Sting in the Tail: Jobs for the boys (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jobs for the boys

When capitalism's economy is booming then some sections of the working class can make considerable gains. This, reformists assure us, is proof that their strategy of “getting something now” is more rewarding than our insistence on the need for socialism.

But what happens when the economic climate changes? Then many of the gains inevitably come under attack and will be completely lost.

An example of this is happening in Sweden now. For decades women there benefitted from the job opportunities in the growing public sector and had the highest level of workplace equality in the world:

They entered the labour market in such numbers that the term hemmafru (housewife) became a virtual anachronism within a decade. (Guardian, 13 April).

Now a huge government economy drive means tens of thousands of women are to lose their jobs and there are plans to introduce financial incentives for mothers to stay home and look after the children.

“Getting something now" is difficult enough in capitalism but hanging on to it is the really tricky bit.

Monet and Money

Alfred Barnes was a rich American who was heavily into modern art. His collection, which includes many paintings by Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir and others, is unequalled and is valued at $6 billion.

Late Again (BBC2, 17 April) revealed how Barnes only allowed a select few to see his collection. When he died in 1951 his will instructed the Barnes Foundation that the collection must never be sold, loaned or even moved.

Now, those who control the foundation want to raise money to repair the building where the collection is housed and they have won the courts' permission to take part of the collection on tour.

Even this outraged much of the art establishment. “The integrity of the collection is threatened, it will never come together again", they moaned, but their big argument was that “a dead man's wishes were being flouted".

All of this art was only possible because society provided the artists with the food, clothing, shelter, materials, education and, often, the inspiration they required. Art is a social product and should he freely available to all and not just to an elitist bunch of ’’art lovers" backed by the whim of a man long-since dead.

Cause and effect

Under headlines such as “Italians dance for joy after huge poll victory on reforms”, the newspapers have reported that the anti-Mafia movement are claiming that a new electoral system will stop “decades of waste, corruption and Mafia outrage".

What are these miraculous changes? In future 75 percent of the 315-seat Senate, or upper house, will be decided by the same first-past-the-post system as applies to Britain's House of Commons.

It is interesting to note that reformers in the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties favour some form of proportional representation in Britain. They decry the first-past-the-post system as undemocratic.

The electoral system makes no difference. No matter which system is favoured, capitalism is a social system that will always cause “waste, corruption and outrage". What is needed is not a change in the electoral system, but a change in the social system from capitalism to socialism.

Royal bricklayers

Amidst universal rejoicing, the government has announced that the Queen's private chapel, which was badly damaged in the Windsor Castle fire last year, is to be rebuilt in a contemporary style. One can hear the shouts of joy ringing out from cardboard city at the news.

Of course, such a prestigious venture must have a steady hand on the tiller. But we can sleep easy in this one too. “The Duke of Edinhurgh will take the lead for the Royal Household in the rebuilding programme. (Independent on Sunday, 25 April).

We hope no naive reader imagines that the Duke will actually be doing any work. No hod carrier he. No, the rebuilding by the Duke of Edinburgh will be like all the “building" that kings, queens, dukes, duchesses and plain old millionaires carry out. They may lay a ceremonial foundation stone or unveil a plaque, but you can be sure all the useful toil will be carried out by members of the working class.

Another patriot

What do the Labour Party really think about military matters? When the Royal Air Force's offer to fly over Bosnia was rejected, we found out.

Commentary on the decision not to deploy UK Tornado fighters, Mr George Foulkes, Labour defence spokesman, said : “I am surprised that, if offered, they were not to he included. We have got probably one of the best strike records of anyone, anywhere, as exemplified by our record in the Gulf. I would have thought it was essential that if there was to be an effective deployment to ensure the no-fly zone that there was a strong British presence. It sounds to me a bit like a snub if British aircraft have been offered and not included. ” (Glasgow Herald, 8 April).

So there you have it. The Labour Party are upset that British workers' lives are not be to risked. It has been said before, but it is worth repeating: “A patriot is someone that wants you to die for his country".

Modern times

Great interest has been expressed by the military about a new heat-resistant plastic that can withstand the heat of a nuclear explosion. Discussing various possibilities of its use the Observer (11 April) mentioned in passing some of the other things that the military are researching at present:

In this sci-fi world, generals are testing the efficacy of frying soldiers’ blood and brains with lasers.

Exploitation goes up (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everybody has heard of VAT—Value Added Tax. It is ironic that the tax authorities should have recourse to a concept—"value added"—that sounds as if it might have come from Marxian economics. But when you deal with the real world, as the tax authorities do in a way that academic economists don't, you do have to take account of facts such as new value being added to the previously existing value of materials by labour in the course of production.

Value-added, as used by the tax authorities and also by those who compile the National Income statistics, is the difference between the monetary value of the materials and services a firm buys and the monetary value of the output it sells. The Penguin Dictionary of Economics defines it as follows:

The difference between total revenue of a firm, and the cost of bought-in raw materials, services and components. It thus measures the value which the firm has “added" to these bought-in materials and components by its processes of production. Since the total revenue of the firm will be divided among capital charges (including depreciation), rent, dividend payments, wages and the costs of materials, services and components, value added can also be calculated by summing the relevant types of cost and subtracting that total from total revenue.

In other words, value-added is the monetary value of the new wealth produced in a firm, which is divided into the property income of the firm’s owners (profits and the various charges upon it such as rent, interest and taxes) and the wages and salaries of the firm’s employees whose labour produced that new wealth. (Strictly speaking, depreciation, which is a measure of the fixed capital used up in the process of production, should be excluded but as this can't be calculated so easily and so quickly as the other costs this is not always done; value-added including depreciation is known as “gross value added".)

Unpaid labour

This division of value-added into property income and labour income provides a way to measure the exploitation of the workers in a particular firm or industry. This can be expressed in a number of different ways: as the percentage share of wages and salaries (or of profits) in value-added; as the ratio between the amount of profits and the amount of wages and salaries (roughly the equivalent of Marx’s “rate of exploitation"); as the amount of working time spent producing profits (unpaid labour time); and. if the number of workers are known, as the amount of profit per worker.

The Annual Abstract Statistics, published in January each year by the Central Statistical Office, very obligingly provides a set of statistics (Table 8.1) which allows us to calculate what these all are and so the extent of the exploitation of workers in various sectors of industry.

The 1993 edition gives the latest figures, those for 1990, relating to “manufacturing", which covers most of the sectors of the economy where wealth is actually produced. In 1990 the “gross value added" (output) in this sector was £111,051m; the total paid out as wages and salaries was £59,712m; the average number of employees was 4,840,000. This, the Table records, gives a figure for “gross value added per person employed” of £22,945.

The Table stops here but we can use the figures to calculate the extent of exploitation. A figure for profits can be got by deducting “wages and salaries" from “gross value added", which gives £51,339m, so a profit (what might be called “surplus-value added") of £10,607 per worker. The share of wages and salaries in gross value added, as the workers' share in the product of their labour, was 53.8 percent. This meant that in every hour they worked 32 minutes to reproduce the value of their wages and 28 minutes working unpaid to produce profits for their employers. The ratio of profits to wages was 86.0 percent.

More for profits

The Table, together that in previous editions, gives figures going back to 1981 and, once these have been converted into 1990 prices (so as to be comparable), it is possible to see what happened over the ten-year period 1981-90.

Between 1981 and 1990 output (“gross value added") increased in real terms from £97.704m to £111,051m, an increase of £13,347m, or 13.7 percent. Of this increase, £2,051m (15 percent) went to the workers as wages and salaries and £11,296m (85 percent) to the owners as profits. Over the same period the average number of workers fell from 5,778,000 to 4,840,000.

It is clear at a glance that this must mean that exploitation increased, even though the workers’ real wages also went up. A detailed analysis confirms this. Output per worker increased from £16,910 in 1981 to £22,945 in 1990 (36 percent); wages per worker, however, went up by much less, 24 percent, from £9,980 to £12,337, the balance going to profits. So all the measures of the rate of exploitation went up. Profit per worker increased from £6,930 to £10,608; the ratio of profits to wages went up from 69.4 percent to 86.0 percent; and the workers’ share in their product fell from 59.0 percent to 53.8 percent.

1990, it should be noted, as the year the current slump broke out, was not the best year for profits and, as the following table shows, exploitation increased steadily with the recovery from the previous slump in 1982. reaching a peak in 1988.

In any event, what the official government figures confirm is what the workers involved will have known already from personal experience: that in the 1980s the reduced workforce was forced to work harder to produce both more output and bigger profits for their employers. In concrete terms, at the end of the period the employers were extracting an extra £3,677 in profit from each worker left and, for a 40-hour week, had increased the period of unpaid labour time by 2 hours and 5 minutes.

Adam Buick

"I got rich through hard work — YOURS!"

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

What community (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Community (dictionary definition): Hie people living in one locality; a group of people having cultural, religious, ethnic or other characteristics in common. Community (governmental definition): Anything that suits us, provided it gives the impression of a united co-operating and supportive social unit.

Of all the politicians’ buzz words “community” is one which has been in use for a long time and which shows no sign of dropping out of fashion. A month or so ago John Major was trying to enthuse the Carlton Club (which is its own community of a particular kind) with phrases like "an unbroken chain of community” and “little unions of communities”. A few days later John Smith ranted about “your communities . . . our communities . . . together in our communities”. This abuse of a very useful word has something of a pedigree. In the 1960s the Liberals won a lot of votes through a bit of electoral sleight-of-hand called community politics. In what they call the war on crime the police have named some insignificant rearrangement of their system community policing. The notorious Poll Tax was officially known as the Community Charge, as if it was something we all contributed to for the common benefit. We should all be on our guard whenever we hear the word: after all the Nazis’ name for the carriage of mentally ill people to the extermination camps was The Community Patients Transport Service.

Care

For some years now we have been hearing a lot about something called community care. What this has often meant in practice has been the closing of mental hospitals, which has released some very valuable sites for profit-hungry developers, and the ejection of the patients into—well, into the community. Often the result of this has been that a lot of people who are so damaged that they have disabling problems in coping with the everyday stresses of working-class life in this so-called community have been thrown on to their own, very inadequate, resources.

In many cases they don't make it, they don’t find a job or get somewhere manageable to live or settle down with a partner or with friends. They descend into vagrancy or alcoholism or psychosis. At the extreme they commit suicide or kill someone else—like the young woman in Yorkshire who randomly stabbed an 11-year-old girl to death in the street; or the Sussex mother who drowned her two small children in the bath. Whatever argument there is in favour of closing mental hospitals and substituting "community care” for the mentally ill it is not the motivation behind the policy. What has counted here—as usual—is cost; "community care” is cheaper and has the bonus of profitably developing the buildings and the grounds where the patients once lived and strolled about.

The latest episode in this saga has been the new Act which has transferred responsibility for community care from the Department of Social Security on to the local councils. This has serious implications for the most vulnerable and needy people. Smooth-tongued ministers justify the change on the grounds that local councils can deliver a better service because care and treatment which is locally-based can be tailored more suitably for each individual.

To the unfortunates on the receiving end this may sound reassuring until they come up against the fact that the responsibility which has been passed to local councils is not just a matter of provision but of finance as well. And there are strict limits on what councils can spend on it. For example, three London boroughs have pooled the funds available for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction but they are still between £1 million and £1.5 million short of what they need. So in those boroughs about one-fifth of those who ask for treatment for their addiction won’t get it.

Local authorities as a whole are complaining that funding for community care is over £200 million short of what is needed for proper care to be provided. Of course, addicts do not rate too highly in public sympathy. But what about old people, who represent what one writer has called a "big financial mountain"? The outlook for them is not reassuring; as a TV programme recently pointed out, local authorities are already exerting a lot of pressure on relatives to pay for their care. In this pitiless game these are among the losers. The winner is the DSS. who stand to reduce its expenditure to the tune of millions of pounds.

Degrading

The new policies on community care mark another retreat from the promises which were so plentiful during the war, that the lessons of a miserable past had been taken to heart. Politicians who were anxious to get the greater commitments to the war effort from the working class were very free with their assurances that never again would poverty be left to chance. In future the state would make it its duly to look after all the most needy people—the old, the sick, the homeless, the children . . . To all those millions of people who did not understand how capitalism works, how it must condemn the majority to poverty, what is the nature of that poverty and the true function of political parties, it was seductive stuff. Out of that auction in electoral bribes the so-called welfare state emerged.

Since then one government after another—Labour as well as Conservative—has pledged to keep the “welfare state" in being while they have been busily considering and implementing plans to dismantle it. If this Tory government has been particularly active and more open about this it is because British capitalism is in slump, which means that the lowering of workers' living standards is that much worse for the most impoverished. What is happening to old people is especially bitter and poignant because these are people whose lives have been devoted to being exploited to make profits for the class whose interest is represented by the government. There could be no better example of how capitalisms class system operates, how it enriches a minority while it degrades the majority, and to call it community care illustrates how sickeningly capitalism degrades the very language we use.

Community is a mellifluous word. What is implies—social cohesion with mutual co-operation and support is not only desirable to human beings but vitally necessary to them. But it is a contradiction to use the word about a social system which essentially divides the human race on the basis of what they own. Capitalism adjusts to such contradictions by distorting the meaning of the word to the point at which it is unrecognizable. Anyone who looks beyond the superficial issues of capitalism to a saner and more competent social order should concern themselves to defend such words, as a start to building what will properly be called a human community.

Ivan.

Letters: Force or violence? (1993)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Force or violence?

Dear Editors,

In reply to Denham Ford (April Socialist Standard) and his ridiculous assertion that the bombing of Dresden was anti-fascist violence, it obviously wasn’t!

I (and Class war) are on the side of the working class in struggle, and that means against fascism and fascists who are active against the revolutionary forces (eg attacks on the SWP and the recent attack on Freedom Bookshop).

An act of violence in itself doesn’t change anything. It is the combined weight of collective violence which will win the revolution. It seems that a lot of people on the left do not understand the class struggle as a dynamic, a living force which we mould every day. It is a balance of forces which we have to tip or kick in our direction. This is because they are not going to give the working class freedom. We are going to have to take it.

Dave Clark

London E8

Reply:

You're confusing force with violence. Of course the majority will have to force the ruling class to give up their wealth, power and privilege, but this can be done by mass democratic political action based on socialist understanding rather street fighting which wouldn't work anyway (they've got bigger guns and better bombs)— Editors.

Dear Editors,

Ref your article on the Mail on Sunday (April), I wrote in very similar terms to the Western Mail and South Wales Echo years ago, and the replies I had were more or less what you received from Chris Rees.

One way out would be to change the name to something that is not in existence, in this country at least, then register it like Marks and Spencers so that nobody else can use it.

E. H. Evans 

Newport, Gwent

Dear Editors,

The commonly held idea of socialism as nationalisation, or some form of state capitalism, is an Aunt Sally that the Mail on Sunday and other opponents of socialism are quite happy to accept as their target. They are not disposed to engage in any real objective discussion on socialism.

The responsibility of explaining socialism as Marx and Engels and the Socialist Party of Great Britain have always interpreted it is the task of the Party itself. The extent to which this has been achieved is the question we have to face. I am firmly of the opinion that a mistake was made when the name of the party was abbreviated to "The Socialist Party" and the full name relegated to the inconspicuous last item, printed in the smallest type, on the back cover of the Socialist Standard.

J. E. Apling

Harlow, Essex

Reply:

Unfortunately the capitalist press are going to distort the meaning of socialism whatever we call ourselves, and whatever version of our name we use. As you say, it's up to us to explain what socialism is—Editors.

Between the Lines: Male violence (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Male violence

Channel Four's Brookside (Mon and Wed 8pm, Fri 8.30pm) has woken from its recent slumbers in a controversial attempt to lift its ratings, now down to little over three million. By introducing the gruesome Trevor Jordache character—a wife beater and child abuser— Brookside has once again set the daytime TV shows a-chattering. And with good reason. Brookside have simply introduced the best (and most original) storyline into a British soap for ages.

The background to the story has been that the Jordache family, of mother and two teenage daughters, had previously been moved to get [away from] husband and father Trevor, convicted of physical assault and sexual abuse. After ferrying them around bedsits for two years, the authorities have now found the Jordaches an inadequate “safe house” on Brookside Close. Unfortunately they have been beset by Trevor's unwelcome attentions once again on his release from prison. Having wiled his way back into the Jordache household with a cry of poverty, the plot has essentially been revolving around Trevor's increasingly hideous behaviour and the plans of the desperate mother and eldest daughter to kill him rather than face his continued assaults—or the alternative of eviction from their new "safe house” on Brookside Close if the authorities find out about Trevor’s return.

The portrayal of this sticky situation has been graphic, bringing into the homes of millions the torment suffered by those women and children with a monster in their midst, a monster mentally equipped for his wrong-doing by a society where sex is cheap and dirty and where violence appears as the "easy” solution to problems. The most interesting aspect of the story is the way in which, beyond the ratings hype, it has illustrated how monumentally badly capitalism copes with the situations it itself has helped create.

Viewers may well ask themselves whether a two-year spell couped up in a dingy prison cell was appropriate for a man whose actions towards those he professes to love have persistently bordered on the pathological. Dealing with any such individuals in a socialist society would not be easy, and no-one pretends it would be, but as Brookside has amply demonstrated, capitalism is at a complete loss, unable to provide the institutional framework to help those individuals who may not be able to help their own actions, let alone provide a situation where mother and children can live in safety and comfort.

Life should never be as brutal as it is for the imaginary Jordaches of Brookside, but unfortunately for thousands of families in the real world of capitalism, it most certainly is.

Female equality

If any show has demonstrated why feminism on its own is not enough it was BBC2’s “Ladies in Lines". Forty Minutes (4 May 9.50pm).This documentary about a platoon of raw female recruits into the Australian army showed why "equality” under capitalism is not generally much of an equality worth having. In this particular instance it was, to be charitable, equal opportunity to be treated like a lump of shit.

The young women involved, arriving with parents, boyfriends and teddybears were subjected to a daily routine that would not have been entirely out of place in a Stalinist labour camp. A quarter of those who started the basic training with the ritual hair-cropping were unable to compile the course and many who did seemed to spend a fair proportion of their time in the charge room, in tears, or both.

Why these individuals should have chosen to enter the army is a tribute to the strength of the society-wide propaganda which eulogizes the virtues of discipline, aggression and competition—supposedly "male values”—above all others. Indeed, virtually all the young women involved testified to an identity crisis. Although they knew they were really women, they were forced to behave as they imagined men behaved.

All in all it proved to be an unedifying sight. Many of the women eventually proved that they could be like male soldiers. but no one, including the women themselves, were really prepared to suggest why this might be a good thing. Beyond correctly identifying the emptiness of the life offered in civvy street, none seemed able to give a credible reason for their presence as women in the army.

In truth, this was not really their fault, as no such reason exists. How on earth can there be a realistic salvation for women under capitalism through simply acting as maniacally as men have so often being trained to behave? Could female soldiers really be the giant step forward for womankind that was implied? Surely not.

As socialists have always suspected, capitalism's reaction to an inequality is invariably to sink those previously at a more humane level to a more barbaric one. thereby giving the appearance of evening things out a bit. Across the world capitalism’s tendency has been to barbarise those who are most vulnerable to its unyielding propaganda, and the "ladies in lines" were as good an example of this as is possible to get.

Dave Perrin

SPGB Meetings and Debates (1993)

Party News from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: Who Rules Britain? (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The mass of the people, including the workers, seem to have all kinds of ideas floating in their heads, from Churchill-worship to astrology. To what extent these ideas correspond to the realities of the world to-day is quite a different matter. Captain Gammans certainly appears to hold a very low opinion of the intelligence of people when he makes the following claim:

“With two short intervals, the Conservative Party was in power during the twenty years between the two wars. There is no reason for it to be very much ashamed of its record at home".

This is the kind of statement calculated to bring even the deadest of dodos back to life. Mass unemployment, slums, the wholesale reduction of the workers' standard of living (enforced, as in the case of the miners in 1926, by a lock-out), all this pitiful record of poverty and downright starvation imposed consciously and deliberately on a people by the wealthiest ruling-class that ever existed—culminating in a world war! It is obviously not in the nature of a ruling-class to have any sense of shame.

(From an article by “S. R.", Socialist Standard, June 1943.)

Where is South Africa going? (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a time when the battle-cries of the ANC were “Black Majority Rule" and “Sanctions Now”. But that was when Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner— in the days when “communism” was seen as a threat to those governments which advocated free-market policies.

We live, however, in unpredictable times. The last 4-5 years have been momentous in shattering illusions, beliefs, notions of what had hitherto been taken for granted. The impossible became possible. There were great shifts in public opinion. Governments have been toppled and national boundaries have moved overnight as if blown by a breeze.

Many believed the breeze reached South Africa when Mandela was released from 27 years of imprisonment on 11 February 1990. Headlines praising the release and eulogizing F.W. De Klerk were flashed around the world, and the 78-year struggle of the ANC seemed finally about to be vindicated.

The dreams of South Africa’s black majority appeared to have been realized in mid-1991, when the parliament in Cape Town repealed the Population Registration Act, and when De Klerk announced to a joint sitting of the country's tricameral parliament that “Apartheid now belongs to history”. Brave words, indeed, from a ruling National Party that had held power and practised institutionalized racism since 1948.

By September De Klerk was seen to be pushing South Africa towards democracy, by unveiling further constitutional proposals for a new non-racial South Africa. The scheme was lambasted by opponents as an underhand move, designed to allow the white minority to keep the “accumulated privileges of apartheid" (Guardian, 4 September 1991). Although the new proposals would extend the franchise to all adult South Africans, it would in effect, it was argued, give the whites and other minorities the right to veto important policy decisions.

It is hardly a coincidence that De Klerk s decision to free Mandela, legalize the ANC and the South African Communist Party, and begin constitutional negotiations should coincide with the discrediting of international “communism” in the wake of the end of the cold war. The South African government knew full well that any change in the constitution would not upset the country’s economic status quo. Under apartheid the black majority had laboured as wage-slaves, or rather volatile wage-slaves; enfranchised, they would still be wage-slaves but this time a little more contented. Besides, a South Africa seen to be getting its act together would be an incentive for foreign investment.

In February last year De Klerk announced that white voters would be asked in a referendum to answer “yes” or "no” to the question: “Do you support the continuation of the reform process . . . which is aimed at a new constitution through negotiations?” One month later the white voting population returned an impressive 68.6 percent "yes" vote. It is a fair guess, however, that many voters, voting either way, had their minds set when violence surrounding the campaign left 25 dead.

Massacre

The entire reform process ground to a halt on 17 June 1992, when Inkatha warriors, with the assistance of the security forces massacred 42 in the Transvaal township of Boipatong. The ANC abandoned constitutional talks and Mandela was "convinced that his [President De Klerk’s] method of bringing about a solution to this country is war" (Guardian, 22 June). All sides were in agreement on the suspending of talks and within a week tit-for-tat killings had left another 70 dead.

Within three months it was the turn of the South Africa’s defence forces to have themselves a massacre, opening fire on a demonstration by 70,000 ANC supporters at Ciskei, killing 28 and leaving another 200 injured.The government, who were accused of complicity with the defence forces, awaited an ANC-led backlash, it never came. Instead, in a surprising act of volte-face, the ANC, three days later, agreed to hold peace talks with the De Klerk government.

In September Mandela signed a “record of understanding" with De Klerk, agreeing that a new South African constitution could only be shaped by an elected constituent assembly, and that there would be a non-racial interim government in the future. For good measure, and probably as way of compensation for the recent massacres. De Klerk agreed on the immediate release of 150 political prisoners. Two months later De Klerk was calling for further negotiation to be re-started by the end of March 1993 with a view to holding South Africa's first non-racial general election by April 1994.

On 4 February this year the ANC again met with the government for a further round of bilateral talks. In a meeting a month previous both sides had agreed there should be an “interim government of national unity”, though no agreement had been reached on the timescale for a new constitution. Nevertheless, it was understood that an “interim government of national unity”, consisting of parties that had secured a minimum percentage of the vote in elections, would hold power for five years following an agreement by a constitutional assembly on a final constitution.

Many in the ANC, however, objected any set-up which would give a disproportionate share of power to Chief Buthelezi, the Inkatha leader. Disagreement also remained on the suggested devolved regional plan. The ANC had pushed for a centralized authority, be it within a federal framework, while De Klerk pressed for regional autonomy on such issues as health and education.

On 1 April delegates from 26 political organizations, extreme left as well as right wing, attended a round of multi-party negotiations. The talks ended a day sooner than scheduled, with many surprised that negotiations were back on track and to continue at a lower level. A day later secret negotiations began to reincorporate the "independent" homelands back into South Africa. Matters appeared to be going smoothly.

Assassination

No-one could have anticipated what would happen eight days later, when a member of the neo-nazi AWB assassinated Chris Hani, a leading ANC politicians as well as the leader of the South African Communist Party. This had been the first political assassination in almost 30 years, and many believed that previous mutual restraint had signalled an unwritten agreement between blacks and whites not to target one-another s leaders.

The ANC urged restraint on its members, hoping that something fruitful could emerge out of the death of Hani, that his death would at least induce some kind of urgency into negotiations. Meanwhile ANC Youth leaders rejected peace calls. One speaker announced to a rally in Pretoria: "It is time we told the leadership that enough is enough . . . now is the time to hit back” (Times, 13 April). In a country where peaceful demonstration has been met with violence and force, and where the black majority has for so long been denied the right of the ballot box to voice their wishes, it is little wonder that many still feel that violence can be the only tool of reform.

Hani's murder has a deadly logic for those in South Africa who hope to gain by it. those who are attempting to upset reform and derail negotiations at any cost, who will deny the black majority any rights, even if it means civil war. Thankfully their numbers are few. They include the likes of Eugene Terrcblanche, the AWB leader whose hypocritical view of the death of Nani was of an “atrocious deed". But whatever the latent motives were for the death of Hani, his assassination does not seem to have dowsed the flame of reform. On 15 April the South African government reacted to the current crisis by tentatively promising to hurry along constitutional reform.

It looks likely that in the near future an electorate with enfranchised blacks in the majority will have voted in a new constituent assembly and a power-sharing government of national unity holding power for five years, headed, probably by Nelson Mandela. The ANC are in favour of a government of national unity of limited duration. but have opposed a five-year power-sharing plan. De Klerk, however, appears to be in the better bargaining position. How smaller factions within South Africa will react remains to be seen. The extreme right-wing AWB will never be placated, neither will comfort be found in the Inkatha camp where Chief Buthelezi has warned of civil war should the ANC and De Klerks National Party reach an agreement to share power on their own. In any event, a future South Africa will probably be a highly devolved federation, with local and regional rights entrenched.

The negotiations have been taking place against the background of a South African economy in turmoil. Employment between 1991 and mid-1992 contracted by five percent and there is a continuance of capital flight—six billion Rand last year and 40 billion Rand since 1985. It is only a matter of time before the finger of blame is pointed. Should the economy continue to collapse Mandela will be blamed as much as De Klerk.

George Meddemmen.

Courting capitalism

Much has been compromised by the ANC since Mandela was released. Black majority rule has been sacrificed for a share in an interim government of national unity, in which parties with a minimum percentage of support will be given representation. Similarly, the ANC ultimate goal of a “socialist society” has been sacrificed for a share in a government with a proven track record of capitalist management.

There are now claims that the ANC elite are the new South African free marketeers, courting white businessmen and aspiring to their lifestyle. Recently the Johannesburg Weekly Mail ran a piece by a disillusioned ANC supporter, who questioned the contrasting lifestyles of the ANC elite and the black majority they represent: Mandela lives in a lavish suburb of Houghton; Zini Mandela’s honeymoon was financed by a wealthy white businessman; Allan Boesak now enjoys an extravagant lifestyle. “Are there gifts from the South African white economic elite?” asked the ANC member, “is our human suffering under apartheid rule so cheap to be bought by gifts from the white racists?”

Professor Heribert Adam, noted South African observer, commented:

On the part of the ANC/SACP, socialism has been reduced to anti-trust legislation and affirmative action. Lenin may still be quoted, but the World Bank, it seems, exerts a stronger pull . . . The more far-sighted sections of the business elite ingratiate themselves with any political leadership. (Guardian. 17 April)

The legalization of the ANC has much to do with this. Once legalized, given legitimacy, they struggled for acceptability, and were easily discredited when Winnie Mandela was indicted on charges of kidnapping and murder, and when news broke about ANC detention and torture camps. The government could even use the Inkatha movement and their own defence forces against the ANC in acts of intimidation, knowing that any backlash would damage the new moderate image of the ANC. The only way the ANC could gain acceptability in the eyes of the white minority was by sacrificing some of their long-held views and recognizing the economic system, as run by the white capitalist elite.

For the ANC there is no going back now, only forward, forward with a perspective tainted by the capitalist economic values of the white minority. The ANC now want sanctions lifted, condemn acts of violence and aggression, and frown upon the kind of demonstrations they backed only six months ago at Ciskei.

"Our ideal is a socialist society”, said Chris Hani a few months before his assassination. “socialism is the best and most cohesive system for South Africa” (Guardian, 15 February). Ironic words, true socialists will agree, in light of recent events. Socialism (not the state capitalism Hani had in mind) is indeed a "most cohesive system”, but only on a world scale. Socialists, however, will not fail to welcome recent developments in South Africa. A South Africa with universal suffrage can only bring the realization of world socialism a step closer when the chains of capitalism begin to rust through and the world’s working class begin to voice objection through the ballot box.

John Bissett

The IRA bombing campaign (1993)

Editorial from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apart from a few genuinely looney lefties such as Red Action and those who produce Dead Leninism (or “Living Marxism” as they have the check to call it), the recent murders of working-class men, women and children committed by the IRA in their current bombing campaign in England have, rightly, been condemned by ordinary people, in Ireland as well as on the mainland.

Life under capitalism is difficult enough without having the additional worry of wondering whether you—or your children—are going to be killed by a bomb when you do your shopping or go for a drink. Making life worse under capitalism is all the IRA achieves by its bombing campaigns. But then terrorising the population is what terrorists set out to do.

As the physical force wing of Irish nationalism, the IRA does have a political objective: the establishment of an all-Ireland Republic. This, as the record of the regime set up in the South in 1922 shows, would be of no benefit whatsoever to workers in Ireland.

Despite so-called independence, mass emigration, unemployment, bad housing and a lower standard of living than on the mainland continued unchanged. In one respect things got worse. The power of the Catholic Church to interfere with people’s lives was strengthened though, thankfully, this has been changing in recent years.

Apart from this, the only difference was that government power passed out of the hands of the parasite Anglo-Irish landlord class into that of wheeler-dealer politicians of the likes of Reynolds, the present Irish Prime Minister, and Haughey, his predecessor. And the IRA is murdering children just to extend the rule of such politicians to the North of Ireland! Can political murder ever have been employed in pursuit of so utterly worthless an aim?

Most workers in the South know this anyway. They have no sympathy for the IRA or its political wing Sinn Fein and at election after election they have repeatedly repudiated its claim to be acting on their behalf. Without being socialists they know that changes to the political constitution make no essential difference to their lives and are certainly not worth killing anybody to bring about. Once again, ordinary people have demonstrated a higher degree of understanding than those who have appointed themselves to act on their behalf.

The only degree of support the IRA is able to claim is amongst a minority of those of Catholic background in the North of Ireland. Certainly, workers there have plenty to complain about— no job prospects, low incomes, bad housing, etc, etc—but they are terribly mistaken in imagining that a united Ireland would in any way improve their position.

They are suffering because they are property-less workers in a world where the means of life are owned by a privileged minority. Their problems are caused not by British rule but by capitalism; which Irish independence left intact. Just as ’’Irish Unity” would.

The solution to the problems facing workers in Ireland is the same as that to those facing workers the world over. We must organise together to replace capitalism everywhere with a system based on democratic control and the common ownership of the planet’s resources. The struggle for such a socialist society has to involve implacable opposition to nationalism, of whatever variety, whenever it rears its ugly ahead.

History of anarchism (1993)

Book Review from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. By Peter Marshall. Fontana. £9.99.

Peter Marshall's monumental history of anarchism from ancient Greece and ancient China to today is now available in paperback. The ideas covered—anyone opposed to the state, from whatever angle— group together people with widely divergent, not to say incompatible views: from anarcho-communists like Kropotkin who stand for common ownership and no money to anarcho-capitalists like Ayn Rand and Proudhon who want to abolish the state so as to allow the market economy free rein.

If the anarcho-communists feel confortable being grouped with these latter under a common title, we wouldn’t. Which is why we are dubious about the unindexed statement on page 495 that “some claim that the tiny Socialist Party of Great Britain is anarchist in inspiration"—even though we have always held that the state, as the public power of coercion composed of police, prisons and armed forces, will be abolished in socialism.

Adam Buick

Malcolm Xploited (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hotter than 

a cross of fire 

hip refurbished 

black messiah 

hanging on 

the whitest walls 

for the biggest 

buck of all. 

                           Dave Bishop

Future of work and leisure (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the worst features of capitalism is the way it separates our lives into periods of paid work and paid-for leisure. Too often we speak of work as if it were only paid work, and it is easy to regard leisure as only entertainment we have to pay for. But even within capitalism there is much work that isn’t done for money and much leisure that doesn’t have a price tag. With socialism, work and leisure will not only be free from financial calculation but also the dividing line between the two will be much less than it is today.

Work done for money is really a distorted and alienating form of work. Employment means going to work because an employer expects to make a profit from buying your labour and selling what you produce. You may do something useful like growing food or building homes—or useless like guarding property or harmful like making weapons. I'he chances are you won’t like the job, although you may like the work, especially if it is creative or to do with people. You won’t like the job because it is done to someone else’s orders, in conditions that are usually less than ideal, and for longer than you would wish.

Even in capitalist society some men and women speak very warmly of their work. Helping people, teaching them, giving them services they appreciate, are all sources of work satisfaction, even enjoyment. These kinds of work will continue in socialist society and be extended to more people for more of the time. What will disappear will be work done only to make someone or some institution a profit. or to service the money system in some way (there are millions of such “jobs").

It may seem fanciful to say that we can play at our work. Some work is not easily associated with play: the kind that has to be done. “Who will do the dirty work?” is a cry that often goes up from those who cannot imagine anyone working except for money. But people do perform essential tasks quite happily without payment if they do so co-operatively and without a sense of being exploited. And they can gain deep feelings of pleasure and creativity from such work, from doing or producing something useful. Psychologists call this a sense of “flow", of immersing yourself in what you do. of losing any desire to watch the clock.

Tainted by money

Leisure in capitalist society is subject to market forces. Margaret Thatcher once announced. talking of the tourist industry, that there is money to be gained from other people's leisure. The providers may be commercial or "public". Both types rely on consumers paying either at the point of consumption or by taxes or licences. Most of this is casual leisure: you buy a ticket or press a button and you are duly "entertained".

There is, however, another kind of leisure on which the market has little or no effect. To distinguish it from capitalist entertainment it may be called serious leisure (which doesn't mean humourless leisure). It takes three main forms: amateur activities, hobbies and volunteering. Amateurs do the same things as professionals. but without payment. Perhaps they are musicians, or scientists of some kind. Hobbyists are like amateurs but without a professional equivalent. They could be collectors or model builders or enthusiasts of any one of a thousand hobbies. Then there are volunteers: people who spend some of their free time helping others in some way. Again there are very many different ways of volunteering.

Capitalism not only artificially separates work from leisure; it also opposes them. Paid workers have been known to say “Roll on five o’clock, lets get out of this place and start living", or something similar. Its a tragic waste of precious life. Leisure, too, is tainted by the money system. Millions of punters band together every week to make a tiny few (sometimes only one) of their own number very rich through the football pools. Follow-up studies of the big winners are not encouraging about their happiness. You can, of course, buy a good time without gambling, but you are usually expected to be a passive consumer rather than an active participant.

With socialism there will be enormous scope for bringing work and leisure closer together and making them both worthwhile parts of a whole life. Work will be organized democratically, not financially. It will be in direct response to need and not in the interest of profit-seeking. It will as far as possible be freely chosen. Leisure won’t be an “industry”—it will be that part of life in which things are done for their own sake and not in the service of something else. People will find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is work and what is leisure. In other words, why shouldn’t we have fun at our work and be serious about at least some of our leisure?

Stan Parker

Beyond Capitalism (1993)

Book Review from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1968 an article written by a member of the Socialist Party, entitled "Smash Cash", appeared in the magazine OZ. Some years later the author of that article, David Ramsay Steele, was converted to the free market ideas of Ludwig von Mises which he expounds in a book just published, From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the challange of Economic Calculation.

Mises (1881-1973) was an Austrian economist whose disciples included Hayek and Lionel Robbins. Early this century, against a background of ascendant Bolshevism, he developed what Steele calls "the most powerful objection that has been made to Marxian socialism". In the 1920s and 1930s, in the wake of the collapse of the Bolshevik experiment of "war communism" (1918-1921), Mises's ideas were widely discussed but from the 1940s began to fade as the fad for Keynesian interventionism grew. But for the failure of, and recent retreat from, Keynesianism itself, Mises might have remained an obscure nonentity. However, the "new groundswell of anti-socialist pro-market opinion" that emerged in the 1980s has prompted a reappraisal of the man — particularly since the collapse of the Soviet empire.

So what is the Misesian objection to socialism? Some of the evidence presented can be summarily dismissed. For example, Steele refers to the failure of "war communism" under the Bolsheviks but the pre¬conditions for socialist revolution did not exist in Russia at the time. The means of production were insufficiently developed to permit a socialist system to function, (even assuming you could have "socialism in one country"). Nor was there the necessary level of popular support to bring it about. Reference to the fatuous claims of "Bolshevik leaders" that they were "abolishing commodity production and money" is irrelevant; you cannot impose socialism on an unwilling (and still largely peasant) population, unaware of what it entails.

Such specious evidence aside, there remains the theoretical argument that there is something in the nature of socialism that makes it inherently untenable. This has two basic components which, though linked, can be separately analysed.

Central Planning

Steele points out that planning as such is by no means incompatible with the market. Within the market there are numerous plans but the interconnections between them are unplanned or "anarchic". The proposal to go beyond planning the parts of production to planning the whole of it, thus requiring a "single vast plan" dispensing with the numerous plans of the market, is what has generally been called "central planning", (though "total planning" might convey the meaning better).

But could a total planning of worldwide production be achieved? Production today is integrated through a complex division of labour. The production of even a simple item is inextricably bound up with the production of numerous other items. When we consider that these in turn require inputs of various sorts for their production, we have an inkling of just how difficult it would be to centrally plan in advance output in every conceivable line of production.

Theoretically, this could be done by constructing a vast "input-output" table. But, for logistical reasons, the best this could achieve is a drastically simplified picture of the input-output linkages that make up a production system; at best the number of items it could handle would probably amount to a few hundred. While each might represent a broad category of goods lumped together for convenience, in reality there are hundreds of thousands of different goods so that any decision made on the basis of such crude aggregated data is likely to result in gross misallocation of resources.

But the problem would not end there for once the Plan has been formulated, assuming it could be, it would require considerable coercion to implement it: how else would it be possible to ensure that targets specified by it were met? This would put it at odds with the democratic nature of a socialist society. Democratic participation would be precluded since this requires informed decision-making whereas no individual can possibly absorb or utilize more than a tiny fraction of the information to operate the whole production system. Inevitably, the power to make decisions would gravitate into the hands of a central administration (or re-emergent state).

According to Steele, "central planning" lies at the very heart of the Marxist vision. Whether Marx and Engels did themselves support Steele's concept of central planning is unclear. Some of their remarks suggest strongly that they did; others suggest the opposite, as Steele himself concedes (p. 316). This ambiguity is well captured by the phrase "anarchy of production". Steele interprets this as pejorative reference to the fact that the total pattern of production is unplanned but it could equally allude to the ungovernable laws of a capitalist economy which manifest themselves through the trade cycle.

A recession occurs not simply because there is unbalanced growth between different sectors of the economy (which might imply the need for centralized planning) but because of the knock-on consequences of such growth within the context of a market economy: an economy-wide contraction of production because the monetary flows are interrupted. As Marx pointed out, it is because of "the very connection between the mutual claims and obligations, between purchases and sales", that disproportionate growth leads to recession (Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 11, 4c). Once you remove the market you break that connection, then any overproduction of some good no longer has a knock-on effect on the rest of production and can be remedied simply by consciously adjusting output to the level required. In this sense "conscious social control" replaces the "anarchy of (market) production".

Steele tells us that Marx set much store by the supposed tendency towards centralization in capitalism — and thus, following Steele's logic, a steady diminution in capitalist anarchy — since it would lead to the "breakdown of the rationale of capitalist production according to the law of value" (p. 72). Yet, curiously, we find Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific saying the exact opposite, that "anarchy" in capitalism grows to a "greater and greater height". This is hardly consistent with Steele's understanding of "anarchy of production" though it does square with the view that capitalist crises get progressively worse.

Perhaps Marx and Engels were at times inconsistent or muddled on this question. But why should it concern us? We are not dogmatists; if they were advocates of central planning in the sense of total planning, we would dissociate ourselves from this aspect of Marxism, and for the best of reasons: a centrally-planned economy is neither feasible nor compatible with the nature of socialism.

What really matters is not what Marx and Engels may have said, but what a rejection of central planning entails. In a model of socialism in which total production is not centrally planned there would be, as in capitalism (and in Steele's sense of the word) an "anarchic" or spontaneously ordered system of production. But there the similarities would end.

Local production

Steele does acknowledge the existence of models that reject both central planning and the market, one being Kropotkin's "anarcho-communism". According to this, "groups of producers (would) govern themselves and federate for occasional common purposes" (p. 217). Such groups would effectively organize production on self-sufficient lines but, in Steele's view, the imposition of local autarky would precipitate a "violent reduction in living standards" (p. 322); it would entail the disintegration of the spatial division of labour and the comparative advantages of regional specialization. Whatever the merits or otherwise of this argument, we do not have to accept that the only alternative to central planning in socialism is localized autarky. In fact the Socialist Party has long argued that socialist production would be carried on at several levels — local, regional and global — though Steele implies incorrectly that this is a relatively recent development and that until the 1980s the Party supported central planning (p. 417).

There may of course be a tendency to produce more things locally in socialism than at present. But given that there will remain a considerable degree of interaction between communities (however defined) in the form of material flows, on what basis will these interactions occur? To suggest that only the market can integrate worldwide production and that "inter-regional movements of goods" cannot be "regulated without trade or prices" is mistaken; it is to fail to distinguish between market-exchange and what anthropologists call "generalized reciprocity" under which goods are transferred between and within communities on the basis of giving and receiving rather than buying and selling.

Generalized reciprocity is a mode of transaction in which neither the value of what is given is calculated (it has no price) nor the time of its "repayment" specified. It thus denotes a kind of social obligation — that we do not simply take from society without giving back something in return — as summed up in the social rule "from each according to their ability to each according to their needs". In this sense, socialism can be characterized as a system of generalized reciprocity.

Economic calculation

Since total planning is an unworkable proposition, it would suffice to show that it was essential to socialism to prove that socialism itself could not work. Steele does not exactly pursue this line of argument; he seems to regard the matter as secondary to his main argument that, in the absence of market prices, economic inefficiency will result, leading to a significant decline in output. This is the so-called "economic calculation argument".

According to this argument scarcity is an unavoidable fact of life; it "applies to any goods where the decision to use a unit of that good entails giving up some other potential use". In other words, whatever one decides to do has an "opportunity cost" — that is the opportunity to do something else which one thereby forgoes; economics is concerned with the "allocation of scarce resources"; the most efficient allocation is one that uses up the least resources in the production of any item and thus leaves the most resources over for other uses, so mimimizing the opportunity costs of producing that item.

Steele provides a hypothetical examples of a "widget" which can be produced by three methods (p. 6): Method A (5 lbs of rubber and 5 lbs of wood), Method B (5 lbs of rubber and 4 lbs of wood) and method C (4 lbs of rubber and 5 lbs of wood). Clearly, B and C are more efficient in terms of resource use than A but how do we know whether B is better than C or vice versa?

According to the economic calculation argument, this requires being able to compare different factors of production, like rubber and wood, and that means reducing them to a common unit. By adding up the total costs involved (expenditure) and the benefits gained (income) in terms of this common unit, we can determine which particular method is most economically efficient by the magnitude of net profit it yields. Of course, there may not be any net profit, in which case it would be uneconomic to produce widgets; the value of resources used up in making them would exceed the value of the widgets themselves and there would be less resources left over for other uses.

According to Steele, such calculations are made possible by virtue of the existence of money; socialism would rapidly regress into chaotic inefficiency unless it can replace money with some alternative that enables society to continue to make such calculations. However, he does concede that capitalist entrepreneurs who make these calculations may often get their sums wrong; given the "anarchic" nature of capitalist production they must rely on shrewd estimates. But what matters is that there is some "objective test of the accuracy of (these) estimates" which profit and loss provides by rewarding those whose estimates are correct and weeding out those whose estimates are incorrect.

Thus, the market process is "self-correcting" while socialism supposedly lacks such a mechanism and has no way of discovering least-cost factor combinations since it has no common unit by which to make cost comparisons. One proposal to get round this problem is that of labour-time accounting with labour time serving as a common unit of cost. But this is beset with numerous difficulties, not the least of which is how do you weight different kinds of labour.

Stock control

There is, however, another proposal which Steele considers which, in fact, turns out to be the definitive answer to the economic calculation argument — namely "calculation in kind". By definition, this assumes that you do not need a common unit of calculation as such a need exists "only where there is commodity exchange". Steele concedes that "some calculations, even within the market, can be done in kind" (p. 86), but believes the scope for this is limited. He also contends that it fails to address, the "fundamental question of how to compare the costs of alternative aggregates of factors" (p. 123), but this only assumes what it needs to prove: that such comparisons are necessary.

Given that socialism will still need to concern itself with the efficient allocation of resources (among other things), how will this be achieved through calculation in kind? The answer rests crucially upon a recognition that production in socialism cannot be totally planned in advance. Steele stumbles over parts of that answer but the long shadow of central planning that pervades his book prevents him from seeing it. This problem is compounded by the fact that the major proponent of calculation in kind to whom he refers, Otto Neurath, was himself an advocate of central planning.

Decentralized production entails a self-regulating system of stock control. Stocks of goods held at distribution points would be monitored, their rate of depletion providing vital information about the future demand for such goods, information which will be conveyed to the units producing these goods. The units would in turn draw upon the relevant factors of production and the depletion of these would activate yet other production units further back along the production chain. There would thus be a marked degree of automacity in the way the system operated.

The maintenance of surplus stocks, as Marx pointed out, would provide a buffer against unforeseen fluctuations in demand (Capital Vol.2) but it would also be relevant to the task of efficient allocation. This is so because of the inverse relationship between the supply of any good and the need to economize or use less of it: the scarcer a good the greater the need for economization.

An analogy might help here. According to the 19th century agricultural chemist, Justus von Liebig, there is a "law of the minimum" whereby plant growth is limited by the availability of whatever nutrient is scarcest — usually fixed nitrogen. Some working principle analogous to the "law of the minimum" would apply to the allocation of factor inputs in socialism.

Suppose that the demand for a good X as registered through the system of stock control rose permanently but that the production of resource A was insufficient to meet this increased demand. In the face of an already committed pattern of factor allocation, the sensible solution would be to search for some more abundant resource B that could substitute for A. At the same time the falling stocks of A would constrain the multifarious users of A to economize on it.

This feedback permits a continual process of discrimination in the use of resources according to their comparative availability. In short, it proves precisely the kind of self-correcting mechanism which Steele claims is the exclusive property of a market system.

Market tyranny

With this claim rebutted, most of what remains of the theoretical argument against socialism falls away. For example, Steele contends that much of the economic activities carried on in capitalism, which socialists regard as wasteful, is in fact "productive". But this is to be expected: if you cannot accept the possibility of an alternative to the market then anything that is functional to the operation of a market economy must, by definition, be "productive". Conversely, once that possibility is accepted the appalling, ever-mounting burden of capitalist waste becomes glaringly evident.

Capitalism, with its obsessive preoccupation with reducing costs is, in many respects the very antithesis of efficient production. We do not refer here only to its obvious structural costs; there is also the important category of externalized costs to which Steele makes barely a passing mention. These arise out of the competitive pressure on capitalist enterprises to pass on — or "externalize" — some of their costs, the repercussions of which, as many documented cases of environmental disasters testify, far exceed any savings that might have been achieved for the sake of profit.

Despite its basic anti-socialist position, this is a book that is both highly informative and lucidly written; it has much to recommend it. But perhaps, ironically, its most enduring value will be as powerful stimulus to fresh thinking about the kind of society we want, a society free of the tyranny of the market.

Robin Cox