About Socialism (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

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

2. What is capitalism?

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

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

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

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

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

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

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

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

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

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

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

8. What about human nature?

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

9. Are socialists democrats?

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

10. What is the next step?

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

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

Editorial: Race and respectability (1988)

Editorial from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard 

One necessary skill of professional politicians is an ability to cloak the prejudices of their potential supporters in respectable language. We know that nobody in the public eye is a racist, and the British reputation for fair play could be further enhanced if more people prefaced their remarks with reassurances like "I detest apartheid as much as the next white Anglo-Saxon but. . ."; “Some of my best friends are Asian shopkeepers but. . . ."; or even “While I don't mind a hint of curry on my Guardian now again . . .".

The rejection of “liberal attitudes" on race by large numbers of workers does not place them automatically in the camp of the mindless bigot, which is why much anti-racist legislation and practice has had minimal effect. Asians with knife scars and families behind boarded council flat windows can testify to the more virulent strains of the disease, but pumping through the bloodstream of society is racism of a much more matter-of-fact, unselfconscious kind. The statement “he's a darkie, but quite pleasant" assumes shared attitudes and feelings and can be made without any awareness that it causes offence: blacks are viewed as one more natural hazard to be avoided, like bronchitis or barking dogs.

Recognition that such ingrained prejudice cannot be washed away by a constant assertion that there is no difference between "them" and "us" — an approach which anyway takes no account of non overt discrimination — has led to a much more sustained assault on the values and assumptions of "white British culture", at least in the field of education. That the consequence may well be a more segregated society, with white parents opting for what they perceive to be in the material interest of their children, should not be a surprise. Tolerance is clearly a skin-deep matter of proximity and numbers, and the symbolic and ill-functioning character of dogmatic anti-racist practice has given sustenance to those who hide their racism behind the banner of "freedom of choice". As with much race relations law, resentment has been stimulated against those who are seen to be positively favoured.

The various racist Immigration Acts passed by Conservative and Labour governments to keep non-whites out of Britain reflected and gave respectability to the view that blacks or Asians are the cause of social problems. The fact that legislation now prohibits discrimination is neither here nor there: property owners no longer publicly state that blacks are not welcome but simply do not accept them; employers are obliged to treat job applicants on their merits and do so with tongues in cheeks. A surface respectability fails miserably to conceal a situation where non-whites are far more likely to be unemployed, far more likely to be in low paid jobs and bound by the frustration their position creates.

The ideas of the racist cannot be legislated away because they arise from and are nurtured by the society in which we live. As every schoolboy knows, Columbus discovered America and Marco Polo was the first to set foot in China; at least, these were the first personages from white western society to do so, which any enlightened schoolgirl knows to be not the same thing. And if the history books tell us that nothing of any consequence occurred before a white man came along, it is not difficult to see why low social status and inferiority remain associated with a black skin.

Historically, the doctrines of white supremacy and anti-semitism originated as weapons to defend pre-capitalist systems of exploitation, and it has been one of the tasks of capitalism to break down all social divisions except that between the wealthy and the propertyless. This, however, it can never succeed in doing, since of necessity individual worker is set against individual worker in the struggle for a living and many forms of hatred and prejudice flourish as a result. If racial equality were somehow achieved, we could still not have an integrated, harmonious society because capitalism demands constant selection and exclusion and therefore creates the insecurity on which racism breeds.

Those who benefit from divisions within society do not have to compete for third-rate education and housing: there are no racist attacks at Charterhouse or riots in Belgravia. The civilised setting of the gentleman's club is also more conducive to an evenhanded treatment of racial matters — white semi-detached proles are held in only marginally less contempt than their darker-skinned counterparts and the "them" and "us" of racist mythology are translated into real, class terms.

Running Commentary: A saint or a menace? (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A saint or a menace?

Words which did not appear in the many tear-stained obituaries for Fenner Brockway, who died last month, were "hypocrite" and "dangerous". According to his admirers, Brockway was a saintly man who longed for a world where everyone — employer or employee — basked in the ecstacy of mutual prosperity; where there was absolute equality between one and another; where all nations, suddenly seized with insight into the futility of war, disposed of all their armed forces and weapons and resorted instead to the quieter, cheaper method of settling their differences though civilised discussion around the conference table.

Anyone who persists in these types of fantasies, in face of all the evidence to disprove that capitalism is basically a sane system, which with a change of heart, could be made to run in everyone’s interests, should be derided. Instead, they are liable to be deeply respected — especially after they die. The obituaries for them don't just regret their death but do so with a touch of wonder and guilt, that the world was so stupid not to heed the teachings of the departed saint.

Brockway was a prime example of this. An ardent, lifelong campaigner for peace, a conscientious objector who suffered imprisonment during the First World War, he was also a prominent member of the Labour Party which so ardently supported both World War One and Two and almost every other occasion when British capitalism needed its working class to take arms, to be killed and to kill their fellow workers. This veteran marcher for CND was an MP supporting a government which was emphatically opposed to dismantling the British nuclear armoury and was an ardent proponent of nuclear power stations. This champion of the dispossessed supported a party which, when in government, fought to keep the living standards of British workers in check, to the benefit of British capitalists. Finally, this man who stood for equality, a life-long opponent of the House of Lords, ended his days sitting on its benches, ennobled as Lord Brockway.

There are many ways of describing such inconsistencies of behaviour but hypocritical is to the point. But is it fair also to say that Brockway was dangerous?

People like Brockway are part of the very tradition of the Labour Party. Although their professed principles, which excite such admiration, should lead them to oppose the party they are among its most steadfast supporters. Whatever anguished twists Labour’s record requires of them, they are equal to the situation; they cling stubbornly to the party no matter what offences it commits against working class interests.

The effect of this is to persuade many people that at heart the Labour Party is not really as we experience it; its inner conscience, personified by members like Brockway, is pure and one day will take over the entire party. So workers continue to vote Labour — for capitalism with all that means in terms of human repression, poverty and suffering. Like any dangerous hypocrite. Brockway had a lot to answer for.

Rough stuff

Hijackers are in the forefront of that exclusive group of people whose actions are certain to provoke one of Thatcher's famous rages or to set Reagan's autocue whirring out the folksy platitudes. No words are too strong to condemn them; they are cowardly, subversive. indiscriminate outlaws who take no heed of the values of civilised society.

In fact, hijackers often personify many of the qualities which Thatcher and Reagan profess to admire in themselves — like sacrificial devotion to their cause, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, a ruthless will to carry out their mission not for their own benefit but for that of their comrades-in-arms. When the media tell us that the SAS or the Royal Marines have behaved in that way Thatcher is quick to praise them and to win a little electoral advantage at the same time but when the same qualities are in evidence from the "enemy" they are somehow transformed from the stuff of Boys' Own Paper into excerpts from the nastiest of video nasties.

The hijackers consider themselves to be at war with bigger, more impressive powers. In such a situation guerilla actions are the customary tactic and among these the hijack is now established as effective. Those who condemn it do so on the implication that war can be a civilised affair, fought to a kind of Queensberry Rules so that everyone who gets killed or wounded can take solace from the fact that it all happened in the most considerate and ordered fashion.

What virtue is there in the notion that something as viciously destructive and anti-human as war would be more bearable if all the participants kept to a set of rules? It would be futile to search for a state whose record in this respect is unblemished. Every one has its intelligence organisation — a spying. assassinating, dirty tricks department who have the utmost contempt for any "rules". We are allowed to know very little about these shadowy bodies but what we do know is that their speciality is not the metaphorical pre-fight handshake but the knee in the groin, the gouge of the eye.

The British and American ruling classes and their state machines are among the leading exponents of these tactics and when they are exposed in this they are unashamed, they make no apology for conforming to the needs of capitalism's persistent and worldwide conflicts.

So the indignation about the hijackers is bogus. There is no such thing as a legitimacy of war. Rather than pursue such fanciful mirages workers should stand aside from the brutal cynicism of it all, to ask how to abolish war itself.

Take your turn

Britain’s doctors are clearly worried about nuclear war. Perhaps they suspect the fragility of the premise of official advise about getting yourself to hospital if you have been injured by the bomb — that the medical profession will magically be immune to its effects.

However there is nothing like forward planning and the British Medical Association has recently issued some guidelines about who should be treated, and who left to die, in a nuclear holocaust (the government, not surprisingly, have been reluctant to grasp this particular hot potato).

These are some of the guidelines: readers are advised to keep them handy, so that they can make sure of their place in the queue for treatment after the bomb goes off. Burn or blast casualties will not get priority if they have also suffered from radiation; thickness bums over more than 15 per cent of the body means that you will almost certainly be abandoned to die; no time is likely to be spent on cardio respiratory resuscitation; the elderly will have the lowest priority and anyone over 60 suffering from burns will not get fluid replacement. Finally, if you have an injured limb which in normal conditions you would expect to be treated and cured, you may find that in the post-nuclear world it is simply hacked off, to save time.

It is a searing comment on this society, that trained doctors and nurses should have to give their attention to so grisly a business. But it is all too close to reality; the BMA estimates that about half the population of this country — 28 million people — will be wiped out in a nuclear conflict with six million more seriously injured. And. as we know, the bombs are still there, waiting in their silos and submarines and aircraft, to wipe out millions if ever the powers of capitalism decide that that is the only way of sorting out their rivalries.

The BMA document makes another illuminating point. Priority in treatment will also be given on the basis of ability, knowledge and social usefulness. And who comes out tops in this? Stockbrokers? Aristocrats? Merchant bankers? Well no — these heroes and heroines of capitalism come a long way down the list. Up at the top will be carpenters, plumbers, stonemasons — and the people who run hospital generators.

This is a comment, not just on nuclear war but on who are the really indispensable people in society, on the values and rewards of capitalism and how they hold back human progress.

Handy hints

Are you well off? Are you about to cash in — if you have not already done so — on the immense Thatcher-planned bonanza of productivity and prosperity? A lot of government propoganda says that you are. What do the facts say?

The latest figures available showing the level of "official" poverty — too bad if yours is unofficial — say that in 1983 nearly 16½ million people, which is about 30 per cent of the population, were struggling along on an income of 140 per cent of what was then the Supplementary Benefit level. The statistics covering 1985 have not yet been published; it is whispered in the poverty lobby that when they do come out it will be to show a sunnier picture, not because poverty has become less harsh but because the government has redefined it.

Does it matter, if you're among the officially poor? Money isn't everything, after all. According to a medical study for 1987 the kind of poverty which comes with unemployment coincides with men being 40 per cent more likely to die of all cancers, 75 per cent more likely to die of lung cancer and twice as likely to commit suicide. Of course, that could be coincidence ... A study by Peter Townsend and others suggests a clear link between serious deprivation and higher mortality. Last year the British Medical Association, which is not famous for being subversive, drew attention to the surveys which show how children whose parents are chronically unemployed tend to be stunted.

The Department of Health and Social Security, perhaps under the impression that this was living up to its title, recently issued some advice to the poor. "Don't shop when you're hungry", the ministry urged their claimants. "You may be tempted to buy more than you need". This is exactly the kind of humiliation experienced by out-of-work people in the 1930s which, the experts assure us, would never happen again, now that we live in the age of enlightenment. Nearer reality was a comment from someone who is not unemployed, a mother of four who works as a shop assistant, in the Observer of 17 April: "I was brought up poor. I never thought it would go on for ever, on to my children and maybe now their children's children".

For the working class poverty does go on. blighting the lives of one generation after another. Mass unemployment is a factor which harshly worsens a condition which will be with us for as long as this social system is allowed to endure — and so will the humiliation which goes with the deepest kind of poverty, when useful people are of no account because they are redundant to the drive for profit.

Lenin and elections (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

We did not mean to suggest in our reply to a letter in the April Socialist Standard that Lenin took up an anti-parliamentarist position and was opposed to participation in elections. On the contrary, he was in favour of this as a way of trying to obtain reforms and urged workers in Britain to vote Labour, though he also argued that the minority vanguard party he advocated could never get to power by electoral means but only through violence.

The Editors

A tale of two tyrannies (1988)

A Short Story from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack and Jacek meet on a train. Jack is a true blue British Tory; Jacek is a member of the Polish Communist Party. Jack loves his Queen and has a big picture of Churchill on his wall, with a smaller one of Thatcher next to his bed. Jacek goes out and gets drunk each year on the day when Poland became a "socialist country". He has a big picture of Stalin on his wall and a smaller one of Jaruzelski next to his bed. Every Sunday Jack can be found upon his knees in the local C of E Hall of Lies. On Sundays you can be sure to find Comrade Jacek on his knees in the Catholic Church, for though he appreciates the guidance of Lenin regarding the affairs of this world, he still seeks divine assistance on his preparation for the passage to the illusory next world. Jack is reading The Daily Mail which always gives him his lies in good plain English. Jacek reads the official state newspaper which most Poles know to be as dishonest as it is dull. The two men get talking, the way that often happens on long, boring train journeys.

Jacek has been reading about the attempt by P&O to smash the National Union of Seamen. He reads about how the company, with dictatorial arrogance, simply sacked its wage slaves for daring to take trade-union action. When the men formed picket lines in order to prevent scabs from being brought in to take away their jobs the police were brought in to exercise their usual scab-herding powers. When the NUS decided to ballot its members they were told by the phoney democrats of the British government that it is illegal to conduct a secret ballot as to whether to go on strike and if such a ballot was held the union would be taken to court. He read about how the judges in the High Court had decided to empower the state to rob the NUS of its legally collected funds. As Jacek read the report he became angry. It was genuine anger. It was indignation which every self-respecting member of the working class ought to feel when he or she sees a government. representing the privileged and powerful. using its power of coercion to persecute workers who dare to combine in their own defence. Jacek tells Jack of his sense of anger, but Jack, who has had mental blinkers fitted many years ago, courtesy of his education and exposure to the press, is full of rage for a different reason. He tries to explain to Jacek that these seamen are nothing but agitators — troublemakers — sociology graduates, quite possibly. Mrs Thatcher has a duty to the nation to ensure that these unions do not become too powerful. Why, if they are not kept in check, the next thing they will expect is to own and control the ships that they have worked on all their lives. And, as every properly educated Englishman knows, the right to own and control ships must belong to the likes of Sir Jeffrey Sterling, who has never had to work on a ship in his entire parasitical life.

There is a period of uneasy silence. It is quite clear that these two passengers will not see eye to eye. Jacek attempts to make light conversation about how he enjoyed fighting alongside the British in the last war; it was so pleasant for Churchill's wage slaves and Stalin's wage slaves to be joined in the common fight in defence of "democracy". The irony occurred to neither of them.

Just as the train was passing through a tunnel somewhere near Didcot Jack gasps in astonishment. Jacek thinks that perhaps his travelling companion has swallowed a pip from his South African orange. But no, he has been reading about how the police were sent in to the Nowa Huta steel works in Poland. With what brutality they used their truncheons against men and women whose only crime was to attempt to organise in a trade union — Solidarity — which is not run by the state bosses. On May Day Lech Walesa of Solidarity called upon the workers of Poland, "I demand of you solidarity with the Nowa Huta strikers tomorrow in your shipyards, in your ports and in your factories'. Last November the Polish government had held a referendum to test the workers' support for a massive increase in food prices in order to increase state profits so that debts to the Western banks could be paid off. The government failed to win a majority in the referendum. but this did not deter the undemocratic dictators: between February and April the price increases were instituted and this has led to nationwide protests and the biggest strike wave since 13 December 1981 when martial law was introduced in order to smash Solidarity. Across Poland the most foul thuggery has been carried out on the orders of the so-called Communist dictatorship; the workers have to be kept in their place. Jack, though never a supporter of strikes when they are in “his own country" is full of admiration for the heroic Polish strikers. Inconsistent as he is, Jack is right to support these brave men and women who will not be brought to their knees by a police state. Every worker everywhere must admire and show sympathy with our brothers and sisters in the state-capitalist countries who are robbed and oppressed in the name of socialism, just as we are in Britain in the name of democracy. Jack explains to Jacek that the Polish government is clearly an enemy of the majority of Polish people. Jacek is infuriated by such a senseless comment: did Jack not realise that these wreckers in Solidarity are out to cause economic ruin and sabotage — and anyway, most of them are probably in the pay of the CIA.

The two men look out of opposite windows of the train, refusing to say another word. They look at their reflections in the glass and catch glimpses of each other. Somewhere down the other end of the train —the end which is labelled “First Class", where the seats are comfier and the stewards will actually bring stale tuna fish sandwiches to where you are sitting we find Mr Ponsonby-Crutch and Mr Polotsky, each a respected member of the business community. Ponsonby-Crutch — or Ponsy, as he is known to the assembled idlers at the gentlemen's club where he occasionally sleeps away his afternoons — is attempting to fix up a joint venture with Polotsky who represents the Polish Trade Ministry, and does not smoke Cuban cigars simply for reasons of ideological solidarity. The two men talk as friends, realising, as representatives of capital must, that ideological differences must not be allowed to interfere with the higher goal of making profits. In a moment of relaxation the two men speak of their respective workforces. Ponsy thinks that the British wage slaves are in "pretty good shape" (a description he has been known to apply to his race horse, Dummy), but there are still a few recalcitrant types who need to be sorted out. With the aid of the police, the anti-union laws, the judges and workers forced to scabbing by the poverty of long-term unemployment. he feels confident that disruptive elements will be weeded out. Ponsy calls it "giving them the miners' treatment”. Polotsky sympathises. His government knows what it feels like to have the noble needs of profit-stealing interrupted by the anti-social antics of the unpatriotic minority. General Jaruzelski, being a military man, will spare no blood in showing the Polish workers who the masters are. Ponsy sighs longingly, wishing that his own government would show a little more of that kind of uncompromising commitment to the national interest.

Britain is a capitalist country and P&O are doing what any self-respecting capitalists will do: tyrannising their workers until every last drop of profit can be wrung from them. Let the drowned corpses of those workers who fell victim at Zeebrugge to the spirit of Free Enterprise stand as monuments to the consequences of free enterprise. Poland is also a capitalist country; its form of tyranny is state capitalism, but its differences with the economies of the West are outweighed by its similarities. In Poland the so-called Communist state locks up trade unionists who do not obey its rule and uses brutal force, indistinguishable from that used by British and other capitalist states, in defence of property and profit. Workers of the world have one single class interest; capitalists of the world, while competing like beasts of the jungle, have a common interest in keeping the workers in a condition of submissive wage slavery. We must not let them succeed in Dover or in Gdansk — in every part of the world the forces of capital must be met with the force of organised socialists whose sole aim is to claim for the inhabitants of the earth all of the resources in and on the earth. Then, with its cause abolished, tyranny will die, in all its forms.

Steve Coleman

Candidates are reminded . . . (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's Summer, Ian McCaskill has once again, for a brief interval, been recast from a harbinger of gloom to a relatively welcome informant. Six hundred and fifty MPs are preparing to go on holiday for a couple of months and leave the profit system to run itself while slow-paced, deep-voiced cricket commentaries, emanating from every media outlet, provide the season's soundtrack.

One place that soundtrack does not intrude upon, though, is the silence of the large, wooden-floored hall in every school and college where thousands of young people every year sit exams. Every summer tens of thousands of students from High schools and colleges step off a convey belt and into a quality control unit — the examination. Like cassette players or cars which carry a 'Tested—Okay' label, some candidates will leave the process certified as competent to perform certain roles in the commercial system or pass on to the next stage of training. Others will be sent back to the drawing board or invited to quit the process.

In Victorian times the education system prepared young people for wage-slavery in a blunt and blatant fashion. In Hard Times, Charles Dickens describes this operation with vivid detail in a chapter called 'Murdering the Innocents'. Here children are being knocked into uniformity and docility by one of a new regiment of indoctrinators. The teachers were made by much the same method as they were now using on their victims.

. . . Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs.

Some of today's educationalists would say that things are drastically different now. But are they? The same class-divided social system operates today as operated in Dickens' day and it has the same demands for a workforce which is disciplined, respectful of authority and implanted with the same fundamentally fallacious assumptions about society, class, competition and "Human nature" as its Victorian predecessor.

Examination Halls are once again filling up every morning and afternoon with hundreds of worried people. Once inside the Halls, the candidates, whose only identification for these purposes is a number, will be ushered to their respective desks the regulation three feet from their neighbour. They will be briefly addressed in a detached, impersonal tone and then will follow two or three hours of occasional coughing, sporadic fidgeting and the trail of invigilator's footsteps. College lectures have been described as the process by which lecturers' notes are passed to the notepads of students without really passing through the minds of either. Spilling out the same stuff on an exam script in a similar fashion is often the next stage in the game. I have been a participant in this rigmarole for 17 years: eleven as a student at various schools and colleges and now six as a teacher and examiner. The more familiar you become with the whole process, the clearer its main purpose becomes. Vainly describing itself as 'Education', the training programme delivered to people between the ages of 11 and 18 is little more than preparing people for the job market. Students are encouraged that the later they leave the process. the more attractive will be the job application form available to them.

Training Workers

The burden of cost for education, so-called, lies with the ruling class — the small minority of men and women who own and control the world's wealth. Education is. with most governments around the globe, the second largest budgeted expenditure after "Defence" (War), such is its importance in moulding a working class generally compliant to the hardships and insecurities of the profit system and tailored to the requirements of its work.

It is true that widespread literacy and numeracy are a pre-condition for the democratic operation of world society but we have already reached that stage. Since the early nineteenth century, the commercial system developed the need for a better educated workforce and then, later on,, for increased technical skills. Syllabuses and examinations have developed broadly in accordance with what the profit system needs. One recent development has been the move to experiential learning techniques and corresponding methods of testing those skills. The Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) and General Certificate of Education (GCE) O’ level have now been abolished and replaced by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) syllabuses which purport to provide a better "education" for those leaving full-time education at 16. One important factor in the design of these new courses was the way they would help to improve the organisational skills of prospective workers. According to a recent publication from the Department of Education and Science. GCSEa Guide for Employers,

Many employers have long been in favour of GCSE. It was, after all, developed in consultation with employers and other interests. (HMSO Educ. Jo. 243.1988)

In Britain about 4,000,000 people work in offices and there is a growing concern amongst employers, as commercial competition becomes more intensified, that their workers may not be up to date with the latest technology. The main purpose of the "A" level exams is to provide an entry ticket for the arena of "Higher Education", or entry into wage (salary) slavery at a "higher" level. Although some people climbing these rungs of the ladder can give the impression that the altitudes are enough to cause giddiness, their clamberings are not even visible from the heights of wealth and power occupied by the ruling class. Back at street level, even several of the "A" level syllabuses are being revamped to include more "practical" components. The Business Studies "A" level, for example, now incorporates a period of "work experience" where the student contributes a few weeks work to a local firm for nothing or next to nothing. Clearly a nice little perk for the owners of the local firm but less clearly a useful experience from the student"s point of view. Arguably the best result that can come from this episode is for the student to work his or her guts out during the "experience". not make any inquiries about a union and act with the right sort of servility to the right people — then they just might be hired by the firm on a "permanent" basis.

Learning the Rules of the Game

Recently, the courses run by the Business and Technician Education Council have become more prevalent in colleges around the country. The BTEC courses at "First" and "National” levels roughly parallel the more theoretical GCSE and A" level courses. They are based, almost exclusively, on a learning-by-doing principle and students' progress is monitored by continuous assessment of "assignments'". The BTEC National course (the "higher" of the two), though, has an examination at the end but because the ethos of academic exams runs against the ethos of the BTEC, their exams are not called exams but "Time Constrained Assignments".

Students on these courses are frequently asked, as part of their assignments, to assume the role of a particular type of employee and then, presented with a "scenario", are invited to complete a number of "tasks". You can see why the owners of industry and commerce must find this sort of thing a real boon. For one thing, it must cut the cost of their own training schemes, either in-house or the type they pay their workers to attend. Education in the commercial system, capitalism, has always been geared to shaping people for the role that their class demands from them. The children of the wealthy owners of society are sent to expensive, exclusive, elitist schools where they are trained in the ways of being patronising members of the ruling class. Conversely, ninety per cent of us attend schools where they teach you (or try to) how to work and to be on the receiving end of orders from the boss. The element of these BTEC courses which is a new departure is the open starkness with which the "students" are being apprenticed to types of work in the setting of a college; not just the skills and procedures required in different types of work but also the way in which they are encouraged to adopt The Right Attitude.

Consider one example of an assignment for students on a BTEC National course designed to prepare them for low levels of management. Details are given about an imaginary company, Fuelsave Ltd. based in Cricklewood with a workforce of eight, three of whom are part-time. The company produces a petrol saving device. A full report on the company is also given, " . . produces between 225 -275 Fuelsavers a week . . . gadgets retail mainly through garages in the South East for £80. . . Fred Smith the founder and majority shareholder wishes to increase production but expansion at the current site is impossible. . . Fred calls a Board Meeting to discuss expansion ". Students are then asked to put themselves through a succession of different roles in furnishing the firm with advice about relocating in two sites, raising new sums of financial capital, suing other firms if they try to use the technology of the fuelsave device (which has been patented), and the "best" way to make workers redundant. Other assignments in this course entail the students casting themselves as clerical workers, estate agents, insurance officers and local government workers.

The remodelling of education on more commercially related lines has also begun to percolate into higher education not only by the innovation of degrees in subjects like "Business Administration" but also in attempts to trim out of existence those research projects which do not appear to be useful to the actual workings of capitalist society and its constant quest for profit for the few. Higher educational institutions are also being seen as places which could be more concertedly used by the owners of industry to cultivate greater numbers of their highly skilled workers. Speaking recently to a conference in London, Lord Prior, former Employment Secretary (before he disagreed with Thatcher) and now collecting a little spending money as Chairman of G.E.C. (£200,000+) said that Britain is too snooty about its universities and this is "depriving industry and commerce of highly-trained brains". He suggested that universities and degrees should not be seen as ivory towers offering glittering prizes. “They should be seen as places which produce a highly-trained workforce for the market place".

(London Evening Standard, 30 April 1988).

If you are taking exams this month, or have children who are, or are teaching towards them or marking them, then you may well be familiar with the little blurb at the top of exam papers which proclaims that "Candidates are reminded of the necessity for good English and orderly presentation in their work . . ." A fully honest preamble would also tell you that "this exam is a necessary part of a competitive and uncivilised social system. It has virtually nothing to do with genuine study and knowledge . . ." One final point, in fact an alternative exam question: Imagine you are living in a society which has abolished class division and operates on the principle "from each according to ability to each according to need". Explain how your life is different from that of one of history's wage slaves!

Gary Jay

A Spring thaw? (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

To many in the "peace movement”, it seems that the tide is finally turning. The focus for their optimism is none other than former Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan, who has instructed his negotiators to "go for gold", and hammer out a 50 per cent cut in the superpowers' nuclear arsenals. They should not be so easily fooled. Behind the pacific rhetoric lies a grimmer calculus which reflects the new realities facing American capitalism in the 1980s.

In the drive to restore profitability to US industry, business interests have clamoured for cuts in the $200bn budget deficit in the new financial year. As a result the Pentagon will be receiving $33bn less than it anticipated and funding for "Star Wars" will be slashed. Forced into a corner, the military and their political allies have felt compelled to change their tactics, and the apparently paradoxical result has been a new found enthusiasm for arms control. To see how this has come about, we will take a brief excursion into the bizarre world of nuclear strategy.

To the military mind, there is no such thing as an "unusable" military weapon, and from the earliest days of the US "deterrent”, the Airforce developed plans for massive first strikes against the USSR. General Curtis Le May stated this quite openly in front of a presidential committee in the 1950s. when it was put to him that pre-emptive nuclear strikes were not official US policy. "I don’t care", he replied, "it’s my policy. That's what I'm going to do." This remains the dominant view in the highest reaches of the US military-political establishment. Colin Gray, for example, now a senior presidential adviser, wrote in 1980 that the US should "identify war aims that in the last resort would contemplate the destruction of Soviet political authority and the emergence of a postwar world order compatible with western values". Nuclear weapons were to be treated in the same way as conventional ones had been in previous eras; as a means to destroy opposing military forces and compel compliance with the interests of the victorious national ruling class.

The paradox of using nuclear weapons to accomplish political objectives, however, was that their sheer destructive power could result only in genocidal war. which could have no rational political use. This was the conclusion of the Harmon Committee, which examined the feasibility of a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union in 1948-9.

What was needed, from the point of view of the military planners, were "cleaner" weapons, which could selectively "take out" discrete military targets such as silos, troop assembly points etc. whilst avoiding large-scale "collateral" damage. It has been estimated that 20 million deaths is an "acceptable" level for civilian casualties in this sort of scenario. In recent years, the technological developments necessary to allow such nuclear war fighting strategies have begun to emerge.

In the dehumanised language of nuclear mass murder, the ability of a warhead to destroy a hard target, such as a silo, is measured in terms of "lethality", or “K". “K" is dependent primarily upon how close to the target a warhead is delivered. The first generation of US ICBMs had an accuracy (acronym "CEP") of some 1000-4200 FT. giving a lethality of between 9 and 12. Some meaning is given to these figures when we compare them with the comparable ones for the new generation of US missiles. The MX and Trident D5 have accuracies of just 300 FT and lethalities of 200. whilst Cruise missiles will land less than 200 FT from their targets with a lethality of 300. US scientists are now working on manoeverable terminal guidance warheads which will have accuracies of 120 FT. as well as "earthquake bombs" which bury themselves in the ground before exploding. In practical terms, these missiles can destroy with virtual certainty the hardest of Russian silos. Moreover, simply throwing more of the earlier missiles at a target does not compensate for lack of accuracy, since the first missile to arrive over a target would destroy those following even a split second behind. Greater accuracy, with fewer missiles means greater certainty of a clean kill. Military strategists have even turned the controversy about the "nuclear winter" to their own advantage, by claiming that the theory is only applicable to attacks on cities by the older, indiscriminate nuclear missiles. Military targets such as silos, it is argued, are located in wilderness regions, which would not throw up the debris associated with burning cities. This form of attack is undoubtedly the more ecologically sound!

It will by now be clear that far fewer of the new missiles are necessary in order to pursue an effective nuclear war-fighting strategy, and that the older ones are effectively obsolete in military terms. It is precisely these older missiles that the US will be "sacrificing" in any major arms reduction agreement. This, however, is only half the story. There is another very good military reason for supporting a major cut in the superpowers" nuclear arsenals, and this has to do with the technological limitations of the "star wars" (SDI) programme.

When SDI was first conceived, it was intended as an integral part of a war-fighting strategy; it was to be the shield behind which the US could shelter from Soviet retaliation after delivering its own first strike. Insuperable technical problems have been encountered in attempting to develop such a device, however, and military planners recently conceded that it is not a feasible objective for the foreseeable future. Instead of a massive space security shield protecting US cities, they now plan only to protect vital military installations, and still reckon only to be able to destroy 30 per cent of an all-out Soviet strike, or some 1,300 warheads.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. however. Suppose that the Soviet nuclear arsenal could be cut in half, to some 2,800 land-based warheads and 600 submarine launched ones. Suppose also that the new US missiles could be expected to destroy even half of the remaining forces in a first strike (bearing in mind that five out of six Soviet submarines are stuck in port at any one time and therefore highly vulnerable. This leaves the number of warheads available for a retaliatory Soviet strike at a number which the new slimmed-down SDI might be expected to deal with. The enthusiasm of the military for a treaty which would cut both sides' arsenals by 50 per cent whilst leaving the US free to develop and deploy its own devastating new weapons is thus readily apparent.

The change in the US approach to the Geneva arms talks, therefore, has nothing to do with the changing whims of its leaders, and still less to do with the influence of the peace movement. Rather, it has to do with material factors; the weakness of American capitalism, which necessitates cutbacks in non-competitive production, and the capabilities and limitations of the available technology. This much is conceded by Professor Paul Rogers, a leading spokesman for CND, in a recent article in the New Statesman (8 April). What, however, is to be done about it? Rogers is reduced to calling for yet more campaigning for a test ban and a freeze in the deployment of new weapons; this is apparently "the best that can be hoped for". But military power and its related technology are the necessary accompaniments of the rivalry between competing capitalist and state capitalist blocks. The murderous technologies and strategies of nuclear war do not have an existence outside of this struggle, and cannot be eliminated without first tackling the antisocial system of which they are simply the most terrifying symbols.

Andrew Thomas

Single union deals (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ford's decision not to go ahead with a new plant in Dundee was based, so most of the media would have us believe, on the controversy that surrounded the single union deal they had agreed with the AEU. The guilty party we were told was the TGWU who opposed the deal. So here we have the unlikely picture presented to us of the big bad TGWU scaring off the little Ford corporation who only had the good intentions of "creating employment" in the Dundee area. Of course the more likely truth is that Ford withdrew because investment in Dundee was less advantageous than it had previously seemed. What the issue did do was to bring the discussion of single union deals out into the open once again.

However as usual under capitalism, misrepresentation has replaced clear information and the debate surrounding this issue has tended to be distorted. To discuss single union deals in a clear light we need to look beneath the surface arguments. By doing this we will find that it is not so much single union deals that are in dispute as the contents of some of these agreements. Secondly we need to analyse the type of environment in which employers have found it more advantageous to sign agreements with a single union. The point here is that the issue cannot be isolated from conditions that exist within modern capitalism.

The first point to be made is that a single union having sole negotiating rights with a particular company is not something which is without precedent. Nevertheless it is true that in British industrial relations multi-union recognition, with each union representing a separate grade of workers, has been the norm. However in the past few years we have seen the growth of single union agreements and many of these have included provisions which have brought about a changed union-management relationship. Some of the earliest single union deals included the ones signed by the EETPU with Hitachi and Toshiba and the AEU's agreement with Nissan. More recently the EETPU have reached a similar agreement with Brother Industries, a Japanese-owned company based in North Wales, whilst the AEU have signed such a deal with Dunlop on Tyneside and the GMB have agreed to a single union deal with British Cable Services owned by Robert Maxwell. In 1985 the TGWU was manoeuvred into accepting a single union agreements at the Norsk Hydro Plant at Immingham on Humberside where the company had previously recognised the EETPU, AEU and ASTMS. [1] 

Ford in Dundee

The growth of single union deals is thus undeniable. But the controversy over them is not, as the media would have us believe, merely over the concept of single unionism but has more to do with the contents of some of these agreements and the way in which they are concluded. This fact stands out particularly in relation to the AEU's agreement with Ford at the proposed plant for Dundee. What precisely was it about the deal that the TGWU objected to? Whilst of course it could be pointed out that had the TGWU been the union chosen their attitude might have been different there is evidence to suggest that the TGWU would not have accepted the agreement as it stood. Firstly, the leadership of the two unions stand far apart on the issue of single union deals and also with the current balance on the TGWU national executive favouring the left it is unlikely that such an agreement could or would have been accepted. Secondly it seems likely that Ford chose the AEU because they were more likely to agree to a package that undercut the existing national agreement between the company and the unions covering pay and conditions for 44,000 workers at 22 plants. Furthermore the leadership of the AEU and the EETPU have been the most willing to organise plants and companies not by recruiting members but by approaching top management of the companies concerned. For example in the deal agreed to between the EETPU and Brother Industries, whilst the TGWU were attempting to recruit workers at that company the EETPU negotiated a deal with the company to gain sole negotiating rights for all employees at the company's electronic typewriter plant at Wrexham and its microwave oven plant at Ruabon, seemingly without the agreement of the employees concerned.

Certainly the TGWU's criticism of the AEU 's deal with Ford seems justified from a trade union point of view. Ron Todd, General Secretary of the TGWU, highlighted the dangers of the deal in the following way.

Ford planned to exploit Dundee's need for investment by setting up a low pay wedge there.

The point of this was to undermine the pay and conditions won through years of struggle. The danger was, Todd continued:

That the company would close down their plants and transfer their work to Dundee at sub standard wages.

Once Ford had been allowed to locate the plant without honouring national agreements how long would it be. Todd asked, before it "decides to try the same trick again?" The point is. then, that the content of the agreement is the stumbling block and not the fact that only a single union is involved. Furthermore one of the most important aspects is how the company or plant is organised. Is it to be on the basis of recruitment of the workers concerned or by negotiations with the company over the heads of the employees? The latter is no basis for solid trade union organisation.

No-strike agreements 

Several single union deals contain "no-strike" provisions. For example most, if not all, of the agreements involving the EETPU include no-strike clauses and several of these make use of pendulum arbitration. Under this method if the two sides reach deadlock on a certain issue then it is resolved by an outside and so-called independent arbitrator who is bound to decide in favour of either the company or the union there being no possibility of a compromise solution. The argument in favour of such a method is that the two sides will be encouraged to reach a negotiated settlement due to the danger that the arbitrator may decide against them. The problem from a trade union viewpoint is that being unable to take any industrial action they will be unable to put any pressure on the arbitrator. In a situation where the company is determined to force through a change it is unlikely that the arbitrator's decision will be reached on the basis of neutrality. Whilst this system may provide some benefit to workers' organisations when they are in a weak bargaining position, unions tied to such agreements will be unable to use their full might when they are in a stronger bargaining position. It is this longer term goal, the ability to constrain union bargaining power when it is at its height, that lies behind the desire of employers for no-strike agreements as part of single union deals. It could of course be pointed out that such agreements are not as yet legally binding but action could be taken against any employees who engage in industrial action on an individual basis in breach of contract.

Not all of the single union deals signed in recent years include no-strike provisions. For example the agreements between the GMB and British Cable Services and between Dunlop's Tyneside plant and the AEU do not include such a clause. The agreement involving the GMB stipulates that both sides should not take any industrial action while a dispute is in procedure. The AEU's deal with Dunlop states that if management and the union cannot resolve a dispute they will mutually accept ACAS conciliation. The agreement between the TGWU and Norsk includes a six stage procedure for the resolution of collective issues. Stage six. if reached, allows for the matter to be put to a secret ballot, with the wording on the ballot form subject to joint agreement. The clause relating to the overall dispute procedure states that during all stages of the procedure:

  It is clearly understood that there will be no deviation from normal working by way of coercion or disruptive action by individuals or groups etc. in any circumstances . . . The company in return will not invoke any form of lockout.

It goes on to warn workers that.

should any individual or group of employees wish to challenge this practice he/she or they will be severely disciplined 

Trade union representation 

Some single union deals also include the type of communication mechanisms that exist in many of the more sophisticated non-union companies. For example, in many of the EETPU deals and in the TGWU's agreement with Norsk, there exists a Company Advisory Board or in the latter case a council. The agreement between the EETPU and Toshiba includes a provision for the establishment of a Company Advisory Board (CoAB). In many ways the function of this body limits the traditional role of the trade unions. The CoAB at Toshiba includes the following provisions. Regarding the election of employee representatives to sit on this body it states that in areas where trade union representation exists the candidate may be either a unionist or non-unionist. Regarding the role of a CoAB member it stipulates that a person should come to a meeting with an open mind and should not be mandated. In addition the member must not be committed to a trade union line. Furthermore the rules accepted by the EETPU state:

  The EETPU. recognises that all collective issues will be raised at CoAB in the first instance and will only be taken up by the trade union if they cannot be resolved by CoAB advice. [3]

The CoAB thus reduces trade union involvement; union representation is not welcomed and where it has trade union representatives on it they are constrained in representing either the interests of their members or union policy.

New technology

The movement in recent years to single union deals is in many ways connected to the demands and possibilities that new technology makes on, and offers to, the representatives of capital. Implicit in the following is the limitations of trade unionism as it is pulled along with, and can only respond in a defensive manner to. the dictates of capital. Here we can also see how technology under capitalism is used not to free but to chain workers to the demands of capital. For one of the most important issues for management in the 1980s is the need to be able to use labour in a flexible way so as to keep expensive production systems flowing and to meet rapid changes in market demand. Many companies who have negotiated single union deals and many others who have pursued a non-union strategy, operate in high technology industries where the need to have a flexible labour force is especially important. Where a union does exist it is obviously easier to move people from job to job in an environment where there are not separate unions representing different crafts and occupations. A flexible labour force means workers being trained in a variety of skills (cross skill training) so they can be moved around as the productive needs of the company dictate. Thus, in many high technology companies, there is a movement to single status employment conditions, common wages and conditions for both blue and white collar workers. Flexibility of labour and single status objectives, two concepts that go hand in hand, are included in most single union deals. It has in fact been noted that one of the major reasons why Nissan rejected a multi-union deal was because it was felt that this would have led to an erosion of the company's flexibility and single status objectives.

The section in the agreement between Norsk and the TGWU on flexibility states that it is the company's policy that workers will have no rigid job demarcations. It goes on to state:

  The whole objective is to achieve a level of flexibility on site so that any employee will, when the need arises, be prepared and willing to do any job regardless of status, function or position provided that the work to be done is within the individual's ability and competence level. In order to achieve this degree of flexibility the company acknowledges the need for extra training to which all employees are expected to be committed, whether it be to be trained themselves or to train others. [4]

The above objective is obviously easier in a single union rather than a multi-union environment.

The point should also be made that new technology not only creates new demands on employers which are passed on to the workforce, it also creates new opportunities for the representatives of capital in their struggle with organised labour. In the environment of the 1980s changes in technology, combined with anti-union legislation and an economic recession, have enabled employers to curtail or even end craft control and to initiate procedures to curb union bargaining power. A prime example of this was the print industry. In this situation unions have been powerless to offer much resistance.

The socialist view

What should be the attitude of a socialist or trade unionist to the type of issues we have focused on here? Firstly a pessimistic view of the future of the trade union movement in Britain can be over-emphasised. As indicated. even if single union deals continue to grow as many argue they will, it is the content of the deal that needs to be examined. One vital feature is that trade union organisation needs to be based on recruitment of employees not on agreements with top management over workers' heads. Secondly such setbacks that have occurred for unions have taken place in a hostile environment that the history of capitalism indicates will not last forever. Thirdly the type of setbacks suffered by trade unions in America where trade union density has declined to somewhere around 18 per cent from a figure of over 35 per cent in 1945, seems unlikely to be repeated in Britain. Unions in Britain in many industries have become too deeply enmeshed in the collective bargaining mechanisms to be easily removed. This factor and the new found ability of well organised groups to use secret ballots to their own advantage was evident in the recent Ford dispute as well as in other recent disputes in the motor industry in particular.

On the other hand there are many problems to overcome. The anti-democratic antiunion laws of the present government are still causing major problems as the NUS's dispute with P&O has indicated. In response to changes in new technology, a change in union structure and tactics may be required. This could perhaps develop at workplace level. For example unions at Shell have accepted more flexible working arrangements but have been able to maintain a multi-union situation. To help achieve this they have reformed their shop steward representative constituencies.

Unions are, of course, necessary and vital organisations for the working class so long as capitalism remains in operation. Any member of the working class who believes that his or her interests can be served by company consultative committees or the like has little understanding of the class struggle that takes place daily within capitalism, based as it is on the irreconcilable interests of those who produce but do not possess and those who possess but do not produce. Certainly what makes a person a socialist is an understanding of the history of working class struggle against a class with opposing interests. A reading and understanding of that history shows us that the only solution is the building of a movement which is capable of creating a society which is not divided into employers and employed or state versus people. Furthermore the society that replaces capitalism will not be based on production for exchange by means of economically coerced labour, but on production for use through understanding and voluntary co-operation. The basis of such a society is the common ownership of the means of production which will replace private or state ownership. With no class divisions based on a clash of economic interest, trade unions will no longer be necessary.

However whilst current divisions remain it is in the interests of the working class to organise themselves in trade unions, become active in them and undertake the defensive struggle within capitalism. Furthermore trade unionists should campaign for a movement free from any attachments to a political party that stands for capitalism and this of course includes the Labour Party. But trade unions have their limitations — they can only react to capitalism; they cannot end it. So trade unionists, and indeed all members of the working class, need to go further and help build a movement capable of ending the capitalist system.

Ray Carr

[1] Details of this can be found in a pamphlet produced by Northern College in co-operation with TGWU Region 10 — I. Linn. Single Union Deals. This is a case study of the Norsk Hydro Plant, at Immingham. Humberside.

[2]  I. Linn — Single Union Deals, p. 16

[3] Agreement between EETPU and Toshiba on CoAB

[4]  Linn, op. cit. p. 16

Between the Lines: Freedom and finance (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Freedom and finance

The Financial Times (4 May) carried an article by its TV critic, all full of fury and libertarian sentiments. The FT's man imagines that he has spotted an anomaly. On the one hand, he observes, the Government is going mad trying to sell off as much of the media as can be flogged, all in the name of increased "economic freedom", while at the same time the same Government is, through its sickening attempts to out-Stalin Stalin, acting as a dangerous threat to whatever remnants of political freedom TV producers still have left. If the Government really believes in freedom, asks the FT innocent, why do they not extend this to political freedom? The FTs TV critic would be well advised to go away and play with his toys. Surely it does not require very much intelligence to see the intimate connection between so-called market freedom and actual political tyranny. After all, if the Government is really serious in its efforts to make TV a suitable area for capitalist investment, then it is only proper that it must ensure that TV will serve the class interest of those who are being invited to invest. The campaign of arrogant persecution has ranged from the appointment of Her Thatcherness's own poodle. Marmaduke Hussey, to run the BBC, to the raid by the police upon BBC Scotland when they planned to show a documentary which the Government considered to contain information unfit for the eyes of the witless proles, to the most recent threat by the Prime Minister to punish the Independent (sic) Broadcasting Authority for having the audacity to show a This Week documentary (ITV. 28 April. 8.30pm) exposing the shoot-to-kill tactics being employed by the louts of the SAS.

Journalists working within both BBC and ITN newsrooms will testify to the extreme political pressure which they are currently experiencing. This should come as no surprise to the FT. the relationship between freedom and finance has never a happy one. In the USA. where "economic freedom" has been dragged further down into the gutter of "free enterprise" than it has yet to be over here, TV studio discussions are shown in which it only becomes clear after you have been watching them for a while that they are paid adverts for particular commodities. You switch on your TV to watch an apparently free studio discussion on skin care, when all of a sudden the presenter pulls out from his pocket a tube of chemical garbage and, with the sort of smile that you thought went out of style with Japanese torture camps, says. "Well, I for one never come into the studio without my packet of Ripoff's Miracle Wart Remover". This opens up a whole range of possibilities for British TV. Perhaps we could have Rupert Murdoch sponsoring a new Sun-style News At Ten, the directors of Guinness sponsoring Crimewatch, and the SDP sponsoring One Man And His Dog. (The latter is assuming that The Two Davids could be reconciled for a suitable fee.)

Realspeak

Most political discussion on TV is as phoney as hell. It consists of people who know nothing making statements which mean nothing about subjects which amount to nothing. More often than not such emissions of unadulterated wind are presided over by that Know-Nothing-In-Chief, Sir Robin Day. On a recent Question Time programme a member of The Socialist Party who was in the audience managed to mention the party's name and indulge in 30 seconds of TV free speech. Sir Robin looked bemused, an expression which matches perfectly his level of political intelligence. Thirty seconds of permitted questioning from the audience is not enough for revolutionary socialists and if the BBC thinks that is. then we will have to convince them that they have made a mistake. Amidst the flow of incessant hot air and tripe which is presented in the name of TV debate, After Dark (C4. 11.30pm-4am on Saturday/Sundays) is a breath of fresh air. At last here is a studio discussion format which actually allows real talk to occur. There have been some very stimulating programmes in the recent series. The memorable debate on homelessness when "Spider", the homeless punk, told the Tory backbencher that he was talking out of his backside and that whoever is elected. Labour or Tory, they would all carry on running capitalism; the discussion on the Grand National — of all things — in which the obnoxious racing commentator for Channel Four declared that all the unemployed in Liverpool are indolent scroungers and all socialists are the scum of the earth and a local worker from Aintree tore the bigot's prejudices to pieces and exposed the capitalist constraints involved in modern sport; the discussion about fashion in which the designer, Bruce Oldfield, who apparently makes dresses for Di, the Royal Clothes Horse, was confronted most eloquently by an Asian trade unionist from the West Midlands who spoke about the sweatshops where the fancy clothes of the rich are produced; there was that beautiful moment when the General who was discussing terrorism explained that there was no war going on in Ireland, but British troops had a right to shoot Irish workers without asking questions first because there was a war on.

These are good discussions because they are unconstrained by time limits and interfering presenters. They are good — but only as far as they go. What has been desperately lacking from so many of the After Dark debates has been any hint of a solution. How necessary it was. when the subject of homelessness was discussed for over four hours! Just one studio guest could have explained how easy it would be to provide decent homes for all if only the barrier of production for rent, interest and profit was destroyed. When they discussed terrorism it was fundamentally important that at least one person should point out the need to examine the root cause of killing in the modern world, regardless of whether such barbarism is practised by thugs paid by the state or thugs who want to set up a new state. The programme on the war in Ireland on 7/8 May was an excellent example of the crying need for socialist comment on After Dark. Before the programme we had written in to the programme's producers telling them about a socialist from Belfast who is well qualified to offer a unique, non-sectarian, revolutionary analysis of the Irish situation. It seems that the producers at C4 did not want to let such comments infect the minds of the viewers. Our comrade was not invited to appear. Instead, the so-called socialist analysis was presented by Eamonn McCann of the Leninist SWP. Rarely has the socialist label been so miserably betrayed. McCann is an IRA fellow traveller, and a very eloquent one too. But he was asked several times during the discussion. "Okay, Eamonn, you are a socialist, you claim to have a solution to the Irish question, what is it?" McCann did not even offer half a solution. All that he did was repeat the worn out cliches of radical republicanism which will never take the workers of Ireland anywhere. After Dark is, without exaggeration, one of the most important developments in the format of TV discussion in the history of the medium. Thanks for the great format; now let's fill it with a bit of hard socialist talk.

Loadsamoney

Friday Night Live (C4. Fridays. 10.30pm. series now finished) is a show which I watched with a mixture of irritation and amusement. It was a showcase for so-called alternative comedy, and after a decade or so of The Benny Hill Show and Terry and June, even death by hanging would be a pleasant alternative. But . . . Ben Elton, the show's presenter, seems to think that he can make a career out of simply not being Jimmy Tarbuck or Jim Davidson. Most of us are not as unfunny as Tarby or as filthily racist as Davidson, but we do not expect to get paid for it. Alas, it is not enough to simply not be a bloody awful comedian to be a good comedian. The trouble with Elton is that, despite all of his pious and strained efforts to be different. he is just another comedian who wants us to laugh every fifteen seconds at his preconceived gags. Ben Elton is a Labour Party supporter who in the Labour election rally in Islington last year was seen waving his manifesto about and joining with the other reformists in the undignified effort to publicly crawl up Kinnock in the way that Tarby and Monkhouse and the other creeps crawled up Thatcher. If Elton thinks that he is radically funny because he can squeeze a few giggles out of a trendy left audience at the expense of Norman Tebbit or Edwina Currie, then he is wrong. He is not poking fun at the system — and humour is a great weapon for doing that but, like the prefects at the public school revue, making a few near-the-knuckle gags against the present exploiters. Maggie will not be shaking in her boots.

The character who has come out of the series as a quite brilliant comic talent — comparable, I would argue, with the Hancocks, the Alf Garnetts and the Cleeses who seem somehow to transcend comic conventions and make people laugh about things which we had not laughed at before — is Harry Enfield. His Stavros is a fine illustration of great comic observation. But, much more importantly from the perspective of those of us who seek the establishment of a moneyless world society, his "Loadsamoney'' character summed up so much of what capitalism is deforming many workers into becoming. A man who cares for no one and no principle, who is obsessed by the wad of thick banknotes which he waves in the air to affirm his identity, and whose humanity has been absorbed into a single phrase which expresses his fragile security. Also funny is Enfield's other creation. ''Buggerallmoney". the macho northern worker who is as hard as nails and as thick as a brick. The humourless SWP, which likes the image of hard-as-nails northern, macho workers, has attacked Enfield for depicting a character which is supposed to insult the Newcastle unemployed. In an interview in Melody Maker (30 April) Enfield rightly accuses the SWP of not knowing their Marxism. He goes on to make the important point about the capitalist system's failure to provide for "the human factor": "That doesn't just mean people on the dole; there are also the people in jobs who are being dehumanised by it all". Quite right. We look forward to Harry Enfield's next character. "Letsabolishmoney". Mind you, if we started doing that, what would Ben Elton's agent have to say, and what would the dummies at the FT have to write about?

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

With regards to Harry Enfield, from an obituary for John Crump:

  " . . . John [Crump] retired early and returned to live in York, where he had spent most of his academic life teaching politics and Japanese studies at the university there. Anecdotally, one of his students was the comedian Harry Enfield who, under his direction, wrote a dissertation on the SPGB."

Party News (1988)

Party News from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Camden and North West London Branches have recently concluded another series of 10 lectures, which have been a regular feature of their joint activity for the past few years. In addition, an extra meeting was arranged dealing with Russia — 70 years on from the Revolution.

The main series covered a wide range of subjects fundamental to the socialist case, plus two or three that dealt with the more "popular" features of capitalism. The Branches feel that it is still essential for the theoretical basis of our case to be aired and related to 20th century capitalism, this knowledge is essential for the socialist propagandist to deal with the spurious claims of the reformist parties.

The attendance for the series ranged from 25 to 40 and the lectures were marked by the high degree of research and investigation on the part of the speakers. A "Fact Sheet" was produced for each lecture, giving interesting quotes and statistics about the subject matter, copies are available on application to the Branch secretaries.

We should like to thank all those who attended and made the series such a success and to state that the branches are now organising a further series to commence in the Autumn.

Camden and N.W. London Branches 

Observations: Housewife's choice (1988)

The Observations Column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The current advertisement, designed to convince the young, white male that he should become an Army Officer, is merely the latest in a series of misrepresentation, and deceit. Headlined, “Detergent or Deterrent” the ad goes on to make a comparison between the boring job of Junior Account Executive engaged in “persuading the nation’s housewives to switch from one make of soap powder to another, “and the exciting life of an Army Officer,” “safeguarding the way of life that offers them”, (the housewives I think they mean), "a freedom of choice in the first place”.

Agog to discover what other incentives beside the spurious one of defending the right of capitalists to continue to produce for profit, and not for need, I read on. What macho male could resist the opportunity to engage in battle manoeuvres with NATO in Germany? Learn jungle warfare techniques in Belize? Indulge in a camel trek across Australia? Go deep sea diving of Ascension Island? Obvious innit? Beats selling washing powder any day of the week. Where do I sign? But doesn’t the Advertising Standards Authority tell us to complain about any advertisement that isn’t decent, honest and truthful? What would an honest advertisement — a contradiction in terms under capitalism — say? Members of the working class are needed, as soldiers, by the British ruling class to act as a public power of coercion, and to fight to protect their markets, raw materials and trade routes against other capitalist states.

When socialism is established, it will be up to society as a whole to decide whether it wants to produce myriad brands of washing powder. However, one thing is certain, with the abolition of class antagonism, soldiering will become unnecessary, no longer needed to do capitalism’s dirty work.

Dave Coggan

Blogger's Note:

This is the 14,000 post on the blog. Fingers crossed I can hit 15,000 by the end of the year.

Observations: Class struggle and social revolution (1988)

The Observations Column from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a leading article in the Guardian (4 May), the writer arrogantly admonished both the NUS and the P&O employers for getting involved in what the writer termed "19th Century Class Warfare”. However, the class struggle exists because a minority have social and economic power over the majority. The class struggle is the conflict of material interests existing between two antagonistic classes — capital and labour — and is not the figment of a Marxist’s imagination. Nor is it an apparition of the past at odds with the so-called "New Realism” of the 1980s. Under Capitalism the class struggle is unavoidable.

Indeed in the very next column the Guardian editorial highlighted the strikes and civil disturbances currently taking place in Poland. The writer even drew attention to the factors involved: a government forced by economic necessity to remove food subsidies and on the other hand workers struggling for higher wages against state enterprises trying to hold down wages in a bid to increase productivity and become more competitive. So the class struggle also exists in state capitalist countries. State capitalism and private capitalism are after all two sides of the same coin.

Unfortunately for politicians and journalists alike the class struggle is not going to disappear by wishful thinking; nor will it go away by the introduction of economic or social reforms nor by draconian anti-trade union legislation. The state coercion at the disposal of the Polish state, where strikes are in the process of being made illegal, did not stop workers striking there. Nor did it stop building workers in Nicaragua striking against the ruling class there for higher wages and better working conditions.

So whilst capitalism remains, the class struggle remains. The solution to this struggle between capital and labour, a solution propounded by socialists throughout this century, is that workers must organise politically to abolish capitalism. Trade unions, strikes, and other manifestations of the class struggle can only go so far. They are always limited by the class position of the workers and the vagaries of the trade cycle which capitalism periodically passes through. In the end, workers must realise that it is in their immediate interests to push the class struggle to its limit and abolish capitalism.

Richard Lloyd