions and cut-backs which has been carried on by Howe and Lawson. For there are no fundamental differences between these parties. They all stand for the continuation of capitalism and for running the system in the only way possible — against the interests of the majority. Whatever differences they have are trivial matters of style or of emphasis.

If the election was no more than a choice between the names to go on the doorplate of Number Ten. if it meant no difference to our lives as workers, what point is there in the whole business? The Socialist Party was confined. through our size and resources, to nominating only one candidate — in Islington South and Finsbury. Less than 100 votes were cast for him as the representative of a new society, against over 40,000 for the representatives of capitalism in that constituency. The socialist was the only candidate to offer the chance to opt for a world working on different social relationships — a world free of the problems typical of capitalism, which dominated the programmes of the capitalist parties.

Elections which are worthwhile will be those which address those problems. The working class produce everything but own virtually nothing; they have the power to change society so that class division, war, poverty, famine, avoidable disease are things of the past. Until they realise that power there can be no hope of the more secure, abundant, happy society which human beings are capable of.

The election of 1987 was another one not to count. A revolutionary change in society needs the working class to understand why capitalism operates as it does and why it must be abolished. With that knowledge they will have no need or use for leaders to swamp them in false emotion and to tell them how to think, how to vote, how to keep themselves in chains. There is time now, before the next election, for this change to happen. The evidence of capitalism's decay, its redundancy, is persistent and overwhelming. The working class, who now run capitalism in every way, need only to see this evidence for what it is and then to opt for the social system which they can run in the interests of the entire human race. It could be that the next election is the one to count, when we begin to change the world.

What future for the unions? (1987)

Norman Willis

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Various commentators, from their different standpoints, fear (or hope) that the British trade unions are finished as an effective factor in workers' lives. They point to the loss of between two and three million union members since 1979, to the tightening of the law against the unions carried out by the Thatcher government and to the fading hope of the unions that a non-Tory government would restore the law to what it used to be. They also say that, because of the decline of manufacturing industry and the emergence of new industries not yet unionised, the old basis of the union movement has been or is being destroyed for ever.

One observer. Frances Cairncross, editor of the Economist, reviewing books on the unions in the Times Literary Supplement (24 April 1987) states the case for non-survival, holding that the low point was reached under the Callaghan Labour government in the winter of discontent just before the 1979 election.

  This winter of discontent was the lowest ebb in the history of the British trade union movement. . . . But since the Thatcher government was elected, the unions appear to have been routed: no beer and sandwiches at 10 Downing Street, no concessions to Red Robbo, or to Arthur Scargill, no states of emergency, or solemn-and-binding agreements. These books leave a question in the air: is this one more temporary shift in the balance of power between employers, government included, and organised labour? Or has something more radical happened to the British trade union movement, which means that neither it nor the political party it finances will ever recover?

Cairncross reminds readers, however, that this is by no means the first time the British unions have lost members. Membership fell from 8,348,000 in 1920 to 4.392.000 in 1933 but eventually recovered and reached about 13,000,000. The fall after 1920, which cost the unions nearly half their members, was in fact much more severe than the loss of members since 1979, which has been perhaps 25 percent of the total. Membership always falls in a long depression because of unemployment. This leads Cairncross to the cautious conclusion that the unions may recover, "although not in the appallingly anarchic form of the 1960s and 70s".

An article in the Financial Times (6 April 1987) takes a more gloomy view but is chiefly interesting for using, as a standard by which to assess trade union effectiveness, the fact that "Strikes plummeted to their current 50-year low". What the writer implies is that lots of strikes are evidence that the unions are doing well for their members and if there are few strikes the reverse is true.

In fact past experience shows almost the exact opposite. Generally speaking periods in which the number of strikes is high are periods in which wages are falling and periods of rising wages are marked by a fall in the number of strikes. The reason for this is obvious. The time when the unions have their best chance of getting wage increases and improvements in working conditions is when capitalism is going through a phase of expanding production, booming sales and high and rising profits. In such conditions the last thing the employers want is to have the flow of profits halted by strikes. To avoid them the employers have good reasons to make concessions. From the union point of view the most successful strike is the one that does not happen.

In a depression the position is reversed. How much pressure can the union bring to bear on the employer by threatening to close the factory, when the employer is closing it anyway because it is operating at a loss? The period 1921 to 1926 was one of falling real wages when wages were being reduced faster than the fall of prices. It was a period of numerous and prolonged strikes, most of which were unsuccessful.

At that time the government published figures showing how many of the strikes were outright victories for the unions, how many were outright victories for the employers and how many were compromise settlements. In the years 1921 to 1926 the percentage of strikes which were outright victories for the employers was three and a half times those the unions won. By contrast the following period. 1927 to 1933, saw real wages rising again but the number of strikes was only half what it had been in 1921-1926, when wages were falling.

The same has been evident in the last few years. Since 1980 production has been expanding again after the 1979 depression, profits have risen to peak levels, and although never a week passes without Thatcher or some other minister saying that wages ought not to rise more than the rise of prices that is what has been happening. The average real wages of those workers who are in work have been rising again. In this situation a fall in the number of strikes over wages has been what past experience leads us to expect.

Strikes, not about wages, but about loss of jobs are a different question. Miners lost jobs because of the development of cheaper fuels, oil. gas and nuclear energy. Printers' jobs were destroyed as the result of new and cheaper techniques. Here the workers are up against one of the inescapable facts of life in capitalist society, despite the belief of many workers that capitalism would be different under a Labour government. Capitalism is run for profit and whether it is the Tories or the Labour Party which takes on the job of government their aim is. and has to be, to enable British capitalism to survive against world competition. This means that the government has to do what it can to promote the adoption of new and cheaper techniques of production, no matter what this means in loss of jobs for the workers dependent on the obsolete methods.

The Wilson Labour government in its National Plan adopted in 1965, spelled out its aim of getting rid of 179,000 miners, and did so. It said that loss-making pits were being closed down as quickly as possible. The Plan also had something to say about the printing industry. It was hoped that output per person in the printing and publishing industry could be increased by "labour-saving investment", so that "the industry's projected need for 35.000 additional workers might be reduced or eliminated". So the story then was not about creating additional jobs, but of losing them. For the other section of the industry, newspapers and publishing, the Plan quoted the conclusion reached by the 1962 Royal Commission on the Press, "that certain National Newspapers were then overstaffed by one-third in their production and distribution departments". The long-drawn out and hopeless struggles of the miners and printers in the 1980s to save their jobs were a logical sequel to the 1965 Labour Plan.

Those who predict the permanent decline of the trade unions also have a lot to say about the anti-union legislation of the Thatcher government. They overlook the fact that, with one exception, the same and worse has happened before and the unions have known how to survive. The one exception is the Act which requires unions to have ballots for the election of officers and ballots for taking strike action. Along with the need for ballots before any strike settlement is agreed to, these are measures which the unions ought, in the interests of their members, to have adopted anyway.

Twice before in this century there have been trade union laws, or interpretations by the courts, which have led some observers to say that the unions were being destroyed for all time. In 1901 a court, contrary to what had been supposed to be the legal position, awarded damages of £23.000 to the Taff Vale Railway Company against the railway workers' union which had been on strike. In relation to the price level then and now, this was equivalent to £800,000 at the present time. With legal costs as well, it would be over £1 million. The court decision hampered the unions but did not interrupt the steady growth of trade union membership. (The law was restored to its pre-1901 position by a deal between the unions and the Liberal government in 1906.)

Much the same happened with the Trade Unions and Trade Disputes Act of 1927 which, among other changes in the law, made all "sympathetic" strikes illegal. Membership of unions fell, but more owing to the depression than to the changes in the law; by 1936 membership was back to its pre-1927 level and the unions were succeeding in raising wages after the fall that had taken place before 1927.

The effect that trade union law and its changes have on the unions is not simple and straightforward. Sometimes the employers, who know that they have to live with the unions, themselves ignore or get round the law. The Heath government made the closed shop illegal but the big employers and the big unions tacitly agreed to carry on as before. Sometimes the government itself chooses to turn a blind eye to breaches of the law rather than stir up trouble it would prefer to avoid. During, and for some years after, World War II there were numerous strikes which were illegal but the government chose to ignore them. The 1875 Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act included the power to fine or imprison workers whose breach of contract was calculated to cause loss of life or damage to valuable property, or an interruption of the supply of gas or water. It was hardly ever used. When, in 1950, the Labour government prosecuted ten striking gas workers it was said to be the first time a particular clause in the 1875 Act had been used. They were sentenced to one month imprisonment, though on appeal this was altered to a fine of £50. To put the whole question of the law into perspective it has to be remembered that before 1824, when trade union organisations were wholly illegal, unions were nevertheless formed and were able to some extent to negotiate with employers.

Which brings us to the basic question — what are trade unions and why are they formed? Unions are an expression of "the class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce, and those who produce but do not possess", between the workers and the capitalists. The class struggle is not something imagined or created by socialists but an inevitable outcome of the structure of capitalist society. It cannot be wished away by capitalist propaganda or by the good intentions of social reformers. It endures while capitalism endures and it will go on moving workers to organise to protect themselves against the pressures of the class which exploits them.

Edgar Hardcastle

Limits of Glasnost (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia is just as much a class society with a capitalist economy as America or any other country in the West, only its ruling class monopolises the means of production in a different way.

Instead of doing so through legal property titles vested in individuals and enforced by the state, the ruling class in countries like Russia does so through a direct exclusive control of the state. So in an economy where most industry is state-owned, this gives them at the same time an exclusive, monopoly control over the means of production too. They control the state through their organisation into a vanguard party, the upper echelons of which decide all appointments to posts of any importance in the various organs of the state — the government, the bureaucracy, the armed forces, and the managements of the state industries.

This means that recruitment to the Russian ruling class too is different to that in the West; it takes place not by inheriting legal property titles but by joining and rising up the Party hierarchy. Similarly, the proceeds of the exploitation of wage labour are shared out differently; not by a legal property income in the form of interest, dividends, profit and rent but through bloated 'salaries", monetary prizes and various important privileges in kind (exclusive access to high quality shops, hospitals, holidays and so on).

Who is better off? Who is in the more stable position? The Western ruling classes or the Russian-type ruling classes? From the point of view of the exploited majority in both types of capitalism this question is of little practical importance. In both cases they are excluded from the means of production and so are forced to sell their ability to work to an employer or an employing institution which pays them in wages and salaries less than the value of what they produce. The difference goes towards the accumulation of further capital to exploit wage labour and towards maintaining the ruling class — however they monopolise the means of production and however they are recruited and renewed — in the style to which they are accustomed.

This question does, however, have some relevance when it comes to understanding the political institutions of the two different forms of capitalism. In the West governments act, just as much as they do in Russia, China and other such countries, in the interest of the capitalist ruling class but they do so without the members of this class having to themselves occupy posts in the government. Because the law, and in some cases the constitution, protects their legal right to monopolise the means of production and to draw an unearned income from this, they can delegate the function of running the government to professional politicians. Since the vast majority of wage and salary workers still see no alternative to the capitalist prices-wages-profits system, the capitalist class in the West can also allow which particular clique of politicians should form the government to be decided by popular vote. In fact, this arrangement suits them very well because this game of "ins" and “outs" ensures that no one group of politicians controls the political machine long enough to allocate itself privileges at the expense of the legal property-holding capitalists.

In any event a modern capitalist economy requires a fairly educated wage and salary working class to operate it. Which demands that the capitalist ruling class employ methods other than coercion and the threat of starvation to win our cooperation. The illusion of participation arising from having a say as to which gang of politicians should form the government is precisely one such other method.

Even though this arrangement, known somewhat facetiously as "democracy", suits the private capitalist class of the West, it was nevertheless still something that had to be imposed on them by mass popular movements such as the Chartists and the Reform League in Britain. The ruling class was originally against giving the vote to the wage and salary earning majority because they were afraid that we might use it against them, though right from the start the more far-seeing among them realised that this, besides being a way of undermining the political influence of their landed rivals within the ruling class, was also a way of integrating the working class into capitalist political life.

Universal suffrage and the relative freedom of speech and organisation that goes with it has one drawback for the ruling class however: it means that they cannot always expect to get their way. at least not without a struggle. In other words — and this is the advantage of these arrangements for the wage and salary working class — it allows us some elbow-room in which to better prosecute the class struggle. It also allows socialists some room to spread socialist ideas in a less encumbered fashion than otherwise and it provides the means, when a majority of workers have become socialists, for them to impose their political will for socialism on the ruling class in an essentially peaceful way.

The Russian ruling class is in a rather different position in this respect. They do not suffer the drawback of having to allow their workers the chance of organising to better wage the class struggle against them, nor of having to allow socialists and other opponents to openly criticise them. All the same, as Khrushchev realised thirty years ago. no more than the ruling class in the West can they run their now relatively modern capitalist economy by employing brute force, as in Stalin's time. The working class in Russia too have become more skilled and educated and so require a different treatment to get them to cooperate in production. Gorbachev's reforms are designed to take account of this.

But how far will he go? How far can he go? In the late 1950s and early '60s in the Khrushchev era. observers of the Russian scene looked forward optimistically towards an eventual evolution in Russia of the same sort of trade union and political freedoms as exist in the West. But this was not what happened. Economic development and economic liberalisation were not followed by a move towards political democracy. On the contrary under Khrushchevs successor. Brezhnev — who deposed him in 1964 — there was a regression, not to the brute force tactics of the Stalin era but to a strengthening of the Party's control over political, economic and ideological life.

An analysis of the way in which the ruling class in Russia-type societies monopolises the means of production shows why this was only to be expected and why in fact it is quite unrealistic to expect a straight-line progression from the present one-party political dictatorship in such countries to Western-type political forms. For the ruling class in these countries monopolise the means of production through their monopoly control of political power; which means that to give this up would be to give up also their monopoly over the means of production. In other words, the ruling class in countries like Russia can permit, in the interests of economic efficiency, a certain degree of liberalisation but this can never go so far as to threaten what they themselves call "the leading role of the Party".

This liberalisation can go so far as to permit the official trade union movement to criticise certain governmental actions (as in Poland), to allow more than one Party or Party-endorsed candidate in political elections (as in Hungary) and to allow private enterprise and investment to flourish (as in China). Since none of these exist in Russia itself this allows Gorbachev the possibility of introducing a certain number of innovations into the Russian political system but however far in this direction he and the group he represents within the Russian ruling class decide to go, they will stop short of allowing any real challenge to the Party's political monopoly. The Party will remain in the saddle since it is the organisation by which the ruling class there actually rules.

Since the fall of Khrushchev this has been confirmed on a number of occasions. Although strategic considerations were also involved, the Russian ruling class sent its tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Party there under Dubchek appeared to be moving away from the principle of the leading role of the vanguard Party. In Poland in 1981 the government was compelled to declare martial law in order to try to suppress the Solidarity trade union movement which had refused to accept the leading role of the Party, some of its members having clearly identified exactly who the ruling class in Poland were and precisely how they ruled and monopolised the means of production. And in China the political liberalisation process was brought to an abrupt halt earlier this year when, following student demonstrations, there seemed to be a possibility of the leading role of the Chinese Communist Party (so-called) being undermined.

This is all quite understandable when it is realised that it is through the Party that these ruling classes control the state and through the state the means of production. To expect them to give up the leading role of their Party is like expecting the ruling class in the West to give up the state's protection and enforcement of their legal property rights. Neither of them can be expected to do that except under the pressure of a political revolution.

In other words, the Russian political system could only change into something along the lines of the political system that exists in the West after a political upheaval in which the present ruling class would be deposed. This is not impossible to imagine but highly improbable since the only group (apart from the working class of course) that could do this would be a class of legally-owning private capitalists. Such a class does indeed exist in embryo form in Russia and in China and Hungary in a much more developed form but they hardly have either the economic or the political clout to overthrow the incumbent state capitalist class in any of these countries. Another possibility would be for the existing state capitalist class to convert itself into a class of legally-owning private capitalists. Some of the members of the Russian nomenklatura have accumulated considerable fortunes in their own right and as this process continues there could be pressure from these and their inheritors to move in this direction, but once again this would seem to be highly unlikely.

This means that the only class capable of challenging the ruling class in countries like Russia is the wage and salary working class. As the case of Poland shows, if they are resolute and determined enough they can win a certain room to manoeuvre within the existing political system: a limited freedom to negotiate over wages and working conditions equivalent to that won by workers in the West. This could be conceded, under pressure, by the ruling class in Russia without their political control of the state being undermined any more than its existence in the West undermines the legal private ownership of the means of production there. So there is room for progress here and in the future the working class in Russia might be able to win the same sort of elbow room within the system as workers have been able to in the West. In fact this can be regarded as being a fairly likely development.

The ruling class in Russia-type societies may offer a choice of two or more Party candidates in elections since this would not represent any threat to the leading role of the Party which is the basis of their rule and the class monopoly they exercise over the means of production. If this comes, and experiments in this direction have already been carried out in Hungary, then workers there would be offered the same false choice as in the West between candidates who stand for the same basic thing: the maintenance of the existing form of capitalism.

Real change will only come in Russia and such countries in the same way that it will come in the West: through the growth of socialist understanding and organisation. This will transform the political scene in both types of capitalist country. In the West the political representatives of capitalism will be increasingly challenged at the polls by mandated delegates from the growing socialist movement. In the East this will be a little more difficult but. under pressure from the socialist movement, the authorities would be forced to permit socialist candidates to stand against those defending the Leninist principle of "the leading role of the Party". If at first they refused, the situation would become impossible for them until they gave in — after all, if they could hardly manage the emergence of an independent trade union movement as in Poland, imagine the difficulties they would have in managing the emergence of a growing socialist movement.

Adam Buick

About socialism (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

It is a political party, separate from all others, Left, Right or Centre. It stands for the sole aim of establishing a world social system based upon human need instead of private or state profit. The Object and Declaration of Principles printed in this introductory leaflet were adopted by the Socialist Party in 1904 and have been maintained without compromise since then. In other countries there are companion parties sharing the same object and principles, and they too remain independent from all other political parties.

2. What is Capitalism?

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, etc.) are monopolised by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, but, as a class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

No: as long as capitalism exists, profits will come before needs. Some reforms are welcomed by some workers, but no reform can abolish the fundamental contradiction between profit and need which is built into the present system. No matter whether promises to make capitalism run in the interests of the workers are made sincerely or by opportunist politicians they are bound to fail, for such a promise is like offering to run the slaughter house in the interests of the cattle.

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

No: nationalised industries simply mean that workers are exploited by the state, acting on behalf of the capitalists of one country, rather than by an individual capitalist or company. The workers in nationalised British Leyland are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned Ford. The mines no more belong to "the public" or the miners now than they did before 1947 when they were nationalised. Nationalisation is state capitalism.

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

No: the so-called socialist countries are systems of state capitalism. In Russia and its empire, in China, Cuba, Albania, Yugoslavia and the other countries which call themselves socialist, social power is monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. The features of capitalism, as outlined above, are all present. An examination of international commerce shows that the bogus socialist states are part of the world capitalist market and cannot detach themselves from the requirements of profit.

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism. In a socialist society there will be common ownership and democratic control of the earth by its inhabitants. No minority class will be in a position to dictate to the majority that production must be geared to profit. There will be no owners: everything will belong to everyone. Production will be solely for use, not for sale. The only questions society will need to ask about wealth production will be: what do people require, and can the needs be met? These questions will be answered on the basis of the resources available to meet such needs. Then, unlike now, modern technology and communications will be able to be used to their fullest extent. The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their self- defined needs. Work will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation: the coercion of wage and salary work will be abolished. There will be no buying or selling and money will not be necessary, in a society of common ownership and free access. For the first time ever the people of the world will have common possession of the planet earth.

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

Capitalism, with its constant drive to serve profit before need, throws up an endless stream of problems. Most workers in Britain feel insecure about their future; almost one in four families with children living below the official government poverty line; many old people live in dangerously cold conditions each winter and thousands die; millions of our fellow men and women are dying of starvation — tens of thousands of them each day. A society based on production for use will end those problems because the priority of socialist society will be the fullest possible satisfaction of needs. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are subsidised not to produce more: yet many millions are malnourished. At the moment hospital queues are growing longer and people are dying of curable illnesses; yet it is not "economically viable" to provide decent health treatment for all. In a socialist society nothing short of the best will be good enough for any human being.

8. What about human nature?

Human behaviour is not fixed, but determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate. Even under capitalism people often obtain pleasure from doing a good turn for others; few people enjoy participating in the "civilised" warfare of the daily rat-race. Think how much better it would be if society was based on co-operation.

9. Are socialists democrats?

Yes: the Socialist Party has no leaders. It is a democratic organisation controlled by its members. It understands that Socialism can only be established by a conscious majority of workers — that workers must liberate themselves and will not be liberated by leaders or parties. Socialism will not be brought about by a dedicated minority "smashing the state", as some left-wingers would have it. Nor do the activities of paid, professional politicians have anything to do with Socialism — the experience of seven Labour governments has shown this. Once a majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, they will take the necessary step to organise consciously for the democratic conquest of political power. There will be no Socialism without a socialist majority.

10. What is the next step?

Many workers know that there is something wrong and want to change society. Some join reform groups in the hope that capitalism can be patched up, but such efforts are futile because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. People who fear a nuclear war may join CND, but as long as nation states exist, economic rivalry means that the world will never be safe from the threat of war. There are countless dedicated campaigns and good causes which many sincere people are caught up in, but there is only one solution to the problems of capitalism and that is to get rid of it, and establish Socialism. Before we can do that we need socialists; winning workers to that cause requires knowledge, principles and an enthusiasm for change. These qualities can be developed by anyone — and are essential for anyone who is serious about changing society. Capitalism in the 1980s is still a system of waste, deprivation and frightening insecurity. You owe it to yourself to find out about the one movement which stands for the alternative.

If you have read this set of principles and agree with some or all of them, contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism.

Is Nicaragua Socialist? (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the midst of the Irangate scandal in which US President Ronald Reagan and his accomplices do their best to extricate themselves from the web of lies created to cover up their illegal funding of neo-fascist terrorists aiming to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, a seldom-asked question is, Who rules Nicaragua and what are the consequences for the working class? Conventional leftist wisdom is quite clear on the matter: the imperialist government of the USA is at war against the left-wing government of Nicaragua and therefore the Sandinista regime must be defended against all attacks. Of course, it is true that Nicaragua is the current victim of a campaign of destabilisation and outright terrorism by American imperialism but that in itself does not make the Nicaraguan government a regime to be supported. Struggles between rival capitalist governments are common and socialists do not take sides in the conflicts between robber forces.

In fact, the coming into being of the present Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was the product of a process of class struggle between various ruling factions which has gone on since the beginning of this century. In the early 1900s the British Empire controlled the Atlantic coast region and these imperialists were ousted, with US support, by José Santos Zelaya whose party represented the aspirations of local capitalists with interests in small business and farming. Having removed the British imperialists, Zelaya’s liberal capitalist government was put under pressure to act at the behest of US capitalists. When it failed to do so, refusing to remove restrictions on US capital investment or to allow the building of a trade canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the US imperialists responded in the time-honoured fashion: by sending in the Marines and toppling the Zelaya government.

Until 1926 the Marines kept Nicaragua under US imperial control with puppet governments assuring that the national economy served as a satellite of Wall Street. In 1926 the national capitalists, led by Cesar Augusto Sandino, attempted to oust the US imperialists as they had done with the British but national capitalist liberation (which is of no interest to the workers) was not achieved and instead the US established the regime of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, a man qualified by virtue of having been a second-hand car salesman in Philadelphia. The Somoza regime ruled as a dictatorship, using the National Guard to keep the wealth producers in their place. It was a corrupt, vicious and dynastic regime: Anastasio Somoza Debayle (the second Somoza leader) personally stole much of the money sent to Nicaragua in 1972 after the tragic earthquake and used extreme force in suppressing any opposition.

Politically the Somoza regime was discredited and, as time went on, it became economically incapable of winning any support: between 1970 and 1974, 35 per cent of all Nicaraguan factories closed down due to falling profits. The resident capitalists wanted change. It was this more than anything which led to the uprising in 1979 which brought down the Somoza regime. The uprising was a popular rebellion involving workers, peasants and local capitalists – it was in no sense a socialist revolution.

The leading political force in what became known as the Sandinista revolution was the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) which was formed in 1961 and originally comprised mainly young pro-Moscow leftists. There is no doubt that after 1979 there were definite improvements both in the economic standard of living and in the degree of political freedom in Nicaragua. Both of these improvements proved to be short-lived and neither amounted to socialism or anything like it (which cannot be established in one country anyway).

The trouble with capitalism is that there are no “nice” ways of running it: capitalist governments can never be “goodies” because it is their job to administer the exploitation of the working class. A government which is loyal to the nation which it serves (and remember, the Sandinistas are nationalists) must ensure that the nation is performing profitably and that entails squeezing as much surplus value as possible out of the wealth-producing majority. That is precisely what has happened since 1979 in Nicaragua.

The FSLN has used its state power to run a form of state capitalism in which the workers are organised as a military force, expected to obey orders from above in the interest of the national economy. “The FSLN has translated its military structures to civil life – more by circumstance than intention – and as such the recently created mass organisations function with a totally hierarchical structure” (Notas Sobre Nicaragua y la Revolution Sandinista in Bicicleta, February 1981, p. 55). The FSLN controls the workforce, despite the pretence of workers’ participation at ranch and factory levels which are no more than a means of incorporating the workers into previously determined state plans.

Under Nicaraguan state capitalism the major features of the economy are under state control. Unlike in Russia and other “socialist economies” the Nicaraguan government does not directly own the means of wealth production and distribution but does monopolise the banks (which control agricultural credit) and all imports and exports, thus effectively appropriating profits from cotton, beef, sugar and coffee which constitute two thirds of the country’s exports. The state also controls the means of processing agricultural commodities, so that although most land used for cotton cultivation is privately owned most of the cotton processing factories are state-owned; although 70 per cent of cattle are owned by peasant farmers 80 per cent of slaughterhouses are state-owned. The state is under an obligation to use its power as a national capitalist to milk as much profit as it can out of the war-weary workers. This profit is needed firstly to pay the interest on the massive debt – in excess of $2.5 bn – which is owed to the big Western banks; secondly, to offset the massive flight of private capital which has taken place since 1979 – Nicaraguan capitalists quite understandably prefer to invest in safer economic regions than one under military attack by US imperialism; and thirdly, to pay for the destabilisation, which has been openly funded by the US Administration to the tune of $130 million in aid to the contras, added to which has been a US trade war against Nicaragua. Given these circumstances and given the imperative need for capital accumulation which is essential to an underdeveloped capitalist economy, the state as capitalist has no option but to act as a ruthless and exploitative boss.

As with the economy, so in national politics the FSLN monopolises power. Technically, power is vested in the Council of State. Epstein and Evans, writing in the radical US paper, In These Times, contend that the Council is “little more than a sounding board for the policies of the nine-man FSLN directorate” (11 January, 1983). The FSLN junta has suppressed opposition parties and newspapers and, as is the usual tendency when a vanguard party monopolises the state, the new bureaucratic elite has established for itself a privileged lifestyle:

  As the FSLN consolidates its hold over the government, its leaders inevitably gain access to the perquisites of power. Commandantes live in the wealthier districts of Managua, occupying mansions previously owned by the leading Somocistas. They are provided with chauffeur-driven cars, servants and bodyguards. Their government offices are air-conditioned, a most exclusive and important status symbol in tropical Managua. (“A Critical Look at the Sandinistas”, Changes, May 1982, p. 14).

One black marketeer quoted in The Toronto Star (12 April 1987) complains that “President Daniel Ortega and the nine commandantes are the only people in the country with money. The rest of us are dying of hunger”. No doubt this quotation is printed by a pro-US Canadian newspaper as part of the ideological war against the Sandinistas but it does probably reflect the resentment which is all too common in the so-called nationally liberated countries such as Cuba, Vietnam or Kampuchea where the beneficiaries of “liberation” are the small class of bureaucrats who control the national state. Of course, Leninist mythology has it that the state is being run by the bureaucrats on behalf of the working class: it is a dictatorship on behalf of the proletariat. So it was that Pedro Ortiz, head of the Sandinista Workers’ Central could tell Nicaraguan agricultural workers that

  For workers to conduct a strike against the state is to conduct a strike against themselves, because the land is now administered by the workers and campesinos (Volya, No. 3, p. 3)

This is similar to the instruction given by Trotsky to the Russian trade unionists after 1917. Indeed, the FSLN’s attitude to East European state capitalism is that of admiration: the FSLN newspaper, El Nuevo Diario, described East Germany as “a model society . . . organised on the basis of jobs for all, peace and justice”. In 1980 when ten million Polish workers resisted their state-capitalist masters and formed Solidarity, the head of the FSLN Propaganda Department, Frederico Lopez, lined up with the most reactionary forces worldwide in condemning such trade unionists as “counter-revolutionary elements which seek to place Poland into the hands of imperialism”. (FSLN memorandum, 23 December 1981, quoted in Nicaragua: Say Hello to the New Bosses, p.31. Published in No Middle Ground).

It is an irony of political history that many of the workers who nominally supported the Sandinista revolution in 1979 then went on to support Solidarity in 1980, only to discover that the FSLN, having established its role as a national capitalist in opposition to the idea of independent trade unions, now opposed the struggle of the Polish workers. In expressing such opposition the FSLN was only being consistent, for it has done its best to ignore or suppress independent unions in Nicaragua. The country’s two largest trade unions, the Sandinista Workers’ Central (CST) and the Association of Rural Workers (ATC) each have about 100,000 members. They are essentially company unions, run by and in the pay of the state bosses. It should be pointed out that Nicaragua is traditionally a badly unionised country: on the eve of the revolution in 1979 only 6 per cent of the workforce was unionised.

There are some unions which are not state-run, but these are either too small to be of significance or discriminated against by the state employer. They range from the very small People’s Action Movement (MAP) which characterises Nicaragua as well as Cuba, China and Russia as “state capitalist” (several of them are now locked in Nicaraguan prisons) to the 65,000-strong Nicaraguan Workers Confederation (CTN) whose manifesto asserts

  . . . the need to guarantee the development of a union movement that is democratic, independent, unified, revolutionary and class-conscious . . . so as to rebuff every effort to impose a single union hierarchy that would be totally subordinate to the party in power.

Despite its Catholic illusions – not dissimilar to those of Poland’s Solidarity – the CTN is the major force in Nicaragua with a chance of threatening the state’s stranglehold over labour.

Without doubt, the US-backed terrorism against Nicaragua is brutal in its disregard for life and hypocritical in its undemocratic tactics in the avowed interest of a perverse notion of democracy. In fact, the US terror is having the reverse effect to that intended: it is uniting Nicaraguans behind the Sandinistas in an act of national defence. Without a US war against it there is a much greater likelihood that Nicaraguan workers would be resisting the state. The US assumption that Nicaragua is “socialist” is utterly mistaken and so probably is the theory that Nicaragua is about to fall under the control of the Russian Empire, taking with it other Central American countries. In fact, it is only the US offensive which could make that feasible, if only as a last resort for a terrorised Sandinista regime.

Needless to say, the Socialist Party is hostile in every way to the contra terrorists and their backers. But the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend (if it was, then socialists in Britain would have had to have defended Hitler in the last world war or the Galtieri junta in the Falklands war). Socialists do not support the state-capitalist government of Nicaragua and to the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign which implores us to do so we respond that our only support is for workers of all lands in their struggle against the capitalists of all lands, be they imperial exploiters or native ones, left or right wing.

Steve Coleman

Within those walls (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we drove along the narrow road bordered by grass with trees and shrubs beyond, I felt curious yet mildly uneasy about our destination. The others were laughing and joking around me, apparently thinking nothing of our impending encounter, though it was true that most of them had been there before. I was struck by the bleak, apparently deserted surroundings, just a stone's throw from a newly completed section of motorway hidden in a cutting beyond a high wire fence.

Then suddenly we were upon it: a large group of grey, uninviting buildings linked together by a single interminable corridor. There were annexes and outbuildings which had been added at intervals. Surrounding the entire establishment was a high stone wall, interrupted in places by large cottages. High atop the central administration building was a clock tower but each clock face had stopped on a different time. I had been expecting a more attractive and friendly building nestling in leafy grounds. Instead, the whole place was gravely forebidding, with an aura of despair reminiscent of a prison save for the absence of bars on the windows.

Originally the establishment was a virtually self-contained unit with its own farm, set well away from the town which had grown and crept towards the boundary wall. Despite this, there was still an inescapable remoteness about the place, a sense of having been abandoned and forgotten by society. Our guide led us into the foyer, a cold unsociable room almost noiseless but for distant echoing footsteps and the buzzing of the telephone switchboard behind the reception window. There was a scruffy, middle-aged man on the floor by a wall, head propped up on one arm. voraciously smoking a cigarette held between fingers burned by years of dragging discarded nips down to the filter. His staring eyes seemed menacing but his manner suggested that he had no will to do anything other than lie around smoking second-hand cigarettes.

We filed through a double door into a reverberating corridor with hideous decor punctuated by patches of bare plaster. There were more vacant-looking people wandering aimlessly up and down. Some were recognised by members of my group, who offered greetings. A couple acknowledged the attention; most were silent and unresponsive, as if senseless. I noticed that they were all wearing very similar clothing: the men all in bland shirts with huge collars, check jackets and crimplene trousers and the women in shapeless dresses that made them look like animated curtains.

I hesitantly followed the others into a long high-ceilinged room lined on either side with old tubular-framed beds. Once through the door, my nostrils were assaulted by a pungent offensive odour. The dormitory was stark and soulless, not a homely or personal artefact in sight. The beds were all covered with identical counterpanes, the only means of identification being pieces of card stuck to the ends of the bedsteads on which were written the names of the night-time occupants.

We were standing on a hideously patterned carpet which led like a causeway over the slippery linoleum to another door, also with two handles. Through the glass I could make out several haggard figures moving to and fro. They looked as if they were anxiously awaiting the arrival of something. We entered this living area, which had thoughtfully been labelled above the door with a large placard. It later occurred to me that to describe it as a "living" room was something of a misrepresentation; "existing" room would have been a far more accurate description. I was unprepared for the scene which confronted me.

The impatient men wandered about, apparently oblivious of our presence. Nearby there were many languid figures seated in uncomfortable plastic-covered armchairs, some half asleep, others staring into the room or fiddling with their clothing. Apart from one man periodically growling at the odorous atmosphere, the only sound was that emanating from a television set placed high on one wall.

Next we called on some younger women, trooping up two flights of worn steps like class and teacher on an outing to the local museum. The place was markedly different; it had a more homely atmosphere. The sleeping arrangements were also remarkable because the beds were in the same huge room as the living area but enclosed in four glass-topped cubicles. I noticed a woman peering at us from within one of these cubicles; her eyes were petrified into an iron stare, isolated inside dark rings. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for weeks.

We followed our guide back down the stairs to the endless corridor, talking earnestly about what we had seen. After another brisk trek we were led through a door into the warm June sunshine — bright, refreshing and gratifying. We walked up a concrete path towards a prefabricated building near the boundary wall.

Inside there were three tables littered with half-finished wicker trays, stools with cord seats and some recently moulded resin figures. At another table there were four men playing a disinterested game of cards. The atmosphere was one of indifference, although a couple of people were making an heroic effort to master those blister-inducing pieces of cane to produce a passable tea tray. Others sat and glared with undisguised contempt at their work through clouds of cigarette smoke.

I've briefly described my first impressions of a psychiatric hospital, in which I subsequently worked for almost three years. The experience was both enlightening and disturbing. The place was a spectre from the past, one of those places we all know exist but don’t like to acknowledge. Within its antiquated walls, time became inert for most of the inhabitants. There was a different world outside of high speed travel, microchip technology, fast food, piped music and canned laughter. Inside there was safety, comfort and seclusion; security in a persistent and unvarying routine. There was of course a vivid window on the world in the form of the television screen but I discovered later that it was more of an intruder than a welcome guest. Here second-hand, pre-packaged escapism was redundant and there was no place for sophistry. The people here made their own world, away from the tangled. mind-bending turmoil outside, insulated in a cocoon of predictability and convention. There were no decisions to be made, no bills demanding to be paid, no production targets to be met. This place was indeed a sanctuary from the economic and social battlefield outside . . .  an asylum.

Although my first impressions were so unpleasant I later developed a fondness for the place and the patients in it, along with a firm contempt for the largely reactionary psychiatrists and their methods of "treatment". During my short experience it became clear to me that the majority of people admitted to a psychiatric hospital would not be there but for poverty and the stress of modern living. Their treatment could only be a palliative, usually in the form of drugs, to enable them to cope — accept the unacceptable, to render them docile and controllable. But the causes of their illnesses would still be there when they returned home, and it was the real causes that were rarely addressed.

Nick Bunskill

Three ring circus (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

How did you feel as you waited for the results of the Eurovision Song Contest? Did you pace up and down in a nail-biting frenzy of excitement as one after another authority on music and culture announced their verdict on the cream of the world's musical ability?

Or were you one of the majority of reasonably sane people who were bored to tears by the whole degrading spectacle, who realised that the banal, sickly, sugar-coated verbal garbage you had been listening to was not going to have the slightest effect on your life and future happiness, and was in fact nothing but a vulgar attempt to create yet another socially useless "Superstar", and vast fortunes for those involved.

If so compare it — the second largest time wasting non-event of 1987 — with what was undoubtedly the most expensive, spectacular, but phoney epic of the advertising profession that we have experienced for several years. I refer of course to the General Election.

How did you feel as millions of TVs and radios bombarded you with the irrelevant result of this gigantic con trick? If you had previously felt slightly cheated by the vague promise of something a little bit special in the world of song and entertainment, you should have felt a passionate fury and demanded immediate revenge on Robin Day who for the last month had paraded endless parasitical hypocrites before you with the implied suggestion that if you backed the right one, your problems and those of society could be solved. Whether on the morning after the Election as you prepared for another day’s work you felt revitalised, thankfully relieved that all would be well for the next few years, or alternatively, panic stricken, convinced that the end was finally at hand, — relax, nothing is going to change. Tomorrow, next week, next year, the army of unemployed will still be with us, so will the ever increasing list of urgent, socially useful work waiting to be done. Next winter pensioners will die of the cold again, coal mines will go on being closed for economic reasons. Thousands of children around the world will continue to starve to death every day. our newly-elected leaders will still attempt to explain away their obscene actions in allowing vast quantities of food to be destroyed because the starving have no money to pay for it.

A minor shake-up in our political leadership has served no useful purpose whatsoever.

This, the latest farce in capitalism's comedy of errors, has more in common with the Song Contest than you might imagine. Apart from the false smiles and the pollution of the airwaves that the contestants inflicted on us, they were both totally useless as far as society's needs are concerned. Neither were run for our benefit although our support was vital for both. Those who did well out of each of them did so at our expense. In short — we were conned.

However, unlike the losers in the song contest who can go away and forget about it, we the vast majority who were all losers in the General Election (whether we realise it or not), have got to live with the consequences.

Nick White

Economics Exposed: The great money trick (1987)

The Economics Exposed column from the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most relevant response to debates about "economics" in the current era is to point out that the present global system of production is based on the legalised robbery of the majority by the minority. As long as the wages system exists, therefore, the needs of the majority cannot properly be met, as production will remain geared to the needs of our employers rather than to the needs of humanity as a whole.

This socialist assertion about the economic system which exists throughout the world today can quite easily be shown to be correct. A recent survey by Management Today has shown that the top hundred British companies have all increased the value of their shares by at least six hundred per cent over the past decade. Now there is a capitalist cliché about "making your money work for you" which is as misleading as statements about the famous billionaire tinfoil-magnate, Lord Skiver, having "built" a palatial residence in the South of France. What it really means is using your money in order to make others work for you. And if I had invested a million pounds in a share portfolio covering those hundred companies ten years ago, I would now have over six million, without even having heard of the companies, let alone worked for them.

This leads us to the key question. Where would my extra five million pounds' worth of wealth have come from? The honest answer is so simple and obvious that it will give the average economist (who works for money by dealing with such “complex” matters) a bout of apoplexy. This surplus is created simply because the wages and salaries paid to workers by our employers amount to far less than the value of the wealth we are creating. And that surplus value goes directly into the hands of those who own the productive resources in the first place, allowing them to build up their monopoly of the means of survival still further.

The prices of goods and services reflect the "value" label which is pinned on them by the capitalist economic system. These relative "values", or ratios in which goods and services are exchanged, are determined ultimately by the amount of socially-necessary labour-time required to produce them. In other words, the quantity and quality of human effort involved in producing some finished item (and delivering it to its point of consumption) is what guides capitalism towards determining its price on the market. Within the wages system, however, the working abilities of human beings have themselves been turned into items of purchase. on the labour market. And the wage (or price) needed to buy your creative powers for a given period is determined in the end by the amounts of labour time or social resources required to "produce" you, as reasonably fit for productive work.

Under the influence of these economic laws, then, let us assume you have been employed for a week. The employer may pay £120, in real terms as the price commanded by your working abilities for that week. That may be the minimum amount necessary to supply the housing and sustenance needed to make sure that you are physically and mentally capable of being a productive and profitable investment for that employer. But unlike other items which are bought and sold in the world market, human working time has a special quality. It is the only item which, once bought, will then proceed to create new values, new wealth. Other investments may seem "productive", but in all cases it is human labour alone which is responsible for generating socially recognised wealth or value.

Having hired you for the week for £120, the boss can rely on you to produce new value substantially in excess of this, even allowing for "overheads” such as paying for fuel and other services, raw materials and the depreciation of machinery. The simple fact is that given access to natural resources and twentieth century technology, one worker can produce the basic material necessities for one person in a fraction of each day, or week, or year. In a sane system of society this would happen, and the remaining time could be spent in constantly refining and improving life, in addition to safely and happily guaranteeing decent food and housing for every human being. In capitalist terms, however, those few hours taken by each worker each week helping to produce (directly or indirectly) the equivalent of their own bare means of survival, is seen merely as "the reproduction of the value of labour power", in other words the part of the week during which we create the equivalent of our wage. Any wealth you create in the remainder of the week goes to the owner of the enterprise (who may live a thousand miles away). The penalties for ignoring these present laws are severe in terms of material suffering, as any worker will find if you pack up and go home every Wednesday afternoon, informing your boss that you have finished for the week because you have created the "value" of your wage. This, then, is the legalised robbery which workers have too often been persuaded to vote for.

Clifford Slapper

Between the Lines: The democracy show (1987)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The democracy show

I watched the 1987 election on the telly. More than any previous one, this was democracy which you watched, like you watch Cagney and Lacey or championship wrestling. It was an election campaign devised for cameras, in which people with minds were temporary screen interferences, which existed to be watched. But that is not what the Chartists fought for over a hundred years ago. Those men and women of the working class who were depicted insultingly as "the mob", unworthy of the right to vote, campaigned for the chance to participate in democracy. They were under no more illusions than socialists are today that the "democracy" which could be squeezed out of capitalism was mean, limited and only a means to a far greater freedom, but, like socialists today, they knew that once they were in on the political act they possessed a means to power in society. But there is a massive distinction which must be recognised between being in on the political act — being active participants in democracy — and having democracy turned into a television show, there to be watched by a passive electorate whose greatest possible function (if they are lucky) is to become invited members of a controlled studio audience. The Chartist movement did not struggle for that: our fellow workers today in dictatorships from the East of Europe to the South of Africa are not struggling for that. What must be recognised, because it has been more apparent in 1987 than it ever was before, is that the democratic election process has been appropriated by unelected, unaccountable media chiefs who have taken it upon themselves not to go as far as to deny workers the chance to vote, but to dominate what workers see before they vote. This gross erosion of meaningful democracy has not occurred as a result of the independent arrogance of the media bosses: they have been aided by the full collusion of the major capitalist parties who have decided to abandon the process of real public debate and opted for stage-managed imagery. In the process the intellectual debate which is fundamental to any kind of meaningful democratic election has been all but stifled. Theatricals have replaced polemics; images have been substituted for ideas; the condescending spectacles of red-rose rabble-rousing and leader-worshipping displays of amorphous masses have compelled even democratic socialists to wonder how seriously one can take a general election which is presented in the manner of The Eurovision Song Contest. What we are saying is that the extent to which the media has taken it upon themselves to lay out the electoral agenda, excluding as they do so all reference to the revolutionary socialist alternative, is a threat to the rights which workers have fought for — a threat which socialists, who regard democracy as an inseparable means and end, will resist.

The show itself

The real election took place away from the cameras. In Islington, where the only Socialist candidate stood, the battle was fought on the streets where literature was sold on stalls and at tube stations; in our manifesto and leaflets which were delivered to all households; on posters and stickers which clearly stated the socialist message; and at our election rally: ours was a battle of ideas. The TV Democracy Show was a prolonged. boring performance, virtually devoid of ideas and totally devoid of fresh thought. There was the torturing experience of endless Kinnock interviews, as the Labour windbag piled on alliterative negatives in description of the satanic evils of Thatcher. The demon Thatcher herself was interviewed rarely, leaving it mainly to Tebbit who looked like a man waiting for an urban riot to break out so that he could squash it. Healey came across, as usual, as an affable lout and Owen as an arrogant phoney. It was an election of characters, not ideas, and as The Socialist Party is interested in ideas, not characters, it all seems hardly worthy of comment. One moment on the election night sticks in this writer's mind. It was when Robin Day, in the middle of one of those utterly empty studio debates which earned him his knighthood, broke off because he had been instructed to cross to David Dimbleby. the linkman. Dimbleby was unable to speak because his mouth was full of chocolate toffee (a Mars Bar. he splurted: "I can't say anything because I'm in the middle of eating a Mars Bar"). Perhaps there lies a clue to the way to finally destroy the stream of banalities which characterise these BBC election specials: stuff their gobs with Mars Bars and give us all a rest. Perhaps the Animal Liberation Front has an historic role to play after all!

Steve Coleman

A better world (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the world today we have the resources, the technology, the skills and the knowledge to satisfy everyone's needs — in food, clothing. shelter and everything else — several times over; no informed person would deny it. But we cannot fully use those assets in a society where the fundamental aim of production is profit. We can only use them in a society where the fundamental aim of production is human needs.

This means establishing a society without money — where we don't use bits of metal and pieces of paper to needlessly ration ourselves, we don't all walk around with a cash register in our heads.

This means a society without wages — where we aren't forced to work for an employer just to get by. but where we can choose the work we want to do for our own satisfaction and for the benefit of the community as a whole.

This means a society without frontiers and nations — where the world's resources and knowledge are used rationally and not in the crazy, haphazard way determined by "market forces" or governments, causing millions to die of starvation or go short while food and other essentials are stockpiled in huge quantities.

This means a society without wars or the threat of wars — because wars in the modern world are caused by economic and trade rivalries between nations, and in a world that is united there won't be such rivalries to fight over.

“You can't change human nature"

A lot of people will say that this sounds nice but it's impossible because human beings are naturally lazy, greedy and aggressive, and "you can't change human nature".

We'd reply to this that human beings can certainly be lazy, greedy and aggressive, but that they can be (and they usually are in their day-to-day relations) co-operative, generous and caring. They are what their situation makes them. We are not, for example, usually greedy or aggressive about the thing that is most essential above all else to our survival — water. We don't fight for it, refuse a glass of it to a thirsty stranger, or hoard it in our baths or in buckets under our beds. Nor do we needlessly waste it. Why not? Because we know that every time we turn on the tap. it's there. And if we organise society — and we can do it easily — so that everything we need to live comfortably is there when we turn on the tap (in other words we have free access to all goods and services), then we are more likely, in these circumstances, to behave in a generous and co-operative way. We will also be providing for ourselves the secure material framework within which we can attend to all the inner, non-material needs we may have.

The real alternative

So we're not asking people to be "good" or “idealistic". We're simply asking them to see that a fundamental change in the way society is organised — which we call socialism — is in their individual interests, in their children's interests, and in the interest of society as a whole.

But the Socialist Party doesn't exist to bring about this state of affairs for you. We exist to spread the ideas we've outlined and to be used, if people want to use us, to vote out the present system of buying and selling and production for profit and vote in a new system of common ownership, production for use and free access to all goods and services. And just as it must be voted in democratically. this new system can only be run democratically — by everyone — with all having equal access to everything it produces.

Socialism (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism means a world without nations and passports, borders and barriers. By replacing production for profit with a society based on production direct for human needs, socialism will do away with prices and profits, buying and selling, money and markets. In the process, socialism will remove war — not by deterring it with ever more destructive weapons, nor by futile attempts to ban the weapons — but by removing capitalism, the cause of war.

Casualties (1987)

USS Stark

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every day wars are fought. Every day the pressures inside this society erupt as some new battleground opens somewhere in the world. Every day capitalism puts new lives on the line to fight over land or minerals or markets. Or, as Ronald Reagan recently put it after the "accidental" rocket attack on a US frigate in the Gulf, "safeguarding the interests of the US and the free world in the Gulf, remains crucial to our national security and to the security of our friends throughout the world".

That sounds unequivocal but friends and relatives of the 37 American sailors who died on the USS Stark will be confused to find out that after the Iraqi Exocet attack, the US administration is portraying Iran, not Iraq, as the villain of the piece. As one Arab diplomat put it.

  the US said it was a mistake to sell arms to Iran, and now Iraq says it was a mistake that the frigate was attacked. Now the two sides are even. It's ironic but the only major consequence of this incident may be a warming of relations between Washington and Baghdad.

The lives were not lost in vain, however — the US armed presence in the Gulf exists (just as for any other country) in order to protect the small number of American-flagged vessels (owned by a small number of Americans) that need to use the Gulf.

There won't be a small number for much longer, hence the build-up in the US state's pressure. By mid-July, eleven oil tankers owned by the Kuwaiti Oil Tanker Company will be transferred to a Delaware-based corporation, putting them under US registration, under the US flag and. more importantly, entitled to the protection of the US navy. While the oil barons and their class shift from nation to nation, flying the flag of greatest convenience, workers of the world are expected to put up with the rhetoric of "the national interest" and to put down their lives, if necessary. In Mexico, lives are risked in trying to cross the border into Texas; in Ireland, workers have to enter a lottery to get a visa to work in the US; in America, Reagan announces the plan to test all immigrants for the HIV virus. At the same time as people are being barred from access to parts of the world, there's no problem, about becoming American if you are an oil tanker.

Of course, it's not just about oil. Capitalism produces many conflicts between nations. It produces many strategies, alliances and rivalries which cannot be ignored. Last December, Washington turned down a Kuwaiti request for help but following the news that the Russians were preparing to provide the naval escort, Washington quickly offered their help. Oil is just one example but it is part of a much bigger ballgame. and such small apparently insignificant disputes can easily turn into something much worse within days. Remember the Falklands War? But do you remember the almost comical news that preceded it, about the scrap-metal merchants from Argentina who had landed on something called South Georgia. Similarly, some small item on tonight's news about some far-off battle in some far-off place with a funny name could be the first kicks, the labour pains for the Third World War.

But whatever the battles are fought over, it’s not in the interests of the vast majority that are at stake. There's only a few people who stand to win or lose in times of war. The business pages of the papers make that quite clear:

 Shell, up 10p at 1011p. and BP. 11p ahead at 749. were the hot favourites as word filtered through that 2.000 lraquis had been killed in a new Iranian offensive. . .

(London Evening Standard. 9 January 1987)

Offensive is the word. And of course it's not the shareholders or the politicians who do the fighting. They stay safe in their offices rattling their sabres and letting others do the dying. According to diplomats in Washington, the deaths on the USS Stark, "provided President Reagan with a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the 'Gulf Cooperation Council' the US's determination to pay with its own lives to protect the oil lanes, despite the cooling in relations because of the American arms sales to Iran". (Guardian, 19 May 1987)

Where, for that matter, was Reagan when American teenagers were dying "to safeguard the interests of the US and the free world", during the Second World War? As someone who sometimes appears to welcome the prospect of a Third World War, he was in no hurry to appear in the last one — Reagan spent the war working for the FBI spying on any suspect communist subversives in Hollywood. One actor that he'd never need to worry about is Sylvester Stallone who has made millions out of encouraging American children to hate Russians in Rocky IV (like I-III). and to kill Vietnamese in Rambo (Rocky without boxing gloves). The actor though, doesn't quite match up to the wide range of characters he portrays: would Rambo have refused (as Stallone did last year) to travel to Cannes for the Film Festival, for fear of attacks from terrorists (or at least film critics)?

Recently our hero has been in Israel looking for a new location for an old script, as Rambo turns his attention to the Gulf after having finished off anyone with slanty-eyes in his previous film. But where was Stallone when the real Vietnam War was on, the one without the make-up and the blanks? Apparently Stallone saw out the war as a Physical Education instructor at a finishing school for rich young women in the jungles of Switzerland. Of course we've nothing against draft dodgers, quite the opposite in fact. But these are the people (and Stallone is just one of the more obvious) who encourage nationalism, who profit from warmongering, and who are all for dying for their country, just so long as it doesn't include them. But what of the sailors who did die in USS Stark? They died for precisely nothing — to help save Reagan's face after Irangate, to defend the American Oil Corporations.

There'll be another conflict in the Gulf, sooner or later. More names to be chiselled into the war memorial. But if the next conflict escalates, it won't just be the soldiers and sailors who suffer. We'll all be in the front line. If you put your trust in leaders, give up your power to politicians, and give up your imagination to film stars, the next thing you could find yourself giving up is your life.