Victorian values or socialist freedom? (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Impotent and desperate in the face of the bleak, chaotic mess of Britain in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher grasped at the social values of the last century—the “values” of naked capitalism. It is a sick morality of a rotten system, dressed up as a glorious past and served on a plate to the impoverished: yesterday's ideological garbage recycled for modern consumption.

Let us sift the ideological muck-heap in the Thatcher mind and see what kind of values our rulers would like us to live by:

  We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself (sic). We were taught self-reliance. We were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to godliness. You were taught self-respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. (Interview with Peter Allen. LBC, 15 April. 1983)

Thatcher's tutor evidently has much to answer for. In what ways do these values help to perpetuate the capitalist system?

“Work jolly hard"
Plenty of jolly hard work for the propertyless nine-tenths of the population means plenty of jolly big profits for the jolly old parasites who monopolise the means of producing and distributing wealth. The work ethic is inculcated into the majority of people because labour power is the only commodity of any value that they have to exchange. But the rich and powerful minority who control the means of life are not in their positions because they worked hard. The richest one per cent of the British population, who own between them more of the accumulated wealth than the poorest 80 per cent, live in luxury because the propertyless majority "work jolly hard to keep them".

"Prove yourself’
How are children born into poverty, brought up in slums, educated in comprehensive schools and often destined to years on the dole queue, supposed to “prove” themselves? Capitalism is unable to provide the majority with any genuine incentive to rise above the mediocrity of daily existence. Those young workers who are persuaded by the advertised illusions of the system and try “to go for the top" are usually forced in the end to submit to the norms of traditional poverty. Capitalism is packed with junkies, alcoholics, broken gamblers, prisoners and cynics who tried to “prove themselves” and failed. For many unemployed kids, “proving yourself' means beating up blacks in empty streets — or doing it the legal way, and pulling triggers in the service of someone else’s interests.

“Live within your income”
For millions of people it is simply not possible to live within the pittance they receive. Ten thousand pensioners died of hypothermia last December alone: could The First Lady of the Treasury teach those careless spenders how to keep alive within their incomes? Let Thatcher and the capitalists try “living” on the basic supplementary benefit, a disability allowance or £70 a week with three children to feed and clothe. For the majority of British workers, whose annual incomes would not buy a decent new car for a member of the parasite class, existence is some way short of living.

“Cleanliness and godliness”
It’s easy to be clean when there are servants to do it for you. But what hypocrisy it is for a class which pollutes the air we breathe with its industrial waste, because it is presently cheaper to have a dirty urban environment than a clean one, to deliver lectures about cleanliness. What is “clean” about war, which throws grown men into the filth of bloody combat so that the perfumed gentlemen of leisure can expand their economic power? Thatcher may have clean fingernails, but she has blood on her hands.

“Self Respect”
Capitalism teaches its wage slaves to respect others: teachers, experts, leaders, generals. priests, politicians — even invisible gods. The self-respecting slave is a rebel; he or she will be branded by Thatcher and her cronies as subversive, wreckers and revolutionaries. Capitalism demands deference, because only those willing to remain on their knees can be deceived into believing that the ruling class is mighty.

“Give a hand to your neighbour”
Is that why armies and weapons of mass destruction are pointed at our global neighbours? The politics of international militarism has nothing to do with loving thy neighbour and everything to do with the competitive jungle of the profit system where all who are not part of “the group” must be seen as economic rivals.

“Tremendous pride in your country”
All very well for those who have a country; but having means possession, and most workers in Britain own about as much of “our country” as they do of any other: none at all. Why be proud of mansions that you have built, but cannot afford to live in; cars you have made, but cannot afford to drive; newspapers you have printed, but have no control over; food you have manufactured but cannot afford to buy? As Marx and Engels wrote, when accused of desiring to abolish countries and nationality: “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got” (The Communist Manifesto). Workers are taught to have “tremendous pride in your country” because, without a massive campaign of patriotic indoctrination, men and women would recognise their common interests.

The London Standard's front page headline about Thatcher’s LBC interview stated “THE GOOD OLD DAYS". The days in question were those between 1837 and 1902: Victorian Britain. It was an age in which there was a consolidation of power by the ever-confident industrial capitalist class; an age of massive economic development; an age when the British ruling class had an Empire and the City of London was seen, in more than one sense, as the Capital city of the world. Historical distortion has created more than a few myths about those “good old days”. There was little crime, we are told; everyone knew their place and the masters looked after the employees well; public charity provided for people's needs, for the Christian rich could not allow the poor to suffer without aid; morals were good and pure, and thoughts of sex were neatly repressed until god had given the legally sanctified green light. Let Thatcher continue the fairy story:

  Many of the good things, the improvements that were made, were made voluntarily in those times. For example, people built hospitals, there were voluntary hospitals. Many of the Church schools were built during that time. You don't hear so much about those things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.

These “eternal . . . perennial values” are the ones Thatcher holds dear. Let us examine them not as professed ideals, but within the context of their practical, historical implementation and in the light of what we know about history. The "good old days” of Victorian capitalism were days of unrestrained ruling class oppression and widespread working class deprivation. This "golden age" of the capitalists, which was a bleak nightmare for the workers, is recent enough for there to be abundant evidence of what Victorian values meant.

Giving testimony before a Royal Commission on the condition of workers in Manchester in the late 1830s, Dr. Hawkins stated that

  I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature, the leanness and the paleness which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and above all, among the factory classes . . .

Class exploitation was not discriminatory on the basis of sex, as may be seen from the Factory Inspector's Report of 1844:

  Among the female operatives there are some women who, for many weeks in succession, except for a few days, are employed from 6 a.m. till midnight, with less than two hours for meals, so that on five days of the week they have only six hours left out of twenty-four. for going to and from their homes and resting in bed.

Indeed, far from preserving the institutions of the family, K.A.Gerlach has written that working conditions in Lancashire "often caused husbands to take over the duties of the household, and wife and children were the breadwinners at the factory”.

The same process of turning humans into the appendages of machines whose sole function was the production of surplus value, was going on in many parts of Europe in the last century. Villermé, in France, described “the good old days" in terms that reflected the harsh reality rather than idealised memory:

  One should see them coming into the town every morning and leaving it every evening. Among them are large numbers of women, pale, starving, walking barefoot through the mud . . . and young children, in greater numbers than the women, just as dirty, just as haggard, covered in rags, which are thick with the oil splashed over them as they toiled by the looms.

Children of ten and under were sent down the mines to pick and haul coal. It was on the exploitation and dehumanisation of defenceless children that the economic success of "the good old days" was based. William Cobbett, a capitalist reformer, stated poignantly in the House of Commons that

  . . . at one time he had thought that the navy was the great support of England, at another time her maritime commerce, at another her bank. Now it was to be admitted that our great stay and bulwark was to be found in the labour of thirty thousand little girls, or rather, one eighth of that number. Yes, because it was asserted that if those little girls worked two hours a day less our manufacturing superiority would depart from us.

On the sweated labour of helpless infants the British capitalists consolidated their unearned privilege. Many of those who are sitting in comfort today do so only because of the wealth inherited from the legalised exploitation of those children.

The Victorian wage slaves passed what parts of "the good old days” were their own in dwellings generally unfit for human habitation. Lord Shaftesbury described Frying Pan Alley in Holborn, London:

  In the first house that I turned into there was a single room; the window was very small and the light came in through the door. The young woman there said, "Look there at that great hole; the landlord will not mend it. I have every night to sit and watch, or my husband sits up to watch, because that hole us over a common sewer and the rats come up. twenty at a time, and if we did not watch for them they would eat the baby up.”

Irish immigrant workers were usually forced by their poverty to live in even worse conditions than the slums reserved for the native English wage slaves; in his brilliant account of working class life in Victorian Britain, Frederick Engels refers to such housing conditions:

  It often happens that a whole Irish family is crowded into one bed; often a heap of filthy straw or quilts of old sacking cover all in an indiscriminate heap, where all alike are degraded by want, stolidity and wretchedness. Often the inspectors found, in a single house, two families in two rooms. All slept in one, and used the other as a kitchen and dining room in common. Often more than one family lived in a single damp cellar, in whose pestilent atmosphere twelve to sixteen persons were crowded together (The Condition of the Working Class in England).

Like the housing, “the clothing of the working people, in the majority of eases, is in a very bad condition . . . The Irish have introduced . . . the custom, previously unknown in Britain, of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot, and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.” (Engels, pp. 99-100)

Worked like horses, inhabiting slums, clothed in rags, the urban majority in "the good old days" of Thatcherite values could only afford access to food that was cheap, unhealthy and unvaried. Then, as now,

  those who sold and produced cheap food had increasingly taken the opportunity to make larger profits by adding other substances. Milk and beer were watered down, boiled potatoes mixed with flour and baked into bread, chestnut or ash leaves added to tea, sand to sugar and so on. Pure cheap food was a rarity in the leading towns by the 1850s because so much was adulterated in ways like these (D.T.J. Arkell, Britain Transformed).

Many thousands of workers perished, victims of the so-called free market. In the age of Victorian values, what options were open to those who could not earn a wage or could not keep themselves on the wage they earned? For many workers, begging in the streets was the only chance of an income:

  Such a man usually goes about with his family, singing a pleading song in the streets or appealing, in a speech, to the benevolence of the passers-by . . . Or the family takes up its position in a busy street, and without uttering a word, lets the mere sight of its helplessness plead for it (Engels. P-119).

And was it from the fat wallets of the Christian ruling class that the destitute beggars received their pennies? After all, Thatcher did say on LBC that "part of the sense of duty was if you were getting on better, you turned yourself to help others." Alas, the Victorian capitalists did not exhibit the benevolent values attributed to them by their admirer; they employed police to kick the beggars off the streets, just as the Indian capitalists do with their beggars today. Dr. Parkinson, the Canon of Manchester in the 1840s, testified that

  The poor give one another more than the rich give the poor . . . the total sum which the poor yearly bestow upon one another surpasses that which the rich contribute in the same time (Quoted in Engels, p. 154). 

Violent crime was widespread in Victorian cities. Thousands of women and teenage girls were compelled by economic hardship to walk the streets and sell their bodies to those rich enough to buy their sexual services. The pretence of universal moral decency did not extend to the lives of the wage slaves. The only values the capitalists required from the working class were the surplus values which were the hallmarks of legalised robbery. Victorian values meant excluding a majority of the population from any claim to human dignity — an exclusion which allowed the rich to have “good old days” while the poor suffered, largely in pathetic silence.

Victorian values meant that if workers needed medical attention, education, disability or old-age support, or any other basic social services, they had only three ways of obtaining them. The first was by paying — which most workers could not do. Many a Victorian parent had to watch their children die of illnesses that could be cured simply because they were too poor to pay the market price for health care. Secondly, they could depend on “self-help” schemes, which ultimately amounted to a system of welfare where the less poor wage slaves subsidised the poorer ones. In the nineteenth century, trade union Friendly Societies helped to redistribute wealth within the working class. But workers' subsidies could only aid a fraction of the destitute in Victorian Britain. When Margaret Thatcher proposes “self-help” she is saying that workers' destitution should be a problem to be solved voluntarily by workers taking charitable collections. Perhaps she forgets that the class which she represents are the biggest recipients of charity in the history of humanity: the profits of labour don't add up to pennies, but to many billions of pounds.

The third option for the Victorian worker was to appeal to the exploiting class for charity. Some conscience-stricken capitalists did offer a fraction of their money to the poor, either through benevolent trusts or the Church. “Giving to the poor" was not such a generous act; after all, they were only throwing back crumbs from the cake which the workers had made. Providing charitable services to "educate” workers and keep them fit had a very useful economic purpose: by teaching skills to young wage slaves and ensuring that the wealth producing class was in a good state of repair the capitalists were investing in their own increased profits. Literate and numerate wage slaves produced more profits than ignorant ones; the fitter they are, the more you can work them; the better their housing the more rest they will get and the more efficiently they will work the next day; the more consumption goods they can be presented with the more incentive there will be to work hard. Furthermore, charitable crumb-throwing helped to defuse the threat of political discontent. The workers who benefited from the charity of their bosses were taught to be eternally grateful. The exploiters felt that they were living morally; the exploited were taught to admire such morality.

What is striking about Victorian Britain is not how different it was from now, but how similar it is. It is true that some of the worst features of working class poverty then are less widespread in Britain today, although they still prevail throughout much of the world, often in worse forms than those which existed in Victorian Britain. On a world capitalist basis, poverty is as great now as it was in the 1880s, and in many ways it is worse. But even in the more “affluent” areas of world capitalism workers are still deprived, are still often compelled to beg and steal and sell their bodies, are still forced to seek charity. Since the passing of the Victorian period the capitalist class has tended to organise public charity or "welfare" via its executive committee, the state. The social services which are now provided by the state are partly in existence because their absence would lead to working class political discontent but, principally, the function of the “welfare state” is to ensure the smooth flow of capitalist production. The Labour Party and other legislative reform bodies exist to convince the capitalists that it is in their interest to pay more tax into the state in order to redistribute poverty. The only grounds on which the reformists are able to justify increased state welfare expenditure is by equating "humane” policies with profitability. Frequently such an equation cannot be made, and that is why governments — including Labour governments, professedly committed to helping the poor — often cut back on state welfare spending, leading to tragic social consequences which are all too evident at present.

In supporting state-administered capitalism, the Left is not being particularly radical; it is certainly not working for socialism. The statists are simply responding to the old Victorian values of nineteenth century capitalism with new policies for running the same iniquitous system. The welfare state has been, and inevitably will be, totally unable to eradicate the poverty and inequality which is inherent in the profit system.

Neither Victorian values nor state "welfare" can make a system of exploitation run in a way that will be pleasant for the exploited majority. Margaret Thatcher, the mouthpiece of conservatism who cannot get to sleep at night without dreaming of “the good old days" when the old and unemployed were confined to workhouses, employees worked like horses and obeyed like slaves, and the rich need only pay to keep the paupers at the request of their consciences rather than the Inland Revenue, is the dreamer of a class which has lived on beyond the appropriate time for its death. Thatcher's vision is one of naked self-interest for the ruling class. Socialists will not waste our time criticising this vision on moral grounds: we urge the workers of the world to apply the principle of naked self- interest to themselves, as a class. There were no "good old days" for our class; for the wage slaves, the good times are yet to come. Only when the wages system has been abolished, along with the pernicious values on which it rests, will men. women and children be able to value one another as part of a united human family in which equality and freedom are the principles of social existence.

Steve Coleman

Oil: the greasy politics (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oil has been used for a very long time. More than 5000 years ago, Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians took advantage of large seepages at Hit on the Euphrates. In the early centuries AD Arabs and Persians developed an interest in crude petroleum and its distillation into illuminants and it may be that this technique was carried to Western Europe from the 12th century onwards through the Arab influence in Spain. In North America the Indians used oil as a medicine and the early explorers found seepages in what are now the states of New York and Pennsylvania. Up to the start of the 19th century illumination in the United States and other industrially advanced countries was little better than that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The increasing development of capitalist industry brought new needs for additional sources of oil. By the middle of the century kerosene or coal oil. derived by distillation of coal, was in common use and the need for yet cheaper and more convenient sources of lubricants and light grew more pressing. In 1859 in western Pennsylvania the first well specifically for oil was drilled. Before 1900 oil field discoveries in the United States covered 14 states and there were finds also in Europe and the Middle and Far East.

At the outset of the 20th century the use of refined petroleum and lubricants ceased to be of primary importance and the industry became a major supplier of energy. In 1980 oil and natural gas together supplied two-thirds of the world demand, with the use of approximately 80 million barrels a day. This does not mean that oil is a satisfactory fuel from an ecological viewpoint: it is a heavy pollutant and when it is burned many valuable chemicals are wasted. Such bad effects have to be really serious to figure in capitalist calculations, when cheapness, availability to the consumer and profitability to the producing interests are always the main considerations.

Reliable estimates about oil reserves and new resources are difficult to obtain because the relevant information is in the hands of the oil companies themselves. Where these firms are government owned, as is the general rule in so-called communist countries, such estimates can be state secrets. OAPEC have stated [1] that about half the known reserves in the Arab states have now been extracted. However, excluding unavailable figures for China, it was estimated in 1974 [2] that about 850,000 million barrels of oil remain to be found, 40 per cent behind the Iron Curtain. In the Soviet Union, Middle East, Canadian Arctic Islands as well as the unknown Chinese contribution these discoveries can be expected mainly on land; elsewhere the great majority will be offshore. There is still a lot of oil over which to fight.

It is because oil is such a vital source of energy that it poses considerable problems for capitalist administrators. The interests of those who profit from its production are clearly to obtain as high a price as possible, just as those who are users of petroleum products strive to keep their costs as low as they can. In such circumstances the state usually has to intervene to regulate the conflict in the interests of the ruling class as a whole, as happens with other important industries. In general, capitalist governments have found oil interests very hard to handle. The industry is vastly profitable, it very soon took on a multinational character, and its products can now be carried quite easily all over the globe. To try and straightjacket the industry might lead to an interruption of supplies which, even temporarily, could have serious repercussions. Also in many states, particularly in the Middle East, it is the producers who are the dominant, indeed virtually the only, capitalist interest.

This apparent lack of interest has led observers such as Anthony Sampson to state [3] that capitalist governments have evaded the problem of the control of the oil companies. It is true, and not particularly surprising, that at certain times oil lobbies have by corrupt means gained undue influence over capitalist governments. Such was the case in the United States in the 1920s when the Teapot Dome Scandal rocked Washington and probably contributed to President Harding's death in office. However, capitalist politicians all over the world are nowadays at their wits end to find a way to regulate the situation. To take a cricketing analogy, Sampson's insinuation is rather like accusing bowlers of not trying to get Geoffrey Boycott out because statistics show that he is rarely dismissed. Sampson deserves credit for the diligence of his research, but unfortunately suffers from the reformist delusion that capitalism can be made to work in the interests of the whole population. He does however state that “any agreement over oil implies a first step towards some form of world government". We shall return to this later.

The first big manifestation of oil politics occurred in the United States in the closing years of the last century. Many of its features are still to be seen today world wide. John D. Rockefeller, using mainly borrowed money, established himself in the refinery business and by 1870 had brought Standard Oil into being. He then combined with some of his competitors to fund a Central Association with himself as president. Such a combination of capitalist concerns to pursue a joint interest is known as a cartel. This provoked the producing interests to try to form a cartel of their own. Rockefeller's cartel was boycotted, and an agreement was reached to stop new drilling and sell as a fixed price. However the temptation to undercut each other proved too much, the bottom fell out of the market and Rockefeller had won. He was contemptuous of the efforts of the producers, explaining [4]: "The dear people, if they had produced less oil, they would have got their full price”. This success led to a number of refiners selling out to Rockefeller, giving his trust a monopoly. His success and that of other trust barons, however, alarmed other capitalist interests and eventually led Theodore Roosevelt's administration to use anti-trust legislation against him. Standard took the fight to the Supreme Court who ruled in May 1911 that it must divest itself of all its subsidiaries.

This exposed the difficulties cartels have in sticking together in face of competition between individual members. If these capitalist interests cannot maintain such limited agreements, how can we expect joint action on a global scale to take steps towards world government? Yet Sampson sees this as a necessary condition to control the oil industry. The Rockefeller example shows the cartels and trusts in turn provoking counter attacks by the state in the interests of the majority of the ruling class, although this took longer to come about than would probably be the case today. The crushing defeat suffered by the producers at Rockefeller's hands is less typical.

The United States were fortunate at that time in having their own native oil supply. Underwater exploration had yet to materialise. Britain and other West European countries had no supply of oil and, as World War I approached, were only too well aware of their vulnerability. Where, for example, was the Royal Navy to obtain oil? Attention was directed towards the underdeveloped parts of the world where the vital fluid was to be found. Burmah Oil, formed to exploit discoveries in Burma, produced an offshoot, Anglo-Persian, based on newly acquired concessions in Iran (then called Persia). Only three months before war broke out the British government, prompted by Winston Churchill, acquired a 51 per cent stake in this company, later renamed British Petroleum (BP). Eventually the American firms, unable to meet increasing demand from home supplies, were also forced to look overseas. Saudi Arabia was to become an American sphere of influence with an organisation called Aramco, jointly owned by four oil companies, to run the concessions. These new relationships, so similar to those between imperialist nations and their colonies, contained the seeds of future trouble. As native ruling classes developed in these territories, leading eventually to the formation of their own governments, so complaints began about the profits which the oil companies were making at "their expense”. These nationalists looked for ways to obtain a larger slice of the cake. Attempts by Mexico in 1938 and by Iran under Dr. Mossadeq in 1951 to nationalise “their” oil industries were eventually defeated because competing customers were able to combine and enforce boycotts. However, nationalist feeling in the oil producing countries continued to gather momentum and the stage was set for the formation in 1960 of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

OPEC would probably have formed itself in any case, but the act was triggered by price cutting by Exxon (ESSO), one of the giant companies popularly known as the “seven sisters". They reduced their posted price by 10 cents a barrel in August 1960. The other six “sisters", although none too happy, eventually felt compelled to follow suit. There was an oil glut at the time and, as happens periodically, Russia was threatening to flood the market at discount prices. This cut helped to unite the producing nations. One month later, on September 9, representatives of five of them, who were at that time collectively responsible for 80 per cent of the world’s oil exports, met in Baghdad and OPEC was formed. Eventually membership grew' to 13 — Algeria, Ecuador. Gabon, Indonesia. Iran, Iraq. Kuwait. Libya. Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. From the start OPEC made it clear that they were, in the words of one delegate, "a cartel to confront a cartel”. [3] Their main object was to raise their revenues. The reaction of the oil companies was to encourage production outside OPEC, a situation which accelerated the coming of North Sea Oil.

OPEC's fortunes have fluctuated with the current state of the oil market, contrary to ideas that the industry is a "special case" somehow exempt from the normal operation of the forces of supply and demand. The oil glut persisted during the 1960s and OPEC was relatively ineffective. After an attempt by the Arab nations to impose an embargo following the Arab-Israel six-day war in 1967 had failed because the non-Arabs did not give their support, the Organisation of Arabian Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) was formed by the Arab states who nevertheless remained within OPEC. By the 1970s however things had changed. Demand for oil was running considerably ahead of previous forecasts, and the glut was subsiding. The Libyan crisis of 1970 was the first sign of this. Following the deposition of King Idris, Colonel Gadaffi's regime threatened 21 companies which held Libyan concessions that unless they raised the price paid to Libya he would sell oil to Moscow. There were now so many competitors in the field that the oilmen could no longer enforce the type of boycott which had toppled Mossadeq in 1951, and eventually they had to agree to a price increase of 76 cents a barrel.

In this situation many OPEC members negotiated “participation" agreements allowing them part ownership of the companies' concessions. By September 1973 the price of oil on the spot market rose above the posted price for the first time since the formation of OPEC. The following month the Yom Kippur war broke out between Israel and the Arab nations. In Kuwait later that month OPEC decided to raise prices by 70 per cent and simultaneously OAPEC announced an oil embargo involving a 5 per cent cut in production each month until Israel withdrew from the territories it had occupied in June 1967. By the time the dust had settled the price had quadrupled in just over two months. The general political uncertainty in the Middle East helped to keep prices up and during 1979-1980 the Khomeini take-over in Iran and the Iran-Iraq war caused some panic among the oil companies; prices nearly trebled during this period. In an attempt to form an effective counter cartel to confront OPEC, members of 21 oil importing nations agreed to form the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The current slump has meant that such price rises could not he maintained. Demand for oil inevitably fell off. Sales of smaller cars picked up appreciably in the United States. The development of sources outside OPEC meant that the latter’s share of the market was declining. OPEC’s combined oil revenues [5], which were $275 billion in 1980, had declined to an estimated $205 billion in 1982. In April 1980 Japanese oil industry executives refused to pay the National Iranian Oil Company $35 a barrel. Iran was now only exporting 1.5 million barrels a day as opposed to 4 million under the Shah. Differences which had always existed within OPEC came to the fore. The main one was between those nations led by Iran, which have large populations and need money quickly, and smaller nations who can take a more relaxed, long term view. The latter are led by Saudi Arabia, with estimated reserves twice those of Iran. The Saudi oil minister and spokesman — Sheik Yamani, suave and Harvard educated — became a world figure in the 1970s and for many typifies OPEC.

The Saudi group need to retain trade into the next century. They were moderates on price in 1979-80 for fear that by going too high they might stimulate alternative energy projects which could drastically reduce their business. Now, while sharing the OPEC desire to avoid a price slump, they are restless about the restrictions on production required to underpin the price. In contrast the Iran-led group have claimed that the high price is good medicine for the importers because it forces them to practice conservation and look for other sources of energy [6]. Equally hypocritical is the claim by OAPEC [7] to be acting in the interests of non-oil Third World countries. The lie to this is given by figures showing [5] that OPEC’s current account surplus rose to around $110 billion in 1980. A fraction of this surplus was invested in less developed countries, but a large slice was added to bank deposits. The Saudi led group at OAPEC has always found difficulty in finding profitable investment channels for its massive oil income. Despite the trappings of wealth Saudi Arabia remains a backward area which still punishes petty "theft" by cutting off a hand, in a ceremony largely unchanged since the days of Mahomet.

The term “price war" has been used almost exclusively for periods of price cutting such as the present. The current round started in February, when posted prices in the United States were marked down by about $2.50 a barrel, and non-OPEC Russia and Egypt reduced export prices. The British National Oil Corporation, a government owned body set up to deal with British North Sea Oil. then cut its price by $3 to $30.50 a barrel. An OPEC meeting in January having failed to agree. Nigeria unilaterally reduced its price by $5.50 to $30 a barrel. This was the background to the London meeting of OPEC in March which eventually produced a fragile looking deal under which prices were cut by $5 a barrel and a production ceiling of 17.5 million barrels a day was set. The immediate outlook for OPEC is far from rosy. Its fortunes will clearly continue to follow market fluctuations and serious splits, perhaps withdrawals, are likely.

Many workers foolishly believed that the discoveries in the North Sea heralded a cheap oil bonanza for everyone in Britain. In fact there was no chance of the working class gaining any benefit. Even if prices did go down sharply, this would have effectively reduced the price of labour power and thus led to a corresponding reduction in wages. Only the owning capitalist class can benefit from North Sea Oil, and their reaction has been mixed. British industry’s need for cheap energy remains but the ruling class are now also in the oil exporting business. Rising oil prices were held responsible for an upward surge by sterling on the exchange markets, hitting other British exporters. This prompted the famous comment by British Leyland's Michael Edwardes that if North Sea oil caused such problems it might be better to "leave the bloody stuff where it is". On the other hand there are obvious benefits for the capitalist class in being self supporting in oil, even if only temporarily. At the moment 26 fields are operational in the North Sea [8]. Another 30 are discovered but future developments are uncertain owing to high operational costs and low recoverable resources. The general fall in oil prices is a further disincentive. It is expected that North Sea oil production will tailback after 1986.

Gross exchequer revenue from North Sea oil is about $7 billion. 6.4 per cent of total central government taxes. Capital intensive projects such as oil exploration and the development of alternative energy sources are based on certain assumptions about future prices and a slump can destroy their commercial viability. However, BNOC is under some pressure from customers who have not yet finally accepted their new price, hoping for further reduction. There are renewed reports [9-10] of Russian oil being dumped on the market. It looks as though the downward pressure will continue for a while yet, with an uncertain outlook for British North Sea oil.

E. C. Edge

REFERENCES
[1] Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) Bulletin, Vol. 8, No. 7. July 1982.
[2] Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974 Edition.
[3] Anthony Sampson: The Seven Sisters, Hodder and Stoughton 1974.
[4] Ida M Tarbell The History of the Standard Oil Company. New York, 1904. Vol.1.
[5] Unsigned article "The Implications of Cheaper Oil". Petroleum Economist, March 1983.
[6] Remarks by the Shah of Iran in 1973, quoted in Ref. 3. p259.
[7] Editorial in Ref. 1 entitled "Aid to the Developing World in Surplus Oil Market".
[8] Article by Alexander G. Kemp and David Rose (University of Aberdeen) in Petroleum Economist, March 1983.
[9] Rod Chapman (Energy correspondent), The Guardian. 9 March 1983.
[10] Roland Gribben (Business correspondent), The Daily Telegraph. 23 March 1983.

Whitewash at the Maltings (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sizewell Public Inquiry which opened at Snape, Suffolk, on 11 January, and is expected to last well into the Autumn, is considering the proposed siting of the first Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) nuclear power station in Britain. The energy problem needs to be seen in the context of the workings of the capitalist system as a whole. Under capitalism, it makes no difference whether power stations are privately owned or state run, as is the case with most power stations around the world. The interests of most capitalists obviously lie in obtaining electricity as cheaply as possible. Most Industry today is electric-powered and the proposed PWR at Sizewell Site B will, of course, supply electricity. Obviously the minority of capitalists with a stake in the actual production of electricity, such as the contractors who supply materials and labour towards the building of power stations, don't see things like that; they naturally want as high a price as possible for their “services”. It is the job of governments, in this case through the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), to see that the best deal is obtained for the ruling class as a whole. This is by no means as easy as it sounds, particularly in these days of large multinational companies and the ever increasing diversity of their interests.

At the moment, leaving aside hydro-electricity which is of somewhat limited value outside certain geographically favoured areas, there are three main methods of generating electricity. All are based on raising steam to drive turbines: burning coal, burning oil (or natural gas) and nuclear fission, the splitting of heavy elements. For the workers in these industries, all three mean unpleasant and dangerous working conditions with a high risk of premature death. All three are unsatisfactory from the ecological point of view. Sulphur dioxide is produced when oil and coal are burned, and a more rational use for these fuels would be as raw materials for plastics. However, the dangers to health and the environment from continued use of nuclear fission are all pervading. Despite this, ecological considerations have so far entered only marginally into the decisions and only a really serious environmental disaster would alter this.

Many interesting alternative power sources are available which are either ecologically benign or present in abundance, or both. These will be mentioned on numerous occasions during the Sizewell Inquiry but none will be sufficiently developed in time for British capitalism to consider them as options. And so the prime considerations remain cheapness, competition and profit. The Inquiry thus appears to have only three options to consider, as it is reasonable to assume that some kind of power station will be built on the Sizewell site. These are: a power station using coal or oil; a different type of nuclear installation; or building a PWR as at present proposed.

It does appear from the available evidence that the government has, through the CEGB, already made up its mind that it wants the PWR, so that the Inquiry appears to have only a rubber-stamping role. The New Statesman reports (7 January 1983) that the pressure vessel has already been ordered from the French company Creusot Loire, and cancellation now would invoke penalty clauses. As early as April 1980 the CEGB issued a letter of intent to the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC) which, in effect, placed a manufacturing order for the nuclear core. Site clearance for the PWR commenced last summer, while Sir Frank Layfield, chairman of the Sizewell Inquiry, was holding preliminary hearings a few miles away. Sir Frank said he had no power to stop it! Further evidence in the same issue of the New Statesman confirms that the government wants a biased, white-washing “investigation” in the hope that its supporters will be appeased and the various objecting groups become dispirited. The journal quotes from leaked minutes of the critical 1979 Cabinet meeting at which the decision to hold an inquiry was taken. Apparently the government saw “a danger that a broad-ranging inquiry would arouse prolonged technical debate between different representatives of scientific opinion”. After reading this prize piece of cynicism we are left wondering why they bothered to hold an inquiry at all, thereby giving at least some opportunity for the expression of informed opposing opinions. After all, without any debate the go ahead has been given for two new advanced gas cooled reactors (AGR) at Heysham in Lancashire and Torness in Scotland. The Windscale inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Parker in 1977 neither increased confidence in judicial impartiality in these matters, nor led to any lowering of the protesting voices. A similar predetermined effort on Sizewell seems likely only to intensify the effect.

The deliberate bias built into this Inquiry shows itself in a very large imbalance of resources between the applicants and the objectors. The CEGB has produced a massive amount of documentation which will require about eight weeks to read into the records. At the time of writing the proceedings have gone “underground" while this task is performed. The boredom induced by this monumental effort of social irrelevance will assist in putting the objectors off their stroke. “Without sufficient funds to employ lawyers and specialist scientists, the objectors will find it hard to sustain an effective presence”, comments the New Statesman (ibid). Since then the chairman has ruled that the applicants can both initiate and wind up discussions on a particular issue, but that the objectors can only do one or the other.

We can now briefly examine the credentials of the two sides. For the applicants, the CEGB lead the way. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) is responsible for the supply and removal of enriched uranium fuel rods. The Nuclear Installation Inspectorate (NII) will issue a site and operating licence. The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) will give “evidence'’ on the hazards of accidental radioactive release (no facts please, must be their motto.). It is planned that the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC) will construct the reactor. The Department of Energy will be supporting the CEGB, even though Sir Frank Layficld will be presenting his final report to the Energy Secretary, Nigel Lawson. Other government departments will be chipping in with supporting views. Also listed among the applicants but not actually present, are two USA nuclear corporations, Westinghouse and Bechtel, who have designed respectively the steam raising core and the associated power plant of the PWR. It will be noted that these applicants, despite their number, are a pretty united bunch. All will be playing their part in trying to convince the British ruling class that they are doing their job.

How convincing is the applicants' case? The CEGB’s main claim throughout has been that nuclear power would be cheaper. In pursuance of this aim the AGR, which is considered to be somewhat “safer" has been abandoned in favour of the allegedly cheaper PWR. However on 14 February last the Electricity Consumers Council, which might have been expected to give its support, published a critical report which, according to The Guardian of that date, said that the economic benefit case had not yet been fully made and suggested a closer look at other methods. Then, on 1 March, the CEGB itself published a pamphlet, reported in The Guardian the same day, admitting that the PWR is not, after all, the cheapest available prospect but still arguing that it represents the best overall prospect. While a blow, this could still be considered acceptable as nuclear power is strategically more secure than oil. However, the cornerstone of the nuclear power strategy has been the plan to move eventually to a series of “fast breeder" reactors (FBR) but this has now been shelved, apparently indefinitely. The USA had earlier held back from further FBR development. The FBR throws off as a radioactive waste product Plutonium 239, one of the deadliest substances known, with a half life of 22,400 years. Undoubtedly the American decision to halt has been taken because the environmental hazards of the FBR are unacceptable. even by capitalist criteria. The Sizewell applicants clearly have their work cut out to justify themselves and would appear to need all the coddling that the Inquiry seems certain to provide for them.

In contrast to the applicants, the objectors are a motley lot, presenting a variety of viewpoints, which by no means complement each other. This disunity will make it easier for the court to brush the opposition aside. One common factor will be that all will be propounding alternative capitalist strategies. Working class interests are not considered in such arguments. Bodies like the Suffolk Preservation Society would probably be satisfied by a decision to site the PWR elsewhere. Arguments that nuclear fission is environmentally unacceptable even to capitalism highlight the criminal social irresponsibility of the capitalist class in suppressing this evidence over a period of nearly 40 years. The Greater London Council will present interesting evidence on the risk to Londoners from the transport of nuclear waste through the metropolis, while pressing the case for falsely labelled ‘employment creating alternatives' such as conservation or combined heat and power stations. The Friends of the Earth, the National Union of Mineworkers and the Anti-Nuclear Campaign will argue against the PWR, trying to present evidence that the government does not wish to have a fair hearing.

A body calling itself Ecoropa recently published a leaflet entitled Nuclear Power, The Facts They Don't Want You to Know. This leaflet has sufficiently worried the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) for them to publish a counterblast pamphlet entitled Nuclear Power, the Real Facts. In a preamble to their leaflet Ecoropa make clear their concern for capitalism’s welfare, so they cannot be accused of anti-capitalist bias in presenting their arguments. This they do in question and answer form. The UKAEA reply repeats these questions and answers and then gives a reply of their own. Ecoropa embarrass the nuclear lobby by drawing attention to the way nuclear power has failed to live up to its early promise and recall the days when we were told that electricity from this source would be “too cheap to meter”.

The track history of the PWR is not a good one. We need only recall the emergency of Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania where, on 28 March 1979, the cooling system of the No.2 reactor malfunctioned, and a catastrophic melt-down of the reactor core was only narrowly avoided. A partial evacuation of the area's pregnant women and pre-school children, lasting eight days, was ordered by the State Governor. Since then the same type of valve failed in another PWR at Crystal River. Florida. The British nuclear industry categorically refuses to publish its safety statistics. Ecoropa point out that since 1977 only one nuclear reactor has been ordered in the United States. In their reply UKAEA acknowledge this but say that “this is due to economic conditions" in the hope of blaming the slump for this inconvenient fact. Yet the same economic necessity is being advanced in this and other countries as a reason for pressing ahead with the self-same design. The real reason for the United States slow-down is a re-think by the ruling class on their nuclear strategy in the light of their disappointing experience to date. This leaves Westinghouse and Betchel with the problem of reducing their losses by selling their wares elsewhere: hence their involvement with British and other European authorities. Suppression of important facts has to be a big feature of such a sales drive.

Ecoropa has also asked: “Has an evacuation due to accidentally released radiation ever happened”. The answer given is “Yes, apart from Three Mile Island. In 1958 an accident at a nuclear waste dump devastated a huge area of the Urals in Russia: the names of 30 communities have been removed from the maps. In spite of conclusive evidence from US satellites, the nuclear industry here and abroad managed to keep the news concealed for 21 years!” This is confirmed in the Britannica Book of the Year 1980: "The US CIA released previously secret documents in 1977 which confirmed that a massive nuclear explosion did take place at that time near the town of Kyshtym. . ." (p.366). If the answer were not so screamingly obvious, we could have asked why the CIA waited so long before releasing such good anti-Russian propaganda. The UKAEA attempted reply begins with “The news was not concealed in this country: an accident involving radioactivity in the Urals was reported in the London Evening News, 18 March 1959”.

The Sizewell Inquiry will in due course complete the job for which it was set up and rubber-stamp the Thatcher government’s plan. Yet doubts over the future of nuclear fission even in the capitalist environment persist, particularly in view of the virtual halt to development in the United States. The British authorities have, in effect, pleaded guilty to knowing the ecological facts and deliberately acting against them. But lies, distortion, bias, half-truths, innuendoes, white-washing, have long been part of the capitalist stock-in-trade. The facts are against us — suppress the facts has to be their cry. Total ecological benignity is of course an impossible dream, but in socialism full discussion on all aspects will democratically take place before decisions on such matters as fuel and power, which have such all pervading implications, are taken. With the competitive drive for profits removed, there will no longer be any incentive to produce untried products, such as PWRs, whose long-term or even short-term effects are lethal.

E. C. Edge

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

How do the views of both CND and the government relate to the current state of military technology and its impact on arms control? Are their propositions — respectively preventing the deployment of Cruise and Trident and multilateral and verifiable disarmament — tenable within capitalism in general and contemporary military technology and doctrine in particular?

The main focus of present CND policy is to prevent the deployment of the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) and the replacement of the Polaris A-3 missile with the Trident D-5 missile — a qualitiative improvement, they argue, which brings the doctrinal concept of nuclear war-fighting closer. Moreover, Britain can only avoid being a major target in the event of war by cancelling Trident and Cruise as a step towards unilateral nuclear disarmament. While it is correct to say that the Trident D-5 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) is a qualitative improvement on Polaris (it has a longer range, 11,000 km compared to 4600 km; 14 independently targetable warheads with a yield of 150 kt each compared to 3 re-entry vehicles each with a yield of 200 kt; improved accuracy and terminal guidance) its cancellation will not make Britain any less of a target in the event of war.

Targeting is the key to military doctrine. The CND argument loses sight of this, focusing on particular weapon types, such as Cruise and Trident, without attempting to relate them to overall force structures and strategic doctrine or to the political and economic conflict from which they originate. In terms of military doctrine CND miss the main point — the vital importance of command, control, communications and intelligence (C3') to the capacity to wage and win a war. Without C3’ Cruise and Trident are useless. The location and targeting of C3' installations determines priority in target selection. In this respect Britain is high on the list, irrespective of existing military-targets, because of its strategic importance in relation to C3'.

C3’ includes all modern communications systems: radio, telephone, air traffic control, early warning systems, satellite tracking stations and airports. In war installations such as those at Cheltenham, Rugby, Preston and Fylingdales would be priority targets. These facilities are elemental to the use of weapon systems; for example, C3' is necessary for the rapid transmission of targeting information and directions to offensive forces. The vulnerability of C3’ is not restricted to a direct hit by a nuclear device. The air detonation (the higher the better) of a thermo-nuclear bomb several kilometres from a C3’ target is just as effective. This is because such an explosion produces an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which creates a voltage surge in electrical circuits strong enough to be permanently- damaging; moreover, EMP can obliterate information stored in computer software. Other affects include “TREE" — transient radiation effects on electronics. The combined effect is the disruption and dislocation of C3', a communications blackout which seriously inhibits the capacity to wage war. An explosion at an altitude of 100 km would be more than sufficient to affect all of the British Isles.

Soviet military commanders could not allow C3' facilities in Britain to remain intact even though Britain possessed no nuclear weapons. (John Erickson, The War About Peace, Central TV, 21 April 1983 and a Radio Scotland Broadcast 2 April 1983). They would have to be "denied" to the Americans. So Britain is a major target, and from a military point of view, when C3' is so vital this is an eminently sensible policy. In this respect unilateralism is irrelevant. In fact, for Britain to avoid being targeted all telecommunication systems and airports would have to be dismantled, in effect reducing Britain to the level of a medieval agrarian society, and would then need to be towed to somewhere like the South Atlantic.

Target identification and location plays a major role in modern military strategy. Here the technical improvements to weapons, increased accuracy and yield to weight ratios for example, militate against a doctrine of "minimum deterrence" in which about 200 to 400 warheads would be enough to destroy either superpower. The identification of potential targets is no problem; there are 40,000 in the Soviet Union alone, and when one considers that there are only about 200 Soviet cities with populations in excess of 100,000 and relatively few specifically military targets, then it is clear that there are numerous non-military targets. C3' has already been mentioned, but other targets include petroleum refineries, power stations, railway yards, docks and shipyards. This form of targeting is known as "countervalue" and Britain has no shortage of such targets either; for example Grangemouth, Drax. Millerhill and Southampton.

The targeting of military sites, missile silos and troop concentrations is known as "counterforce” and despite the CND argument that preparation for fighting a nuclear war is something new, counterforce has been around since the late 1950s and early 1960s. The US Airforce was committed to counterforce by the early 1960s; this provided a rationale for the development of the Multiple Independently-Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) which would make more targets available per missile.

In 1964 . . . the Mark 12 Task Group realised that the MIRV system it was developing could not be justified by any existing mission requirement. Its members made a conscious effort to find a strategic rationale. Counterforce targeting and growth of Soviet missile forces promised the solution. MIRV could be justified by the need for greater target coverage.

(Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision Making, Ted Greenwood, Ballinger. Cambridge. Mass.. 1975. p.53).

So what appears to be happening is that technology is running out of control in relation to weapon systems, doctrine and C3’. In short it is the technical improvements to weapons that shapes doctrine and not the other way around. Just how the banning of Cruise and Trident is supposed to reverse this process is not clear.

As civil and military technology develop the distinction between nuclear and conventional weaponry becomes blurred. In effect the major difference between different types of weaponry is time — conventional, chemical and biological weapons will take a rather longer time to destroy the world. The notion that war can be sanitised by the removal or barring of specific weapon systems is ludicrous; for example, there is a fuel air explosive (Arms Control and Technological Innovation, eds. D. Carlton & C. Schaerf. Croom Helm, London, 1977, p.65) which can create the same overpressures as a small yield nuclear weapon; secondly, the new Soviet 5.45 x 39mm bullet contains a mild steel core surrounded by lead which forms a plug toward the tip of the bullet but fails to fill the tip. The centre of gravity is far to the rear ensuring that it will flip over when hitting the human body. It will thus very effectively deposit its energy in the body, causing an “explosive type wound". (World Armaments and Disarmament 1982, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Taylor & Francis, London, p.451). Efforts to contain these technological developments have not been conspicuous by their success. This brings us neatly to the whole question of arms control in relation to technological development.

The British government insists that multilateral arms control is the best road to disarmament; however, it is clear that disarmament has never been a serious possibility. The Russians claim that they have tabled 150 separate disarmament proposals since the 1950s, all of which were rejected. The West could no doubt make the same claim. Such proposals were, and still are, for propaganda purposes and chiefly for internal consumption; arms control, on the other hand, seeks to “stabilise" the arms race; it can never provide “security". The object is to institutionalise the arms race by avoiding or limiting major quantitative improvements to existing forces. The superpowers agree to put certain areas out of bounds to save the expense of developing or deploying new weapon systems; for instance, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty, the Outer Space Treaty and the Seabed Treaty. In contrast, SALT actually fuelled the arms race since it placed no restrictions on qualitative improvements which in any case are very difficult to monitor, let alone enforce. SALT only limited launchers — holes in the ground or in submarines — not warheads or accuracy. The MIRV was left unchecked permitting a legitimate increase in the number of warheads. The US had 6784 in 1973, but 9000 in 1981. Since a Mirved missile is externally indistinguishable from a non-mirved one it is impossible for satellites to tell the difference. In this respect arms control achieved its principal aim which was to put the arms race on a more predictable course and avoid de-stabilising events. In any event technological improvements in weapons makes existing arms control procedures increasingly redundant.

As one American general said you cannot compare “apples and pears”; this refers to not only the asymmetries in superpower force structures, but also to their strategic doctrines. The Russians prefer large land based missiles, reflecting technological inferiority, 72 per cent of Russian warheads are land based. The Americans prefer to put their deterrent to sea, 50 per cent of warheads are on SLBMs. This presents accounting problems. Considerable time was spent in SALT II disputing the status of the Soviet Tu-22m, Backfire bomber. The Americans insisted that it was a strategic delivery system (intercontinental) whereas the Russians argued that it was for the Eurasian theatre only.

In the European theatre the asymmetries and technical complexities are even more acute making arms control more difficult, if not impossible, to come by. For instance, in the Intermediate Nuclear Force talks both sides cannot agree on what to count or include. The question of nuclear capable aircraft (those able to drop nuclear bombs) is a case in point; for example, should the Russian Mig 23/27 Flogger be classed as a “Primary long-range theatre aircraft" or a “marginal long-range nuclear aircraft"?

The inclusion of British and French forces is another area of contention. Both insist that their forces should be excluded; the Americans agree, but the Russians argue that anything that can hit Soviet territory, irrespective of origin, must be counted. All this despite the fact that a rationale for Britain’s “independent deterrent" is that it allows access to the “top table". Indeed the Nassau Agreement of 1962. when Britain bought Polaris from America, specifically allocated Polaris to NATO for targeting purposes, in other words a theatre role as opposed to a strategic one.

Conventional weapons control in Europe is equally confused and unsuccessful. The Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks have been going on since 1973 and have achieved little. NATO considered the number of Warsaw Pact divisions and tanks a problem, but then discovered that it could not even count its own. Arms control is more than a numbers game. The case of the British government, that deterrence has kept the peace since 1945, is quite irrelevant to the state of military technology. In fact no one really knows what deters in deterrence in the first place, and when one considers the technical barriers to arms control, the government’s position is untenable.

Nor has Britain been active in the field of arms control. Lawrence Freedman in Britain and Nuclear Weapons notes that Britain has judiciously avoided arms control since it would involve the complete dismantlement of Britain's nuclear force. Despite the fact that Britain signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 in which Article VI puts the onus on the signatories "to negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race", Britain avoided the SALT talks, fearing that the US would bargain away the Polaris force or be restrained from transferring weapon systems in the future. Furthermore Britain has no interest in a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and as Thatcher has stated, "The British deterrent has no place at the INF negotiations" (Hansard, 18 January 1983. col. 109 written answers). Therefore, in addition to the technical obstacles to arms control, Britain has little enthusiasm for it, as is made clear by the decision to buy the Trident D-5. Just how arms control is supposed to lead to disarmament is never made clear.

Many in the arms control fraternity fear that technology is out of control making arms control an impossibility. The focus of concern is that it will be impossible to reassert human control; likewise with the talc of the Sorcerer’s apprentice who, having summoned up magical powers, lost control and was unable to regain it by himself since he did not understand the power he had brought into existence. The reassertion of social control over military technology is impossible even within the confines of capitalism; arms control, whether unilateral or multilateral, is an irrelevancy. Supporters of CND or the government would do well to consider such a proposition.

John Walker

Election Notebook (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

No vote

Leo Morris will not be voting in the election because he is in gaol and by the time he comes out there will be a new government running British capitalism and wondering what on earth they will do with all those promises they made about peace and prosperity for all if they won.

It may be of little consolation to Leo Morris but his incarceration illustrates a fact of capitalist life and those workers who are prepared to weigh up the true power of their vote at the election might ponder it, and what it represents.

Leo Morris was sent to prison for two months — the maximum at the court's power — for being drunk and falling asleep when he was in charge of a railway signal box. As a result there were long delays to trains on the main line from Paddington to Cornwall; the magistrate told the hapless signalman (or rather ex-signalman, now) that "It is very fortunate for you and all concerned that there was no accident".

Indeed. But at least this shows that Leo Morris had a job which is useful and important to the safety of human beings. There are many other occupations of which this can’t be said, where it doesn’t matter if you are drunk every day, three times a day. Mark Thatcher, for example, can be drunk or sober without affecting the welfare and safety of other people. Observers in the public gallery of the Stock Exchange during the period of labour after lunch in the City will see several people whose sobriety or inebriation is of absolutely no consequence. No member of the capitalist class has ever been prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a dividend cheque.

It is the working class, who rely on selling their labour power for their living, who do all the useful work in capitalism. Leo Morris had been on the railways for 35 years and he was doing an especially important job. The punishment he got for failing to do this job to the highest standards shows how vital it is.

So the issue is: there are two classes in society, one productive and useful and the other non-productive and redundant. The useful one is the majority and they run society now, but in the interests of the other class. It is time for the majority to take over society and to begin to run it in their own interests.

That is the real issue in this election. Whenever the working class go to the polls they have the opportunity to begin the revolution; human society is up for grabs and the evidence is there, before the voters’ eyes and in their ears, of the vital need to take it.

Crusader

He was not the only one to do it but Tony Benn was characteristically quick off the mark in greeting the election as “. . . the most critical in this century". The other politicians had different time scales — for them the election was the most critical of the decade, a lifetime, in the history of the human race. It is part of their unsavoury job, to tell us that it is of crucial importance whether the Labour Party or the Conservatives rule in Westminster.

Benn was prepared to go further than that. In fact, of course, going too far is what he is famous for: "Labour’s policies had to be taken to the people with the passion of a moral crusade". (Guardian 11 May 1983.)

No details were offered about the scope of this morality — about Labour’s plans to again hold back wage rises by negotiating an overall deal with the unions, about their clear intention (whatever happens to their professed commitment to ban British nuclear weapons) to remain within the nuclear-armed NATO power bloc.

The morality of these policies fits in exactly with that of capitalist society, with protecting the interests of a minority class of parasites. They are based on a confidence that capitalism will continue, with its wars, poverty, class conflict, famine, disease . . .

An absent-minded politician might one day describe these policies for what they are — a cobbling up of the remnants of previous failures. But leaders like Benn are always alert, quick to stitch up the remnants into an historically vital crusade for an eternal morality.

Experience makes it obvious that this is nonsense. It matters not one whit to the working class — who make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s people — whether one capitalist party or another is in power, trying to control the system’s uncontrollable anarchy.

Of course it might make a difference to Benn, whose ambitions are very different from the abolition of capitalism. The summit of his achievements would be to wave to the crowds from the steps of Number Ten. as British capitalism’s Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

Taking the poison again (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elections always nourish hopes. I had high hopes for the Labour Party in the 1964 election and was sure they would be fulfilled when Labour were returned to office for the first time in thirteen years. It would all begin. Things would start to go well because at last we had a government that cared about people, understood their problems and wanted to solve them. More than anything we had in Harold Wilson a leader with the flair and confidence to control events and shape the future in the general interest.

Wilson reigned for six years. During that time the cost of living went up by thirty per cent, unemployment doubled to 700,000, National Health charges were drastically increased, free milk for schoolchildren was abolished, racist legislation was passed and the government supported horrific wars in Vietnam and Nigeria. I wondered at the time why all this was happening because none of it had been in The New Britain, Labour's 1964 election manifesto. I was surprised at Harold Wilson too because all this meant that the reputation he had made for himself in opposition as some kind of political magician was now lost.

But this didn't stop me supporting Labour. Old ties are hard to break and, anyway, I didn’t see any alternative. I was puzzled however as to why, if Labour really cared, it hadn't tried harder to keep its promises. Perhaps it really hadn't, as it claimed, had enough time to clear up the mess the Tories had left behind and would do better next time.

But there wasn’t to be a next time, or not right away, because in 1970 the Tories were voted back in. Although I was disappointed, by this time I’d come into contact with some people calling themselves socialists who were actually telling you not to vote Labour in elections and who, I soon found out, had said the same thing at every election the Labour Party had ever contested. All the people I’d previously known as socialists, no matter how opposed to or sceptical of the Labour Party they were most of the time, considered it an article of faith to vote Labour in elections if only to “keep the Tories out”. But these “new”’ socialists said that there was no more point voting Labour than voting Tory and that a Labour government could only deceive and disappoint the workers who elected it. And when I started to look into the Labour Party’s record in office, 1 realised that this argument had history on its side. Labour governments in 1923-24, 1929-31 and 1945-51 had presided over rising levels of unemployment, falling living standards, strike breaking, militarism and scores of broken promises. What I'd just experienced was only the latest in a succession of similar failures that went back over forty years.

Does it always have to be like this? The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always said it does because the Labour Party in office has the same function as the Tory Party — to administer the capitalist system, and that system cannot be administered in the interests of the majority, those who have to work for a living. And if you look at this proposition, certain things become clear. “Capitalism" no longer appears just an empty word. It actually describes the world we live in, a world which depends on capital being invested by that small minority who own it with a view to making profit. If capital can’t be invested at a profit, it isn’t invested at all. This causes production to cease, regardless of the need people may have for the fruits of that production and it also causes workers to be unemployed. Governments of whatever colour and whatever their stated intentions, can be seen in their true light as guardians of the existing state of things and therefore working to preserve and protect the interests of that capital-owning minority.

Socialism too takes on a definite meaning. It has nothing to do with the particular method the Labour Party has of running capitalism but means a completely different kind of society from capitalism, the like of which we have not yet seen anywhere. It means a society where production doesn’t take place for profit but directly for use, where everything is owned in common, where all goods and services can be taken freely by everyone and where governments don’t rule but people participate democratically and meaningfully in their own affairs.

So is there no difference between the Labour and Tory parties? Only so far as each claims to govern according to its own distinctive values and philosophies. Labour says it is a party of humanitarianism, compassion for the underprivileged, intervention by the state to serve the interests of working people. The Tories also say that they are concerned about workers’ well-being but that what is ultimately of benefit to workers is the success of private enterprise and keeping state intervention to a minimum.

But “values” and “philosophies”, like manifesto promises, are discarded by both parties when they are faced with the reality of trying to keep capitalism on an even keel. British capitalism needs to keep its costs down in order to compete favourably with other national capitalisms in the world and this imposes on both Labour and Tory parties policies which have neither been part of their declared outlook nor corresponded to their pledges. And these policies have often been strikingly similar — wage restraint, cuts in education and social services, trade union curbs, inflation caused by printing an excess of inconvertible paper currency, and so on. Labour, despite its compassionate, peace-loving image and its sentimental links with the working class, has gone in for cuts in the health service, strike-breaking and war-making, while the Tories, despite their free market “principles" and tough, “stand on your own feet” reputation, have backed nationalisation (e.g. Rolls-Royce) and seemingly humane reforms (Supplementary Benefit legislation) when conditions dictated. And what unites the two parties — their commitment to operating capitalism and their adherence to its immediate dictates — is much more fundamental and important than the different values, rhetoric and promises supposedly dividing them.

So this election is not, as Tony Benn called it, “the most critical in this century” (South Wales Miners’ Conference, 10 May) nor is it, as the Guardian newspaper has said, “likely to decide the political direction of the UK for a generation”. It is an election like any other whose result will not touch the root cause of social problems, the system of production for profit, but will only alter minor details within the framework of that system. After the election the winning party will pull out the goodies from its manifesto cupboard only if they contain the ingredients the world market can digest. Michael Foot can bluster about reducing unemployment by “reflating the economy” and Margaret Thatcher can insist that the only way to get people back to work is to “stimulate investment". But “reflation” is a dead end, as Mitterand’s failure in France has shown, and investment will only be stimulated by the prospect of profit, which depends on the present slump in world trade easing off and markets beginning to expand. Only if this happens will the jobless figures go down and neither Foot nor Thatcher, nor any individual or political party, will have any influence in the matter.

On unemployment therefore, as on other issues, both will inevitably fail to keep their promises — perhaps through naivety, but certainly through their inability to control a system that is uncontrollable. But even if they miraculously managed to run capitalism according to their predetermined plans, they would still be failing — and in a more important way — the majority of those who elected them. They would be failing the wage and salary earners by fostering the illusion that there is no alternative way to organise things than through buying and selling and that any attempt to manage our affairs sanely — without markets, without wars, without wages and salaries, without governments, without the whole paraphernalia of buying and selling — is impossible, unrealistic and not an issue worth considering.

But then, in the final analysis, it is up to the majority not to be taken in by the illusions of the capitalist parties and their leaders and to take our own democratic political action to change things. As long as we leave our world in their hands, they will fail us and we will be failing ourselves.

Howard Moss

Manifesto (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

You are again faced with a bunch of politicians who can only be distinguished from one another by the colour of their rosettes, but there are thousands of people not prepared to support any of them. About one in four did not vote for any of the candidates in the 1979 General Flection. It is particularly to men and women who are not prepared to follow leaders or to believe the bogus promises of Thatcher, Foot, Jenkins and Steel that this manifesto is directed.

Most of you will not know much about the Socialist Party of Great Britain — this may even be the first time you have heard of us. Certainly, many people have heard the word “socialist" and imagine that it has something to do with the nationalised industries or dictatorships such as Russia and China. It is understandable that many people regard “socialism" as just another political cliché, used to win votes for Labour politicians, but having very little meaning.

The Socialist Party stands solely for socialism because we do not think that the present social system — capitalism — can ever be made to work in the interests of the majority of people. This is not the fault of government policies, but of the present social system in which they are operating. Capitalism always puts the needs of the minority who own and control the factories, farms, offices, mines, media, the means of wealth production and distribution, before those of the vast majority — we, the working class — who produce the wealth, but own little more than our ability to work, which we have to sell for wages or salaries.

It is a hard but undeniable fact that no political party — including the Socialist Party — can legislate to humanise capitalism or make it run in the interests of the wage slaves. That's why it’s time for you to stop giving your votes to politicians who stand for the profit system. None of them can solve unemployment, which has increased steadily under both Labour and Conservative governments, despite their proclaimed recipes for economic success. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will end hypothermia. None of them will prevent thirty million people from starving to death each year. None of them will end the threat of human annihilation as a result of war, because militarism is inevitable within a system based upon the market, trade and ferocious competition. Why waste your vote on parties that cannot make any of these urgently needed changes? Why go on in the hope that a miracle will happen and the insanity of the profit system will be put right?

So what's the socialist alternative? We say that the resources of society must be taken into the hands of the whole community — and by that we don't mean the state, but all of us, organised together, consciously and democratically.

In a socialist society we will produce for use, not profit. This means producing food to feed the world's population, not to dump in the sea if it cannot he sold profitably. Producing for use means ending the colossal waste of resources on armies, armaments, trade, banking and insurance, and all the other social features which are only necessary within capitalism; it means devoting human energies and natural resources to producing the best of what people really need and want. By running society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use we can all have free access to all goods and services.

Two points will be clear to you by now. Firstly, this is no ordinary manifesto. We have made no promises; we have not asked for your support. Indeed, the Socialist Party does not want your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a sensible one and is in your interest. Socialism can only be established when a majority of workers understand and want it, so there is no point in seeking support on any other basis. Secondly, you will have noticed that what we are advocating is different — it has never been tried. That gang of political has-beens, the SDP, have nothing new to offer. The Labour Party, if elected, will continue its futile exercise of trying to reform capitalism. The Tories, if given a chance, will pursue their vicious policy of dancing to the tune of profitability while human needs are ignored. Thatcher’s “Victorian values”, Jenkins’ “consensus politics" and Foot’s “Keynesian” reformism have all been tried — they’ve failed. This is the only manifesto to come through your letterbox which is making a proposal to transform world society from the chaos and waste of the market into the co-operative democracy of production for use.

This manifesto can be summarised. Do you agree with the following statements?

★    CAPITALISM puts profits for the few before the needs of the many.

★ LABOUR governments, “communist states”, and proposals to reform the profit system cannot establish socialism.

★ SOCIALISM means a society of common ownership and democratic control where production is solely for use — not profit.

★ WHEN a majority of workers — including the quarter of the electorate who did not vote last time, the disillusioned members of the old parties and those who have turned to the SDP — understand and want socialism, the new system can be established immediately.

If you think that the above statements are wrong, please take the trouble to tell us why. If you agree with us, then why not take the next step and contact the Socialist Party?

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