Editorial: “Each Against All” dashes “United Europe" (1997)

Editorial from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent weeks the great capitalist Euro project has looked in dire straits. Last month it suffered two massive body blows with the election of the relatively Eurosceptical French “Socialist Party” and Germany’s attempt to revalue its gold reserves in order to meet the strict Maastricht convergence criteria.

Each EU member state attempting to “converge” their economies and economic performance has proved tantamount to demanding the impossible. Wide structural differences between the Euro economies, ranging from differing import/export requirements, tensions between industrial and finance capital, and a less than synchronised trade cycle have meant that real progress on convergence since 1992 has been minimal.

But what lies behind the persistent talk of European federalism and a single currency? In actuality, what we have been witnessing has been the movement of the most dominant section of the capitalist class in Europe— generally based in Germany—to create the most powerful economic, political and military bloc on the planet, a bloc capable of challenging the dominance of the United States. What really worries other sections of the Euro capitalist class is that such a federal bloc will be dominated by German interests to the exclusion of their own. Hence the strategics of states like Britain and France which have centred on how best to contain German dominance—France by encouraging the cohesiveness of the other major European states and Britain by its obviously Eurosceptical and nationalistic posturing. All this being further proof, if any more is needed, that “unity” between capitalist nation states can be nothing more than a temporary charade, a mask for the economic manoeuvring and power posturing that is increasingly setting each nation state against all since the demise of the post-war bloc line-up.

For socialists the “European question” can only be a capitalist question and nothing for the working class to take sides about, despite all the efforts of the differing sections of the capitalist class to enlist the support of the workers, not least of all on the latest Amsterdam Treaty. A single currency in Europe is neither an economic panacea (as Germany and some neo-liberals argue) nor the real cause of the austerity and economic restructuring taking place across much of the continent, a product of capitalisms still lingering world economic crisis. In this respect, the single currency and the Maastricht convergence criteria provide the perfect pretext for attacking working-class living standards while, behind the scenes, remaining an object of intense disagreement among the rulers and owners of Europe.

As the Bishop said to the Politician (1997)

From the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Last October, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales published a 13,000-word document entitled "The Common Good and the Catholic Church's Social Teaching"—Thirty pages of confusion which reveal the authors have no understanding of the workings of capitalism and are totally divorced from reality.

Common Good is prefaced by Cardinal Basil Hume and was basically a statement aimed at all Roman Catholics, but the bishops, as they announced in an introduction, believe it should also be read by “anyone concerned about the future of our society”.

"The Church." claims Mr Hume."has the right and duty to advocate a social order in which the human dignity of all is fostered and to protest when it is in any way threatened. Thus the Church opposes totalitarianism because it oppresses people.” But when has the Church ever advocated the abolition of the class system and the establishment of a society in which all have free access to the benefits of civilisation? And isn't this the same Church, incidentally, which signed a concordat with Hitler in July 1933 and promised to keep schtum about the Nazi persecution of the Jews on condition Catholics were left alone?

Hume continues: "The Church denounces any abuse of economic power such as those who deprive employees of what is needed for a decent standard of life." But isn’t it the case that every employee is exploited and in general has to struggle to make ends meet? And how do we define “a decent standard of life” within the context of capitalism? He also declares that "the future of humanity does not depend on political reform, social revolution or scientific advance ... [but] ... a true conversion of mind and heart". Nevertheless, the bishops declare, two paragraphs later, when referring to the present system that so far "no social system has shown itself superior in encouraging wealth creation and hence in advancing the prosperity of the community, and enabling poverty and hardship to be more generously relieved". The same social system they speak of is one in which 800 million are malnourished, 600 million have no home, one billion have no access to clean water or sanitation, in which at least 15 million children die of hunger each year, and in which 30 wars rage at present in the name of profit.

Common Good also informs us that “the search for profit must not be allowed to override all other moral considerations” because it leads to an "ideology of consumerism". The truth is that if you endorse the profit system with its commodity production, which the Church obviously does, then you embrace the ideology of consumerism—they can’t be separated.

Work and leisure
A lengthy section of Common Good is given over to the world of work, in which it becomes blatantly obvious the authors have never participated. The Catholic Bishops believe "workers should love the work they do" and point out that they “oppose an unduly negative view of work . . . which would regard it purely as a burden of drudgery". Try telling this to an overworked security guard, a stressed-out nurse or a production-line worker who does the same routine mind-numbing job every day for a relative pittance. In reality, the majority of workers do their work not out of love for the job but because they would face home repossession or the like if they didn’t.

We are then told “workers have rights" and we’re given the usual run-of-the-mill list of terms and conditions of wage-slavery that workers have been fighting for over a century to achieve before being told that their absence leads to "a sense of alienation between a worker and his or her labour". Just when we think a bit of Marx is about to creep into the text we are then told that "an employed person is . . . not a commodity to be bought and sold according to market requirements’’. The bishops advocate employers bringing to the workforce "creative partnership" and to "regard employees as entitled to a fair share in any rewards as a result of increased profits".

Following on from this we don’t have to read far before we find the first of several attacks on Marxism. The Church, we are told, "spoke out on behalf of the poor and defenceless, especially exploited workers.The Church attacked economic determinism . . . in the form of Marxism." The bishops go on to tell us that "the defeat of Marxism in eastern Europe was a significant moment", but what existed there was nothing to do with Marx. It was state-run capitalism and not socialism or communism.

Sin and damnation
"Subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery . . . disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit rather than as free and responsible persons" are seen by the Bishops as "structural sin". However, nowhere do the bishops condemn capitalism as a social and economic system that gives rise to these "evils" and countless others. Indeed, the bishops endorse capitalism. The Church, they say, "recognises the fundamental and positive value of business, the market, private property and free human creativity in the economic sector". So they condone a system that acts as a barrier to the production of plenty, that retards scientific advance and human development, even though they admit that market forces cannot always deliver.

Catholicism is said to be "incompatible with unlimited free-market or laissez-faire capitalism which insists that the distribution of wealth must occur entirely according to the dictates of market forces”. In other words, restrained, reformed capitalism is not a sin.

Ever generous, the Catholic bishops go so far as to recognise trade unions, but they draw the line at unions fostering what they call “confrontational attitudes” and even contemplate employers being "unfairly disadvantaged by an imbalance in the relative economic strength of each side in negotiations". However, trade-union activity is “sometimes a necessary corrective to managerial policies which are devoted purely to profit . . . and they . . . must also take a responsible view of the profitability and financial viability of the employer". Presumably trade unions can strike the right balance by putting in for a wage rise when the company's making a packet but knuckle under when the bosses are screaming for redundancies. We can also assume that neither the Liverpool dockers or the sacked Magnet workers were consulted on this issue by the bishops.

The bishops believe there is such a thing as a “just wage". If employers do not pay one voluntarily, then "Catholic Social Teaching would allow the State to make them do so by means of a statutory minimum wage". That employers are out to make a profit, and that if the implementation of a minimum wage results in a cut in profitability, then unemployment could rise never occurs to the bishops.

The usual reformist attempts to solve the problems facing humanity permeates much of the Catholic bishops' thinking. When their document is not filled with hypocritical statements such as "the Gospels repeatedly warn us about the over-attachment to material riches" (does this include the Vatican?), it is punctuated with unrealistic demands upon capitalism, such as "resolving the world debt crisis" and the restriction (not a total ban) on “the promotion of arms sales to poor countries" (why not rich ones?). Not to mention the occasional absurd statement such as "it is no longer a feature of the British economy that the means for the production of wealth are largely concentrated in the hands of the few".

Little wonder, then, that the Guardian, reviewing the document could run headlines such as "Catholic Church backs Blair" (19 October) and that "Labour claims Catholic vote" (22 October). The "Christian Socialist" movement which now boasts Blair and four Cabinet and 11 other Ministers, claimed “the party can meet the challenges which the bishops set out and the concerns they expressed" (Guardian, 22 October). This is hardly surprising considering that the “challenges" the bishops set out keep capitalism intact, altering not one iota the fact that a class-divided society continues to throw up the same social problems the workers have been facing for two hundred years.

Just as the Labour Party has a history of betraying, deceiving and thwarting the ambitions of generations of workers, so too is this the case with the Catholic Church hierarchy. Indeed, at a time when the working class were beginning to understand the need for independent political organisation in the late 19th century; a time when some workers were coming to realise that their lot could only be bettered through a transition to a more advanced system of society—socialism—their efforts were to be attacked and distorted by the then Pope. Leo XIII, in the first of a series of papal "social encyclicals" entitled Rerum Noverum:

  “When socialists endeavour to transfer privately owned goods into common ownership they worsen the conditions of wage earners . . . they rob them of all hope and opportunity of increasing their possessions and bettering their condition . . . the dream of equality would become the reality of equal want and degradation for all."

Religion is one thing, reformism another. When they are mixed and fed to workers, the concoction only serves to perpetuate the misery it is purported to alleviate, becoming nothing but the solace and sedative that spreads false hope and apathy in equal measure.

John Bissett

Labour and the work ethic (1997)

From the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

  In the aftermath of that great non-event that was the general election we can soon expect to see what measures the new Labour regime has in store for us in its mission to make British capitalism yet more ruthlessly "efficient" and exploitative.

One person who should know is Labour’s own "Prince of Darkness”, political gangster- extraordinaire Peter Mandelson (Minister Without Portfolio). In BBC 1's On The Record programme (11 May), amid the waffle and lying (and his claim that economic growth could bring “prosperity for all” is a twenty-four carat lie), he dropped us at least one very interesting clue. More than once Blair’s whizzkid identified as a key Labour objective the reinforcement of the work ethic and in so doing signalled the government’s commitment to further putting the screws on the working class.

The “work ethic” has a history as long and as horrible as modern capitalism. With roots in the Calvinist Protestant variety of religion it was swiftly seized on by the capitalist class as a powerful ideological weapon. At the time of the industrial revolution it was all the bosses could do to make their workers knuckle under. Only recently driven off the land by enclosure and made completely dependent on working for a wage, the new working class was not used to the regimentation demanded by industrial capitalism and resistance to it was widespread.

The bosses’ response, alongside the removal of all means of living independently of the wages system, the threat of mechanisation and naked repression, was to hammer home the belief that work for the sake of work was a great and noble thing. From being simply a means to an end, the work ethic held up work as an end in itself, to the point of becoming the meaning of life. This was a convenient ideology for the capitalists as the labour of those forced to work for them was the source of their wealth and power. More convenient still was their success in grinding this belief into the population at large, so that the exploited not only accepted their exploitation, but became more or less enthusiastic about it.

This process has continued to the present day, with the lesson continually drummed into us at every stage of our lives that giving up the bulk of our time and energy to the creation of profit for the ruling elite in jobs we usually hate is somehow a desirable way to live—indeed the only way to live. “Education” in schools and colleges is only the most obvious way we are conditioned (or brainwashed) into accepting the work (or slave) ethic and our subservient position in the system. It was after all no accident that the departments of education and employment were merged.

It is hardly surprising that Mandelson should than have expressed such zeal for reinforcing this ideology. Capitalism likes us to be as cheap, obedient and eager to knuckle down to the job as possible and this has become ever more so as the “global market" and suchlike has forced national economies to get rough, tough and more mercilessly exploitative than ever.

In a world of "flexibility", short-term contracts and job insecurity the work ethic may be more important than ever to the ruling class in securing a working class resigned to the anxiety of slaving away in whatever employment the system chucks at it. That firm bosses' favourite the Job Seekers Allowance is an attempt to cut social (in)security expenditure, but also to ensure that the unemployed are "actively seeking" work, i.e. are firmly locked into the treadmill of work by being forced by sheer poverty to search for absolutely any job going, even when such jobs are non-existent.

At the back of the Minister’s mind may be the fear that capitalism's restructuring and long-term mass unemployment has led many people to lose their identification with a certain “career” and even with the whole world of employment: many people are sensibly asking themselves whether wage and salary labour is really that desirable after all.

To counter such developments, we can expect the Labour government’s commitment to the work ethic to be reflected in their education, social security and law and order policies: in other words a continuation of the Tories’ policies of heightened regimentation, austerity and repression. Whatever they do though they will not be able to stop more and more people seeing how criminally unnecessary this system of exploitation, pressure and misery is in a world where a few voluntary hours a week enjoyable, useful activity is all anyone need contribute to supply what is needed for everyone to lead a comfortable, fulfilling life. Down with the work ethic—a tool with which capitalism has stolen our lives, our energy and our world.

Ben Malcolm

50 Years Ago: The Labour Party Conference (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the 1946 Labour Party Conference can be described as a “victory binge”, then using another metaphor, this years might be said to be the hangover. Undoubtedly another year of Labour government has cleared away any intoxicating fumes. It was this perhaps that gave to the conference the somewhat depressing and jaundiced air of those who have at least sobered up and are beginning to see things as they really are. “Things as they really are” being Conscription, continued Austerity, Power Politics, etc. (...)

The Labour Party has undoubtedly proved an inestimable boon for existing capitalist interests. British capitalism, weak from the emergence of a great war coupled with the recession of the traditional hold over the workers, exercised by the older political parties might have found the process of recovery and rehabilitation a grave problem.

The Labour Party, in securing the support of the workers by their claims to be able to run capitalism differently from the older parties, have not only strengthened the hold of capitalism over the working class but have facilitated its recovery. Looking at the Labour Party Conference one is almost inclined to paraphrase Voltaire by saying that if the Labour Party did not exist it would have been necessary for capitalism to have invented one.

(From front page article by EW,
 Socialist Standard, July 1947)

Free Trade Claptrap (1997)

From the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February of this year, a World Bank press release on Africa boldly declared: “Economic performance has improved considerably with over 24 countries posting growth figures of over 4 percent—above the rate of inflation . . . this success has given ground for cautious optimism" (New African, May 1997). "Cautious" indeed.

What the Bank failed to point out is that when you are on the bottom, the only way you can go is up. As always, World Bank reports continue to confirm they suffer what critics have termed the bikini syndrome—what is revealed is interesting; what is concealed is more so.

We are not told, for instance, that of the 174 countries listed on the United Nations Human Development Index, 25 of the poorest 30 are in Africa, and that 44 African countries are ranked below the 100 figure. Neither will you hear of Zambia spending 35 times more servicing multilateral debt between 1990 and 1993 than on primary education.

Again, we are no more likely to hear of the 47 percent of sub-Sahara African children not attending school than we are to hear them report their share of the £400 million in interest and capital repayments transferred from the "Third World” to the West every day between 1982 and 1990. Such revelations will only ever portray the big financial policemen of the World Bank and the IMF as the corrupt and self-serving profit-mongers that they are.

The World Bank and the IMF can often be heard saying that the cause of Africa’s mis-development are its leaders and the failure of its economic policies, neglecting to mention that it is they who make the Mobutus wealthy and that it is their structural adjustment programmes that makes economic stability preclusive. Thanks to the assistance of these multilateral organisations. Mozambique debt in 1994, as a percentage of its GNP, was 450 percent.

Mozambique, still suffering from a devastating civil war and a GNP per capita of £60, the lowest in the world, hardly needed the IMF-imposed privatisation measures which are aimed at reducing inflation of 15 and which the country was advised to adhere to if it wanted further loans.

It is understandable that the IMF and the World Bank have every reason for wanting others to believe their propaganda. The 1980s are painful times to remember. It was then, that having loaned so much, they were faced with a growing unwillingness to repay. When Mexico and Peru threatened to renege on repayments, they were only cowed back into line by having their repayments rescheduled. Today, there are undoubtedly concealed but real fears that many countries might come to the conclusion that being so poor they’d be no worse off for withholding cash earmarked for the IMF and World Bank.

It was perhaps this realisation that brought the IMF, World Bank, various commercial banks and governments together last September to hammer out a new initiative to reduce the debt burden on the HIPCs (heavily indebted poor countries). This might have sounded promising but for the fact that this new venture has been put on hold for a few years. And of course, there are the usual preconditions. Countries wishing to qualify must be "well behaved" and prepared to commit themselves to further structural adjustment programmes. The hair-of-the-dog remedy indeed.

Though they will try to deny it, the power of the World Bank and the IMF is increasing. Like the colonial regimes of old, they have power to influence which government is elected, what is produced and the size of a country’s health service. In short they have power to decide who lives and dies.

In fairness, the World Bank is the lesser evil of late, going so far as to insist that public expenditure cuts should not hit health and education, prepared to accept criticism and supposedly taking heed of voluntary agencies and the UN. Of course, there is method in their madness, so to speak. They are all too aware that in the longer term a healthy and educated workforce means increased profits and an increased chance of debt repayment.

Conversely, the more powerful IMF couldn’t give a damn. It preaches a pay-up-or-else creed, is less accountable and has erected a higher temple to the god Mammon, even going so far as to oppose, in recent months, World Bank plans for the building of schools in Mozambique.

There is a third pillar supporting the global economic order—the World Trade Organisation. As the enforcer of the GATT "free trade" agreement, it is likely that many African countries will be dragged into the mis-named "free trade global economy” by the WTO and in Darwinian fashion only the fittest will survive.

The supposed logic behind this "free trade" clap-trap is that with barriers removed, the world economy functions at the height of efficiency and to the benefit of all. We can immediately ask. however, how African countries are supposed to compete with the 500 mainly western companies who control over 70 percent of world trade, or the likes of Cargill, the giant grain conglomerate whose income is higher than that of the poorest 10 African countries. Already, of the 47 countries deemed to be “too slowly" integrating into the world economy, 21 are African.

It goes without saying that the only real benefactors of free trade are the multinationals.Their power is such that they can control not only the fate of national currencies, but also force governments to tailor their economic policies to their own interest. In addition, they face little host government opposition when they destroy a country’s environment. Witness Shell in Nigeria. Like sharks scenting blood they are drawn to countries where there will be tax concessions and where they will be exempt from local labour laws. And it is not uncommon for them to have non-union policies and to take advantage of low-cost economies with poor health and safety standards.

This then is the reality of the "free trade" Africa will benefit from. This is the reality of the "new dynamism" the World Bank claims is taking hold in sub-Saharan African.

From the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean coup and conflict are commonplace. From Mali to Mozambique, homelessness and hunger exist alongside illiteracy and unemployment. This on a continent potentially the richest on Earth. And all of this in the name of profit.

We can at least offer a little consolation to the pessimistic. In the last year the seeds of socialism have been scattered around Africa and are already taking root. Workers in Uganda. Gambia and Sierra Leone have already joined us in our struggle to rid the world of capitalism and to replace it with a world of free access. Others await in Zambia and Namibia. At last something of real world significance is germinating on the fertile land of the poorest continent on Earth.

John Bissett

Greasy Pole: An Ex-Prime Minister is Missing (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Has anyone seen John Major? We are referring to the man who, until a couple of months ago, was leader of the Conservative Party, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Her Majesty's First Lord of the Treasury and much else besides but who seems to have disappeared without trace. This is especially peculiar because the said John Major was also a staunchly courageous man who always stood up for what he thought was right, who never ran away from a fight, who thrived when the odds were stacked against him.

We know all this because John Major often told us so himself. He told us when he defiantly said that Britain would stay in the ERM because he knew, as Prime Minister, that it was in all our interests that this should be so—and again when, shortly after, he bravely left his Chancellor Norman Lamont to inform us that it was important to us that Britain immediately left the ERM. He told us as one after another of his ministers and supporters in Parliament were revealed as venal and devious, when he steadfastly denied that they had broken the rules only to abandon them to their fate when their exposure became too obvious. And finally when, with breathtaking bravado, all through those long days up to 1 May, he assured us that he would be leading the Tory Party to another stunning electoral victory and a fifth term in office—until, when he saw the size of the Labour majority, he abruptly resigned the leadership to leave what was left of his cabinet to scrabble over the succession.

Bastards 
And since then we have neither seen nor heard anything from the man. None of the contenders in the struggle for the Conservative leadership seemed to think it worthwhile to ask for his opinion or for his endorsement (did they, it is reasonable to ask, fear that Major’s support would be the kiss of death only much more rapid?). Perhaps more to the point, Major himself did not intervene in the contest, although he was once so certain that some of the candidates stood for policies which would be seriously damaging to the standing of British capitalism.

Remember, for example, the time when he memorably described the likes of Peter Lilley and John Redwood as “bastards”. When he sneered that whenever he got close to colleagues like these he could hear the flapping of white coats. At the time, this was supposed to be John Major being brave and scathingly witty. But if he thought like that why did he not speak out during the fight for the leadership, to warn the Tory MPs of the perils of voting for someone who was mad enough to stand for policies which Major considered insanely damaging to British capitalism?

Of course one explanation is that Major is concreted into a prolonged sulk, bitterly angry with his party for making his life as Prime Minister so miserable and then catapulting his government into so historically huge a defeat. There are one or two comments to be made on this possibility. First of all, what kind of parliamentary leader is it, who can react in this petulant way to the give and take of political life? Would he, in one of his more misanthropic withdrawals, have sulkily decided to press the button to start World War Three? Or sullenly decide one day to go down to the House to own up to the facts about what capitalism does to its people and about the impotence of all its political parties to control the system?

Fed up 
Secondly, if Major were so enraged in his dissatisfaction, what was he doing leading the Tory Party into the election, trying to persuade us to vote them back for a fifth term and obstinately declaring, until the votes had been counted and the enormity of their defeat was undeniable, that they would win and he would be back in Number Ten? He wasn't sulking when he wrote in the Conservative manifesto that the Tory government since 1979 were ". . . among the most successful in British peacetime history"—forgetting that some of the ministers in those governments were "bastards" who should have been carted off to psychiatric hospitals. He wasn’t sulking when he signed his name under the slogan “You can only be sure with the Conservatives”—although he did not elaborate on what we could be sure of.

Perhaps Major is simply fed up with politics, with the bump and grind of it all and of recurrent, insoluble problems. Perhaps now he fancies offering himself for one of those posh jobs in the City or those part-time directorships which pay a lot more than what a minister gets. (Of course one problem in this is that what with all those suddenly unemployed Tory ex-MPs the competition is a lot sharper than it used to be.) He would not be the first.

Exposed 
Norman Fowler, for example, resigned in order, as he famously put it. to spend more time with his family—or should he have said "while the going is good”? As it turned out Fowler spent more time in various boardrooms and is still to be seen doing his bit to influence the running of the Tory Party. Nigel Lawson, after his "boom" had been exposed in the anger and despair of thousands of people who had been seduced by the false dream of capitalism in endless prosperity, symbolically lost a lot of weight and audaciously cashed in by writing a book on dieting—which some of those workers who had had to tighten their belts may have found grimly amusing. It is difficult to imagine what Major would do. Could he go back to the bank? That might work provided his job did not involve any economic forecasting. Try again to be a bus conductor? What with cuts in funding and in wages there aren’t many of them left. Go back to the obscurity of Brixton? Perhaps—if they'll have so spectacular a failure.

And that really is what it is all about—politicians who talk to us so confidentially about their ability, their unique schemes, to control capitalism but who are found wanting when their facile assurances are exposed. John Major is a historical example of this. Has anyone seen him? Has anyone seen one of the more wretchedly exposed politicians of recent times?

Ivan

Letters: Labour without illusions? (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour without illusions?

Dear Editors,

With reference to your reply given for my letter published in the June Socialist Standard I believe you have misunderstood my reasons for supporting Labour. While I support most of the aims and values voiced in your pamphlet and readily accept the shortcomings of the Labour Party's limited vision I also support progressive change. Your pamphlet goes into great detail about the contradictions of the Free Market and erroneous capitalist system but actually offers very little in terms of practical alternatives. In effect it produces propaganda as opposed to political commentary and discussion. Let us imagine that the SPGB had swept to victory in the election. What would they do? Economic policy is a highly complex science. An immediate change from capitalism to socialism would have devastating effects. The system would be almost impossible to regulate and the beneficial effects would not appear for many years by which time a new government would be elected. Radicalism does not, and never has worked. You openly criticise the former Communist regimes in Europe and Asia (and rightly so) but how would you go about it differently? How would you form a fair government?

I do believe that one day we will have a socialist government but I do not believe we are ready for it yet. Switching from one political system to another causes devastating political instability and often war. Such a change is always temporary whereas a gradual change can create a permanent (stable) system. If we are to embark on socialism seriously it must be done in union with other nations (from both the developed and the developing world), not in isolation. Otherwise all we are left with is National Socialism—another contradiction in terms. We are clearly not yet ready for such a change. However opinions are changing and not only are we not at war with former enemies but we are at the negotiating table with them (albeit for capitalist purposes).

The introduction of a socialist government today would only limit its future successes—just ask an eastern European what he thinks of Communism. Today’s climate (political) is such that a socialist state can only fail. It can, however, win support by arguing its case by means of discussion—not propaganda.

I did not vote for Labour as a "knee-jerk" reaction against the Tories. I am under no illusions that the Labour Party will introduce socialist measures. I do however think you are wrong about the election result making no difference. With new foreign aid, immigration, anti-hunting and anti-smoking legislation being passed New Labour have shown that compassion and humanitarian respect can be used in government—that morality is not decided by market forces. Surely it is a compassionate state, fair and equal that is a founding principle of socialism? OK it is still essentially capitalist government but is it not a move in the right (or left) direction?

Dominic Linley,

Leeds

Reply: 

It seems you have one or two misunderstandings about our definition of socialism. First of all, there will be no such thing as a socialist government. A "Socialist State" is a contradiction in terms. Although we are in favour of using the parliamentary system to establish socialism, the new society won't be run by a government. Instead it will be democratically administered. Governments are, and have always been, the agents of administration of the ruling class. They are not in existence to run capitalism in the interest of the majority, whatever the intentions of individuals in those ruling bodies may be.

Socialist society will maintain and modify, as necessary, those inherited institutions (health care, road maintenance, education, transport systems, etc.) which are necessary for the running of its affairs and set up new ones as appropriate. It will have dismantled all the coercive elements of the state, such as the armed forces, police, judiciary, etc. It will also have to address the productive methods prevailing at the time, stopping all harmful production, and dealing with the rest in the same way as with the political institutions outlined above.

Before socialism can be established there has to be the agreement of the overwhelming majority of the population on how it will be run. Because there are so few socialists at the present time, it is difficult to lay down detailed plans on how it will be run. As socialist ideas spread, there will be more and more input of ideas of how this will be done. Socialism will not come out of nowhere, it will be the culmination of the spreading of socialist ideas, of workers reinterpreting their experience of capitalism and coming to the conclusion that the present system does not adequately deal with their needs. We would not be entering it "cold".

Socialist society will not be an economic society, in the sense that the word is used today. Economists talk about managing scarce resources, but what they really mean is artificially scarce resources. We say that socialism could feed, clothe and house the world's population on a sustainable basis. Socialism would not be "almost impossible to regulate". In fact, it will be much easier to run. because the complexities of capitalist market forces and the drive for profit will have gone. There will no delicate balancing acts between producing goods to sell for profit and matching peoples' ability to pay. With commerce and all its trappings gone, we would be able to get on with producing goods and services, solely for use. If there is a need for something, and it is deemed realistic to produce it. then it will be produced. Instead of people sitting down and working out the cost of producing in terms of money, it could be decided by the amount of labour necessary to do the job. and whether or not it might be damaging to the environment.

You accuse us of negative criticisms of capitalism without offering any practical alternatives. Have you read our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative? This includes chapters on Democratic Decision-Making, Organisation of Production for Use, Choice of Productive Methods, Conserving Resources, etc.

Your reference to gradualism smacks of a patronising attitude to the working class, implying that they cannot grasp the concept of a world community of common ownership but have to be spoon-fed the idea, through incremental steps. We in the Socialist Party have become socialists without a "guiding hand" and we are not special. We have looked at the world and made our own evaluation of it, based on our experience and the experience of others.

You are quite right that to establish socialism workers of the world would have to act in concert. Socialism would be impossible to establish in one country alone because capitalism is an interconnected world system in economic terms (but not politically—various factions of the capitalist class may well be at each other’s throats) and no one country would be able to opt out of it.

Unfortunately voting for Labour "without illusion" is of no use to the socialist movement. The capitalist class and its government will just read it as another endorsement of their system and it will have the effect of boosting their confidence to run it.

Editors.

Reformism rejected

Dear Editors,

I was searching for a party that was a Marxist party but not Leninist, because I oppose Leninism. Trotskyism and Maoism.

When I was introduced to the Socialist Party I became very happy that this party was only Marxist, but when I inquired into the Socialist Party's ideas I realised that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is parliamentarist and does not believe in revolution by workers, therefore I lost my hopes.

You believe that workers must not use force against the government and that they must not seek power through civil war. because this is the road to a "blood bath". The idea that you advocate is to gain political power to establish Socialism through parliament. You argue that if the majority of the workers were Socialists and voted socialist delegates into the parliament they would establish Socialism without the capitalist government and their armed forces doing anything.

The workers do not believe what the Socialist Party advocates because it is not possible. The capitalists are not as kind to the workers as you think.

Marx strongly believed and advocated class struggle, the use of force and violence by workers. I referred to Marx's books again and again but I could not find Marx talking about setting up Socialism by voting delegates into parliament. Besides, everybody knows that the police and armed forces are there to protect capitalism against workers. All the different parts of the police and armed forces are always ready to punish and suppress any protest against capitalism. We can see it every day in 

different parts of the world.

How do you expect capitalist governments to tolerate Socialism and the workers' movement and their power? When the 90 percent of workers and other people accept Socialism as the best community, the other 10 percent will fight to keep their private property and never allow workers to get power through parliament.

The workers and poor people are combating and struggling but the police are arresting them and torturing them and killing them. They have made the world "bloody" already. We are living in a "blood bath" right now. can not you feel or seee it?

The Socialist Party has a fear of our violence against capitalism because it does not like a "blood bath”. You do not believe that the capitalists have already made a "blood bath" in the world. You obviously forget that thousands of people are being killed in Iraq. Rwanda. Somalia. Iran. Turkey. Afghanistan. Ireland and so on.

Every second capitalists kill us by worsening the economical and political situation. Not only does capitalism make a "blood bath",but it has made a “sea" of blood.

Marx believed and wrote that workers must arm themselves for a revolution, to gain power by force. He believed that right after establishing Socialism the workers need to exercise a dictatorship to keep their government and fight the capitalists.

To abolish capitalism the workers need force and the majority of workers must be armed in the Workers' Rcvolution. Without violence (blood bath) the workers can not defeat capitalism. The experience of the Paris Commune alone is enough for all the workers. The workers in Britain must arm themselves the same as the workers of the Paris Commune did and as in Albania too.

The workers of the world need to arm and organise an International Communist or Socialist Party for victory and freedom. They can never gain power and Socialism by parliamentarism because parliament belongs to capitalists and workers must be against parliamentarism.

The Socialist Party's ideas about parliamentarism have wasted the energy of thousands of Communists in the last 100 years and the workers have no hope to succeed against capitalism with a parliamentary policy and parliamentarist party in the next 100 years.

Ismael Jahandideh, 

London W9

Reply: 

We are certainly aware that capitalist ruling classes in some parts of the world routinely torture and murder tens of thousands of people. That is one reason why we are against capitalism and want socialism.

If we don't advocate violence and civil war against capitalism it is not just because we want to minimise the occurrence of any violence in the course of the changeover from capitalism to socialism. It is also because we hold (I) that it wouldn't work and (2) that it isn't necessary.

Violence wouldn't work because what keeps capitalism going is not just the capitalist class's monopoly control of the means of violence: the capitalist class is not holding people down against their will. It is above all the fact that most people see no alternative to a social system based on class ownership, working for wages and producing for profit; they don't think you can abolish classes, privileges, private property, money, banks, armed forces, nation states.

Violence cannot overcome this lack of socialist consciousness and. if tried by a minority, even if successful could not lead to a democratic, classless society. It could only lead— and. historically, has only led—to the replacing of the previously existing ruling class by some new minority which in time evolves into a new ruling class.

On the other hand, once this lack of socialist consciousness has been overcome and a majority has come to want Socialism (as it must before Socialism can be established and then function) then violence is not needed. If, to keep with your example, 90 percent of people wanted Socialism it would be quite impossible for any capitalist government to continue governing.

This is because governments depend on a minimum degree of consent to function. Once this is withdrawn—and especially if it is replaced by a determined desire for Socialism—then their game is up. Even supposing that the pro-capitalist minority was as large as 10 percent, it would be suicidal for them to try to use violence to maintain capitalist rule. Of course, if they did, the socialist majority would have to deal with them—we are not absolute pacifists and we don’t suppose a future socialist majority would let a handful of pro-capitalist nutcases stop them establishing socialism.

The best way to minimise violence is for the socialist movement to proceed in a peaceful and democratic way. Hence our advocacy of using existing semi-democratic institutions including parliament. Incidentally, this is not "parliamentarism", which is the illusion that Parliament can be used to gradually reform capitalism into socialism. We are not saying workers should elect people to Parliament to reform capitalism, but only socialist delegates mandated to formally abolish capitalism.

Finally, you are wrong about Marx's views. In the Communist Manifesto he and Engels did indeed say that the only way the workers could win political control was through a violent insurrection but that was in conditions where political democracy did not exist. When they went into exile in Britain they supported the Chartist's demand for "one man. one vote" on the grounds that, if achieved, this would be equivalent to potentially placing political power in the hands of the working-class majority. Later, at a meeting in connection with the Congress of the International Working Men's Association in The Hague in 1872. Marx went on record as saying “we do not deny that there are countries, such os America and England, and if I was familiar with its institutions. I might include Holland, where the workers may attain their goal by peaceful means". Again, in 1880. he helped to write the preamble to the programme of the French Workers Party which declared that to obtain the collective control of the means of production workers in France should use “all means that are available to the proletariat, including universal suffrage, which will thus be transformed from the instrument of fraud it has been till now into an instrument of emancipation". Both these quotes are to be found in K. Marx. The First International and After. Political Writings Vol. 3 published by Penguin Books.

What socialists should do depends on the assessment by the socialist movement of the contemporary situation and its possibilities. This was Marx's position too and why he didn't stick dogmatically to the view he expressed in 1848 when and where conditions had changed.

Editors.

The Negative Midas Touch (1997)

TV Review from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC1's Panorama (8pm, 9 June) on the night before the first round of the Conservative leadership election went a good deal of the way towards explaining the Conservative Party’s historic and horrendous defeat a month or so earlier. Nick Robinson spent 40 minutes charting the Tory decline over the last five years examining Major's weak leadership, the ERM debacle, the tax rises, splits over Europe, sleaze and the challenge represented by a revitalised Labour Party under Blair.

What he didn't examine was quite how suspicious the majority of voters have demonstrated they are about the great political "project” of the last twenty years, ushered forward in Britain by the Tory right. This is the political project built on the premise that the market knows best, and its application by the Conservatives was one of the key and deciding factors in the huge Tory defeat.

This may, at first sight, seem paradoxical because self-evidently the Blairite Labour Party is in love with the free market too, with small caveats. This is what bamboozled Panorama into ignoring this popular rejection of the free market, but a closer look at the election and the years leading up to it would have demonstrated the truth of this proposition. This is because although New Labour did not campaign on an open programme of state capitalism like in 1983, neither did it campaign for the free market. Beyond the soundbites the Labour Party campaigned on very little at all and its most popular policies were little more than heavily dressed-up anti-free market rhetoric devoid of spending commitments.

It is quite possible that the Labour leadership does not particularly find the schools voucher system. GP fundholding, the NHS internal market and so on to be quite the idiocies they painted them as but they were crucially aware that these market reforms were deeply unpopular among the working class both as workers in those fields and as consumers of services.

Sighting the target

In fact, the Labour Party's position on the free market as conveyed by its leaders and campaigners was a superb example of audience targeting. Its most obvious free-market rhetoric and pro-big business stance was reserved for its growing number of admirers in the capitalist class, the people it is now having to "do business” with now it is in government. For the consumption of the working class, there was a rather different fare—pledges to curb the alleged excesses of the free market Tory years and to build a community of interests, a “one nation" vision of inclusion rather than exclusion. In this way the Labour Party distanced itself from the unfettered free market just enough to convince its target voters to switch to them without at the same time frightening them off with grandiose revenue-raising proposals or suchlike.

The more discerning on 1 May were not seduced by this two-faced posture and turnout was the lowest for years, but then again so was the vote for the unashamed party of the free market.

Of course there are those in the Tory Party who believe (rather like the Bennites did some years ago about their project) that the only problem has been that their medicine for capitalism’s ills has not been administered in great enough quantity. As the Tory leadership contest has shown hardly anybody with brain cells still functioning believes this nonsense.

Instead politics has reached a situation (and Britain is only one example of it) whereby the free market is generally viewed by most people with suspicion bordering on hostility while the overt interventionism and state ownership of the past is distrusted and feared in equal measure. In this scenario there appears to be only one short-term solution and the Labour Party found it just as Clinton's Democrats did—attack everything that has gone before and failed, whether state capitalism or private capitalism and hope that something more substantial than rhetoric will come along to fill the resultant void. In other words, a “new" capitalism where the old private/state and left/right divisions have been left behind. A capitalism where persistent old problems require bright new solutions which must be there in the minds of the great and the good . . .  somewhere.

But these ideas about superseding the old divisions seem remarkably sparse and those that are around tend to cost big money. While the Tory Party fights over the spoils of its defeat everything Blair touches turns to gold at present. But at an ideological level, deep beneath the political spin. Prime Minister Blair has been dealt the hand that capitalism deals all its leaders blessed with momentary popularity out of the popular distaste for the effects of the market, including Thatcher and Major before him, is the negative Midas touch, where sooner or alter, everything the market touches, including its political "masters", turns to shit, no matter what the rhetoric or political dressing.

Dave Perrin

The Last Word: Moving statues (1997)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

The Last Word column from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The proposal of the boorish old drunk, Boris "the booze" Yeltsin, to remove the embalmed body of Lenin from its tomb in Red Square and give him a "decent Christian funeral" (as opposed to what would presumably be an indecent one) has set me thinking. Old Lenin has been lying in state for over seventy years: a mummified memorial to his years of unblushing lying as head of state: a veritable dictator in a fraudulently described “workers’ government".

The plan is to hold a referendum in St. Petersburg to decide what shall be done with Lenin. Has it occurred to the commerce-hungry Russian leaders that there is a market out there for Lenin relics? To be sure, they would not fetch much in St. Petersburg if forced to compete with fresh sausages, but think of the profits which could be accrued if Lenin cuttings were flogged off to sections of the dwindling world Trotskyist movement? The British SWP, which these days resembles a walk-in mausoleum for the praise of long-dead Bolsheviks, would surely pay a handsome price for a bit of prime Lenin anatomy. (Think of the jealousy it would inspire amongst the others Leninist cults: one can see now the RCP forging its very own fake Lenin testicles.) Lenin's left big toenail would be worth at least the price of Paul Foot’s salary for one month. Why not call in Camelot to ensure that the spoils are divided fairly?

Of course,Yeltsin did not invent the idea of kicking men when they’re dead. As ever, the English state was the pioneer in the field of brutality to the disinterred bodies of its enemies. For the sake of children and the nervously-inclined, we shall not describe what they did to Oliver Cromwell for having the audacity to temp as a monarch.

Historical revenge is not sweet.The sight of the crowds booing Ceaușescu, the hideous Rumanian dictator (Sir Nikolai, to you, for he was knighted by the Queen for services to British trade) was a joy to watch, but why did they have to spoil it all my executing him? It is so much pleasanter to rout ones enemies and then leave them to rot in bitterness. (Lenin’s successor, Stalin, never quite grasped this point — as Trotsky was to discover.) Only the weak need to murder and torture to assert their strength.

The problem of what to do with offensive monuments is a real one. When they pulled down the statues of Lenin all over central and eastern Europe in 1989/90 they were actively destroying the symbol of a lie which had imprisoned them. There are some statues in Britain which cry out for such justice. The vast metal-wasting edifice of the parasite, Victoria, which stands close to Buckingham Palace: the offensive statue of the gratuitous aerial murderer, Bomber Harris: the statue at the end of Camden High Street, London to the callous free-marketeer, Cobden; these and numerous others across the land will surely be candidates for the sledgehammer of the people once the streets are truly reclaimed.

The case for vandalism, though seductive, is weak. The disfigurements and destructions encouraged by the Cultural Revolution in China were a futile attempt to dislodge the minds of the millions from the past by knocking down its superstructural architecture. For this socialist (though not necessarily for all) there will be a safe place for buildings of genuine beauty in a society of equality. Why on earth deny to future socialist generations the splendours of Westminster Abbey or Christ’s College chapel in Oxford or the Hindu Temple in historical Neasden simply because they emerged out of unearthly folly? William Morris’s dream of turning parliament into a storage place for manure was a teasing fantasy, but missed the point: surely, the objective must be to get the shits out and use the place productively. Why pour more manure on to centuries of past deposits?

There may well be a role for Buckingham Palace in a sane society. The sight of the ex-Queen and her old man serving tea and sandwiches to visitors to London would cheer us all on many a rainy day.

As it is, the profit system has its own way of disposing of exclusive assets. In France there is a huge row over the sale, for £30 million, of Voltaire’s old estate at Ferney. The fear that some philistine Yank might drift in and insert a pinball machine at the place of the desk where the great man once wrote his brilliantly funny novel, Candide, has caused locals to protest in the vain sort of way that people without £30 million tend to protest. Even Buck House has been opened to the vulgar hordes. Surely it can only be time before Camelot will sell tickets for a night out with Andy—or Edward, if one is so inclined. An alternative might be to offer the Lenin mausoleum as a new home for the dwindling Windsor family and open their palace to the kids who are sleeping on the streets within a mile of it. Now, that really is a foolish idea—isn’t it?

Steve Coleman

Obituary: Mike Bathurst (1997)

Obituary from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mike Bathurst, a member of the Party for over 30 years, died prematurely—a victim of cancer—in late April. Mike was a founder member of the Colchester Group in 1990, and three years later he became treasurer of what is now the Colchester Branch of the Party.

Mike was a steadfast socialist, loyal and true, and all his friends in the branch will miss him dearly. His father, Stan, was a member of the Party and so, too, is his brother John.

It's easy in the welter of minutes, conference papers and the like, to forget why people are socialists: the vision of a world free from poverty, wars and social hostility, where co-operation, freedom and democracy are the order of the day. But Mike never forgot. He was the most thorough of administrators—a careful and punctilious treasurer—but never forgot why we were holding meetings, distributing leaflets, trying to involve others in our enterprise. And when—often after a glass or two of red wine—Mike would talk about socialism he conjured another world—a better, brighter world—and his eyes would shine, his voice would become animated, and his excitement was there for all to see and to hear. Like many of us Mike was transformed by the possibilities of a better, freer, co-operative and caring world.

We will miss him.

Lady Thatcher's Shadow (1997)

From the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Margaret Thatcher casts a long political shadow. She may have failed to fully transform the Tory Party but Thatcherism had a far-reaching effect on the Labour Party.

A remarkable political unanimity existed for three decades following the end of the Second World War. Both major parties followed broadly similar policies aimed at creating full employment through government intervention in the working of the economy. Additionally both parties were committed to the so-called welfare state and accepted the economic theories of Keynes which claimed that the boom and slump cycle of capitalist economic activity could be smoothed out by government intervention. Conservatives willingly dropped their minimal intervention political stance and bid for support on an openly reformist platform. There was a general shift in politics towards collectivist thinking. However capitalism remained as anarchic as ever and was not to be controlled and run smoothly to order.

General economic expansion in the post-war period was punctuated by increasingly severe economic recessions, and Britain’s share of world trade continued to decline. By the time the OPEC cartel quadrupled oil prices in the early 1970s a section in the Conservative Party was ready to accept the ideas of the New Right. Less state intervention in economic life, complete free trade, and strict control over government spending as advocated by the New Right theorists drew an increasing number of adherents, among them Thatcher. Here at last was a body of ideas that could provide the movers and shakers in the party with an intellectually respectable anti-statist ideology despite the fact that Conservatives saw themselves as resolutely non-ideological.

It had been the achievement of Conservatism in the nineteenth century that it adapted the strong individualist tendencies of Liberalism (the ideas associated with laissez-faire economic policies) to the more traditional aristocratic values of social order and cohesion, deference, community and reciprocity. Thatcherism was a revival of this earlier strand of Conservatism emphasising self-reliance, self-discipline, competition, free markets, and small enterprise. It was intolerant of other, paternalistic, strands of Toryism typified by those she called the “wets”. Many in the party were appalled by these developments and Lord Alport was moved to write to the Times in 1985 expressing his opinion that “Thatcherism is not Conservatism.” But her strong leadership qualities were attractive to large sections of the working class and she became the Conservative Party’s strongest asset.

Success and failure

Some of the changes implemented between 1979 and 1990 were obvious successes for Thatcher’s programme. The sale of council houses and the privatisation of state enterprises are not going to be reversed. Control of local government finances is too useful a tool for Labour to want to abandon and in any case was something they themselves had been attempting to do while last in office. Similarly, the laws restricting trade union rights and controlling their internal organisation are likely to remain with only minor modification. Again this is something Labour had been trying to address, and they have recently again distanced themselves from the trade unions.

But Thatcherism failed to fully convert the workers in Britain to acceptance of the joys of popular capitalism. The sale of state-owned industries saw millions buying shares just to sell them shortly after to realise a quick profit. However the number of shares held by private investors continued to fall—a trend which went against the Conservative policy on share ownership. Capitalism was for Thatcher a system designed to bring wealth to the many, and her ideal was an obvious impossibility—’’Every man and woman a capitalist” (Observer, 8 May 1983). (If we were all capitalists who among us would continue to suffer the indignity of having to sell ourselves for a wage or a salary?)

By late 1984 the British public had become largely indifferent to privatisation. Unemployment was stated to be the top priority by 75 percent of respondents in an opinion poll in August 1984, as opposed to curbing inflation which was given top priority by a mere 18 percent. The “drag up” effect by which Thatcher expected a general rise in economic prosperity through the promotion of “enterprise” also failed to materialise. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the 1990s revealed that “the gap between rich and poor is at its widest for 50 years . . .  millions of people have no stake in future prosperity” (Independent, 10 February 1995). Howard Davies, Director General of the CBI, and a member of the report team, said it was a problem which could not be ignored and a solution would have to include more government intervention. (Financial Times, 10 February 1995.)

The “Thatcher revolution” was not delivering the economic goods any more successfully than the abandoned interventionist Keynesianism. Indeed, the policies were increasingly out of favour among the leaders of British industry for whom the “red meat” was getting a little rancid. Peter Morgan, Director General of the Institute of Directors complained that British business recovery had been “. . torpedoed by runaway inflation . . . This awful recession . . .  is a failure of government economic management. It is a government failure.” (Financial Times, 24 April 1991). The Iron Lady had become a political liability.

John Major’s first move on succeeding her was to reshuffle the cabinet. He appointed to it the arch interventionist Heseltine. Political commentators expected Major “ . . .  to listen less to the political theoreticians and gurus beloved of Mrs Thatcher [the] radical right-wingers who campaigned for him knew perfectly well that he was not ‘one of us’.” (Economist, 11 December 1990). While advocating “prudence” in public spending (“We must not . . . run in with our chequebooks flapping” (Economist, 1 July 1989)). He struggled with the economic recession he had inherited declaring that “a strategy for growth is what we need . . . ” Inflation was running at above 10 percent, industrial output falling at the rate of 11.5 percent, retail sales falling at 5.75 percent, with unemployment again rising.

Labour Mark Two Tory Party

Margaret Thatcher’s real significance lay in the agenda she set for political  debate. If she failed to fully transform the Conservative Party Thatcherism had a far-reaching effect on the Labour Party. Labour consciously and deliberately set about transforming itself into a Mark II Conservative party by ditching any pretence of having anything to do with changing society. Accepting the values dictated by a market economy Labour now talked of “ . . .  efficient, competitive industry . . .  capturing the markets at home and abroad” (Neil Kinnock: Making Our Way: Investing in Britain's Future, Blackwell. 1986, p.60). Labour more  than ever before accepts the market as the arbiter in the setting of economic goals. Clause 4 has been totally abandoned only to be replaced by the  anodyne commitment to “ . . .  a united  and prosperous society and to the fair distribution of wealth and opportunity . . ." (Guardian, 30 January 1995). Blair has dedicated himself to the promotion of a “dynamic modern economy (Economist, 14 January 1995).

The harsh realities of capitalist economics have forced the Party to realign their policies to the new consensus to such an extent that the Institute of Directors were pleased to report that “Labour has moved massively toward the Conservative agenda” (International Herald Tribune, 2 May 1997). In addition we have been reassured by no less a person than Lady Thatcher that Blair will “not let Britain down” (Guardian, 14 March 1997). It is little wonder that ’Bagehot’ could note in the Economist (7 January 1995) that one could forget accusing the “new” Labour Party of “being socialist” because “sometimes it is stretching things to describe it as left wing.”

Those who voted for the Labour Party cannot say that they were not warned in advance that Labour intends to run capitalism. We predict that Labour will fail to run capitalism in the interest of the vast majority who make up the working class in Britain, just as Lady Thatcher did.

Gwynn Thomas

These Foolish Things . . . (1997)

The Scavenger column from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

American bad dream

In 1994 every US resident between 18 and 65—that is 150 million people— received at least 17 offers of credit cards  . . .  A survey by the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, reveals that over the past three years the number of families running up credit card debts on annual incomes of less than $10,000 (£6,250) has more than doubled from 11 percent to 24 percent. And the number of personal bankruptcies has reached a record 1.1 million. The average bankrupt is aged 30 to 40 with an annual income of $25,000 to $35,000 and up to $40,000 in credit card debt. Typically, this person will have between 10 and 12 cards with a credit limit per card of $3,900. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 23 March.)

Out of sight . . .

Government scientists have decided against further research in to a cluster of leukaemia cases around one of Britain’s most powerful FM radio transmitters. The decision comes five years after the Guardian first revealed an unusual number of cases near the BBC’s TV and radio transmitter at Sutton Coldfield north of Birmingham. The existence of the cluster was confirmed by a subsequent government funded study published, after a long delay, in a US journal this year . . .  the effect was to ensure that the UK press did not cover the story of the Sutton Coldfield cluster. (Guardian, 29 May.)

Wage slavery

About 200,000 employees in the West Midlands—12 percent of the region's working population—receive no paid holiday . . .  One in five get only 15 days annual holiday entitlement and 25 percent work more than 48 hours a week. (Evening Mail, 28 February.)

A class act

Lloyd’s insurance market is bracing itself for the biggest wave of City job losses since Big Bang in 1986. More than 200,000 workers face the sack as some of the worlds largest insurance brokers merge with former rivals. The massive cost-cutting drive has been triggered by the Aon corporation, a US insurance broking group already embarking on extensive takeovers in London and the US in a bid to become the world number one. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 6 April.)

Penury

Elderly people in state-funded care homes are left with barely a third of what they need to pay for personal needs such as clothes and toiletries . . .  The personal expenses allowance of £14.10 a week compares with £38.78 needed to meet the ‘‘modest but adequate” outgoings of someone living in a residential home, according to the research for the charity Age Concern. (Guardian, 24 April.)

As we say . . .

Differences between the three main parties are wafer-thin—a matter of nuance rather than fundamental approach. That may be because we really have little choice about where we go from here. Politicians are merely trying to fool us when they claim they can change our lives for the better at little cost, fearful that if they tell the truth we shall turn against them. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 27 April.)

                                                                                                                         The Scavenger

                                                                                                                                       

The B team takes over (1997)

From the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

France’s conservative president, Chirac, called early elections in May and June in the hope of winning five more years in office for his supporters. The voters, however, refused to oblige and elected instead a left-wing government. Chirac remains president but has to cohabit with a government under a “Socialist" Prime Minister and with "Communist” and Green Party ministers.

Needless to say, the new Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, is no more a socialist than Mitterand was. His misnamed "Parti Socialiste” stands for a reformed capitalism not a society of common ownership and production for use not profit. Like the Labour Party in Britain, it is the B team to take over governing capitalism in France when the conservatives are tired or discredited.

Even so, the French PS fought the election on a programme that would have made Gordon Brown’s hair stand on end: increasing the minimum wage, reducing the existing 39-hour week to 35 hours with no loss of pay, 700.000 new jobs in the state and semi-state sector. In other words, unlike New Labour, which has got the message that such a reformist policy won’t work, the PS still believes—at least for vote-catching purposes—that a government can reduce unemployment by spending its way out of a slump.

A disturbing feature of the election was the vote for Le Pen’s Front National. It got 3.8 million votes, or 15 percent of those who voted, its highest ever score in a general election, even though—thanks to France’s two-round election system designed to ensure that MPs are representative of a majority of voters—it only got one seat. Since 38 million people aged 18 or over are eligible to vote in France, this means that one out of every ten French citizens voted for a party led by a fascist and open anti-semite.

As fascism is a reaction to the failure of democratic reformism to make capitalism work in the interests of the majority, where alienated workers mistakenly blame parliamentary democracy or some minority group instead of capitalism for their problems, this is a warning of the further dangers that could like ahead if workers continue to put their hopes in democratic reform of capitalism rather than socialism.

Some commentators have seen the election of the Jospin government as making a single European currency less likely. This is based on the assumption that the new government will honour its election promises and try to spend its way out of the crisis. This would indeed undermine the value of the franc and inaugurate a period of European monetary instability which would make the introduction of a single currency impossible.

The last time a French government tried to spend its way out of a slump was after Mitterand’s election as president in 1981. As we Socialists predicted, it was an utter failure because the capitalist economy is driven by profits, and the prospect of making them, not by government spending, which in the end is a charge on profits.

What happened was that the extra government spending was financed largely by inflating the currency. This undermined the competitiveness of French capitalist industry and led to three devaluations of the franc in an 18-month period. In the end, the austerity policy of the previous government was re-imposed, and tightened. It was one of the most spectacular failures of reformism in recent years.

If the Jospin government does adopt the same policy as in 1981 the commentators will be right. A more likely scenario, however, is the new government explaining that its election promises were only long-term goals, to be achieved within the framework of a united Europe, etc., etc., and carrying on with more or less the same economic policy as the previous government, as Blair and Brown are doing in Britain

Adam Buick

Ways of Seeing (1997)

Theatre Review from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Closer by Patrick Marber

Becoming a socialist is an educational experience. It is about discovery and knowledge; and the experience changes people.

Once people know and understand the essence of the socialist case—that various historical "epochs" are characterised by different kinds of class relationships (landowners and serfs in feudal societies, capitalists and workers in capitalist societies, etc.); that history is a record of class struggle; and that the economic system is prime, so that nowadays the interests of the capitalist class determine the dominant ideas and values in society—they will use this body of knowledge in analysing and responding to the world around them. Knowledge of the socialist case is. like other knowledge, internalised. It affects the way that people think and behave; it changes the very essence of their thoughts and feelings. In a very real way, once people have been persuaded of the essence of the socialist case, they will never be the same again. They will bring their newfound knowledge to the task of understanding the world in which they operate, including the behaviour of characters in a play. Other people, with different worldviews, bring a different set of analytical perspectives with them when they go to the theatre. Or. as increasingly seems to be the case, they bring only their ignorance of such matters. When I saw Patrick Marber's new play, Closer, in preview. I reached a set of judgments about it; judgments informed by my historical and sociological knowledge. I imagined that other critics, especially those working professionally (sic) for the national, newspapers, would reach a different set of conclusions. How right I was.

Like his first play, Dealer's Choice which has been hugely successful world-wide since its opening in 1994, Closer (Cottesloe). is marvellously well crafted. Marber's story line is full of surprises, yet at the same time it has a convincing inevitability, given the apparent “natures" of the four characters who meet as the story unfolds, and whose lives become horribly enmeshed. Dan meets Alice and they start to live together. Dan meets Anna and proposes a liaison. Anna resists. Dan, in revenge, surfs the Internet and affecting to be Anna (who he impersonates as a wildly salacious nymphomaniac) dupes Larry into a meeting. Larry meets Anna, discovers he has been set-up. but manages, nevertheless, to persuade her to live with him. Dan, having discovered that his deception has backfired continues to pursue Anna. Eventually Anna capitulates. Alice distraught takes a job as a "hostess" and meets a drunken, miserable Larry in a strip joint. United in adversity they begin to see one another. Dan hears of their relationship and decides that he is really in love with Alice and returns to her. Etc.. etc.

Told in this way the plot sounds like the worst kind of populist soap; a kind of wearisome episode of some Islington-based EastEnders lookalike. But Marber writes wonderfully convincing dialogue with a serious voice. And he seems genuinely concerned with the fate of his four characters whose lives he suggests are, given the nature of life in the 1990s, almost capriciously out-of-control. (My partner suggests that Marber, whose first play, Dealer’s Choice, was about playing poker, is really interested in games playing, and that Closer might be seen as a game of sexual poker. It seems a productive insight, but it was apparently lost on the critics.) The three newspaper critics whose reviews I consulted were wildly enthusiastic. They saw it as a play "about love and passion", which was "very much in the spirit of the time". They lauded Marber's "realism" and "humour".

But they offered no comment about the behaviour of the four protagonists. They failed to consider that love might need to be differentiated, significantly, from sexual passion, and whether being in love with someone carried with it certain obligations. They had nothing to say about why people in the 1990s seem so unable to form lasting relationships, why—at least superficially— some people are seemingly disposed to "throw away" relationships with as much thought as they might give to getting rid of an old sock, and whether this might have anything to do with our throwaway economic behaviour in a society which prizes newness as though it was one of the four virtues. Yet these things were at the heart of the play for me. I am not surprised when people, responding to economic imperatives which put making money and looking after oneself as prime, treat other human beings with the same contempt as they treat other "things" in our throwaway society. But the critics who wrote about the play in the three so-called quality papers which I consulted were either unable or unprepared to locate the behaviour of the four characters by reference to such perspectives. In consequence their reviews were glib and superficial. Perhaps it is consciously part of the process of "dumbing down" which is apparent in most contemporary criticism. And in education, too, where the diet offered to students must be as vocationally relevant and as intellectual barren as possible. But that's another matter.

Michael Gill