Sting in the Tail: Born in the USA (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Born in the USA

American politicians are fond of boasting that the USA is a classless society. But the truth of the matter is revealed In a Michigan newspaper The Grand Rapids Press (26 April 1990) under the headline "One Child In Five Now Lives In Poverty".

Reporting the National Commission on Children, a group established by Congress and its members appointed by the President and House and Senate leaders, It showed the real position of the working class in the USA.

Malnutrition affects nearly a half-million children, and every night an estimated 100,000 go to sleep homeless —
The poverty rate in 1987, the year the report cited, was 15% for white children but 45% for black children and 39% for Hispanic children.

In the same issue the newspaper reports:

The heirs of Edward Steichen, a pillar of New York's Museum of Modern Art, are battling the museum over an $800,000 painting by Matisse that was bequeathed to the photographer's 6 year old great- grand-daughter.

One kid stands to inherit $800,000 while 20% of US kids suffer official poverty. No class differences In the USA?

Nothing Sacred

The Anglican Church has lost 600,000 members and demolished 289 churches in the last 20 years.

But the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market 'Think Tank", has come up with a solution. They propose according to The Guardian (16 April 1990) that the clergy be:

. . . paid on a performance basis and regarded as a 10,000 strong sales force established on prime sites throughout Britain.

What the priests would earn would depend on how successfully they could:

. . . go into the highways and byways and compel them (customers) to come in.

In other words, get bums on seats or else. 

Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie had converted, among others, the priests into paid wage-labourers, but even they could hardly have dreamt that one day the priestly wages might be based on piece-work!

Dancing in the Street?

"If Labour Wins" was the title of John Molyneux's article in Socialist Worker for April 17,1990.

He predicts that a Tory defeat at the next general election will see "mass dancing in the streets". So much for the night before but what about the morning after when the new Labour government is faced with "economic crisis"?

Molyneux's prediction is that Labour will "turn on" and "squeeze the working class" because that is "what every Labour government has done when faced with economic crisis" and he provides chapter and verse to prove this.

We can agree with Molyneux's predictions about a future Labour government, but we can do a little predicting of our own: it is that, despite all their denunciations of Labour, Molyneux and the rest of the Socialist Workers Party will be urging workers to put their heads in the noose by voting Labour at the next general election. Any bets?

US Speak

George Orwell in his book, "1984" invented "Newspeak" a language that allowed the ruling elite to describe the Ministry of War as the Ministry of Peace.

According to the report of Time (30 April 1990) Orwell's Newspeak is in full bloom In 1990.

 The Strategic Air Command has decided to change its longtime motto 'Peace Is our Profession", to "War is our Profession - Peace Is our Product".

Boom and Bust

John Ashcroft, ex-chairman of Coloroll, was a stock market darling of the 80's.

And no wonder. Coloroll started the decade as a small wallpaper manufacturer but under Ashcroft's guidance it borrowed heavily to buy companies making glassware, ceramics, textiles, furniture and carpets.

This mad dash for expansion was fine when the economy was booming and interest rates were low, but when they shot skyward then High Street spending plunged and so did Coloroll's profits. Its shares have fallen from a peak of 383p to only 15p.

Now Coloroll's very future is in doubt and Ashcroft joins the long list of financial whlzz-kids who, despite all the evidence, believed that capitalism's booms will last forever.

The Sick Society

The Socialist view that Health, like everything else in a capitalist society, is largely decided by economic factors, has recently been vindicated by the World Health Organisation.

 If current global trends continue, an estimated 200 million persons world-wide could die prematurely from preventable Illnesses in the 1990s, according to a report on the state of world health released yesterday by the World Health Organisation.
"Disease is the most destructive force In the world", Dr. Hiroshi Najakajina, director general of WHO said in a statement . . .
"many of the world's illnesses are preventable or treatable with inexpensive vaccines, anti-blotics or oral rehydration therapy", Nakajina said. "What Is needed Is to mobilise the political will to make this a healthier world."

The Boston Globe (30 April 1990)

Dr. Nakajina's "political will" cannot solve the problem while capitalism, with its production for profit motive, remains. People are dying today simply because they cannot afford to buy the treatments that would cure them.

What could be a more powerful argument for a new society, based on production solely for use, than the next piece of Information in the WHO report?

 . . . more than 8,000 children die every day from diseases that could have been prevented by immunization, and almost 11.000 die daily of dehydration caused by diarrhoea, the report said. Further, an additional 8,000 die every day of pneumonia, WHO said. Much of the suffering can be alleviated, the report said.

Holiday Competition

The news that Thomson and Intasun, the two biggest package holiday operators, have increased their 1990 prices by around 12% and scrapped over a million holidays from their 1990 plans should surprise no one.

For years they have conducted a fierce price-war which was hailed by the free marketeers as a glorious example of the benefits which competition brings to consumers.

True, prices dropped ever lower in real terms until a holiday in Spain could be bought for a ridiculous £29. But this meant that profits in the industry almost vanished. The average profit on a holiday is now around only £1.20 and many operators have gone bust or been swallowed up.

These tiny profits have meant tiny re-investment, and the resulting decline in standards of holiday hotels and apartments has produced massive customer dissatisfaction and fewer bookings.

So besides providing rising prices and less choice for consumers, the package holiday industry has fallen into fewer and fewer hands until Thomson and Intasun have more than 60% of the market between them. Ah, the benefits of cut-throat competition!

Question Time (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

If politicians know the truth
Why do they tell lies? 

If British Rail belongs to the public
Why do I have to pay my fare? 

If this is my country
Which bit is mine? 

If there are mountains of food
Why do people starve? 

If capitalism works
Why do people put up with it? 

If I am free
Why am I a wage slave? 

If this is democracy
Why can't I have my say ? 

If I am a polar bear
Why am I so cold?
                                                    M. J. Tavener

Letters: Non-manual labour (1990)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Non-manual labour

Dear Editors,

I am writing in the hope that you can enlighten me on a point concerning non-manual labour. Unless I have completely misunderstood the dynamics of capitalism, the exploitation of the workers rests on the extraction of surplus value, and the wages system is the mechanism by which this robbery takes place. This is easily observable in, say, mining or steel production. Physical wealth is produced, expropriated and sold. However with unproductive work such as, for example, a typist or a bank clerk, what wealth is being produced? How can someone who is producing no wealth be exploited through the extraction of surplus value? What wealth is being expropriated?

I understand that much non-manual labour is an essential part of production (nursing, planning etc) and that this labour, indirectly, produces wealth. However, doesn't this suggest perhaps the existence of two different types of exploitation? (1) the ‘real’ economy—physical wealth production on which we all depend, and (2) non-manual labour, some of which (like the occupations mentioned above) is essential and some of which (bank clerks, etc) is completely wasted labour. The exploitation of someone in the 'real' economy is easily analysed—the owner's outlay (wages, rent, repairs, etc) can be said to cost x, commodities are sold for y. the difference between x and y being profits.

Can the exploitation of a typist be quantified in this way? A miner pays his own wages, he has produced wealth over and above the value of his wages, does a typist do the same? Who pays for a bank clerk's wages if they don't actually produce any wealth? Is it enough to say that employers are happy to pay unproductive workers because within the context of the money system they do serve a purpose? Are unproductive workers a sort of subsidised workforce, paid for with wealth accumulated through physical wealth production? If so, doesn't that imply a rather more sophisticated understanding of the system amongst employers than blind obedience to the God of profit—if they are prepared to forsake immediate gain by employing workers whom they can’t actually physically exploit for profit, or is it a situation that developed naturally?

T.M.

Glasgow.

Reply:

Production is the transformation of materials that originally came from nature into something that serves some human purpose. This necessarily involves both physical (manual) and mental (non-manual) work. Mining is not just a question of digging. It also involves surveying, planning how to extract the mineral and how bring it to the surface, and the like. This work is just as necessary to production as the physical side. Originally the same person would have done both but, as the division of labour has grown, the manual and mental aspects have come to be performed by different groups of workers. All of them are equally engaged in productive labour, including, we might add. the typists who type out the plans.

Under capitalism it is not just use-values that are produced but commodities, or items produced for sale. This means that a whole series of other operations become necessary which wouldn't exist if production were carried on simply for use: buying, selling, accounting, banking, insurance. Necessary though these activities are under capitalism, they are not productive as they do not enhance the usefulness of the product. This does not mean that the workers involved in them are not exploited. As Marx explained in Chapter 6 of Volume 2 of Capital on "The Costs of Circulation", such workers, just as much as productive workers, are paid less in terms of labour-time than the time they actually work and so perform unpaid labour for their employer. It is this unpaid labour which transfers a part of the surplus value produced in the productive sector to their employer. So an employer of unproductive labour has not abandoned the pursuit of profit. Quite the contrary.

Editors

South Africa

Dear Editor,

P. Lawrence, in his article on South Africa, asserts that “tribal differences also divided the African peoples who in the seventeenth century had migrated south from East Africa (Socialist Standard, April 1990). This claim is also to be found in the more dated official literature such as the South African Department of Information publication Progress through Separate Development (1973) and anyone familiar with Apartheid historiography will readily appreciate its purpose as one of a battery of “myths of origin" that Apartheid ideologists have deployed over the years to legitimate the contemporary distribution of land between "White South Africa" (87 percent) and the "Black Homelands" (13 percent). According to the above publication, "the story of modern South Africa dates back more than 300 years when the forefathers of the various Bantu or black nations of South Africa and the white South African nation, all foreigners to southern Africa, converged in relatively small numbers and from different directions on what was, at the time, a practically empty country except for small roving bands of primitive nomadic Bushmen and Hottentots" (p.12). The present distribution of land between whites and blacks, it is argued, reflects the original pattern of settlement of these two groups and involved "neither colonialism nor conquest".

This bears no relation to the historical reality. For some time now it has been known that the interior of South Africa was populated by iron age Bantu-speaking farmers long before the 17th century (when the Dutch arrived at the Cape) and was continuously occupied since, notwithstanding the Mfecane, or inter-tribal wars in the early 19th century, which supposedly depopulated the interior prior to the Great Trek. According to Shula Marks, there is substantial evidence to suggest that the first wave of Bantu migration arrived south of the Limpopo River “early in the first millenium AD, and not, as had been previously assumed, relatively late in the second" (History Today January 1980). There are, for example, numerous traces of ancient African settlements and mine workings throughout much of so-called White South Africa. Indeed, the archaeological evidence against the thesis of "simultaneous occupation” is now so overwhelming that not even the official propaganda of the South Africa Government bothers any longer to peddle this nonsense (cf. Official Yearbook of South Africa 1983). It is therefore all the more surprising that one should find it being perpetuated in, of all places, the Socialist Standard

Robin Cox, 

Haslemere, Surrey

Reply:

Although we never expressed the view our correspondent has read into the article (we merely stated that there was a migration of Bantu-speaking tribes, in the 17th century, into what is now South Africa, which is true), we naturally defer to the archeological evidence, not that it has any contemporary political relevance. The fact the Bantu-speakers were there first does not justify the claim that the ruling class in South Africa should be drawn from their ranks any more than the Afrikaner nationalist distortion of history justifies their claim that the ruling class should be white. Socialist are not interested in such arguments. We say there should be no ruling class, no states with their frontiers and nationalist mythologies, and no monopoly ownership of land

Editors.

The Case for Equality (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a socialist society all human beings will be equals. Without equality there could be no society which could accurately call itself socialist. So, the class-divided, extremely hierarchical nations such as Russia and China, which have a class of privileged party bureaucrats ruling over the majority of the population who are wage slaves, are clearly not socialist—they are part of the social inequality which characterises capitalism.

What do we mean by social equality? We mean that we seek to create a condition of social organisation in which no person is entitled to be regarded and rewarded as superior to others and no person is to be condemned to the disadvantaged position of being socially inferior. In a society of equality there will be no socially superior or inferior people.

We are not advocating a social situation in which no person is superior to another person in any respect. In a society of human equality one person might be a better violinist than another. The inferior violinist might be a better poet or bricklayer than the superior violinist. The significant point is that such differences of achievement (which are almost certainly conditioned rather than innate) will not lead to social inequality. In a society of equals the better violinist will have no opportunity to live a more confortable life than the violinist whose music sounds awful. The person who is an expert at cutting up human bodies (a surgeon) will have no greater access to pleasant accommodation or decent cigars than the person who is skilled at fixing motor cars (a mechanic). Society needs surgeons and mechanics, violinists and poets.

Just as a society of equality will include people with different levels of talent and skill in various areas of life and work, so it will be a society of humans who are different from each other. The distinction must be understood between equality and sameness. If the present writer is asked whether he prefers the plays of Chekhov or Pinter he will reply that he enjoys them equally; this does not mean that he regards them as being the same—in fact, the two writers are very different from one another. The two playwrights (in the view of the present writer) are worthy of equal respect. To say that the dedication of a nurse and a firefighter is equal is not to suggest that both types of work are the same. Equality does not imply conformity or uniformity. On the contrary, it implies that our appreciation of our fellow human beings is not governed by a monolithic value structure, but that we have the capacity to respect different abilities without subordinating one to the other. Rather infantile critics of the case for social equality suggest that we are advocating some kind of absolute natural equality. Jerome K. Jerome wrote a rather foolish satire about utopia in which he depicted a society in which everyone had to be the same height and weight. Clearly, social equality will not require the elimination of natural human differences. If one person has natural advantages over another (such as the physical strength of the young over the old and feeble) that will not allow such a person to have social domination over those who are so-called natural inferiors. Natural differences such as gender or skin colour are no basis for social differences; it is only in a society of human inequality that these natural distinctions become parts of a battle for power

The facts of social inequality
Only a fool or a liar would contend that we are now living in a society of human equality. World capitalism has as its first characteristic the unnatural, artificial inequality between class and class. In Britain today the richest 1 per cent of the population own more of the marketable wealth than all of the poorest 80 per cent added together. The richest 10 per cent own between them more than half of all the wealth in Britain. In short, even if the 90 per cent joined together we would still be poorer than the richest 10 per cent. Approximately one in four humans alive today are malnourished because they cannot afford to buy food. In Britain and the USA one in four children live on or below the official poverty line. The most recent World Land Census, carried out by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, showed that 2.5 per cent of the people who own land of over 250 acres own between them 75 per cent of all the world's privately owned land.

These are the dry statistics of inequality. The more visible and emotionally comprehensible features of inequality are before us every day. The sight of kids sleeping on the streets on cold nights while estate agents advertise six-bedroom houses for over a million pounds—often as suitable second homes for the useless rich. The queues in the casualty departments of NHS hospitals where the poor must wait for serious injuries to be treated, while round the corner in the private wing there are comfortable lounges for the rich to wait in while they demand the very best in health care, regardless of whether they are ill or not. The mothers who cannot afford to feed their children and keep them warm on £40 a week, while a couple of miles away five-star hotels are serving dinner to parasites at £250 a head. Only the socially blind will deny the existence of social inequality: only the socially brutalised will regard it as a desirable condition of affairs.

Is social equality possible? Some have argued that it is not. and if we are to argue scientifically we must examine and dispose of their claims. We can commence with the most stupid argument against equality; the religious objection. In 1784 George Pitt argued against the doctrine of equality";

  A doctrine, the fallacy of which is proved by the experience of every day. by the concurrence of all history from the earliest times, and above all by the contemplation of all the works of the Creator, the very essence of which appears to be gradation or inequality. (Letter To A Young Nobleman.)

In short, humans are created to be unequal. The Church has pursued this propaganda with vigour: The rich man in his castle, the poor man in his hut. God made them high and lowly . . . Apart from the fact that this nonsense ignores the first 40,000 years of human society (the great majority of our history) in which classes did not exist, its entire reasoning depends upon the completely unproven and utterly unprovable belief that the world was designed by an over-seeing being who decided how it would be organised. The religious defence of inequality is an ideology designed by the defenders of the rich who offer a creationist account of human inequality as a way of keeping the ignorantly—believing inferiors in their place. Lest there be any doubt about this we can turn to the writings of the prominent 18th century Christian and conservative, Edmund Burke, who spelt out the religious purpose in clear terms:

   The great body of people must not find the principle of natural insubordination . . . rooted out of their minds. They must respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportionate to the endeavour, they must be taught to console themselves with the prospect of divine justice.

The claim that inequality was designed by a god requires a belief in an unprovable. immaterial deity, and then a respect for such a supernatural being who designs poverty and social misery for the majority class in society.

Biology not determinant
Different from the religious case against equality—but not all that different—is the biological theory. The infamous Professor Eysenck states that "biology sets an absolute barrier to egalitarianism"; we are all born with unequal capacities to become intelligent; this intellectual inequality is genetically inherited and determines our status in life: "Clearly, the whole course of development of a child's intellectual abilities is largely laid down genetically" (The Inequality of Man).

This biological determinism replaces genes for gods and contends that we are all born to fit into an intellectual hierarchy and must make the best of what our genes allow us to become. Eysenck and others have attempted to link superior genetic abilities with white skin colour. Others, such as Steven Goldberg in The Inevitability of Patriarchy, have tried to make a case for the biological inferiority of women. The case for biological inequality rests upon some very weak reasoning. Firstly, its conception of "intelligence' is a very narrow one, rooted in the limited history of European and American capitalism. If Professor Eysenck was left to survive in an African desert region we wonder how "intelligent" he would be in relation to the people who were brought up in such an area. The best evidence regarding human behaviour points to the fact that humans learn to be what we are: the extent to which we inherit genetically any mental aspects of our being is negligible. Even if there was some truth in the Eysenck theory, there would be no more reason for a society of human equality to discriminate against less intelligent people than it would be to discriminate against those who are physically disabled.

Davis and Moore have constructed a sociological theory which is simply an updated version of last century's Social Darwinist defence of social inequality:

  Social inequality is . . . an unconsciously evolved device by which societies insure that the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most important persons. (Some Principles of Stratification).

According to this theory, society offers rewards to the people it needs most. Superiority is a reward for usefulness. If you are socially useless you will become inferior. The fittest will survive and thrive. The only problem with this theory—a pretty major problem for a would-be scientific analysis—is that it bears no relationship to the experience of how capitalist society actually does run. We know very well that under capitalism the useless stockbroker is rewarded (by income) much more than the nurse; the parasitical Royals are rewarded with billions of pounds for waving at people, while workers who grow food are often so poor that they cannot afford to eat properly. The belief that life is one great competition in which the capitalists win because they are the most able is a nice idea if you are a millionaire, but a lot of rot if you consider that most millionaires inherit their fortunes, and that these were obtained in the first place by exploiting the labour skills of others.

Free society of equals

It will not take long for the thoughtful reader to detect that all of the arguments against social equality are unhistorical. The god-myth has no basis in material history and entirely ignores the thousands of years during which humans lived in a condition of what social anthropologists call primitive communism. Were these humans (the majority of those who have lived on the planet) built by god with a design fault? The biological theory relies upon unproven notions of inherited intelligence and defines intelligence in an unhistorical manner. The modern Social Darwinists can see no further than the social order of the capitalist jungle.

There is one further argument against social equality which is sometimes put by capitalism's defenders and which does make sense. It is said that equality can only occur by limiting certain liberties which currently exist. This is quite true. The liberty of the least needy to push in front of the most needy in the queue for food, clothing and shelter will be taken away in a socially equal society. The liberty to destroy food and take land out of cultivation in order to keep prices and profits up will no longer exist. The liberty of humans to compel others to work for them (or starve) will be ended. In short, a socialist system of human equality can only occur once the expropriators have been expropriated—once the capitalist class has been dispossessed of its monopoly of the earth's resources. This threat to the capitalists' liberty to own and control the world is seen by them as something to be resisted at all costs—including the reputations and lives of those who dare to advocate social equality. The capitalist minority use every means of propaganda at their command to distort the case for equality, to defame its advocates and to defend their own privilege in the name of popular liberty and democracy.

To the majority of us, who are not capitalists but live by selling our mental and physical energies for wages and salaries, the awful danger of the capitalists losing their liberty to be the top dogs ought not to appear as such an awful threat. On the contrary, the removal of the liberty of the capitalist to be superior is the necessary precondition for the liberty of the wealth producers not to be inferior. The right of the worker not to be a wage slave requires the abolition of the right of anyone to be a capitalist. Freedom and equality have the abolition of class society as their social basis.

The only free society will be one where all human beings, without any distinctions of race or sex or age, have free and equal access to the common wealth of the world. Once goods and services are freely available to all, on the basis of self-defined desires, without the interference of money or markets, humans will be able to say in honesty that we are members of a human family—a family of equals.

Steve Coleman

What's so good about the market? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone seems to be falling in love with the market these days. From all over the political spectrum people are saying that it's the best way of deciding what's produced and how it's distributed. The Communist Party, the Labour Party. Mr Gorbachev. Mrs Thatcher—wherever you look more and more people are saying that the market system is efficient and allows us freedom to decide what to buy, where we live, and where we work. Everyone seems to be a convert to the new religion of competition; even the countries of Eastern Europe are now shifting away from the equally abhorrent state capitalism. Yet the human cost of all this supposed freedom and equality is barely ever mentioned. In reality the "free" market hides the most blatant inequality, oppression and wastefulness behind its mask of equality, freedom and efficiency.

Unequal Shares for All

In theory we all have the freedom to buy a flat in Mayfair or a forest in Scotland—even if we don't speak with a plum in our mouth. But you don't get far without money. And some people tend to have a lot more money than others. For example, it was recently announced on the TV news that the people of Ethiopia stood on the verge of a famine of worse proportions than 1984 when around a million people died. We see pictures of beautiful children dying—robbed of their right to even a life of poverty. Now take the Earl of Cadogan. According to the Sunday Times, he is worth £450 million due to land owned as a result of marriages in the 18th Century. Or what about Alan Sugar? He is judged to have £432 million—rather more than the Korean women and men who produce the computers that bear his company name—Amstrad. What explains the gap between those who struggle and those who become multi-millionaires?

The Great Divide: Class

Class is not about your accent or your school tie: it's about what you own and whether you have to work for your living. Just because Robert Maxwell was once poor, it does not mean that he is somehow still a member of the working class now he may be worth up to £675 million. You needn't be an economist to see that millionaires (and. indeed, billionaires) will have a bit more choice than the poor of Eritrea.

All of this belies the claim that the market is in any way "democratic" and that we have somehow got equal "votes" under it. Some people have many times the influence of others in choosing what they do in the world. How else can we explain the production of luxury yachts alongside the failure of the system to provide adequate food to millions? It doesn't matter how much people are crying out for food and shelter; without purchasing power (money) the needs of the poor will stay unrecognised. Producing food for the penniless will never be a big money earner—it won't sell. And the pressure towards holding wages down to allow firms to be "competitive" will ensure that even many of those in work will be unable to influence significantly what is supplied on the market in order to meet their needs. Some democracy!

As we go to the market place to make money to live, most of us sell only our ability to work by getting a job. Yet others have got a bit more to fall back on. income from their capital. Even if they somehow "deserve" wealth, why should such talented people enjoy continued advantage? If they're so good they could succeed all over again from nothing! And why do some people have millions of pounds? Is it that they are a thousand times better than you or me? Can someone really work a hundred times harder than a nurse or an ambulance driver? Supporters of the market think so. "The market rewards hard work and enterprise," they say. How is this measured? Is a company director s greater wealth worked out with the aid of an "Enterprisometer”? In reality their rewards are legally stolen from the efforts of ordinary women and men. The capitalist's reward— profit—is no more than the unpaid labour of working men and women.

Now, the capitalist press say that everyone is free to set up their own companies and to become capitalists. But we can't all get rich by owning companies—to begin with, who will we all employ (read "exploit") in the companies? And we can't all compete with Murdoch's empire. To become cost-effective in the era of trans-global corporations a company must meet the huge costs of entry which exist in most areas of business. You need the ability to sustain a loss for the initial period—how else could Sky Television have survived?

You also need the power of money to influence customers through marketing and advertising. In Murdoch's case, it has been a bit of a help owning five national papers in Britain to persuade the unconverted to buy satellite TV. In short, you need money (capital) to make money. Despite the Enterprise Culture in Britain, real economic power is not in the hands of a few window cleaners undercutting each other's prices on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. Record numbers of small firms went bust last year in Britain and it's no surprise when you realise what they're up against.

Wealth, Waste and Want

Yet it's so much more than a question of unequal shares. The whole rationale of production is skewed by profit. People's real needs are not taken directly into account when firms decide what is to be produced. Even if we had a "share-owning democracy", and everyone had an equal stake in society as Mrs Thatcher tells us we've got. even if we divided all the money out with "fair shares for all", the whole system would still be a roller coaster that is not amenable to rational and democratic control. This is because the market system is geared towards production for profit, stimulated by advertising, marketing and credit. The whole aim of the system would still be production for profit and all that this entails—even if there were not the sickening levels of inequality that we now experience; we would still have wasteful hyping of competing products, banking and built-in obsolescence.

The market system has provided the impetus for technological developments but doesn't allow us to take full advantage of them. In a sane society everyone would benefit from advances in technology. Under capitalism research is duplicated and advances in technology are restricted by the patent system. All in the name of the great god—Competition. The market system is characterised by superficial rationality and efficiency within individual firms, but global insanity when all these unco-ordinated and anti-social decisions are added together and seen in the light of the needs of the whole world population. And under this supposedly efficient system there is also the huge waste of unemployment where people living on a pittance are robbed of a chance even of wage slavery. There can be no democracy when decisions about work organisation and how to provide goods and services are made on the basis of profit. Trying to meet the needs of five billion people through the clumsy workings of the market is like performing microsurgery with boxing gloves on.

Working to Stand Still

In a world where buying and selling dominate. there is a complete disregard for the experience of people in the workplace since the whole emphasis is upon what is produced and whether it can be sold. Wages, health and safety and work satisfaction will always come a poor second best to the need to make a profit. Much welcome discussion about "Green" issues and "quality of life" has managed to avoid one of the main limits upon our real quality of life—the lack of control and creativity that most people experience in their work. Environmentalism has been seen to be largely about buying the right sort of consumer goods. Important though this may be, it leaves aside the fact that the whole reason for capitalist production is not production for need, nor for the satisfaction of the people in the workplace, but production to make a profit on the market.

This is at the very centre of capitalism; and the consequence is that decisions about how goods and services are made are still in the hands of the large corporations. The system cannot gear itself to producing fewer useless goods, producing them in a more satisfactory way for the workers, or democratically deciding how to solve a problem globally.

For example, the market will never get round to planning and producing a truly safe and comfortable public transport system. The vested interests of oil and automobile corporations ensure that it is biased towards producing and promoting private cars. As an afterthought we're asked to use lead-free petrol to limit the havoc caused by everyone pursuing their "individuality" as we sit in ever-increasing traffic queues of mass-produced cars. And Cecil Parkinson still sees more roads as the solution!

Under the market, the answer is always "more” rather than a sane alternative. “Make a fast buck" and "Leave the competition standing," we're told. All this obscures the fact that we need more than ever to collectively decide how to deal with the increasingly global problems that we all face. It's no game: life and death decisions are being decided behind our backs by the harsh workings of the market. We have been played a huge confidence trick. Beneath the talk of efficiency and equality the market is out of control. We need to abandon this crazy system which dominates our lives and organise to bring about a wholly new society; on which has never  even been tried—socialism. But that's another story . . .

Ken Aldred

The State and Chernobyl (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now four years since the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986. Information about its consequences is now becoming available in spite of attempts by the Russian government to prevent knowledge leaking out into the public domain. Glasnost may be Gorbachev’s policy in most things but not where Chernobyl was concerned. The scale of the disaster is far greater than has been supposed till now.

A significant feature of this disaster is that it was partly caused, and to a large extent made worse, by state secrecy. For instance, it was the state’s obsessional secrecy on all matters nuclear which meant that the reactor’s operators were not allowed to know that withdrawal of all the control rods could cause an explosion. All they were told was that this was “forbidden” (New Scientist, 11 November 1989).

Similarly, it was a military secret that a previous graphite fire had occurred, in 1958, at Kyshtym in the Urals. Not only did the Chernobyl management and engineers know nothing of this (except what had leaked back to them from the West), but again according to the New Scientist “those who had dealt with it were not called to Chernobyl until three weeks after the accident”. During those weeks a lot of harm was done. Fruitless attempts to dowse the fire were unsuccessful, only resulting in contamination of the watertable. Meanwhile radioactive material continued to escape into the atmosphere.

Political considerations led Gorbachev, in his TV statement about Chernobyl 18 days after the accident, to allege that the western media had lied and exaggerated the scale and nature of the disaster with their claims that there would be “thousands of casualties” (quoted in Frederick Polil’s novel, Chernobyl, 1987). This was part of the cover-up agreed to by the politbureau and recently exposed by Gorbachev’s opponent, Boris Yeltsin.

This cover-up involved misleading the people at risk so that many of these within Russia believed themselves to be safe. Chernobyl is in the north of the Ukraine, very close to the southern border of Byelorussia and not far from the border, to the east, with Russia proper. The plume of radioactive particles drifted north and east, and seriously contaminated a large part of Byelorussia and adjacent provinces of Russia.

“They were not told. They had to guess…”

The original disaster was bad enough. What made it worse was misinformation, the attempt to pretend that the only areas at risk were within a neat, circular, 18 mile (30 km) “exclusion zone”. The result of this official policy was that people have still not been evacuated from many seriously contaminated areas. In the week after the disaster, official policy decreed that “communities were left to rot in ignorance…”. Over the border, in Russia proper, people “were very frightened. They were not told. They had to guess …. Nobody knew what was happening. Burly peasants were collapsing in the fields” (Sunday Times, 29 April 1990).

The cover-up meant that the May Day parades were ordered to proceed, in Kiev and Minsk, as though everything was normal. Thousands of schoolchildren were thus exposed to radioactive open air. It also meant a delay even in evacuating Pripyat, the nearest town to Chernobyl. It is now thought that 4 million people are living with radiation, including 34,000 in areas very seriously contaminated. Yury Cherbak, a Ukrainian Green politician, claims that 85 villages in Byelorussia, 19 in the Ukraine and 14 in Russia should be urgently evacuated (The Independent on Sunday, 22 April 1990). In these unevacuated areas, where people are still growing food crops, not only are they eating the contaminated food they grow but, according to the Sunday Times again, “Soviet trade officials collected it and distributed it in Moscow, Kazakhstan and elsewhere”.

Now, four years later, the consequences of Chernobyl are becoming apparent. Children are suffering from leukaemia or cancer of the thyroid. There are a number of babies born with serious congenital abnormalities, a disaster similar to but worse than that caused by thalidomide in Britain or Agent Orange in Vietnam. In Byelorussia, over 2 million people are at risk, one-fifth of the population. Yet in the capital city, Minsk, there are no ultrasonic scanners (essential for diagnosis and treatment of leukaemia) or intensive care units. Medicines, even for pain relief, are in short supply. The authorities have decreed, harshly, that no treatment at all, not even for pain relief, be given to terminal cases. In the West, leukaemia cases have an 85 percent chance of survival. There, they only have a 15 percent chance.

Acute food shortages mean that children are not getting a proper diet. They die of quite common illnesses, with their immune system weakened by radiation. Experts claim that “it is not ‘Chernobyl Aids’ that kills them, it is the lack of proper food” (Sunday Times).

The state showed its “concern” in February 1988 by decreeing the sort of information which should be made available to the media. The increased incidence of anaemia, hypertension and hyperplasia of the thyroid was hushed up as a result of “official policy”, and there was to be no mention of any “loss of physical capacity for work or professional skills” (New Scientist, 28 October 1989). Who was the state trying to protect?

Delay and Disinformation

The role of the state in this disaster has been to make things worse: the delay in issuing warnings, the misinformation as to which areas were at risk, the suppression of information on the deaths and diseases related to or caused by Chernobyl, the refusal to allow scientists to do research, the publication of underestimates of the amount of radiation released, the refusal to arrange for evacuation from areas known to be contaminated, the despatch of contaminated foodstuff from these regions to uncontaminated regions, the lack of provision of decent medical facilities, the secrecy surrounding the lessons learnt earlier at Kyshtym – the state and its officials bear a heavy load of responsibility for this massive catastrophe and its (too-often avoidable) tragic consequences.

Probably this is the worst environmental disaster the world has yet seen. Large areas of land are uninhabitable yet in many of these people are still living – living a nightmare. In one village, in a single year, 30 babies were born with serious deformities.

The danger to humanity, and to the planet, of continuing to allow capitalist priorities – production of cheap, rather than safe, energy – and capitalist political structures – such as rule by a Party hierarchy, determined to control the information released to the population under its rule – this is the lesson of Chernobyl. The land is poisoned with pollution, the forest trees produce abnormal mutated growths, and the watertable is polluted. On the farms cows give birth to deformed calves, in the villages young women dread giving birth to monsters. Children are not allowed out of doors except to go to and from school.

Genetic mutation is a high price to pay for the government’s mistakes, for cheap electricity for export to Poland and Rumania, and for plutonium for the military, a by-product of the Chernobyl reactor. It is a price being paid partly because the world has trusted technical experts too much. There were experts in the Ukraine who claimed that Chernobyl’s four reactors were totally safe. After the accident Britain’s best-known expert on nuclear power, Lord Marshall, asserted that the risk from radiation inside the exclusion zone (less than 20 miles away from Chernobyl itself) was “no worse than smoking a couple of cigarettes a year” (Observer, 4 May 1986).

The likes of Lord Marshall have been making reassuring noises in the Soviet Union and doing their best to prevent doctors and scientists revealing the truth about Chernobyl’s legacy, Gorbachev’s glasnost did not apply in this special case. So long as society’s class divisions mean the necessity for the continued existence of states and national governments, and so long as production is for profit not for use, the danger of continuing to use such extremely risky technology will be too great – the victims are already too many.

Charmian Skelton

Kashmir: socialism or barbarism? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the end of April this year the Indian army had redeployed 70-90,000 troops, including between 300 and 500 tanks, to just 30 miles from Pakistan's Sind and Punjab provinces. These "exercises'’ were officially due to have ended in February. It was along this stretch of border, Pakistan's "weak under-belly", that Indian tanks crashed through in 1965, and today war between the two states again seems a real possibility.

Pakistan and India have fought each other three times since British forces pulled out of the Indian sub-continent in 1947. In that year Imperial India was partitioned into two bitterly opposed states. Moslem Pakistan and mainly-Hindu India. But the cause of the successive Indo-Pakistan conflicts was never religion as such. Religion rather became the cloak behind which the Indian and Pakistani states mobilised their peoples to fight for regional strategic dominance. And the key to this dominance lay in Kashmir.

Strategic importance

Kashmir is a poor, mountainous, scenically beautiful region of 85,000 square miles—larger than England—lying between India and Pakistan. Traditionally it has been the resting place for caravans moving from India to the Highlands of Central Asia, and it remains today the strategic pivot of the sub-continent. The state which dominates Kashmir dominates the area, and this has been clearly recognised by the leaders on both sides.

In an Indian government publication entitled Independence and After written in 1949 the then Prime Minister Nehru asserted that:

  India without Kashmir would cease to occupy a pivotal position on the political map of Central Asia. Strategically Kashmir is vital to the security of India: it has been so since the dawn of history.

And. almost twenty years later, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan, justified his state's claim in exactly the same terms:

  Kashmir is vital to Pakistan. Kashmir, as you will see from the map, is like a cap on the head of Pakistan. If I allow India to have this cap on our head, then I am always at the mercy of India. (In M. Gopal, Considerations of Defence, Caravan, 1967).

After “independence" Kashmir was left hanging between its hostile neighbours. Although some four-fifths of its population were Moslems, the ruling elite was Hindu. In 1947 Moslem tribesmen from the North West, enraged at reports of massacres of Moslems elsewhere, invaded Kashmir. The wave of mass killing and arson which followed threatened the rule of the Hindu Maharajah, who turned in desperation to India for support. Seizing its opportunity, the Indian government extracted a promise that Kashmir would be signed over after the army had intervened—a condition the Maharajah had little choice but to accept. But as soon as the instrument of accession had been signed Pakistan sent troops into Kashmir, ostensibly to "save the uprising" of fellow Moslems, but in reality to secure the Pakistani state's strategic position.

The bloody clashes which followed were brought to an end by a ceasefire which left India in de facto control of the most prosperous part of the province. Although Indian politicians had promised free elections for Kashmir, this was soon forgotten The result could only have been independence or union with Pakistan.

Despite a disastrous attempt by the Pakistani army to seize Kashmir in 1965 after infiltrating guerilla forces over the ceasefire line, Southern Kashmir has remained in Indian hands ever since.

Cynical misrule

The present crisis erupted in Kashmir after years of cynical mismanagement by the Indian state, including rigged elections, endemic corruption and now naked repression. Foreign correspondents, now banned from the province, have continued to receive reports of beatings, rapes, torture and even executions.

In response. Kashmiri secessionist groups have stepped up their campaign of violence, engaging Indian troops in savage street to street battles, assassinating politicians and senior police officers and waging a relentless bombing campaign whose recent targets included a private bus and a Bombay commuter train. Indian army curfews were met with mass demonstrations and over 350 people have died in the uprising this year.

Over 8000 refugees and at least 3000 volunteers seeking military training have already streamed over the ceasefire line, and with the end of the avalanche season in June as many as 100,000 more are expected to attempt the crossing. India has responded by banning any movement out of the province and constructing a 12-ft high electrified fence along the perimeter. Pakistani troops are reported to have provided covering fire for refugees making the break for the border and ugly clashes with Indian border patrols are said to have led to a number of deaths.

The Indian government has blamed Pakistan for fomenting the unrest and threatened armed retribution. In the middle of April the Indian Prime Minister VP Singh said the country should be "psychologically prepared" for war against Pakistan, and after attacking Pakistan's “evil designs" in Kashmir warned that the Pakistani army would "not last 1000 hours" in a war. “We will teach them a lesson unless they stop aiding terrorists", he concluded darkly, refusing to rule out the possibility of hot pursuit raids against the alleged rebel training camps on the Pakistani side of the ceasefire line.

Meanwhile correspondents in Pakistani Kashmir report that the rebels are setting up power centres and arming themselves with weapons bought from arms dealers in the country's tribal belt. A jihaad. or holy war, has been proclaimed by Moslems there with the support of a hard core of 1000-2000 Kashmiris already battle-hardened in that other jihaad just across the border in Afghanistan

Fingers on nuclear triggers

What lessons can be drawn from this dismal situation? First, that where there are states competing for strategic advantage—which they are compelled to do for reasons of survival in a competitive world—there will always be conflict, or the threat of conflict.

It also reveals the futility of nationalism. Who would Kashmir "belong to" if it was “liberated" from the grip of the Indian ruling class? Certainly not those who are pouring across the ceasefire line to learn to fight and kill their fellow workers. They would find that their sacrifices would bring just the same poverty and oppression when they are exploited by a bunch of Kashmiri or Pakistani bosses rather than the Indian variety. And of course the multinationals would continue to inflict their Bophals and extract their profits no matter which gang was in power.

The only solution to the Kashmiri crisis is world socialism, in which there will be no more states struggling to divide the world's markets between them and using the cloak of religion to muster support for their murderous banners; when there will be a free and cooperative sharing of the world's resources and living space on the basis of need, and not on the ability to conquer or exploit.

One closing thought for those who think that a socialist world would be all very nice but is not an urgent necessity. India has successfully exploded a nuclear capability Both have large air forces capable of delivering nuclear bombs. If a crisis does erupt when refugees from Kashmir start pouring across the border after the avalanche season, and the Indian state carries out its threat to launch cross-border raids, fingers will be on those nuclear triggers.

Because, unlike the superpowers, who can guarantee to retaliate after receiving a first nuclear strike. India and Pakistan have so few nuclear devices the side which strikes first could expect to "win" an exchange (whatever that might mean). This is clearly a recipe for massive instability, and perhaps disastrous miscalculation. Socialism or barbarism is still the only real choice which confronts us.

Andrew Thomas

50 Years Ago: The Communist Party and the Churchill Government (1990)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Party is annoyed about the new Government. They do not like the Government led by Mr. Churchill, which includes Mr Attlee and other Labour leaders, along with Sir Archibald Sinclair and other Liberals. The Daily Worker of March 10th, 1940, says in its editorial: "The Daily Herald thunders against Chamberlain, but it is silent about Churchill. What a man to take under the wing of the Labour Party!"

The next day (May 11th, 1940) the Daily Worker had another fierce article against the National Government, under a headline "Fight against Labour participation in Churchill's new War Government".

It was not always so. Only last year the Daily Worker was campaigning for a Popular Front Government and urging that the men of its choice should get together and form an all-party Government in order to carry out an active policy of "collective action against new aggression and threats of aggression from Nazi Germany".

And who were the men of the Communist Party's choice? None other than Mr. Churchill. Mr. Attlee and Sir A. Sinclair! The front page of the Daily Worker (March 30th, 1939) carried in bold headlines: COMMUNIST APPEAL TO ATTLEE. SINCLAIR AND CHURCHILL—URGED TO DEFEAT CABINET AND FORM NEW GOVERNMENT.

[From Socialist Standard, June 1940]

Between the Lines: The Godfather Part XXVII (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Godfather Part XXVII

There is something perversely compulsive about watching American TV preachers. Perhaps it is that the rest of American TV is so indescribably awful—punctuated by adverts for ointments for piles and candidates for Governor—that the hideous nadir of the merchant-evangelists offers security in the knowledge that things cannot get any worse. Contrast the screaming apostles of instant salvation with those sleepy inhabitants of the god-slot on British TV: Thora Hird playing hymns to ancients hers and their budgies in Dorset: Harry Secombe standing on Welsh hills talking about Jesus as if he were still a member of the Goons: mass choirs of frigid little people with guilty squints and Hitler haircuts who sing about being joyful and look like they've just opened their poll tax demand and discovered that salvation is for the next life. British TV offers a dull dribble of religious platitudes. It is on because the law says it must be, and most of us switch it off because we were taught about the Bible at school and it makes us tired.

You do not fall asleep watching religious TV in the USA—not physically asleep, anyway. The Praise The Lord channel provides an endless parade of men who would fail the honesty test for the Used Car Dealers' Association. They are here to tell us that Jesus is alive and has a telephone number. You call the number and then discover that he also has a bank account. You pay a thousand dollars and wonderful things will happen to you. Watching one hysterical Jesus-pusher was almost a caricature of the genre. In the studio with him were a husband and wife whose marriage had only one year ago been on the rocks. The husband was ignoring his wife and getting into debt; she was depressed. Then she switched on the god slot and, hallelujah, delusion was mixed with depression to create a fatal concoction of witless optimism. She recounted the story of how she was about to throw her husband out of the house. The miserable looking husband confessed that life for him was awful and that he was broke and needed a van to start up a business. So what did they do? Why. what would any sane person do, buddy? They got right down on their knees and they said. "Lord, send us that van". The Lord—through his American TV interpreter— suggested that it would be a good idea to send their last thousand dollars to the TV preacher. (Why they did not spend the thousand dollars on the van was not explained. Then, neither was the virgin birth). And hallelujah, within a week a cheap van was purchased and since then the saved couple have been as happy as . . drug addicts in a state of mental oblivion.

"So", said the screaming presenter. "I want you people out there to make god your credit manager". God the credit manager— was George Bush watching, we ask ourselves. The presenter then went into a state which seemed to call for men in white coats. He ranted, raved, sang, cried, had visions, felt Jesus talking to him—and above all, remembered to repeatedly mention the telephone number. Important that; forget the men in white coats—bring on the boys with the truncheons. It was a spectacular act; “I see a poor single mother out there—I see the look of sadness on her face—I want her to know that god loves her—god loves you ma'am—yes, he loves you and he wants to tell you—you might only have your welfare cheque there—that might be all you have in the whole wide world—but god wants you to send that money to him—and here's the number to call right now . . ."

The new Broadcasting Act in Britain is to open the floodgates for such unscrupulous rogues to perform here. Watch out Harry, Thora and the Bridlington Middle-Aged Ladies' Choir: the Lord has a few more mysterious than usual ways in which his agents are about to make moves.

And so to Hell

Returning from the USA to Britain, back to the high culture of Neighbours and Opportunity Knocks, was a relief. As yet there are no thousand-dollar trips to Heaven on offer. On Sunday 13 May BBC's Everyman ran a documentary about hell. That is the place for the oppressed to be sent if they fail to show enough obedience to their oppressors during their lifetimes. One Christian, the Bishop of Edinburgh, referred to the ridiculous concept as "the smash-grab crush- your-testicles conception of Christianity". In short, it was based upon a form of psychological terrorism which threatened infinite mutilation to those who refused to adhere to their masters' morals—or in the USA. to wicked sinners who fail to surrender a thousand bucks as a sign of their fear. The images of hell shown in the documentary were the kind of pictures that would have frightened the average peasant into submission—and put the wind up quite a few aristocrats. In the concert in Liverpool to mark the tenth anniversary of John Lennon's death they showed film of him singing Imagine: Kylie Minogue and the gang singing about "no possessions" was just a little strange—but when they sang about a world where there would be "no religion" your reviewer joined in with all the enthusiasm of a boy scout in the back row of Songs of Praise. No religion, no possessions, a world without the need for illusions, eh? You may say I'm a dreamer, but it beats Thora Hird's vision of the Good Life any day.

Steve Coleman

Will China Follow? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The momentous events of Eastern Europe have found little echo in China. Since its bloody suppression of the democracy movement a year ago this month, the government has carried out a widespread programme of arrest and repression. Anyone who played any kind of prominent role in the strikes and demonstrations is liable to summary imprisonment, torture or execution. Ordinary people have been pressurised into betraying their relatives or neighbours. The rulers' aim is to cow people into submission and apathy.

It should not be thought that the protests for democracy and against corruption were merely the work of a few thousand students, however much attention was centered on the events in Tiananmen Square. On 17 May last year, over a million workers marched through the streets of Peking to show their support. An important aspect of the movement was the demand for independent trade unions. After the 4 June massacre, the government bracketed the autonomous Workers Union with the autonomous Student Union as illegal organisations whose leaders must be brought to book. There were hunger-strikes and demonstrations in other parts of China too, for instance a demonstration of 300,000 in the provincial capital of Xian on 20 May. The government's response would not have been anywhere near so brutal had they just been dealing with a few students rather than a temporarily-united working population of Peking and elsewhere.

The army's actions were not just aimed at teaching ordinary workers a lesson, they were directed at “liberals" in the Communist Party who felt some sympathy with the protesters. It has been suggested that the first army firing on that fateful Saturday night, just before Tiananmen Square was cleared, was against workers and their barricades in the Muxidi area in west Peking, overlooked by the flats occupied by many middle-ranking Party officials. They, too.,were being shown that no concessions to popular demands would be countenanced.

In fact, since June, many Party members known, or suspected, to be sympathetic to Zhao Ziyang, the disgraced Party Secretary, have been purged and replaced by those loyal to the hardline leadership. In November, Deng Xiaoping, one of those with the blood of June on his hands, resigned his last official post as chair of the Central Military Commission, though he remains a power in the background. The new CP Secretary. Jiang Zemin, brought in to oversee the return to "normality ", took over Deng's post as well.

On 11 January martial law was finally lifted in Peking, showing that the government felt confident enough to take the troops off the streets. But, at the same time, the government and ruling class cannot be sure to count on the loyalty of the army if it is again called on to slaughter Chinese citizens. The events in Rumania, in particular, sent a shock-wave through China's ruling circles. It is hard to know how accurate they are, but there are reports that up to 1500 soldiers and officers face court martial for mutiny during last year's protests, and that many high-ranking military officials were opposed to the use of force last June. The top brass went to great lengths to ensure that the soldiers used in the massacre could be relied on. Now many officers are having their loyalty investigated, and ordinary soldiers are having the importance of unquestioning obedience drummed into them.

Economy in a mess

Economically, too, hard-line rhetoric is now the order of the day. The reforms of Deng and Zhao—decentralisation, promotion of private enterprise, special zones with privileges for overseas companies—are being partially withdrawn as the government reassumes economic authority. Wealthy private capitalists are attacked in the media and subjected to ever-higher taxes as the tentative steps towards private capitalism are put into reverse. But there are still government bonds and company shares to be traded, and a real-estate industry. buying and selling urban property, is growing fast. Joint enterprises still flourish, with over 47 billion US dollars invested so far from abroad, and in October the largest-yet solely overseas funded project was opened in Tianjin.

The economy, though, remains in a mess, despite the best efforts of the government to control the uncontrollable. Inflation was cut to 18 per cent last year, while urban living costs went up by 16 per cent. In September passenger fares on trains, ships and planes were virtually doubled overnight. Yet city dwellers' incomes increased by only 12 per cent in 1989, and over one-third of families saw a drop in their income. In the words of the State Statistical Bureau, "actual per capita income of low-income families fell". So in China, too. the poor get poorer.

A particular problem for many workers is that their factories have stopped paying bonuses, which often amount to as much as the basic wage. Industrial output has fallen as factories go on short time, unable to obtain raw materials. In the countryside, last year's harvest was better than previous years, but the government may again fail to pay in cash for the grain it has contracted to buy. Most workers employed by the state have been forced to buy government bonds, thus cutting their disposable income drastically. No wonder many workers (from 20 per cent in Tianjin to 70 per cent in Wenzhou) have taken to moonlighting. doing a second job in the evening or at weekends to supplement their incomes and make ends meet. Others vent their frustration by go-slows and sabotage.

In December the Chinese currency, the yuan, was devalued by 20 per cent, in an attempt to boost flagging exports. At the end of 1988. the foreign debt of China was 40 billion US dollars, and large repayments lie ahead. International capitalism has been wary of investing in China since last year's events (they are worried about the security of their profits, not about the slaughter of Chinese workers). But the president of the World Bank has recently been making conciliatory noises about resuming loans to China, declaring himself satisfied with the new economic plans. Tourism has begun to recover, too, though many of the luxury hotels gracing Chinese cities have empty rooms and empty coffers.

For the time being, then, the developments in Eastern Europe are unlikely to be repeated in China. The Chinese working class have shown both themselves and their rulers their potential, but have also seen the ferocity which is unleashed when the ruling class reply. Yet the economic problems which gave rise to the protests remain, and are even being exacerbated. Repression and tyranny have won the current battle, but the class war continues.

Paul Bennett

Strange ways (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Was the Strangeways Riot the work of the Devil? According to the prison governor, Brendan O'Friel, there is a very simple explanation: the riot was "something of a battle between good and evil" (The Observer, 6 May). The cause for this battle had to do, it seems, with the alleged success last year of a Christian mission within the prison. Later on, during the protest, the god-fearing Governor "became increasingly alarmed by the signs that something was going to happen on Good Friday. The omens were pretty bad. Good Friday was also the thirteenth, and we were getting some signals from the roof that sounded pretty ominous".

As an explanation for the riot, this is absolute moonshine. O'Friel claims that the "success" of the 1989 Christian mission led to a riot. But was this mission a success? Out of 1600 prisoners (some very distressed, possibly suicidal), only 200 made "a commitment to Christ", This is only 1 in 8: the majority rejected the message. To claim this as a success is as silly as Kenneth Baker's attempt to claim the result of the local council elections as a massive Tory victory. Another improbability about this "success of the mission" theory is the timescale. Why did the "forces of evil" wait so many months before mounting this alleged counter-offensive? Then there's the Governor's view of what happened on Friday 13th—Good Friday. As a result of his forebodings, he enlisted the prayerful support of his fellow-believers. Down on their knees they went.

History relates that nothing very dreadful happened that day. Two more of the prisoners surrendered and the siege continued as before, without any "diabolical" incidents. This, to the devout Governor, was evidence of the success of "the spiritual outpourings . . .  (of) the Christian community". In other words, bending the ear of the Almighty produces better results than appeals to the Home Office for reinforcements.

It is characteristic of true believers that they claim events as supporting their beliefs whatever the outcome. In this case, if, as he predicted, a “holocaust" had happened. that would have supported his belief in the activity of these supposed "forces of evil”.

This was a naive attempt by Governor O'Friel to persuade the outside world that there were no commonsense, material circumstances which could be expected to have triggered this and other jail protests. He would have us believe that this riot had more to do with the saving of souls than with slopping out. He apparently said nothing in his press conference of the conditions which the prisoners had to put up with in the jail: of the unhygienic and inhuman overcrowding in claustrophobic conditions; of the understaffing, which renders ineffective any attempts to make conditions less unbearable; or of the righteous fervour which inspires Manchester's god-fearing police and magistrates with a zealous determination that even those awaiting trial for motoring offences must be locked up.

One of the young rooftop protesters was a teenage boy on remand, waiting month after month for his trial for taking a car without consent and drunk-driving. The jails of this country are overcrowded because people like him are locked up in cells, waiting for months for their cases to be heard. Mounting frustration and exasperation may well have been one of the factors that contributed to the protest.

Strangeways—a good name for a system which treats live people like dead sardines.

Charmian Skelton

Caught in the act: Who's afraid of Labour? (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are few more repulsive sights than local Tory activists exulting in an election victory, especially when this happens in the small hours of the morning when everyone else wants to go home to bed. Thus it was in Ealing, a local election result which the Labour Party could not explain in any way other than their own unpopularity. It seems that, in spite of everything that has happened since to give the Labour council confidence that they would be re-elected, the voters in Ealing had not forgotten the steep increases in rates which Labour imposed. Their misguided outrage at this was titillated by bloodcurdling stories about lavish council expenditure on bizarre lame-duck minorities and the creation of a lot of lucrative non-jobs for the boys and girls in the party. Nevertheless the Labour Party did not expect to lose Ealing; as Bryan Gould said in the stunned aftermath of the Tory victory, they thought they did not deserve to lose there.

If that means anything it is that in Ealing the Labour council had industriously applied itself to shedding the loony-left tag which it acquired in 1986 and had become a model of Kinnockist moderation—appropriately enough since it is the borough where the Labour leader lives in surprisingly modest style for someone who sees himself as a future prime minister. Labour's transformation did not please everyone and there were some well-publicised rows over the economies which the council imposed just before the election, involving councillors who were under the delusion that Labour administrations should act differently from those run by Tories. If the Labour Party did not "deserve" to lose Ealing it could only have been because they had done such a good job of disguising themselves as Tories. After all that effort to obliterate the differences between the two parties how could the voters be so ungrateful as to choose between them?

Lunching in the City

The Ealing result was ominous for the Labour Party because the council there had done what the party nationally is doing. Ever since their defeat in 1987 Labour has been trying to make itself as similar to the Tories as it reasonably can. At its conferences Kinnock still addresses the delegates as "comrades" but his preoccupation is to persuade the voters that Labour is a party whose claim to their support is based on their promise to run capitalism more efficiently than the Tories have managed to.

In the forefront of this tendency is the man who hopes to be Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer and who, to prepare himself for this, has been industriously lunching his way around the City of London. John Smith is a very caricature of sober restraint; even his voice, with its austere Scottish rasp, promises a hard-headed prudence. He gives no hope to the most naive of Labour supporters that his visits to the City are to give notice, over the claret, to the bankers and stockbrokers that with a Labour government and its policies of common ownership their days are numbered. What he is actually doing is reassuring them that when he is installed at the Treasury their interests will be his first concern; “The first and overriding priority of a Labour government will be to put the economy right, so we may have to ask for patience from people" was how he put it on TV recently.

The "people" he had in mind were not the investors who infest the City but those on a rather lower income, who misguidedly think that a Labour government's priority will be to spend money on their welfare. They have no excuse for this, for Smith has held consistently to his line. Last October he warned that as Chancellor he may need . . . to postpone some of our social ambitions ." In April in New York he was soothing Wall Street with the assurance that “. . .  there will be no dash for growth under the next Labour government" and last month he was repeating the same doleful message given out by every Labour Chancellor, that if the unions press for "excessive" wage rises they will be causing unemployment.

And how does the City react to the presence in their midst of this dangerous radical from across the border, eating their food, drinking their wine and talking their language that profits come first? Well, they are by no means alarmed or even uncomfortable. The Economist reported that City analysts are widely reassured that a Labour government would be no worse (for them, that is) than the Tories. The Investors Chronicle, which does not exist to promote the cause of social revolution, concluded that Labour's economic policy ". . . contains nothing to which the City objects violently on principle .

Undeserved reputation

In fact it is difficult to understand the belief that a Labour government will always include a reckless and incompetent Chancellor, especially when we remember that recent Conservative holders of that office have included Anthony Barber. Derek Heathcoat Amory, Selwyn Lloyd, Reginald Maudling and Nigel Lawson. When we compare these with Labour Chancellors like Stafford Cripps, Hugh Gaitskell, James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey and consider how their anti-working class policies protected the interests of the capitalists we can only wonder why the City does not immediately and unreservedly welcome a Labour government. Can it be that the Square Mile is populated by people so exceedingly ungrateful that they would not recognise a profit-protective Chancellor if one was served up on—well, on their lunch plates?

Consider too what has happened in the past—the efforts of Labour ministers to convince the British capitalist class that they had nothing to fear from a Labour government and how this message was received. In 1965 George Brown said in the Director, the magazine of the Institute of Directors, that "businessmen have more hope of making progress and money under a Labour government than they had before” In 1969 Frank Kearton. who was then chairman of Courtaulds. told the Institute of Public Relations that "some of the (Labour] government s measures will stand industry in good stead in the seventies'. More recently, in 1987 Lord Donaghue. head of research at stockbrokers Kleinwort Benson, had this to say about the result of the general election which was expected that year: " . . . the

reality is that all parties in this country support a mixed economy and none has policies so radical as to be damaging to long-term investment prospects". The noble lord's research had obviously not unearthed the presence of the Socialist Party and its policies, but let that pass.

New faces

So there is nothing new in Labour s present reshaping of its policies and its image, trying to smooth out those inconvenient doctrinaire lumps of nationalisation and "soak the rich" hysteria which were meaningless but which upset the City when all the Labour leaders wanted was to have friendly lunches with them while they got down to the serious business of organising the maximum exploitation of the working class. What is new is the faces; a new generation of Labour leaders has risen since Thatcher first marched triumphantly into Number Ten and they are letting it be known on which side of the class barricade they stand. On those terms John Smith is a comforting figure and workers who are nervous about how rich, how competitive and how secure are the class who exploit them may vote for him to compose the budget of British capitalism while he tells the workers how their greed and indolence are ruining the profitability of the British economy.

Smith now promises to do the kind of balancing act which former Labour Chancellors found impossible, in spite of their promises before they got into power. He says he will energise British industry into prosperity, encouraging steady expansion while controlling any tendency to a boom in which pay claims may become too powerful. At the same time he will prudently invest in education, health care, social services and our general welfare. He makes it sound very easy and reassuring, except to those who remember what happened to the same promises made by other Labour Chancellors.

History gives no support to John Smith nor to those who are dazzled into supporting him. It is not a matter of incompetence; many of the abject, discredited failures competently tried to do the impossible—to make capitalism behave as if it were a benign and controllable social system. John Smith will not be pondering these facts as he chews his way through his lunches, for they would not stimulate the appetite of an office-hungry politician.

Ivan