'Free enterprise' v. Life (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who hold that capitalism is about ‘free enterprise’ and ‘healthy competition’ should consider the aircraft industry. Visit any airport in any part of the so-called ‘free world’ and you will notice the vast majority of aircraft are of US manufacture.

Revelations of widespread bribery by firms like Lockheed are only part of the story. The US Government discourages foreign competition by imposing a 5 per cent. import duty on non-US aircraft purchased by American carriers. Presently, west European companies account for only 7 per cent. of the world-market (excluding Russia and China) and attempts to break US protectionism meet heavy resistance.

An example of this: US ‘feeder’ airlines (those which ferry passengers from the smaller airports to international ones) receive Government subsidies for aircraft carrying up to a maximum of 30 passengers. The increase of air-traffic has put pressure on the Government to increase subsidies to cover 50-seaters. But, if they did this, the US aircraft industry would be vulnerable to European competition in this range. According to Radio Nederland (13.4.78), a successful Dutch aircraft in the 45-seater range is expected to remain unattractive to US carriers because of Government legislation which will restrict the subsidy to planes carrying no more than 36 passengers.

Aircraft safety is another area where profits are given priority over passengers.

According to a Radio Canada International report (2.4.78), statistics covering commercial aircraft accidents only record fatalities among fare-paying passengers and leave out a host of other categories such as employees using special passes and very young children who travel free.

In ground accidents fire is one of the chief killers in aircraft. Foam sprinkler systems could easily be incorporated into aircraft but no aircraft company has, so far, done so. An executive of one large airline was reported, [in the same broadcast], as saying that, on a 650-seater ‘jumbo’, the inclusion of such a sprinkler system would reduce the payload by 8 seats. For the sake of ‘healthy competition’, it seems, the loss of eight fares is too serious to bear consideration so all the rest, including the crew, are put at risk.

Such examples—and they are to be found everywhere—illustrate how capitalism devalues human life by exploiting it for the sake of making a ‘fast buck’. As a system it offers no lasting solution to the problems confronting workers. If capitalism continues workers will pay an increasingly heavy price. Only socialism bases itself on the needs of humanity, not on exploitation.

REW

Monuments to misery (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Historians will no doubt argue for years to come exactly what is meant by the term “Industrial Revolution” and when this social change occurred. However, one can say that in relation to Britain, the term broadly applies to the tremendous technological development that took place in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which transformed the means of production and, with them, every aspect of society. But of course, the Industrial Revolution did more than that. Its significance for the socialist lies not in the technological changes in the production process, but in the consequent development of the working class and the creation of a productive capability, previously unknown.

The working class were the new “slave” class. They were the people who would produce the wealth for the new society — capitalism. The urgent task still awaiting their attention, arises directly out of the Industrial Revolution — the harnessing of capitalism’s productive forces in the interests of all to banish deprivation from the earth for ever. For the socialist, this is not a question of techniques of production, but of social organisation.

New museums
In order to understand the nature of present-day society and why its seemingly insoluble problems remain, it is necessary to have some grounding in history. This is why the socialist will welcome the four new museums of the Industrial Revolution that have opened in Shropshire under the blanket heading of the “Ironbridge Gorge Museum”. Within easy walking distance of each other at Coalbrookdale on the banks of the murky river Severn, they trace the industrial development that took place in this area, with its natural resources of coal, iron and clay in particular.

An attempt has been made, at least in part, to take the museums to the exhibits. Constructed on the sites where the developments illustrated actually took place, they concentrate especially on the late 18th century, when in effect, a new iron-age was introduced. The ironbridge itself, situated by the (now run-down) town from which it takes its name, is a remarkable product of the early industrial activity of the district. With the growth of trade and industry along the river Severn, industrial traffic across the river became heavier through the eighteenth century. The traffic needed a bridge somewhere near to the smelting and mining districts, but the technological problems this presented proved considerable. The barges travelling along the river needed clear passage and no obstruction could be allowed in the water. On the other hand, the steep banks made it almost impossible to build a bridge by the then conventional methods, especially since it would need to be very high to allow laden barges to pass beneath. The result was an iron bridge, which at the time must have seemed almost as fantastic as flying machines to the Victorians. Yet this world’s first ironbridge was eventually built; weighing 378 tons, with a span of 100ft 6ins, it was finally completed in 1781. Immediately it became a spectacle, with people (rich people anyway) travelling miles to see it. As the guide book explains: “To build a bridge in iron was not simply a matter of whim, fancy or ostentation, but the application of a new technology to the solution of a particularly difficult problem”. The bridge has been repaired and strengthened this decade, and should last another 200 years.

Iron Bridge, Shropshire c.1800

The museum sites are even more interesting and focus on work done in the area including mining. In particular, the development of the use of iron following the discovery in 1709 at Coalbrookdale that it was more efficient to use coke rather than charcoal in the smelting process, threw up the possibility of a tremendous increase in the production of iron. So the development of iron and related products is reflected in all parts of the museum sites. In particular the “open air” museum successfully recreates the atmosphere of the period. Much of the old machinery of production is preserved and restored on the sites where they were worked, and the museum is also importing historic pieces of machinery from other parts of the country, which would otherwise be destroyed. Here, the visitor can see the giant double beam engines known as “David and Sampson”. Built in 1851, these monsters were used to blast air into the furnaces. Originally powered by water-wheels, they were later adapted to steam power. The large volumes of air that they could blow’ into the furnaces enabled bigger works to be constructed and operated than had hitherto been possible. The original blast furnaces are also being reconstructed, as are various other mining processes, and the museum has also started the re-creation of a small town typical of 19th-century industrial Shropshire. When completed, it will be a lesson in history, far better than most books can provide.

The omissions
The museums stand as a tribute to man’s ability to harness nature’s powers and adapt them to his needs. But apart from one or two exceptions these exhibitions have a glaring omission. They illustrate the progress man achieved at a particular time — they don’t reveal the misery, the huge amounts of suffering this imposed on men, women and children. It would be quite wrong to romanticise the conditions of the majority of people in England prior to the Industrial Revolution.

There can be little doubt that pre-capitalist England was an easy life for the aristocracy, a comfortable one for a further small section, and pretty hard going for the majority. However there can also be little doubt that the start of the Industrial Revolution introduced the most appalling working and living conditions for the majority of people. A misery was imposed on the working class, the likes of which had never been known. And the sheer size of the event, and the hopelessness of the lives of the majority of people experiencing this “progress”, makes one shudder to read about it even at this distance. This failure to illustrate what was happening to people at the time of the Industrial Revolution, is the museum’s fault; perhaps they will remedy it in time.

In order to discover what it was really like for people who did not own the means of production during the Industrial Revolution, it is necessary to turn for guidance from the museums to the history books. And undoubtedly one of the best history books for this, is Volume I of Marx’s Capital. The history of the development of capitalism with its almost all-embracing inhumanity, is movingly documented by Marx. Large sections of the work are a plea to bring to a stop the totality of sufferings that the new developments had brought.

Horrific reading

Among the many things Marx does in this regard is to describe in detail (usually taken from government reports) the actual living and working conditions of the people operating the new technological marvels; and it is pretty horrific reading. But Marx also explains why this development resulted in such suffering. In brief, it was because the purpose of the new processes was not to benefit society as a whole, but only those who were receiving the increased profits the developments brought. Marx writes in Volume I of Capital (Lawrence & Wishart edition 1970) that: “machinery becomes in the hands of capital the objective means systematically employed for squeezing out more labour in a given time”, (p.412) A little later on Marx points to the contrast between earlier society (handicraft and manufacture) and capitalist society proper (factory production) when he writes:

  In handicraft and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in a factory the machine makes use of him . . . The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from the work, but derives the work of all interest . . . it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workmen . . . the instruments of labour confront the labourer, during the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power, (p. 422/3)

What Marx is saying here is that at the time of writing, the technological developments had not been harnessed to satisfy the needs of all the people, but only the needs of the minority. In the meantime, these marvellous developments were being used to destroy all purpose in work for the majority of people.

It is this aspect of the Industrial Revolution the Coalbrookdale museums fail to bring out. And this is the most important lesson for the working class. For capitalism’s inhumanity in the relentless and frequently bloody drive for profits, continues to the present. Day by day, hour by hour, the life of the workers is drained by the engines of capitalist accumulation. Instead of the wonderful advances of Ironbridge and elsewhere being harnessed to the benefit of one free human race, technology is used to increase the exploitation of the majority in the interest of the minority.

Ronnie Warrington

Winstanley: A 17th Century Utopian Socialist (1978)

Woodcut by Clifford Harper

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gerrard Winstanley’s writings were only rediscovered in 1894 and even now not much is known about his life. He was probably born in Wigan in 1609 and later went to London where he eventually became a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. By 1643, however, he was bankrupt and was forced to leave London to live on the land, at Cobham in Surrey. It was here, amidst the ferment of ideas stirred up by the Civil War between Parliament and Charles I (in which he wholeheartedly supported the parliamentary side), that Winstanley developed radical ideas.

Basically, he held that the earth had originally been given to mankind by God to be held in common and that landlords were usurpers. He urged that the original common ownership and free use of the land be restored and proposed that a start should be made by allowing the landless poor (one of whom he now was) to use the commons at St. Georges Hill near Cobham; hence their name of “Diggers”.

The Diggers did not parcel out the land amongst individuals, but worked it in common with the intention of later sharing in common the fruits of their joint labour. But they were never to enjoy these fruits; for right from the start they were harassed by the local landlords: they were taken to Court for trespass, their goods were seized, their houses pulled down and their crops destroyed. While this was going on Winstanley wrote a number of pamphlets putting the Diggers’ case. Later, in 1651, he decided to put their views into systematic form; the result was The Law of Freedom in a Platform, addressed to Cromwell, that appeared the following year. This proposed a communistic — and democratic, with annually elected officials and councils — society without buying and selling or money, to be established first on the commons and on the lands seized from the King, the bishops and royalists but with the eventual aim of embracing the whole of England.

Unlike Sir Thomas More in his Utopia (which appeared in 1516 and which is more widely known among socialists), Winstanley was not painting a mere picture of an ideal society but was putting forward a practical programme for action. Needless to say, Cromwell did not take up his suggestions and Winstanley and his ideas disappeared into oblivion — we do not even know when Winstanley died.

There was in fact no reason, apart from the opposition of the landlords (including the new ones created under Cromwell by the sale of royal and episcopal lands), why Winstanley’s ideas could not have been put into practice on a small scale. In the 19th century many colonies based on similar principles were to be established and to function for a while, especially in those parts of America where there were no landlords to sabotage them. Thus, in this sense, Winstanley can be said to be the first of the “utopian socialists” anticipating by over 150 years the projects of Fourier, Owen and Cabet.

We reproduce below an extensive passage from The Law of Freedom from which the extent to which Winstanley grasped that common ownership necessarily involves the disappearance of buying and selling and of money can be seen.

The Law of Freedom (1652)

The earth is to be planted and the fruits reaped and carried into barns and storehouses by the assistance of every family. And if any man or family want corn or other provision, they may go to the storehouses and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go to the fields in summer, or to the common stables in winter, and receive one from the keepers, and when your journey is performed, bring him where you had him, without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers’ shops, and receive that they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep, or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling. And the reason why all the riches of the earth are a common stock is this, because the earth and the labours thereupon are managed by common assistance of every family, without buying and selling.

Even as now we have particular trade in cities and towns, called shopkeepers, which shall remain still as they be, only altered in their receiving in and delivering out. For whereas by the law of kings or conquerors they do receive in and deliver out by buying and selling, and exchanging the conqueror’s picture or stamp upon a piece of gold or silver for the fruits of the earth, now they shall (by the laws of the Commonwealth) receive into their shops and deliver out again freely, without buying and selling.

They shall receive in as into a storehouse, and deliver out again freely as out of a common storehouse, when particular persons or families come for anything they need; as now they do by buying and selling under kingly government.

For as particular families and tradesmen do make several works more than they can make use of, as hats, shoes, gloves, stockings, linen and woollen cloth and the like, and do carry their particular work to storehouses, to work upon without buying and selling; and go to other storehouses and fetch any other commodity which they want and cannot make.. For as other men partakes of their labours, it is reason they should partake of other men’s.

* * *

Every tradesman shall fetch materials, as leather, wool, flax, corn and the like, from the public storehouses, to work upon without buying and selling; and when particular works are made, as cloth, shoes, hats and the like, the tradesmen shall bring these particular works to particular shops, as is now in practice, without buying and selling. And every family as they want such things as they cannot make, they shall go to these shops and fetch without money, even as now they fetch with money.

* * *

As silver and gold is either found out in mines in our own and, or brought by shipping from beyond the sea, it shall not be coined with a conqueror’s stamp upon it, to set up buying and selling under his name or by his leave; for there shall be no other use of it in the commonwealth than to make dishes and other necessaries for the ornament of houses, as now there is use made of brass, pewter and iron, or any other metal in their use.

(Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, edited by Christopher Hill, Pelican Classic, 1973)

Capitalism and Hunger (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is overpopulated, we are told, and this alleged overpopulation (often confused with density of population) is the cause of hunger. Hence, in order to eliminate the problem of hunger, the world’s population must first be reduced.

This is the reasoning behind the many attempts to force Indian villagers to limit their families to only one or two children, whether by persuasion or compulsion. The moral persuasion advocated by Malthus in the nineteenth century has given way in the twentieth century to government campaigns for mass sterilization.

But this argument is, although widely accepted, totally false. The facts do not support it. For example, a special issue on “Food and Agriculture” in Scientific American (Sept. ’76) invite the conclusion that we are capable, now, of feeding not just the present world population but an even greater world population. The cause of hunger, starvation and malnutrition, whether in the so-called “Third World” countries or in the West, is to be found in our economic system.

Why is it that the capitalist economic system does not produce enough food? In the first place, under capitalism the production of food, like that of other commodities, is deliberately restricted. If there is “too much” food, the price falls, farmers lose profits and sooner or later, governments intervene with policies aimed at restricting production so as to maintain the market price at a profitable level, if all else fails the stuff can always be destroyed — dumped at the bottom of the sea, for instance: anything will do just so long as the market price is maintained. Above all, it must not be given away to the hungry.

Which brings us to the other half of the equation. Why are people hungry when shops and warehouses are full of stored food? Here we have to state the obvious. The only reason for most people doing without the food they and their families need is quite simply that they cannot afford it. Poverty restricts the ability of most of the world’s working class to buy what food is available—the price is too high. The old “Let them eat cake” problem!

Along with this view of food as simply a commodity to be marketed, like houses or oil, with production controlled and restricted in such a way that supply should never catch up or overtake demand, we see agriculture exploiting the earth as a source of profits. Mother earth is raped by profit-seeking agro-business. The farmer’s business is not growing food for people to eat. Like every other capitalist, he is in business to accumulate more capital. Therefore he cannot afford to concern himself much about soil erosion, the destruction of humus, the loss of wild flowers or eagles. His real concern has to be the balance sheet: that his capital investment should produce as big a profit as possible.

Capitalist agriculture has found a few crops exceptionally profitable. In some areas, the West Indies for instance, monoculture has replaced the cultivation of a variety of food and other crops. In Europe a lot of arable land is now devoted to non-food crops — barley for the brewers in Britain, grapes for the wine trade on the Continent. Cotton, tobacco and sugar are all still dominant in many areas noted for their hunger. Forests are felled for the sake of a quick buck. Rivers are polluted by profit conscious industries. The seas are scoured to the point where even herrings become scarce; they are drilled for gas and oil and suffer pollution from oil tankers, all in the interests of maximising their owners’ profits.

Capitalism puts pressure on agriculture and industry alike to produce as cheaply and as fast as possible. Hence the excessive use of pesticides and mineral fertilisers, with consequent damage to the soil and destruction of the eco-balance. In our society the earth is capital — wealth which must be used to produce profits.

The working class throughout the world suffer poverty and hunger. This hunger is not a natural phenomenon. It is not caused by the alleged inability of people to grow enough food. It is caused by the fact that, on the one hand, it is often more profitable to grow non-food crops, and on the other hand, food is produced as a commodity to be sold at a profitable price and is therefore never produced in sufficient quantity to satisfy all man’s needs, any more than housing is. Profits first, people’s needs last — that’s capitalism.

Only if we end this system where production is primarily for profit, only if we end the money-based economy and the wages system based on class ownership of the earth and other means of production, only then do we stand any chance of both satisfying human needs and at the same time developing production techniques which will safeguard the natural environment. It is high time all “friends of the earth” recognized that profit-based capitalism is the real enemy both of those who are concerned about the problem of the “starving millions” and of those whose main concern is ecology and the environment. In Socialism there will be no conflict between the satisfaction of human needs and care for the environment.

Charmian Skelton

Ignoramuses of the world, unite! (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is worth briefly noting a letter from Sir Keith Joseph in The Guardian of April 28. He quotes with approval Sir Harold Wilson’s dictum that “inflation is the mother and father of unemployment”. He merely complains that when he, Joseph, said the same thing earlier, Wilson clobbered him for it. It is well known to all but these ignorant politicians that the worst unemployment was in the ‘30s, when the figure approached three million. At this time there was not a hint of inflation, if anything there was deflation. It appears, therefore, that unemployment was born without a mother and father. These are the leaders whom the working class elect every few years. Could they possibly do worse, by thinking for themselves, instead?

Lew Higgins

The world steel crisis (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour government, as its White Paper published at the end of March on the British Steel Corporation shows, has once again been forced to face up to the realities of capitalism. Its policy of pumping money into a bankrupt industry in order to try to preserve jobs is to be abandoned.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of how capitalism works could have predicted that such a policy could only be temporary since it goes against the whole logic of capitalism, which is to produce wealth to be sold at a profit not so as to provide jobs for workers. In effect it poured money raised by taxes on other sections of capitalist industry down the drain; something which no government can do indefinitely. The House of Commons Select Committee on Nationalised Industries which, under a Labour chairman, is the watchdog for the capitalist class on such matters had already said “enough, no more”. The Labour Government has now bowed to the inevitable and fallen into line with the logic of capitalism.

It is an interesting story which illustrates the futility of the reformist policy of trying to make capitalism work other than as an unplannable profit-making system. In February 1973 the then Conservative Government proposed closing a number of steel works. The Labour Government, elected in 1974, reversed this decision and told the BSC to keep them open for a longer period. Now only three years later the Labour Government itself proposes “early closure dates” for these same plants on the grounds that they are a burden to the BSC’s finances and productivity. The White Paper openly recognises this as a breach of previous promises:

  It must be recognized that the proposed advancement of these closure dates involves serious departures from previous understandings and commitments made by the British Steel Corporation (British Steel Corporation: the Road to Viability, Comnd 7149).

It does not say, however, that the BSC made these commitments under instruction from the Labour Government. We recognise the problems of the steelworkers who will be losing their jobs in a time of high unemployment. They are victims of the operation of capitalism whose inexorable law of “no profit, no production, no employment” cannot be overcome by the action of any government nor, we might add, by the most militant trade union action. Many of the workers involved seem to realise this and have switched their demands from trying to keep the plants open to trying to get as big a redundancy payment as possible.

The crisis in the steel industry, which is worldwide and not just confined to Britain, illustrates very neatly the anarchy of capitalism and how it leads to periodic crises in particular industries.

There are three main steel producing and trading groups in the world. The United States, Japan and the Common Market. The Common Market can legitimately be treated as a single unit since, under the 1952 Treaty of Paris which set up the European Coal and Steel Community, the Commission in Brussels has considerable powers in this field and is charged with managing the common affairs of the steel industries in the nine member States, essentially those of Germany, Britain, France and Italy.

In the years 1973 and 1974 the steel industry was booming, as our graph of ECSC production of crude steel over the last twelve years shows. In these conditions the various capitalist and state capitalist enterprises involved, in Japan and America as well as in Europe, planned massive expansions of their productive capacity, not to mention the plans for new steel works in the so-called Third World. In 1973 the BSC, for instance, adopted a development “plan” which involved increasing its crude steel productive capacity from the 29 million tonnes it was that year to 43 million tonnes in the 1980s.

Under the pressure of competition each enterprise and each country expanded its productive capacity to meet the booming market demand which each assumed would continue. The result was that their total productive capacity came to exceed by far the market demand. A crisis of “overproduction” broke out in 1975 and production fell drastically.

The White Paper describes the situation, frankly bringing out the perils of “planning” under capitalism.

  There are two main reasons for the serious problem of world over capacity for steel-making. First, a huge amount of modern, highly productive new capacity was either completed or under way in Europe, Japan and the developing world before the Middle East war in October, 1973, and the steep rise in energy prices that followed it.
   When this new capacity was built or planned, continued expansion in world industrial activity was widely expected with a sustained growth in the demand for steel.
   Instead—and this is the second factor—the growth of world industry has, in recent years, fallen well below the rates predicted before 1974.
    All such forecasting is subject to a wide margin of error as subsequent events have shown. Demand for steel has tended to decline—at the very time when much of the new capacity was only just coming on stream.

This is a classic case of “overproduction” caused by the anarchy of capitalism. The steel industry has had such crises every four or five years: 1961, 1966 and 1971 were, like 1975, years in which production fell compared with the previous year. But on all these occasions production resumed its upward trend the following year. It was expected that the same pattern would be followed in 1976. “The recovery may not be uniform but on the whole it is encouraging”, wrote a German journalist that year in an article featured in four leading European newspapers. “After the worst recession for decades, affecting most of the world’s steel industry in 1975, the leading figures in the industry face the future with unwearied optimism” (The Times, 26 October 1976). So, optimistically, the steel enterprises planned to expand production again. Let the White Paper continue the story, again illustrating the unplannable nature of capitalism :

  By late 1976, with some new capacity coming on stream and with improved performance at other plants, BSC was well placed to supply demand at a time when it was generally expected that there would be an upturn in Britain and in the world as a whole.
  Instead, there was a further downturn in demand at home and overseas. United Kingdom demand for steel has fallen by 23 per cent since the 1973 peak instead of the continued growth then expected. The industry is currently operating at about two-thirds capacity, the same as Japan.
  Other EEC countries are operating at about 60 per cent of capacity and the United States at about 75 per cent.

Slowly, as 1976 did not show the expected recovery and 1977 proved to be as bad as 1975, the steel enterprises began to realise that they were faced with something more than the usual temporary “overproduction” of previous recession years. They began to talk of a more basic, “structural”, problem of “overcapacity” for which there was only one solution: mass sackings and closure of plants. In other words, the destruction of the “excess” productive capacity.

The Labour Government’s White Paper is in line with this solution which is quite rational by the logic of capitalism, but irrational and even criminal from the point of view of human needs and interests. For there is no real “world over-capacity for steel-making” as the White Paper claims; there is only excess capacity in relation to profitable market demand. From the human point of view, not enough steel is being produced; there is a real human need for more steel and steel products to construct, for instance, houses, hospitals, power stations, bridges, railways, etc. But this does not interest capitalism, so world steel-making capacity is to be cut back until it is in line with what does count, profitable market demand.

The steel industry, in Britain and elsewhere, will eventually recover from this crisis—even if this involves destroying part of its existing productive capacity. But there is no telling how long this will take. One German steel baron, Hans Birnbaum, chairman of Salzgitter (whose losses in 1976 amounted to £25 million) has been reported as stating that

  competition on the world steel market was now so strong that there would be no quick reduction in the overcapacity situation—at least while demand for steel grew only slowly. Annual world steel production was about 700 million tonnes against a capacity of 900 million tonnes, and there had been considerable expansion of capacity in Japan in the past few years. The Japanese exports to the EEC, he said, were only relatively small in terms of the size of the total market, but their exports to third world markets were ruining EEC steel sales in those countries (The Times, 19 April 1977).

One thing is clear, however, the adjustment of productive capacity to market demand will be as chaotic and anarchic as was the expansion of productive capacity which led to the 1975 crisis. We can expect to see a three-sided trade war between Japan, Europe and America, with America trying to keep Japanese and European steel out of its home market and Japan and Europe competing fiercely for external markets as indicated by Birnbaum. The Common Market too will be under strain as Britain. Germany, France and Italy struggle to shift the burden of production cuts on to each other. This chaos is just capitalism working in a normal way.

Adam Buick

La Pensionaria (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other morning, switching on the BBC overseas service, I heard the rhythmic spelling out and clapping of what I assumed to be the name of Manchester United or some similar outfit. However, after endless repetition, I became aware that the name was I-B-A-R-R-U-R-I and I then realised that the chanters were Spaniards who had the cheek to call themselves communists and that this was a broadcast from the proceedings of the first legal congress of the Spanish Communist Party since Franco’s Civil War victory.

The first reflection one had to make, upon this realisation, was on the mindlessness. Here were supposedly politically aware workers who had taken an apparently momentous decision (more of that later) and who had the effrontery to claim to be in the vanguard of working class thought, and yet here they were mouthing slogans in praise of leadership, like so many Pavlov dogs. As if all this was not sufficiently depressing, one then had to listen to the inane commentary of the BBC reporter at the five-star luxury hotel, in Madrid, where pseudo-communists were holding their jamboree. In a voice vibrant with emotion he said that this scene was a celebration of the name of the President of the Party and he went on to say that during an interval in the proceedings this woman had enchanted the delegates by singing Asturian folk songs in the same beautiful voice which, forty years before, had thrilled the Spanish people and given her the name of La Pasionaria. What this commentator forgot to mention was that when this melodious voice was heard during the Civil War, it struck a note of horror in the hearts of thousands of people fighting in the Civil War on the Republican side many of whom La Pasionaria would condemn to torture and death in the Communist Headquarters.

Anyone who is unaware of these facts and wants to get to know more about them has only to read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Still better, if it is possible to get a copy, they should read Listen, Comrades by El Campesino. This was the nickname given to a famous peasant general who led a Communist army in the Civil war and the book describes not only what went on in Spain but in Stalin’s Russia to which he and La Pasionaria and other Communist leaders fled from the victorious Franco. This Communist harridan continued her murderous career, under Stalin’s wing, by liquidating Communist opponents, including her husband, and it was only because El Campesino was actually able to escape from Stalin’s Russia — an even more difficult task than from Franco’s Spain — that we can learn about these things. Unfortunately, it seems that even the “reformed” Communists in Spain have not read about their former hero, El Campesino. Or perhaps they prefer to remain in ignorance. (It is worth a little digression here to mention that his memoires include some very revealing pages about the utter collapse of nerve on the part of the Stalin regime when the Germans were approaching Moscow in 1941. It is well known that millions of Russians showed that they looked to Hitler as their deliverer from the tyranny of Stalin. There is certainly a good case for arguing that, if the Nazis had behaved with some semblance of humanity towards the Russians in the area they had conquered, then even greater numbers of Russians would have changed sides).

The Spanish Communist Party has now achieved world-wide fame as the most advanced outpost of so-called Euro-Communism. It does not seem to have occurred to the scribblers of the western press that there is something remarkably inconsistent, even for Communists, in those circumstances, in appointing as their president a notorious Stalinist witch. The majority of Spanish people are a little less naive. They remembered her windy rhetoric during the Civil War about dying for liberty, rather than living under tyranny, but they noted that far from dying, she ran away to become a pensioner of Stalin, and with their mordant Spanish wit changed her sobriquet to the one at the head of this article. The Spanish Communist Party has now officially abandoned Leninism but, whatever that means, in practice none of the pundits seems to have noticed that this means they have thrown out the baby and the bathwater and the bath as well. What on earth can the party stand for minus its Leninism? They claim that the answer to that is that they are Marxist Democrats. But their new found adherence to democracy is exposed as a sham by the continuation of secrecy and leadership in their own organisation. As to Marxism, the word in their mouths is the same meaningless shibboleth as the so-called Marxist-Leninism that the Communist parties of the world have been prating about ever since 1917.

The real position now seems to be that the Euro-Communists of the western countries wish to divest themselves of the aura of conspiratorial leadership with the objective of a minority seizure of power. All they are left with is a programme of nationalisation. But, of course, there is already a plethora of so-called Social Democratic and Labour Parties who have been playing the rôle for generations. There is but one service which the Communist parties can perform and that is to leave the stage, where they now have no rôle whatever to play.

L. E. Weidberg

Marx, carbuncles and all (1978)

Book Review from the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale (Blackwell)

A very good biography of Marx, which recounts fairly and without eulogy his personal and political activities year by year, is Marx without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale (published by Basil Blackwell in 1975). What makes it so good is that the authors recognise that Marx stood for “a classless, stateless and moneyless society” and point out that, right from his first socialistic writings at the end of 1843, Marx held that mankind could only be emancipated through the abolition of money and the State.

Marx maintained this view for the rest of his life even if, as Rubel and Manale point out, “he was not always able to reconcile his conduct with his theoretical views”. For instance, he was obsessed with the Russian threat to Western Europe, an obsession which led him to very questionable cooperation with Tory journalists like David Urquhart and Maltman Barry. As late as 1877 Marx was writing anonymous anti-Russian articles in the Tory press! But then we have never been committed to endorsing everything Marx said and did, even though we do owe him a tremendous debt as the man who first provided a scientific basis for the case for Socialism.

Adam Buick

A useful introduction to Marx (1978)

Book Review from the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx's Capital by Ben Fine (Macmillan)

Subject to certain reservations dealt with below, Marx's Capital by Ben Fine (Macmillan’s Studies in Economics, Paperback, 76 pages, £1.50) achieves what the author set out to do and should serve as a useful introduction to the three volumes of Capital.

The author, who is Lecturer in Economics at Birkbeck College, describes his work as both introduction and interpretation. His method is to summarise and simplify, in his own words, various aspects of Marx’s economics, including the labour theory of value and surplus value, commercial and interest-bearing capital, rent of land, crises and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. On the last of these he writes (p.57) that it would be nonsense “to hypothesize a long-run tendency of the rate of profit to fall in the sense that over a period of one hundred years the rate of profit must have become lower”, and he stresses the relationship of a short-term fall to the cycle of booms and depressions.

He warns readers that his book must not be regarded as a substitute for reading Capital itself. Its merit is that, by clearing away some popular misconceptions, it should make it easier for the student to understand what Marx was getting at in his detailed treatment.

Marx’s Capital begins with an outline of the materialist conception of history and an account of the way Marx moved on from his early Hegelianism. It reminds the reader of the impossibility of separating economic theory from the class basis of society. Other economists’ attempts to explain profits are briefly dealt with, including “abstinence theories” and “marginal productivity” (pages 31-2).

In the treatment of Marx's economics a serious defect is that, although present-day inflation is several times referred to, there is no mention whatever of Marx’s explanation, based on the labour theory of value that inflation is caused by an excess issue of inconvertible paper currency. As the author can hardly be unaware of Marx’s explanation the possibility is that he rejects it (as some rather obscure remarks suggest), but he makes no attempt to disprove it or to offer an argued alternative explanation.

His treatment of the very low post-war unemployment is equally unsatisfactory. He writes (p.76) that capitalism has changed, as evidenced by the fact that “capitalism since the second world war has enjoyed an unprecedented boom, free from the shattering crises . . . that characterised the earlier laissez-faire period . . ."

Several things can be said about this. Did capitalism in general enjoy an unprecedented post-war boom? In the four years 1948-1951, for example, unemployment was at depression levels in several countries. The average for the four years was over 9 per cent in Belgium and 8 per cent in Germany. In Italy it was continuously over one and a half million.

As regards low post-war unemployment in Britain all that was unusual was that it lasted as long as it did. It was always normal for unemployment to be low in periods of expansion, and in the second half of the nineteenth century there were several periods of 3 to 5 years when the average was less than 3 per cent.

Nor is the enormous belief in permanent boom a new one. Kautsky, in his “Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx” (p. 230), after noting that there had been a belief in permanent depression, wrote:-

From 1895 to 1900 we had again a period of economic prosperity, which led not a few optimists to the opposite assumption, viz. that the period of crises had passed away.

Mr. Fine’s book was published first in 1975. If he had waited till unemployment rose above 1,600,000 in 1977 we may guess that he would have worded differently the passage quoted earlier.

The book contains two mentions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the first a quotation from Marx, in the Foreword, and the second on the last page. It reads:-

   The future will herald a new era founded on the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The author does not go into the question of what Marx meant by the phrase or explain what he (the author) means by it (the dictatorship in capitalist Russia?) or give his reasons for believing that it is a way to the classless society, Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Make No Mistake About It (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Smith is a painter, Bill Brown is a clerk, and so on; five upright young men. Those weren’t the names nor, one supposes, were the ones on the poster the real ones. What have they got in common? Yes, we know they are all members of the working class, but the poster wasn’t put up by the SPGB. They are, in fact, all in the Territorial Army. However, unlike the usual recruitment advertising, these young men were not shown “learning a useful trade”, seeing the world, or doing anything which would ensure rapid promotion on their return to civilian life. This poster makes no bones regarding what joining the Army is all about (perhaps that is why it was so quickly withdrawn!). Facing the viewer directly, each one carries a submachine-gun.

The correspondence columns of the Daily Telegraph of 20th April were headed “Land of Equal Opportunity”. The first three letters dealt with one of to-day’s “in” subjects — women’s right to be exploited at the same level as their male fellow workers. The last letter, from Lord Monson, ridicules (wittily and quite justifiably) the Equal Opportunities Commission’s injunction to parents to check their children’s books for “sex-assumption rôles”. So far so good. However, in his penultimate paragraph he refers to “the stomach-churning revelation that female recruits to the fighting branches of the United States armed services were being taught to shriek the words ‘kill, kill; hate, hate; murder, murder; mutilate, during bayonet practice”.

We too are appalled. Unlike Lord Monson however, who seems to see nothing wrong in men being taught to shriek ‘stomach-churning’ obscenities during bayonet practice, we protest at the fact that workers are not just taught that it is right to kill each other, but to the accompaniment of chants of hate. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT whatever the advertisements (usually) say about the wonders of a career in the Armed Forces, they are about KILLING; workers killing each other at the behest, and in the interests of, their real enemies — the capitalist class.

Eva Goodman

Socialism YES, reformism NO (1978)

Editorial from the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Throughout its seventy four years of life the Socialist Party of Great Britain has held unswervingly to one object — the establishment of a social system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Alone, we have stood for a social revolution to overturn capitalist society and replace it with socialism.

During this time we have often been invited to divert from our object, or to postpone its achievement in favour of doing something immediately about the problems of capitalism. For example, when there has been a slump we have been urged to forget socialism and campaign for a reduction in unemployment, or an increase in dole money, or something similar.

During the two world wars we have experienced we have been advised — if that is the correct way to describe the persecution our members endured because of their opposition to capitalism’s wars — to join the fight on our masters’ side, to become, in other words, anti-socialist, on the argument that democracy or something called the British way of life was at stake.

We have been under pressure to support Labour governments as the lesser of the Labour/Tory evil; to join marches against fascism (whatever that may mean at any particular time), to demonstrate against some laws and in favour of others. And always, we have been told, the issue was so vital that it justified our giving it priority over our declared object of socialism.

It is ironic that our refusal to take part in these activities has been abundantly justified by the fact that, after all this time, there is still an apparent demand for them; none of the problems they profess to ease has been dealt with. Each day and every day we are made aware of campaigns against some social ill of capitalism. Workers still need to fight to protect their living standards; there are still numerous movements against war, or against its more horrific weapons like the neutron bomb. And still, even after the anti-working class records of the governments of Attlee and Wilson and Callaghan, socialists are told that there is some advantage in splitting the hairs between the evils of Labour and Conservative rule over British capitalism.

No good reason has ever been advanced to support a preference for the style of poverty the working class endure under Callaghan to that they would suffer under Thatcher. And when we add that, in making such a choice the workers are throwing away the power they hold, to build a world of freedom and abundance, the argument can be seen for the madness that it is.

It is continually necessary to state our fundamentals. Socialism will end the problems which are inescapable under capitalism. Diverting our efforts from struggling for socialism does not ameliorate the problem — it ensures their continuation.

Socialism can be established only by a world wide majority of workers who consciously opt for it, in full knowledge of what it is and how it will provide a society basically different from capitalism. A socialist party, then, must work to increase working class consciousness; to advocate something other than socialism, some stop gap or diversionary idea would be to spread confusion and delay the setting up of socialism.

That is why we have always opposed the political doctrine of reformism; we have refused to campaign for anything other than socialism and all our propaganda has been directed to building up an understanding and an acceptance of the case for the new society.

Our numbers are small but that is no measure of the correctness of our case. It only proves how seductive is the appeal of the numerous campaigns of reformism. But reality is on our side; the facts support us in our insistence that the only effective campaign must be a single minded one for socialism.

A Question of definition (4) - socialism/communism (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is the name we give to the new society we wish to see the working class establish, defined in our Object as “a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community”.

Actually, at the time our Party was founded in 1904, socialism was not the generally used name for the society Socialists wanted to see established. Even the early issues of the Socialist Standard referred to future society as "the co-operative commonwealth” (an Owenite phrase which is expressive enough), the "social republic” (from the French revolutionary tradition) and "socialist society”. The word socialism referred rather to the body of theory which criticised capitalism and argued for a new society based on common ownership and democratic control. This is the sense in the title Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (given by Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue to the extracts from Engels’ Anti-Dühring which he translated into French and published as a separate pamphlet in 1880) and in the old sub-title of our companion journal the Western Socialist: "journal of scientific socialism in the Western hemisphere’’. It is of course a natural transition from socialism as the name of the doctrine to socialism as the name of the application of the doctrine, viz. the new society to be established. Nowadays the original situation is reversed: we use socialism almost exclusively to refer to the system of society and virtually only in the phrase “scientific socialism” to refer to the doctrine.

Socialism and socialist originated in both Britain and France in the 1820s and 1830s. In Britain, where it was popularised by Owen and the Owenites, it was used to describe a doctrine which favoured co-operation instead of the competitive individualism of capitalism. In France it had more the sense of a doctrine favouring reforms in the interest of the poor. Communism, on the other hand, originated in French in the 1840s as the name of the doctrine of those descended from Babeuf’s 1796 Conspiracy of the Equals who favoured the seizure of power in an insurrection in order to introduce genuine “equality” through abolishing private property. The German League of the Just also supported this doctrine and in 1847 changed its name to the Communist League, for which Marx and Engels wrote the famous manifesto of 1848.

Thus, in 1848, as Engels explained in a preface he wrote to the Communist Manifesto in 1888, communism was what Williams calls the “harder” word:

We could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, Socialism was a middle-class movement, Communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the continent at least, respectable; Communism was the very opposite.

Clearly since in 1880 Engels was prepared to have his doctrine described by Lafargue as socialism a change must have occurred in between.

Williams suggests that in the 1880s in English socialism was the harder term because it, in whatever form, envisaged some reorganization of society as a whole while communism tended to be associated with small- scale experiments in common property, or “community of goods”, as in a number of agricultural colonies established in America (equivalents of today’s kibbutzim). There is some truth in this, but it is not as simple as that. The “community of goods” and “levelling” associated with the word communism were looked on with more horror by the capitalist class than the social reforms in favour of the poor associated with the word socialism. Thus when Sir William Harcourt, the Liberal politician, who served as Home Secretary and later as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated in the late 1880s "we are all socialists now” he did not mean that “we are all in favour of a community of goods”! And it is no accident that William Morris in the 1880s, when he wished to contrast his views with the reformism of the Fabians, chose to call himself a communist. Some anarchists such as Kropotkin were also at this time describing their aim as “free communism” in contrast to the State capitalism (which they misleadingly called “State socialism”) favoured by most of those who called themselves socialists.

"State socialism”, again, was a term used to describe measures taken by the State to try to aid the poor. The word socialism unfortunately in widespread usage has never lost its association with reforms and reformism. Hence Labour and similar parties in other parts of the world describe themselves and are described as “socialist”. This does not deter us from insisting that our use, to describe someone who works for a new society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is not only the more adequate definition but also the more historically justified: those who introduced the word into English, the Owenites, favoured a co-operative commonwealth rather than reform of capitalism.

The word communism (which Marx preferred as the word to describe future society) has suffered a fate just as bad, if not worse. It has come to be associated with the State capitalist police dictatorships in Russia, China and other such countries. This goes back to a decision of the Bolsheviks in 1918 to change the name of their party from Social Democratic to Communist Party. They did this to distinguish themselves from the Social Democratic parties of the rest of Europe which had so shamefully betrayed the working class over the war. From then on communist has been used to describe supporters of Russia, inaccurately since it is not communism in its original sense of common ownership that they stand for but state capitalism.

Williams is quite wrong when he states that in the period 1880-1914 communism was used “as a description of an ultimate form, which would be achieved after passing through socialism”. This dates from after 1917 and was an innovation introduced by Lenin. Before then the only person to make such a distinction was William Morris but this was not taken up by anyone else in the Social Democratic or Socialist movements. It is true that the reformist Ramsay MacDonald in his book The Socialist Movement (1910) distinguishes communism from socialism, but as alternative and not successive societies and, as we have noted, this was a distinction made also by some anarchists. It is interesting that MacDonald distinguishes the two societies, as Lenin was to do, by the method of distribution: under “socialism” consumer goods would be distributed in accordance with work done, under “communism” according to needs.

Lenin’s innovation (to use a neutral term) was to make “socialism” and "communism” thus defined successive societies after the abolition of capitalism and to attribute this view to Marx (a gross distortion since Marx made no such distinction: he only distinguished a “first phase” of “communist society” when there would still have to be some restrictions on individual consumption—a reasonable assumption for 1875 but outdated today— from a “higher phase” when the principle “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” would apply, but these were phases of the same society based on common ownership and democratic control and not successive, separate societies).

As far as we are concerned, socialism and communism are exact synonyms, alternative names to describe the future society we wish to see established and defined in our Object. We don't object to this being described as communism and us as communists but in practice we only use the words socialism and socialist.

Adam Buick

Concluded

Boffin the night away (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the heading “Britain’s Biggest Daily Sale” the Daily Mirror recently told us something important. Well, important enough to run to 3 pages on Wednesday 8 March and 2 pages on Thursday 9 March. Now that’s important and no mistake.

Who could resist it? I mean, a question like “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?”

Forget the heart, you sneer (for after all it is the Wednesday tea-break in the Heart Attack Machine Factory). How about her income? Now there is something worth capturing. Princess Margaret has a £50,000 annual income. Having squandered your 7p on the Daily Mirror you want the goods. “Why Has This Man Captured A Princess’s Heart?” You want a short, easy, fool-proof method.

Well it seems a distinct advantage, if you are in the Princess heart capturing business, for your old man to be well-heeled. We are informed by the biggest daily selling newspaper “Roddy’s brother Dai, older by 18 months, is fascinated by sport and hunting. Even these days, he will race home to the family’s 2,000 acre estate near Abergavenny, Gwent and hunt with unashamed zeal much to his father's delight”. Roddy wasn’t interested: "I am not particularly interested in killing small animals.”

So there’s a clue. Be a sort of gentle guy. Oh, and by the way, make sure your old man has 2,000 acres. Dustmen don’t capture Princess’s hearts.

O.K., you say, the guy isn’t a dustman so what does he work at? The biggest selling daily is ready to inform you. After all, knowledge is power.

The Daily Mirror is a little vague on this one though: “. . . a fair haired young landscape gardener (and would-be pop singer). . .”

The would-be pop singer is easy. Who isn’t? The Saturday nights of Clapham and Maryhill ring to the bath-room echo of plenty of potential Jaggers and Bowies. Gardener? No sweat there either. Their income is as poor as yours.

So what’s the Princess heart-winning ingredient? Let’s take a look at big brother—yes, the fox-hunting one. Whatever else you could say about Roddy Llewellyn’s occupation, his brother could never be accused of gardening.

Vagueness creeps over the biggest selling newspaper again. “Dai has done a variety of jobs. From the travel business (“I wore a bowler and stiff collar in those days”) to his present endeavours which involve boosting British goods in the US”.

But if they are vague on the work-life of the brothers they describe as “Two of Britain’s most intriguing bachelors” they are quite specific on the love-life. How do you think they became Britain’s top-selling newspaper?

They tell of Dai and one of his mates pulling a couple of “very English, very debby girls” in a nightclub of course. Dinner and on to another club. He then hired “a famous Latin-American singing group” to accompany them to Annabels and the Clermont Club. . . . and then on to a friend’s house.

And so to bed. In this case “eventually Dai and his companion ended up making love to the two girls side by side on a huge bed. while the group stood round serenading them—stark naked.”

To all dustmen, engineers, school teachers, labourers and other ungrateful workers who may be reading this—a word of warning.

If you want to find out how a section of society can lead this sort of life-style don’t read the Daily Mirror.

Oh, sure, they’ll give you details of Roddy’s visits to Barbados, Istanbul and Acapulco. You’ll get the details of "Dai’s 4 or 5 cocktail parties in a night...” 

But to find out why you live the dull repetitive life you do; while Dai can say “My motivation is simple. Eat, drink and be merry—I genuinely don’t care what people think. I believe I should experience everything in life that is possible”—don’t look to the top selling newspaper.

Better take out a subscription to one of Britain’s lowest selling newspapers—The Socialist Standard.

For only in this newspaper will you read that the Dais and Roddys of this world lead their jet-set lifestyle only because you—the useful members of society —provide the wealth that makes it possible. Dai’s income comes from your endeavours. The wealth you produce is more than you get back in the form of a wage or a salary. The surplus you produce makes it possible for these parasites to live the way they do.

All this is bad enough, but the Daily Mirror going on about how Princess Margaret refers to her parasite boyfriend as “my darling angel” and similar gushing nonsense, is to add insult to injury.

The one piece of information to emerge out of the whole silly story is the item . . . "He’ll (Dai that is) eventually take her home, indulge in a bit of “boffing” (current upper class slang for you know what) and drive her home.”

Boffing. Now there’s a new one.

Next time the gaffer tells me that I'm not working hard enough. I can reply “Away and boff yourself.” 

Let’s hope he doesn’t read the Daily Mirror.

Dick Donnelly

The Red Brigade (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The most serious political crime in the last 30 years", was the way an Italian newspaper described the kidnapping of leading conservative politician Aldo Moro. On March 16, in the middle of Rome, left-wing "guerrillas" murdered Moro's bodyguard, snatched him from his car and vanished without a trace. On May 9, Moro's bullet-ridden body was found in a car in Rome after, according to his captor's communiqué, he had been sentenced to death in a "proletarian trial". The secretary of the United Nations had intervened, so had the Pope, but to no avail. In return for Moro's life the "Red Brigade", the organisation which carried out the kidnapping demanded the freedom of other violent left-wingers at present being held in Italian gaols. The Italian government's refusal led to Moro's murder.

Just how politically "serious" was this terrorist act and the sequence of events that have followed it? Certainly at the time of the kidnapping the talk was of "civil war" (a leading politician of the Italian Republican Party) and of "armed attack on the heart of the state" (editorial in the Corriere della Sera). And when he was killed " . . . the First Italian Republic is ended" (former President Saragat). But this was not the first time political violence in Italy had provoked crisis rhetoric along these lines. The Red Brigade began their operations against the Italian state in 1970 gradually escalating their violence to the kidnappings, leg-shootings and murders of more recent times.

Judges, magistrates, journalists, business men, minor politicians and others considered to symbolise or uphold the power of a repressive state have been their victims. Each time the cry of "political crisis" has gone up — and each time, within a short period, the whole thing has been quietly forgotten, along with the individuals who have suffered in the affair. The plain fact is that the violent acts of a small band of fanatically determined individuals (the Red Brigade numbers a few hundred at the most), for all the media coverage they obtain and the temporary panic they provoke, pose no threat to a state that commands a superior potential for violence and above all the support and allegiance of the vast majority of the population.

The Moro affair may have caused a bigger stir than the others, dragged on longer and made politicians and other VIPs shiver in their shoes but in perspective, it will be seen, like the acts that precede it, to have been a mere surface feature of Italian capitalism, a wild ineffective lunge at the armour of the state not a blow at the heart of it.

The killers too are quite mistaken as to what will be the effect of their violence. When they talk about "striking at one man to educate a hundred" (Red Brigade slogan), they imagine that terror tactics will stir the population to a mood of insurrection which they can then harness to topple the state. The effect their activities have in fact is just the opposite. Far from persuading people to accept their ideas they frighten them into even greater solidarity with the powers-that-be (witness the spontaneous general strike of 15 million workers immediately following Moro's kidnapping and the demonstrations and strikes immediately after the discovery of his body) and make it possible for the tangible democratic rights and freedoms that do exist under capitalism to be eroded or removed.

The repressive laws passed by the Italian Parliament (easy interception of telephone calls, arrest on suspicion, interrogation without legal representation, random identity checks, compulsory notification to police of accommodation let or bought) several days after Moro's disappearance are of course what the Red Brigade were aiming at. They believe that measures of this kind following their acts of terror expose the repressive nature of the state and force it to "shed its mask" of liberalism and benevolence. They fail to see however that such measures will, given the circumstances have wide support among the working class and will not be condemned as being anti-democratic and repressive.

We should in fact have no illusions about the coercive nature of the state and should not attempt to provoke further repressive measures to illustrate the constraints it puts on the vast majority who sell their energies for a wage or salary. Instead of this we must, unlike the violent organisations on the Left, face up to the fact that for the moment the majority of wage and salary earners are quite willing to live with capitalism in its present form and realise that their minds will not be changed by acts of violence. Such violence can only strengthen their attachment to the established order and create an atmosphere of unreasoned emotional reaction in which it is all the more difficult to put Socialist ideas across.

The insurrectionists, the Red Brigades the world over, are right only about one thing — the capture of the state is a prerequisite for revolution. But not for a revolution of minority violence (which would anyway be just another replacement of one kind of repression by another), but for a revolution by the ballot-box in which a majority of convinced Socialists in all the advanced parts of the world will use their votes to establish a society of free access and democratic control. In Italy as elsewhere the left-wingers — both those who practice violence and those who tacitly approve it — would do well to think carefully on the consequences of minority action and decide whether there is not a more constructive way of expressing their dissatisfaction with life under capitalism.

Howard Moss

Down Coronation Street (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHAT IS CORONATION STREET? A row of terraced houses, At one end is a pub called The Rover's Return where the locals spend the best part of their leisure time. The locals are our old friends; we know them better than our next door neighbours. There's Stan Ogden, the luckless window cleaner and his wife Hilda, there's Ken Barlow, the local intellectual and his Uncle Albert, there's Ena Sharples and her friend Minnie, the Langtons, the Faircloughs, Emily Bishop, Elsie Howard, Annie Walker, Alf Roberts . . . they've been there for years, every Monday and Wednesday at 7.30 p.m. We've watched their hard times, their family problems, their love affairs, their hopes and heir disappointments. We accept Coronation Street as an extension of the streets in which we live. 　

CONVENIENT ENTERTAINMENT 　

Coronation Street is an integral part of the culture of British capitalism. It influences the consciousness of television viewers far more than the paintings of Picasso or the plays of Pinter which fit more traditionally into the category of culture. Most of us spend a large part of our leisure time watching television; it is not surprising that it affects the way we see the world. It is fashionable to condemn workers for watching television, especially for watching soap opera like Coronation Street, Such criticism comes from those people who have the time, money and inclination to pursue what are commonly considered to be more 'cultured' pastimes. For the working class television is the most convenient form of entertainment. 　

In years to come the present age will be remembered far more by the records of television than by a hundred volumes of bogus sociological jargon from academies. Fiction can tell us more about the past than records. Engels, writing to the English novelist Margaret Harckness in April 1888 says that: 

Balzac whom I consider a far greater master of realism than all the Zolas past, present and yet to come, in La Comédie Humaine gives us a most wonderfully realistic history of French 'society', describing, chronicle-fashion, almost year by year from 1816 to 1848 the progressive inroads of the rising bourgeoisie upon the society of nobles, that reconstituted itself after 1815 and that set up again, as far as it could, the standard of la vieille politesse francaise (old French refinement). He describes how the last 'remnants of this, to him, model society gradually succumbed before the intrusion of the vulgar moneyed upstart, or were corrupted by him; how the grande dame whose conjugal infidelities were but a mode of asserting herself in perfect accordance with the way she had been disposed of in marriage, gave way to the bourgeoisie, who corned her husband for cash or cashmere; and around this central picture he groups a complete history of French society from which, even in economic details . . . I have learned more than from all the professed historians, economists and statisticians of the period together."　

If the writing of Balzac can so realistically reflect the class struggle, what about Coronation Street? Can it be dismissed as harmless entertainment or is it politically subjective in the way that television news coverage more obviously is. To put the question in perspective let us consider two contradictory points of view on the nature of 'culture' in society. Graham Hough, writing about the rise of modernism in his Reflections on A Literary Revolution argues that 

Literature by a fortunate dispensation, does not reflect very accurately the convulsions of the social order. Its revolutions sometimes precede the social ones, sometimes fellow them. sometimes, it would seem, overlap them quite pointlessly . . .  But as soon as we begin to look closely at a particular patch of literature we are likely to see it developing according to its own principles, which have their own interest, and are likely to be at least fortuitous in their relations to the wars, technologies or movements of classes that are their temporal accompaniments. The dispensation is fortunate, for it is a happy instance of what we mean by the freedom of the spirit.

The alternative point of view is put by Allan Rodway, writing about Romantic poetry in The Romantic Conflict: 

Chance could hardly ordain that in England all those coming to maturity between 1789 and 1830, and possessed of poetic genius, should have been born with a romantic temperament while the genius of, say, 1689 to 1730 was born Augustan. We are force d to the conclusion that the milieu probably encouraged one type of genius and inhibited another. The art-form is inseparable from. the circumstances of the age.

Hough's view, that 'Art' is divorced from the laws of social motion is surely absurd. Ideas are social in nature; the mind could not possibly conceive an image which has no basis in society any more than the hand could touch a non-existent object. Chaucer could not have written The Canterbury Tales in Roman Britain, Shakespeare could not have written Look Back Anger, Coronation Street would have had no meaning in the Sixteenth Century. Marxists reject Hough's 'freedom of the spirit', but at the same time reject the mechanistic notion that 'Art' can only ever be between ideas and society is not always joined by a straight line for the benefit of vulgar determinists. 

To what extent does Coronation Street reflect the society in which we live? It is reflective in that it conforms to the social relationships of modem industrial capitalism: there are those who are forced to work in order to live and others — the usually unseen bosses are able to live without working — unsurprisingly the latter class are not found inhabiting the slums of Coronation Street; the characters pay for the necessities of life, such as food, clothing and shelter; there are women who are expected to stay at home and do housework or else find menial employment and men who are expected to be hard working, virile and socially dominant (if, like Stan Ogden, they do not exhibit these characteristics are expected to laugh at them); there are 'educated' people (like Ken Barlow) who talk about and organise things when leadership is required and formally uneducated people (like Stan or the barmaids) who know their places and can't pronounce long words; there exists an implicit hierarchy of social roles, and a natural uniformity of class position. These relationships are never challenged; they are shown to be natural. 　

Drama rarely reflects what society is really like, It an idealised picture of what dramatists and their patrons (in this case the television company) want to be like. Coronation Street is not the reflection of life under capitalism, but the reflection of prejudices about life under capitalism. It is the gap between realistic reflection of human life (which is what dramatic honesty is all about) and the subtle extraction of its social consequences which makes Coronation Street a piece of political propaganda. It is a representation of capitalist society with the class struggle neatly. removed, which is about as honest as a representation of Beethoven without commenting on his music. The writers, actors, and director attempt to convey particular images of capitalism, for example that workers wear cloth caps and are basically both stupid and lazy, that women are naturally inferior to men, that nice things happen to 'good' people and 'baddies' always lose. These prejudices are not based on an objective examination of society (if they were then Socialism would be impossible and we could all retire to The Rover's Return), but on the beliefs and requirements of the capitalist ideology. The ideology of Coronation Street provides the ruling class with immense optimism - there are no Socialists down Coronation Street, not even a single looking vaguely like he could read, let alone understand, a piece of Socialist literature. 　

Not that the elimination of the problems of capitalism would have any relevance to these fairy tale characters. The desire for Socialism arises out of real problems facing real workers in real life. Down Coronation Street these problems are never experienced. No unemployment, no homeless families, no battered wives and kids, no old people dying from the cold, no demands for better wages. The scriptwriters have eradicated all the problems of Jim Callaghan's England with a stroke of the pen. The only problems which exist are due to 'human nature'. Coronation Street is a capitalist's utopia: the slum paradise. 　

SELF INDOCTRINATION 　

Does this mean that television soap opera is merely The Epilogue in single syllables? As we settle down for our twice weekly intrusion into non-existent people's intimate affairs are we in fact pressing the button for our own indoctrinaticn? The BBC and IBA undoubtedly see it as part of their function to persuade the working class to accept certain 'virtues', such as hard work, family life, sex roles, obedience etc. 　

By reinforcing popular myths Coronation Street performs an important political service to capitalism That alone does not mean that it, and television drama in general, should be ignored. Coronation Street is entertaining in a perverse sort of way — more people watch it than any other programme according to most week's audience ratings. However, we should remember Marx's dictum that the capitalist system creates its own gravediggers. It has at times used the Church as propaganda, but that has not prevented some sections of the religious establishment from pointing to the inadequacies of the system. It has used schools and Universities to inculcate its values, but within modem education there are people with unorthodox values. It has used television drama as propaganda, but to be effective the viewers have to be politically ignorant. Regular viewing of Coronation Street leads to the passive acceptance of prejudices which prevent working class consciousness. 

Steve Coleman