NHS Crisis: A Socialist Nurse Speaks Out (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard interviews socialist nurse, Adele Atkinson.

We both know that the NHS has always been a get-you-back-to-work service to keep workers in a fit state to produce profits, so what’s new about the new reforms?

The NHS reforms, brought in on 1 April this year, are designed to ensure that the NHS conforms to market demands. All services within the NHS are being priced and sold within an internal market: GPs must buy services from hospitals, hospital departments specialising in one area from those specialising in another, and so on. 

These new contracts for services can only be entered into if the buyer has the money in the budget. No money to buy, no contract; no contract, no provision of service. 

The original aim of the NHS was ostensibly to provide free health care paid out of state funds; now each sector of the NHS must rely on its own budget and constantly think in terms of the market. This is just making explicit what was already implicit in the financing of the health service.

How does capitalism manage to price illnesses?

This is done in accordance with a system called ICD (International Classification of Diseases) which classifies diseases as being more or less costly than each other, and also by DRGs (Diagnostic Related Diseases) which suggests how long a patient will need to stay in hospital and how much medical attention will be needed. 

This is a crude pricing system and its means that many pieces of technical equipment are unused because nobody can afford to buy their use; for example, this is the case in the burns unit where I have worked for years.

What will happen to burns patients in the future – if, for instance, the burns treatment costs too much for their local health authority to pay for?

They will be put on general wards where they will have less specialised attention and where there will be a much greater risk of contracting infection – burns victims are very prone to infection. This is happening now.

So, these cost-cutting policies by so-called economic experts hurt real people?

Let me give you an example of this. There was a woman waiting for sterilisation at Guy’s hospital in London. She had been on the waiting list before 1 April. After 1 April Guy’s refused to do the operation unless her local health authority, which had no contract with them, would pay the cost. The local authority wouldn’t pay; the operation did not take place.

How do workers in the NHS feel about this?

Morale in the NHS is very low. It is clear to many workers what our employers think we’re worth. The RCN has criticised the reform, but will take no defensive action, such as striking. The other unions, COHSE, NUPE and NALGO are going to merge and that should make us stronger. But, you see, in the end it doesn’t matter to the financial whizz-kids who are running the NHS what we think. 

Opting out can be carried out by hospitals on a minority decision by the people who work in them. Senior staff, such as consultants, have been bought off: they’ve been put on management boards called Clinical Directorates where they are made to choose how to spend the budget. In other words, skilled medical practitioners are being dragged into the dirty work of having to play the health market – and then defend the decisions to the rest of us.

Guy’s Hospital became a trust on 1 April, in accordance with the reform, and then sacked nearly a thousand workers. Why?

Because it’s not “cost effective” to have so many London teaching hospitals all competing for the same population with the same services. So, despite the chronic length of waiting lists, Guy’s decided to close down its least marketable services – mental health and care of the elderly, I should think. Guy’s did this in the knowledge that there would be a public outcry. The plan is to get the outcry and the demonstrations over quickly and then the other hospitals can start cutting services and laying off workers. Mind you, Peter Griffiths and Karen Caines, the top managers at Guy’s, are paid £90,000 and £50,000 a year respectively. And they are being paid to ensure that costs are cut and budgets are kept to, regardless of human lives lost.

As a socialist, what way out do you see from this mess?

We need a society where the production of everything – everything from food to housing to health care – is provided on the basis of need, not sales or profit. 

The market is a crazy way of distributing – in fact, it rations – what people need. There will never be a fully decent health service as long as there is the market.

In a non-market, socialist community what do think will be the main changes in the way you, as a nurse, will do your work?

For a start, socialism will be able to provide decent care for the elderly. These now take up half the beds on the orthopaedic, chest and other medical wards. They are seen as a burden. What gain in there in paying the price of keeping them alive? In a socialist society real care – and that takes a lot of time, a lot of people – will be possible. 

Also, people with learning difficulties – those currently dismissed as mentally handicapped – can be more integrated into the community. A lot of people are currently left in hospitals because the society beyond can’t be bothered, or lacks the cash, to care for them. I also think that socialist hospitals will keep patients in for longer periods. At the moment hospitals do their best to throw patients out so that their beds can be filled, new money can be made. People need to be properly looked after and capitalism isn’t letting us do that as well as we can and should.

Labour’s futile policy (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the British economy is in recession, capitalism's economic gurus are busying themselves trying to find a cure. The Labour Party, ever free with its opinions on how governments can run capitalism efficiently and painlessly, has hit on a policy which, they hope, can stimulate investment and growth. Like so many of the cures for capitalism's ills it is not in fact a new policy, and amounts to saying that the present economic downturn has been caused by government policies, primarily with regard to high interest rates.

The Shadow Chancellor, John Smith, argues that investment in manufacturing industry has dipped because firms cannot borrow at an acceptable rate of interest. The government, he says, should cut interest rates as a way of encouraging investment and halting the recession.

This idea has been receiving support from some unexpected quarters. For instance, Sir Alan Walters, formerly chief economic adviser to Thatcher, recently wrote:

Interest rates should have been brought down long ago from the 15 per cent year-long high to 11 per cent or less. And, if we bring interest rates down within a few weeks, I suspect that we can still avoid a savage slump. (London Evening Standard, 22 February).

This view that banks have been charging a rate of interest that is not “acceptable" was put by the Labour Party during the slump which started in 1929. Similarly, a major reason why Labour nationalised the Bank of England in 1946 was to ensure that governments could intervene to bring down interest rates in a bid to avoid any threatening recession. The argument that governments can smooth out capitalism’s booms and slumps via manipulation of interest rates is as erroneous now as it was then.

The anarchy of production inherent to the capitalist system ensures that periods of prosperity and boom are not everlasting and that a slump is always somewhere around the corner. In any period of boom some industries will inevitably over-expand their production in relation to market demand and have to curtail output and lay off workers as a consequence. This has a knock-on effect for other sectors of industry, resulting in falling output and increasing unemployment for the economy as a whole.

Supply and demand

It is not the ease that high interest rates come along and turn a booming economy into a stagnant one by discouraging investment when further growth and expansion is still possible. Rather it is the other way round: high interest rates are not the cause of a capitalist crisis of over-expansion and overproduction (in relation to the market), but arc a symptom of its initial stages.

The rate of interest charged by banks is determined by competition between buyers of capital (the borrowers) and sellers of capital (the lenders). When faced with the onset of an economic crisis many capitalist enterprises will be prepared to borrow money capital at higher rates of interest just so that they can meet their obligations and stay in business, so pushing the rate up. At other times the situation is different, as Marx explained in Capital:

If we consider the turnover cycles in which modern industry moves—inactivity, growing animation, prosperity, overproduction. crash, stagnation, inactivity, etc . . . —we find that a low rate of interest corresponds to periods of prosperity or high profit, a rise in interest comes between prosperity and its collapse, while maximum interest up to extreme usury corresponds to a period of crisis. (Vol 3. Penguin edition, page 482).

Interest rates are not arbitrarily fixed on the whim of governments: they reflect the market conditions affecting money capital

A complicating factor today which was absent in Marx's time is that interest rates are now permanently higher than they would otherwise be because of the continuing government policy of printing an excess issue of inconvertible (that is. not backed by gold) paper currency. This inflationary policy leads to constantly rising prices. With interest rates being the price of borrowing money capital, these too are affected. High interest rates are needed by lenders to protect their assets, which would otherwise be eroded year after year by inflation. Lenders have to be concerned with the return they get after rising prices are taken into account: the so-called “real" rate of interest (the actual rate charged less the rate of price increases).

Clutching at straws

Banks, like other capitalist enterprises, are in the business of making a profit. They do this by paying depositors a rate of interest to attract capital in, and then by lending it out again to borrowers at a higher rate of interest. A major cut in interest rates would mean a fall in deposits as lenders and savers were discouraged by lower returns on their investments—so restricting the amount that banks can lend out to industry and others (banks can only lend out what has been deposited with them and cannot “create credit with the stroke of a pen" as many of capitalism's economists seem to think). Such a cut in interest rates at the present time would be likely to adversely effect the already reduced profitability of the banking sector. Lloyds Bank has already cut 5,000 jobs in the last 18 months, with the other three major British banks in a similar situation. The Guardian (26 February) has reported that Lloyds expects 50,000 jobs to be lost soon in the financial services sector as a whole.

In any case, any attempt to finance industrial capital at the expense of the banks overlooks one crucially important factor. If cheaper loans are provided for industry this doesn't automatically mean they will be invested in order to expand production. The rationale behind capitalist production is the expectation of profit, and if market conditions dictate that commodities cannot be sold at a profit, then firms will not employ more workers and expand production The whole idea that large-scale cuts in interest rates can, as if by magic, turn a stagnant economy into a booming one is a myth. It is another example of reformist politicians clutching at straws.

The present high interest rates are a product of both the continuing process of inflation. and of the onset of the recession, and will eventually fall of their own accord as the recession continues. Any attempt to manipulate interest rates (or other prices) so as to control the operation of the capitalist economy is entirely futile and can only represent another doomed policy initiative to ameliorate a social system that fails to match the high hopes of its politicians with monotonous regularity.

Dave Perrin

Caught In The Act: Monmouth and after (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monmouth and after

Losing gracefully is supposed lo be something that all Britishers are supposed to be good at. It has something to do with being properly brought up, going to a good school, being keen on cricket — rather like John Major, who has the added advantage, when it comes to behaving chivaloursly, of being a Tory. So there was some surprise, notably in the newspapers which usually support the government, when Major’s response to the Tory defeat in the Monmouth by-election was to lead a verbal assault on the Labour Party on the lines of "we wuz robbed" — that Labour had won the seat by telling a lie about hospitals opting out of NHS administration.

In fact there was hardly any need for the Labour Party to lie about this or about anything else because the government is in such a mess at present that they don’t know whether to have an election this month, or October, or next May, or never again.

In Monmouth the Labour Party ran what is for them now a typical campaign, masterminded from headquarters with a candidate featureless enough to fade into the wallpaper. The new MP Huw Edwards set out his stall as a political puppet when, at a press conference during the campaign, he replied to a question about one aspect of Labour policy: it was still being worked out but as soon as he was told what it was he would support it. There was no sign, among the celebratory Labour supporters at Monmouth, that any of them were wondering whether their victory was more a case of cynical manipulation than political principles.

Desperate

Meanwhile the Tories have two choices: they can panic, as they did after Monmouth or they can silently grit their teeth and wait for things to get better. Their attempts to replace the ill-fated Poll Tax with what they hoped would be the voter-friendly Council Tax has flopped. Many votes are won and lost on the issue of the size of the bills sent out by local authorities, whether under the old rates system or Poll Tax or the promised Council Tax. In fact this is a non issue because whatever the level of these charges it is not of significance or permanent concern to workers. When they designed the Council Tax the Tories were hoping to exploit the widespread misconception that lower local authority charges are in our interests. But the memories live on how the Poll Tax was pushed through against so much sound advice and the Tories are branded now as a party of muddle needlessly caused by dogmatism.

This has also been their problem over the NHS which, after Monmouth, will almost certainly be a central issue in the next general election. In Monmouth the Labour Party shrewdly focussed on two local hospitals which are considering opting out while they publicised evidence that the recent changes in the NHS mean medical care is a matter of what people can afford. This was powerful stuff to voters who were raised on the fallacy that the NHS provides the best possible treatment, freely and equally to everyone. In fact medical service has rather more than the two tiers which Labour made so much of. At the bottom is the NHS with its straight-jacketed resources, its overworked staff, its wailing lists and its patients organised like tiresome cattle. At the top is the kind of attention provided in the world's exclusive clinics with their expensively discreet rooms, squads of doctors and nurses and their assumption that the customer is always right provided they can pay enough. The NHS was designed for the working class, as a co-ordinated and economical get-you-back-to-work service. At the other extreme is the medical care, far removed from the scope of organisations like BUPA, reserved for the ruling class — the class who can afford the best of everything.

Orthodoxy

In the past much has been forgiven the Tories because they were assumed to be the party who could be trusted to run the economy. It all went with playing cricket, behaving correctly to ladies and losing gracefully. This has meant that Tory Chancellors of the Exchequer, however muddled and panicky their responses to capitalism's upheavals, have had an easier ride than those in a Labour government. It made little difference, that Chancellors from both sides carried out roughly the same policies, failed to the same degree to solve the same problems, made similar speeches after similar budgets. But when the cosy assumption that all Tory Chancellors are in control of the economy comes under serious challenge the result can be a severe destabilising of support for the government.

For a long time it has been an orthodoxy of capitalist economics that a booming economy and low unemployment could stimulate inflations — rising prices. Another orthodoxy has been that "inflation" is the enemy of civilisation; John Major is on record as one who "hates" inflation rather as one might "hate" a disease or a vicious animal. In the House of Commons he proclaimed that reducing "inflation" is the ". . .only stable and sure way to create and keep jobs".

But on the same day the Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont was telling the Commons that lower inflation does not create and keep jobs but destroys them: "Rising unemployment is the price we have to pay to get inflation down, and it is a price well worth paying”. In fact both Major and Lamont have either misunderstood the situation or distorted it. And when all the speeches have been made and the votes counted it is clear that either way working class interests are not involved.

Arrogance

There are some striking resemblances between Lamont and Nigel Lawson of much cursed memory, not least in the arrogance with which he delivers his lectures on the economy. Like Lawson, he has the knack of spouting memorable phrases which he must instantly hope will be quickly forgotten. Not only the unemployed were outraged by this overfed buffoon telling them that their suffering was all in the good cause of keeping the Tories in power and advancing Lamont's career.

Monmouth was a typical episode in the politics of capitalism, a smokescreen to obscure the reality of the politicians' impotence to control a vicious and inhumane social system. It is all a grisly, farcical game in which the parties of capitalism make the rules, appoint the referees and change the scoreboard. When will we blow the whistle on it all?

Ivan

Fear or Freedom ? (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a society which is full of scared people. Millions of men and women who are scared of powers which they do not control. At work you fear the boss, even if you have never met him—even if he only ever manifests himself through the anonymity of a company logo. The boss is Capital and Capital is King: if the economic overlord does not like you, if you are not delivering the profits to order, then you will be thrown out of a job. The incessant insecurity of employment will be transformed into the nightmare insecurity of unemployment.

If you are an unemployed wage slave you live in the constant fear that you will become too poor to exist. You stand shaking on the verge of the living hell reserved for workers who have no money. If you have a home you fear falling behind with the mortgage payments or rent. Repossession is your constant threat. If you are homeless and have joined the growing army of workers who must sleep on the streets, then be sure to fear the friendly reminder of your poverty from the policeman's boot. When you walk down the streets of most cities you are scared. Who is behind you? The ethic of competition makes you prey for the bully who robs from the poor. You are scared of war. Unless you are crazy, in a world crammed full of the weaponry of mass destruction you feel miserably insecure about the prospect of the next full-blown market shoot-out.

The media, over which the vast majority has no control whatsoever, thrives on popular fears and depicts a world of beasts, be they East Enders' wretched brutes who fight and con one another or the ugly caricature of Dirty Harry: Winner Man. The government, with its laws and machinery of coercion, scares you: “Do as we say or suffer the force of violent sanctions". You submit because you are frightened not to. Fill in the census with its meaningless questions about ethnicity, discuss your sex life with the Department of Social (In) security official, keep off the grass and away from the Earth because it does not belong to you. We live in a "Keep Off—Keep Out— Keep Quiet" culture, and if you think of resisting, beware, for you may be labelled The Enemy Within. You fear the price of resistance; who knows how the powers that be will retaliate?

Fear is characteristic of the normalised wage slave. You were sent to school to learn to become scared. You were taught the skills of conforming, obeying and stifling awkward criticisms. Indeed, you were taught to be afraid of your own fear: it is not "manly” to be scared. It is "manly” to suffocate your self-respect until you have a slave's contentment with the sound of the whip hitting someone else. It is so much easier to down eight pints of lager and cheer in unison in a football stadium than to face up to the fears which this social system thrusts upon us.

This fear which is the daily companion of most workers is not something natural. To be sure, there are natural fears: physical dangers which threaten all of us occasionally and some to the extent that it destroys them. But most of the powers which assault the working class are the product of the way that society is organised. They are the socially-created effects of a social cause. The cause of our fear is the capitalist system.

The truth about capitalism

Under capitalism the means of wealth production—factories, farms, mines, media, means of communication and transportation—are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world's population. The world is run for the purpose of accumulating profits for that capitalist minority. In the pursuit of profit, the needs, feelings, hopes and dreams of the vast majority. who are the wealth-producers, will inevitably be hurt. Capital uses (exploits) the working class and also it abuses us in many ways. It makes workers subjects of a set of economic, political and social relationships which we do not control. In fact, even the capitalists do not control the workings of their system—the system ultimately controls the capitalists and the governments which rule on their behalf. The truth about capitalism is that the workers are economically disenfranchised from real power and the bosses only imagine that they are in charge; everything is chaos and disorder: nobody knows what will happen next.

Under capitalism it is quite sensible to be scared. The record of the system is one of persistent disasters, usually unexpected. Just as one social problem is apparently being reformed out of existence two more emerge to plague us. Plans and policies to improve the system fail, either immediately or in the long term. Optimistic prospects of peace collapse when new ruling gangs with unforeseen appetites for profits make war a necessity. In late 1989 the capitalist leaders were celebrating the end of the Cold War, the outbreak of world peace, freedom from the threat of military strife—and exactly a year later they were preparing for a potentially global war commencing in the Middle East. Even at its moments of greatest hopefulness, capitalism only offers the reasonable observer grounds for worry.

The result of this fear-inducing system is a society characterised by socially-caused suicide statistics (rising in recent years amongst teenagers) and massive addiction to drugs, both legal tranquillisers offered to the fearful by helpless doctors and the illegal variety, used as an illusory form of escape by those for whom fear and insecurity have become too much. This system sells escape as one for the most sought after commodities. Holidays offer a fortnight of artificial relief from the worries of everyday wage or salary slavery; there is escape through film and escape through astrology and escape through bopping up and down to the sterile non-songs of Jason, Kylie or the latest packaged boil-in-the-bag superstar. Escape is the dream of the captive. The prison of capitalism, which captivates us in the trap of working for wages and buying everything we need for money, makes the fantasy of escape an appealing one.

Mass emotional repression

Capitalism requires repression. Not only that visible, brutal, blood-stained repression which comes out of the barrel of a gun. or other means of state coercion. Mass emotional repression is the order of the day. Workers must learn to know their places, fear stepping out of line, feel afraid to question what it is not for us to question—run and hide, mentally if not physically, when talk of freedom is in the air. The “fear of freedom" (to use the term popularised by Erich Fromm, whose writings have much to offer us in examining the psychology of capitalist life) is amongst the greatest barriers to majority socialist understanding in the world today.

The problem is that to understand the possibility for social revolution—socialist liberation—people have to want to be liberated. to become free, to overcome the forces of oppression. For many workers such a desire for freedom is too much to cope with. To think about the socialist demand that the we should emancipate ourselves from wage slavery involves making the admission that we are now slaves and then accepting the desire to be something better. This recognition presents a difficulty to workers who have become accustomed to their condition: the happy slaves and the victims of fear who tremble at the thought of seeing what the system has reduced them to and what they could rise to become in a free society.

In a socialist society humans will be free. The most basic social freedom of all is free access to the goods and services we need. Capitalism can never offer such freedom. The market is the antithesis of free access. Socialism means that the common store of global wealth, including all services and the widest artistic opportunities, will be free to all. There will be no money. Each will take from what is available according to their needs, just as all will give to society according to their abilities. Co-operative, democratic human freedom will prevail.

With this economic freedom from the shackles of the market will come a profound emotional freeing of people from the burden of living in fear of powers beyond them. No more bosses, no more gods, no more money-worship, no more moral absolutes. Stateless, leaderless and classless humanity will be free to explore what we want to make of ourselves. The dreams which had previously been confined to fear-free utopian visions will be on the social agenda. Humans will be free to live with a consciousness unhindered by the fears which come from always having to look over your shoulder.

The psychological freedom which many have sought through individualist therapy or mystical diversions is only going to be possible when there is a collective fightback against the fear-culture of capitalism. If the movement for socialism is small today it is not because most workers have heard our ideas and rejected them. Nor is it the case that those who have rejected socialism have done so consciously. For millions of workers the dream of being free from all the fearful strains of life under this anti-life system is a powerful one. What is needed is the strength to act and the knowledge that conscious, democratic action for socialism is the way out. To our fellow frightened workers we say: Don’t be afraid; it’s time now to give the capitalists something to worry about.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

Capitalism, poverty and child abuse (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The allegations of satanic rituals involving children in Rochdale and the Orkneys, and the life sentence passed on David Hammond in November 1989 for the brutal murder of his five-year old daughter Sukina have provided the national newspapers with a lot of sensational material in the last two years.

The NSPCC estimates that between 50 and 100 children are killed by their parents each year and that a further 16,000 are abused. Child abuse cases reported to them have risen by 20 percent in the last year (Guardian, 19 March) and 7 of their 66 teams claimed to have evidence of Satanic rituals involving children (Daily Telegraph, 19 March).

The murder of children by their parents is not new. Infanticide was used to control the population and to prevent children born with defects becoming a burden on the community. In China even today baby girls are sometimes killed, where boys are preferred in families limited to one child.

In 19th century London 80 percent of illegitimate babies put out to nurse in the notorious "baby farms" died. Some died of childhood diseases associated with poverty. because their mothers could not afford to pay for their children to be looked after properly. Others were murdered for gain after the fees had been collected.

P. T. Resnick, writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1969, listed various reasons why parents murder their children: altruistic killing to relieve the victim’s realistic or delusional suffering, whether or not followed by suicide; acute psychosis; elimination of an unwanted child (as when paternity is in doubt or the child would be a financial burden); accidental or unconscious motivation; and spouse revenge—the so-called Medea Syndrome (after Medea in Ancient Greek mythology who, following desertion by her husband, killed their two children, saying: "Thy sons are dead and gone, that will stab thy heart").

Children are frequently warned by parents, teachers and public information films not to talk to strangers. This deliberate inculcation of a suspicious and fearful attitude to strangers is probably more harmful than helpful as at least 88 percent of child murders are carried out by members of the victim’s own family. The same mistrust of strangers is instilled into children to "protect" them from sexual abuse. But children are far more likely to be abused by relatives.

Poor get the blame

Commenting on the strong link being being abused as a child and anti-social behaviour, including child abuse, later in life, Sir Keith Joseph when Minister of Health and Social Security coined the phrase “cycles of deprivation". His argument was that parents brought up in deprived circumstances were responsible for bringing up their children in similarly deprived circumstances.

The political right-wing favours this type of “victim-bashing" approach because it avoids the pressure for social change. To blame the poor for their poverty ignores the fact that capitalism creates the wretched conditions in which many workers live. Capitalism fosters inequality and workers brought up in deprived circumstances have great difficulty in making economic progress. The worst schools, the worst social amenities and the worst job opportunities are all the very poor have access to. Children from poor families are under greater pressure to leave school as soon as possible in order that they can work and contribute to the family income. In addition, some housing estates have such bad reputations that it is difficult for workers living on them to borrow money or obtain mortgages. This has more to do with the continued deprivation from one generation to the next than any moral deficiency or lack of ability on the part of the workers.

Internal stresses within a family, personality clashes, sibling rivalry, incompatibility, worries about health, and misunderstandings between the different generations are similar for rich and poor alike. But the external stresses caused by poverty, unemployment, bad housing, overcrowding or homelessness only affect those who have to work for wages. It is these external stresses, and the fact that workers will have faced many of these problems during their own childhood that makes physical abuse more likely to happen in poor homes.

Poverty is violence

Social workers have failed to protect children because under capitalism their function is social control:

We have seen that the ruling class cannot maintain its exploitive domination simply by the direct repressive apparatus of the army, police, courts and prisons. Its legitimation has to be engineered through a range of ideological mechanisms. Social work operates primarily as part of these mechanisms.

(P. Leonard, Poverty Consciousness and Action, 1975).

Capitalism distorts relationships. By putting a price on everything and subordinating all activities to the need to make a profit it has made us all rivals. It is no surprise that children have been regarded as their parents’ property, because capitalism prizes property above everything else.

Hypocritically, individual acts of cruelty are condemned by politicians while children are allowed to starve in underdeveloped countries to maintain profits. In the Phillipines children work long hours in what amounts to little more than slavery without much condemnation from European reformers, some of whom are happy to reap the profits that are made.

In the case of Sukina Hammond the Daily Star carried huge headlines “Whipped to Death" and gave lurid details of the child’s suffering. But only a handful of cases are reported in this way. The majority of children killed by their parents will not be mentioned because they are not newsworthy enough. Even in death Sukina Hammond was exploited for a headline.

Workers owe it to themselves, their children and to future generations to remove the profit motive, the property tag and all the rivalries and suspicions which are inherent in competitive societies. Perhaps then children like Sukina Hammond will not have died in vain.

Carl Pinel

Why hunger? (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now common knowledge that up to 1.4 billion people in the world live below the poverty line. Over 500 million go hungry, according to the UN, and every single day 40,000 children die as a result of hunger.

Why do people go hungry?

Is it because there is not enough food? No, the world produces enough food to give every person on Earth 3000 calories a day.

Is it because of too many people? No, Holland has 1078 people per square mile while Brazil, where ten of thousands go hungry, has 39 people per square mile.

The developed countries comprising 30 percent of the world’s population consume over 80 percent of the resources, not because they need to—the UK alone swallows over £500 million worth of slimming aids every year. Developing countries have been forced to grow more cash crops for export. Consequently, land that should be feeding their people is producing for European and North American markets.

It is in fact the World Market that rules the world. Acting like a natural force beyond human control, it has much more power than any national government and forces governments to comply with its economic laws, whether they want to or not.

The market creates an artificial scarcity and organised waste that is responsible for poverty and hunger in the world today. The law which governs production everywhere is “no profit, no production”.

World malnutrition and starvation, then, is not a natural but a social problem. Its cause must be sought not in any lack of natural resources but in the way society is organised.

Michael Ghebre

Letter: Hayek or Marx? (1991)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

In response to an invitation to send information on the market economy to an address in Czechoslovakia, a Socialist Party member sent a recent issue of the Socialist Standard. He received the following reply from the Czech Minister in charge of privatisation:

Having received your letter and given it the consideration it deserves. I would simply inform you that you should continue in your efforts to establish “Socialism” in England so long as you care to continue in a morally and practically suspect endeavour. Your knowledge of Czechoslovakia, her social conditions and history appear inadequate to allow us to take your officious comments as anything more than calculated drivel or utter self-delusion.

Events in the Persian Gulf have shown that it is unnecessary to comment upon the article "Another War for Oil” except to consign it to one of the above-mentioned categories.

Finally, I have read the works of Karl Marx and may say that, after a lifetime of experience in the application of some of his musings, I don't think much of them, nor do I consider Marx to have been a very good student of human nature. I strongly urge you to broaden your viewpoint. 1 suggest you begin with the works of Friedrich von Hayek. Afterwards, if you wish to discuss rather than polemicize, write me again.

Dr. Tomáš Ježek

Minister of Czech Republic 

for National Property Administration 

and its Privatization

Reply:

We publish this letter to record the sort of ideas held by those who have taken over from the state capitalist dictators who used to govern countries like Czechoslovakia. Clearly, they have unbounded optimism in the ability of private enterprise capitalism to improve conditions in their part of the world. Some of them may be able to line their own pockets and become private capitalists, but the majority of the population will not benefit. Capitalism, whether in its private or its state form, can never solve the problems that confront wage and salary workers as these arise out of the very nature of capitalism as a system that exploits wage-labour for profit. The private capitalists whose interests the likes of Dr Jezek represent will prove to be just as harsh taskmasters as the old state-capitalist bureaucrats who have been thrown out.

The letter also illustrates the harm that the previously-existing state capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe have done to the cause of genuine socialism. They had nothing whatsoever to do with socialism nor even with Marx, but were anti-socialist dictatorships in which an élite of Party bosses ruled over and exploited the working class. The trouble was that they called themselves "socialist" and, as a result, millions of workers all over the world have been put off the whole idea of socialism.

In a sense it is understandable that those workers who were the victims of these régimes should react with hostility to the very word "socialism" and should have illusions that "capitalism" will do better. Life itself will teach them about private enterprise capitalism. As to socialism, we would urge them to overcome their understandable prejudice against the word and to investigate what it originally meant: a classless society of social equality based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production—which they know from their own experience never existed under the regime which both their previous masters and their new masters lyingly told them was socialism.

Editors.

Between the Lines: A Simpler Truth (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Simpler Truth

In the month that has seen the parasitical pigs fighting round the ITV trough to see who can win the fattest franchises, the state-funded BBC announced that it will lay off 104 workers in its News and Current Affairs section so that it can slash its budget by £2 million. The BBC's new Funding The Future policy statement states that there will be a £75 million cut in BBC expenditure by 1993. This will be paid for by laying off workers, making cheaper programmes and selling off the big-audience productions to commercial companies who can pump them for profit. (For example, BBC's Question Time is to be sold off — just as all the leftists who appear on it have sold out.) The future of British TV, dominated by big-money outfits who are to buy up the deregulated commercial channels and a cut-price, game-show dominated BBC, will consist of more televised Ratners for the proles while the bosses entertain themselves in the casinos and opera houses on money they have acquired by robbing us.

Speaking of robbery, The Simple Truth concert (BBC2, 12 May, 8pm - 1 am) is worthy of comment. The concert, to raise money for the Kurds and other victims of "disasters" (for which read "every day occurrences of the profit system), was the brainchild (to refer to the parentage loosely) of top Tory, Jeffrey Archer. Young Jeff, it will be recalled, is a pretty generous sort of guy: prostitutes who have never met him before have only to drop him a line requesting £200 and it's in the next post. Archer hoped that the concert would raise £10 million. Viewers were urged to phone in with £5 donations. £10 million — a lot of money, eh? Until you start to think that

• The daily cost of the bombs dropped on the Kurds in Iraq during the recent Gulf war, which Archer proudly supported, was far greater than the amount collected by the concert.
• The daily rate of interest required from African states, where millions are dying, is greater than the money collected by the concert.
• The proportion of weekly income of an average British worker which £5 constitutes is a thousand times greater than £5 out of the weekly profits obtained on the basis of working-class robbery by Archer, the multi-millionaire creep.

Their Music

Another thing about The Simple Truth timewasting was the chronic irrelevance of nearly all of the music to any kind of real social change. The five hours of the concerts were filled with melodies to make us moronic. From the talentless drivel of super-hyped New Kids on the Block to the sub-Sinatra tripe of Whitney Houston, the whole show had nothing to say about what is actually going on in the world. The following Sunday your reviewer was at the Levellers' Day commemoration in Burford and heard the superb Peggy Seeger singing songs of real class awareness. She is not the only one writing and singing such material; there is a huge growth of singers, writers and bands coming out of and reflecting the experiences of the working class. What they have to sing about relates to the profit-caused problems of the Kurds, the starving Africans and Bangladeshis. But you don’t find the likes of Archer or the state-run BBC giving exposure to them. They might make the wage slaves think too much.

The Worst Show on Earth

Neighbours (BBC1, whenever you switch on) is in no danger of making the wage slaves think too much. A prerequisite for following the events of this implausible load of old tosh is that you do not think at all. Last month junior Education Minister, Michael Fallon, called for the programme to be banned, saying that it dulls peoples's senses. His Labour opposite number. Jack Straw, said that it was "a pretty trashy programme". Quite why a Tory Minister should object to workers’ minds being dulled (how else could they win an election?) or a Labour leader should object to trash (who but a collector of such would read the lie-a-minute Labour manifesto?) we do not know. We do know that the BBC, representing the true voice of the ruling class, put out a statement saying that Neighbours was a good programme because it offers moral education to its audience. Funny that: when this column exposed the predecessor of Neighbours, Crossroads for being a vehicle for just such moralistic propaganda we were atttacked by an article in The People newspaper suggesting that our claim was the loony delusion of deranged Marxists

Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings and Debates (1991)

Party News from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• The ILP that the Party debated in Cambridge was in fact the old ILP of Maxton, Brockway and Hardie fame. In the mid-1970s the ILP had re-affiliated to the Labour Party and renamed themselves Independent Labour Publications. By 1991, they were publishing a well produced magazine, imaginatively called 'The ILP Magazine'. I used to subscribe to it.
• The two meetings in the North West with Gary Slapper under the title of 'Is Your Job Killing You?' possibly tied in  with his research into workplace deaths which eventually became the book, Blood in the Bank: Social and Legal Aspects of Death at Work.
• The meeting in West London with the guest speaker, Khachik Pilikian, would have been good.

50 Years Ago: Why the Workers Save (1991)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Times (April 21st 1941) published an article based on first-hand knowledge of the workers’ attitude towards the Government savings campaign. The writer comments on the fact that many workers save in order to be able to face the anticipated depression after the war. “A majority of the working-class expect hard times after the war,” he writes, and quotes a Bradford weaver, who said : —

“I think there’ll be a big slump. I was in t’last slump; it was a terrible time. People didn’t save anything. I was always telling them, if it’s only two or three shillings, don’t spend more than you need. If it’s anything like the last, God help them.”

The naive writer of the article is rather surprised to learn that the attitude of the workers towards saving is not like that of the capitalist: —

“It is only in a very few instances that a working man is putting by money as a form of capital accumulation, which will eventually enable him to invest in property or become a small trader. Most often saving is a form of insurance against known contingencies : marriage, sickness, death, unemployment, old age, hard times . . . even at the poverty level families frequently save, at the expense of their elementary subsistence needs . . . ”—(The Times, April 21st, 1941.)

In short, the capitalist saves out of his superfluity in order to accumulate capital; the worker saves out of his insufficiency in order to protect himself against capitalism and the capitalist.

[From the Socialist Standard, June 1941.]

Utopia now (1991)

Book Review from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

I Was Robot (Utopia Now Possible). By Ernest Mann. (Little Free Press, Rt 1. Box 102 Cushing, MN 56443, USA. $7.95.)

We have always argued that many workers would arrive at conclusions similar to those of Socialists on their own, without encountering Socialist speakers or publications. This is just what happened to Ernest Mann: twenty years ago, at the age of 42, he decided that he had had enough of wage slavery and "dropped out”. Since then, he has been propagating his ideas in his own newsletter, issued from Minnesota. Many of these newsletters are now collected together in this volume. Unfortunately, this format means the book is very repetitive, and there is little sense of an argument being developed. Nevertheless, the result is lively and well worth reading.

Mann argues that basic causes of problems should be attacked, not just the symptoms. For him, it is the pursuit of profit which is responsible for the ills of society—for gross inequalities, for the bloodshed of war, for the waste of production, for people's need to obey and conform. His alternative is what he calls the “Priceless Economic System" which is a system without money or the profit motive, based on co-operation not competition, with work done by volunteers. He deals with the “lazy person" argument by pointing out that there would still be plenty of motivation to work in a society where people would be cooperating to produce the best possible, free of stress and worries. Without useless jobs and the waste of wars and so on. it would be possible to produce an abundance of goods, for people to take as they wish.

There is no doubt that the Priceless Economic System is in its essentials Socialism. The only sour note is struck by a passage leading to the conclusion. "let's get rid of Profit and get our country back!”, which is based on the idea that the American economy has been in part sold out to billionaires from Asia and north Africa. The nationalism, indeed racism, of this argument, sits ill with the rest of this book.

The other problem in Mann’s discussion concerns how to establish the moneyless society. At one point he takes the elitist position that it will be enough to convince a few “movers and shakers” of its superiority, for then the rest of the population will follow them, apparently like sheep. At other times he suggests starting on an individual basis: give away your surplus possessions, set up a group of friends and neighbours who can donate labour and skills to each other for free. Then again he proposes that, once everyone is convinced of the need for the change, they can just set a date on which to stop using money. So he does (sometimes) see the necessity for majority support for a moneyless society, but he makes no reference to class struggle or the need to dispossess the capitalist class.

But the good points of the book far outweigh its shortcomings. There are some striking images, such as the opening one of workers all wearing helmets which somehow make them slaves of the bosses. Memorable too is the idea of the Warbucks family, who have ruled Earth for millennia but who eventually decide to leave for outer space, recommending to their slaves not to continue with the money system.

Paul Bennett

To give money or to abolish money? (1991)

Editorial from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are being bombarded by pleas to part with pennies and pounds. Millions are dying. Over 125,000 Bangladeshis have been killed and a staggering ten million are now homeless. The suffering defies imagination. We are asked to donate money. In Africa the famine has become greater than it was in the disastrous mid-80's. 27 million might starve to death, half of them children. So, could we send some money? The Kurds, refugees from the ruthless Iraqi dictatorship, are freezing and starving. Jeffrey Archer organises a pop concert and we are asked to give money.

Money is not the solution. Starving people cannot eat money. Money is a feature of the property system that causes poverty.

In Africa they are starving because money exists. Crops must be produced to be sold for cash. The African farmers are part of the world capitalist system which tosses them crumbs with one hand and sends in the debt collectors to recover the loans from banks with the other.The civil war in Ethiopia, which makes worse the effects of the famine, is about which group of capitalists will control which territory.

“BANGLADESH'S REAL TRAGEDY IS POVERTY”. This headline appeared in the Guardian newspaper on 3 May. Those who died in the floods did so because they had to live on the most dangerous land.The Guardian quotes Dr Allister McGregor of Bath University: “These people are the very poorest, and they take the biggest risk. It is like living next to a precipice. If there is a flood, they are the ones who pay the highest price.They are constrained by their own poverty”.

Poverty is not a natural phenomenon. It is the result of a society where a small minority own and control the resources of the Earth and the vast majority must pay to have access to what is not ours. For millions who cannot pay anything at all the consequence is abject destitution and mass deaths. They are killed by the profit system.

Earlier this year the capitalist powers went to war over the control of oil. Many millions of pounds were raised. They orchestrated one of the most logistically sophisticated movements of armed men and women in military history. The task of killing Iraqis was completed in a highly scientific fashion. But when it comes to dealing with famine and disaster such skills are conspicuously absent. The charities call for greater “political will” to help the suffering. What they do not understand is that more important than the decisions of politicians are the calculations of economists, and the fact is that feeding the starving is not profitable.

The humanitarian concern of many workers shows that we are not the heartless beings that the “human nature” myth portrays us as. In fact, most of us hate to see our fellow humans suffer. Vast amounts of money are collected by charities. This may convey the illusion that something is being done. In reality, it is a drop in an ocean of unstoppable despair. Capitalism without pitiful poverty is not on the agenda.

In a world based on production for use all of the efficiency currently dedicated to industrial profit and war can be mobilised to help those who are the victims of disasters. Of course, in a socialist world the economic necessity to live in the most dangerous areas will not exist. The national frontiers, which are part of the cause of the plight of the Kurds, will not exist. Kurds, just like any cultural group that wishes to do so, will be free to live together. But most importantly, in a society where production is for use there will be a constant check kept on how much the world is able to produce, who needs what is available and how most efficiently to distribute it. The idea of food shortages will be inconceivable.

There is a simple choice: keep capitalism and starvation will remain on the human agenda for years to come, whatever the relief efforts; or go for socialism and not a single person need ever starve again. As you watch the TV pictures of those who scream from the pain of hunger it must become obvious which is the most practical and humane way forward.

Sting in the Tail: Send for Jeeves (1991)

The Sting in the Tail Column from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Send for Jeeves

The characters of P.G. Wodehouse may seem a little outdated, but the useless, luxurious lives of the very rich don't seem to have changed all that much since the days of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

Patrick Davison, a butler to the millionaire George Soros, recently won his case for unfair dismissal; and in reporting the tribunal the newspapers revealed a little of the outrageous life-style of the rich in Britain today. The butler insisted to Mrs Miriam Sanchez, a recently appointed chef, that she use less expensive wines when preparing her gourmet meals.

But Mrs Sanchez complained to Mr Soros's wife Susan, got her own way, and began to use Chateau Lafite wines costing between £400 and £500 a bottle

Glasgow Herald 8 May

All lovers of haute cuisine will be delighted that the present economic slump is not affecting the high standards of the Soros household.

Unkindest Cut of All

At the Scottish Tory Party conference in Perth last month you could hear some remarkable nonsense, but it is doubtful if any of the delegates could have topped the nutty ideas of that foolish fop Mr Nicholas Fairbairn MP.

When not grabbing the headlines of the gutter press with his eccentric notions of sartorial elegance (he once appeared at Buckingham Palace in a tartan three piece suit that made him look like a demented Bay City Roller fan) he thunders forth on such issues as World Hunger.

In Africa, they are being encouraged to have more children. I feel there should be more sterilisation programmes by these governments and It should be a world-wide priority.

Glasgow Herald 10 May

Like many politicians Fairbairn believes that World Hunger is caused by too many people. He of course does not take the socialist view that this planet is capable of feeding all the world's population if we had production for use instead of production for profit.

Sterilisation as a solution to World Hunger is stupid. Although it is a pity perhaps that Fairbairn's father hadn't been a volunteer for such a programme.

Dead Leninism

We forked out the £1.80 to buy the May Issue of "Living Marxism", the monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

The contents quickly reveal the RCP as yet another bunch of Leninists when, for example, we read about the alleged need for

... arming a minority with an understanding of the necessity for social change...

Of course there's not one word about what the social change is to be, merely a mention of "a new society".

But why only a minority, why not a majority? Well, being Leninists they certainly don't want THAT!

After all, if the majority saw the necessity for real social change by replacing capitalism with a world-wide society based on common ownership and democratic control then there wouldn't be any place for Leninist leaders, would there?

Thieves Fall Out

The Institute of Directors has been described as the Tory Party at lunch but now its director general has fallen out with the government.

Peter Morgan told the Institute's annual conference:

This awful recession . . .  is a failure of government management. It is government failure, not market failure.

The Guardian 24 April

Morgan imagines that if the government had followed policies approved by him then the recession would have been avoided. He is wrong. No matter what policies governments pursue, the normal boom - slump cycle of capitalism cannot be avoided.

But he was right about the relationship between inflation and wages when he blamed the government for "high wage settlements".

I have absolutely no doubt that inflation causes high settlements and not, categorically not, the other way around.

Remember this the next time you hear about "inflationary wage rises"

May Day Mayhem

May Day in Glasgow was fine and sunny but the number of marchers continues to decline. The main speaker at the official rally on Glasgow Green was a trade union leader but his meeting attracted fewer people than the beer tent did.

One fringe activity was a platform on which every leftist group was invited to speak. And so they did but often only to slag off one another.

For example, a Trotskyist attacked "the Stalinists" and was immediately denounced by an anarchist for supporting Trotsky, "the butcher of Kronstadt".

Some speakers urged trade union action while others were hostile to this, but all were united in hammering the Labour Party although most still wanted to "get the Tories out" and "a real Labour government in".

Incidentally, the big demand from the organisers of this meeting was ... the reinstatement of the demoted curator of the People's Palace Museum!

Meanwhile, Glasgow branch members of the Socialist Party set out their literature and, despite the surrounding din, held a brief meeting. That, we can swear, was the only occasion when anything about socialism was allowed to intrude during the whole afternoon.

Don't All Rush

Fancy a des res with "unrivalled view" over Kensington Palace Gardens? This apartment has polished marble floors throughout, four reception rooms, four bedrooms each with bathroom en suite, and has Prince Charles as a near neighbour. (ITN News 10 May).

And because the market is at rock bottom it's yours for a giveaway £13 million. This includes antique furniture worth £1 million but a discount can be arranged should you wish the apartment unfurnished.

Still not sure? Well, this residential block is so exclusive that its development officer thinks the apartment will go to the type of person “who needs a home in all the major capitals".

You'll think about it? Yes, that's just about all workers can ever do about capitalism's extravagances.

The Blackboard Jungle

A good example of the Tory Party's idea of open government was explained in The Independent on 13 May, in reporting how the government dealt with critical reports from the school Inspectorate on the state of education. 

The Government found such criticism embarrassing. In 1987 it held back the Chief Inspector's report until after the general election. Only after the election did the public find out about the large increase in unfilled teacher vacancies, the crumbling classrooms and the great divide between schools where parents could afford to buy textbooks and those who could not.

It is heartening that some Tory MPs are eager to avoid this dishonesty - they are proposing a bill to abolish the inspectorate!

Was Kinnock always a Tory wet? (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Restless is hardly the word to describe members of the Labour Party as they contemplate Neil Kinnock's abandonment of the left-wing ideas which he professed in those far-off days when he was coming up through the ranks of the party. They are unlikely, however, to be consoled by one of our readers who thinks that they— and we—have got it wrong because Kinnock has not changed: he was never a left-winger in the first place. E. H. Evans, of Newport, Gwent, writes:

You keep on repeating that Neil Kinnock used to be a left-wing firebrand. Can you prove that? I knew Neil 30 years ago. In fact, he used to be my tutor in TU weekend schools in Porthcawl, and I never had the impression that he was a "leftwinger". Far from it; apart from the fact that he was a member of CND, he was always on the so-called "right" of the trade union and Labour movement. This so-called "left" myth is nothing but a Tory plot, supported by the media. How can a person be a leftwinger when he supports and admires Clem Attlee? Unless you can supply proof you'd better let this fairy tale rest.

So what are the facts? Was Kinnock a left-winger or is it all got up by the Tories and the media—and the Socialist Standard? To begin with, it is not unusual for left-wingers to admire Attlee for the huge programme of nationalisation and other measures his government pushed through. And, of course, Kinnock is also an admirer of Nye Bevan, who for much of his political life (until he too outraged his supporters on the left) was a left-wing scourge of the Attlee government. Kinnock contributed a foreward to a reprint of Bevan's book In Place of Fear in 1978. After you have hacked away the dense verbiage (not for nothing is Kinnock known as the Welsh windbag) this is revealed as an eulogy that condemns as "lame-brained and prejudiced" anyone unable to accept Bevan's proposition and practice.

Whatever E. H. Evans's experience of Kinnock in the 1960s it is clearly at odds with that of others, who knew Kinnock and worked with him, and with that of those who observed him later in his career. Eric Heffer in his book Labour's Future says that Kinnock "was known in the party as a man of the left who was a close personal friend of Michael Foot and much influenced by Nye Bevan". In his diaries covering 1977-80 (Conflict of Interests) Tony Benn records a Tribune Group meeting in January 1977 when "the whole left was there: Ian Mikardo was in the chair, Neil Kinnock, Dick Clements, Mark Sanders" and a party he threw at his home in 1979 "with about forty people of the left" who included Neil Kinnock.

Of those who observed him, David and Maurice Kogan in The Battle for the Labour Party say that "he has held left-wing views on most matters" and "talked in the language of the radical post-Bevan left". In The Tragedy of Labour Stephen Haseler describes the Labour Party NEC swinging "further to the left with the addition on it of Dennis Skinner, Neil Kinnock and Douglas Hoyle". Kenneth O. Morgan, in Labour People, says that by 1974 Kinnock "was a vocal advocate of the standard left wing position on nuclear weapons, the Common Market, public ownership, incomes policy, arms to South Africa, Chile, El Salvador and much else besides".

Capitalism "a failure"
What had Kinnock done to deserve such assessments, from people who are hardly Tories or media dupes? Although he has never been famous for outpourings of gems of political theory, Kinnock did put enough on record to establish his reputation as a left-winger. In an article on nationalisation in December 1974 in Labour Monthly he wrote, in a bitter criticism of the then Labour government and in particular its Treasury ministers:

The future of Britain is with socialist nationalisation and not with pensioner capitalism . . . British governments have fruitlessly been trying to bribe British capitalism for forty years. There is no need to be apologetic about the extension of public ownership or the establishment of workers' control. They are now prerequisites of the economic survival of Britain . . . there is no alternative in the capitalist system—it is a failure.

At the Labour NEC in October 1978 Kinnock proclaimed, in another attack on the policies being pursued by the Labour government, that "we should reflate, put money into health, go for the job-swap scheme, better housing, end stock relief for businesses". After the defeat of that government, in May 1979, Kinnock condemned it:

"For the third time the Labour Party had saved capitalism, and lost", Benn Diaries

Times Change
As late as October 1984, after he had been elected leader of the Labour Party, he was able to reassure the left with statements like "the short sighted, speculative market system . . . never will produce the plenty necessary to meet human need" (Marxism Today). Well times have changed because at the Labour Party conference in October 1988 Kinnock was telling his members of his intention to run the same market system which fails to satisfy human needs:

The fact is that the kind of economy that we are faced with is going to be a market economy. It will be the one that we have to deal with when we are elected. We have got to make it work better than the Tories make it work . . . Even after that has been the implemented programme of a Labour government for years, there will still be a market economy.

Times have changed, too, about nuclear arms because it is quite clear that if Kinnock ever becomes Prime Minister he will not arrange, in deference to his past membership of CND, for the immediate abandonment of British capitalism's nuclear arsenal.

Kinnock is not the first Leader of the Labour Party to tread the well-worn path from left-wing to right, even if in some cases in the past—such as Harold Wilson—the left-wing policies existed more by virtue of wishful thinking of a power-hungry party membership than in reality. For a Labour politician on the way up a reputation as a staunch left-winger has been almost essential as an apprenticeship. Kinnock, though, has been different in one respect; he has not waited to get into office before moving from left to right, but has carried this through while still in opposition—clearly he decided that if he did not make the move now this would stay that way.

Winning political power to run capitalism, which is the aim of the Labour Party, has to be a process of deceit. How else could they justify their present policies and presentation, which are in opposition to what they have claimed to stand for in the past? Running British capitalism is not a job for anyone who is encumbered by the embarrassments of what they had to do and say in order to get to the top. This is a harsh system which must operate against the interests of the people who vote the leaders into power. If Kinnock ever makes it to Number Ten, and settles down to run his bit of the market economy and the British nuclear forces, he will enrage his followers. But he will always be able to argue that when they voted for him they knew what they were letting themselves in for.

Ivan 

Rosa Luxemburg (1991)

Book Review from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rosa Luxemburg. By Wendy Forrest. (Hamish Hamilton. £6.99)

New on the shelves of the children's section in the local public library, one of a series "In Her Own Time", is this book on Rosa Luxemburg. Contrary to the perceived correct behaviour for women of her time, Luxemburg did not wait at home for a husband and children to look after, but campaigned for socialism, was imprisoned and finally murdered. The book is a breath of sanity among the usual mind-bending and cobwebbed Never Never Land found on children's bookshelves. It is especially encouraging to see children introduced to Luxemburg's definition of the cause of war, so relevant today: "The fight against militarism cannot be separated from the socialist class war as a whole . . . Wars between capitalist states are as a rule the result of their rivalry for world markets . . . Wars are therefore inherent in the nature of capitalism; they will only cease when capitalism is abolished".

Eva Goodman 

Organise to end the profit system (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party member Fred Edwards was a candidate last April in the election for the two delegates from the Yorkshire and Humberside district of NALGO to the 1991 TUC Conference. We reproduce below his election address. He obtained 3628 votes as against 9172 and 7669 respectively for the two other candidates, who were elected. We would not want to claim that all those who voted for him fully agreed with the socialist views expressed in his statement. All the same it is encouraging that the socialist message obtained such a wide and receptive hearing.

In 1989 when I was first nominated by my branch as a potential delegate to the TUC Conference I indicated then my history in the trade union movement over the past twenty years or so and as such feel it not a necessity to cover old ground, suffice to say that the views I had then are as strong now with regard to the effectiveness (or lack of) by our "leaders".

Throughout the years our "leaders" (for that is what they like to be called) continue to place themselves in a position of trying to influence the powers that be that, by tinkering with a social system which continues to put profits before people, all will be sweetness and light.

However, the reality is whenever workers endeavour to gain a few extra crumbs from they cake they themselves bake the capitalist class and its apologists remind them of the need to be realistic. By which they do not mean that workers should acquaint themselves with Marxian economics and the workings of the class struggle, but rather that the employee class should accept less today in exchange for a share in Utopia tomorrow. In the meantime, the working class have to endure the deprivation of their inferior social position, while the capitalist class can continue to enjoy their parasitic privileges derived from profit, interest and rent.

Production under capitalism is anarchic, as the profit requirement must be placed before the needs of the majority. That is why tens of millions of human beings starve to death each year, while farmers are subsidised not to produce food. Similarly whilst thousand of building workers remain unemployed tens of thousands of workers remain homeless.

Alongside over-production for the market there is under-production for human need. This basic contradiction has remained despite reformist attempts to eradicate working class social problems. They have failed as they address effects rather than the cause: commodity production.

In conclusion, I ask of you, the voter, if you agree that my assertion is substantially correct and the TUC should be educating towards a classless, moneyless, private-propertyless society then please vote for me. If you disagree then you will obviously vote for someone else.

The great task which confronts the working class is to organise consciously, politically and democratically throughout the globe so that a speedy end may be wrought to the system.

Fred Edwards

SWP contradictions (1) (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Labour Party is drenched in the blood of ordinary workers in the Middle East, slaughtered for imperialist rule." SWP "Marxism '91" Programme

The Labour Party, says the SWP, stands for capitalism; if elected it will attack the workers and serve the bosses; Kinnock and the other Labour leaders have blood on their hands for supporting the Gulf War. All very true. So we shouldn't vote Labour? No, no, no, says the SWP, you should vote Labour—and at the next election, as in previous ones, they will produce posters calling on workers to vote for all Labour candidates, including Kinnock, Kaufman and the other war-supporters. Why?

The SWP's facing-both-ways attitude to the Labour Party arises from their contempt for the intellectual abilities of most of the working class. As Leninists and Trotskyists, they think that only a minority can come to acquire a socialist consciousness and that it is the task of this minority to lead the rest of the workers, who are considered incapable of advancing beyond support for trade unions, reforms and reformist parties.

So the SWP is trying to do two things: build a vanguard party and acquire a following of ordinary workers. The attacks on Labour and talk of socialism are aimed at organising the minority who alone can understand these things into the disciplined party that is to play a leadership role, while appeals to "fight the bosses" and "kick out the Tories" are directed at winning followers amongst the inevitably Labour-voting ordinary workers. After all, if you believe, as the SWP does, that most workers cannot understand socialist ideas there is no point in appealing to them on this basis. Why cast pearls before swine? Just tell them that the Tories, not capitalism, are to blame for their problems and urge them to go on voting Labour.

In fact, of course, not only can a majority of workers come to understand socialism but they must if socialism is to be the outcome. Only a majority revolution can lead to socialism as a classless, democratically-run society of free and equal men and women. Minority and minority-led revolutions can only lead to the continuation of class rule in one form or another—as happened in Russia after 1917 under Lenin and Trotsky, which the SWP take as their model, where the leaders of the vanguard party installed themselves as the new bosses while the mass of the workers continued to work for wages. This was state capitalism, not socialism.

Once you recognise, as all genuine socialists must, that workers are capable of coming to want and understand socialism then the attitude to take towards the Labour Party is clear: complete opposition, as to all the other parties of capitalism. Don't, vote Labour any more than vote Tory. Struggle for socialism.

Next month: the contradiction between saying Russia was state capitalist after 1928 but not before.

Adam Buick