Sting in the Tail: Warning to our readers (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Warning to our readers

Shock horror! A spate of muggings in what was once ‘appy ‘ampstead has resulted in some very valuable Rolex watches being nicked.

Several of the well-heeled fraternity including one of Michael Heseltine’s daughters and ex-model Jilly Johnson have had their prized timepieces snatched from their persons. Some of the watches cost as much as £20,000 and one is described as being “diamond encrusted' (Guardian, 29 April.)

In a cunning and very well publicised attempt to surprise the muggers, decoy policemen wearing fake designer clothes are parading around Hampstead sporting imitation Rolex watches provided by the company which is, naturally, anxious to see that its customers are not discouraged from buying the real thing.

So our warning to all our readers is: do not go up to Hampstead flaunting your £20,000 Rolex as you could easily be mistaken for a policeman.

Somebody tell them

What happens if you put a lot of predatory fish, large and small, into a fish tank and leave them to get on with it? That’s easy, the little fish get gobbled-up by the big ‘uns.

This is what has happened in Britain’s passenger bus industry since it was deregulated in 1985. The government’s declared aim was to end “public monopolies” run by municipal authorities and “open up the industry to competition”.

For a while, this is what happened as lots of new operators emerged to compete with privatised ex-municipal bus companies for a share of the lucrative market.

But since then hundreds of the smaller companies have been taken over or forced out of business by biggies like Stagecoach or Badgerline, and the end result will be a few big companies each aiming for the legal maximum of 25 percent of the market.

The government and its think-tank advisers completely failed to foresee the so-predictable consequences of their policy, but shouldn’t capitalism’s loudest advocates at least understand how the bloody system works?

Natural unemployment?

Socialists are used to dealing with well-paid apologists for capitalism’s shortcomings. Politicians who tell us that it is natural to be aggressive and acquisitive. Priests who tell us that it is natural to have poverty amidst plenty.

Now we have another piece of “natural” nonsense. The economic journalist Evan Davis in the Independent (20 April) wrote a column entitled “How Much Unemployment Comes Naturally?”. He reviewed various “expert” opinion on what the natural figure for unemployment might be. One of these groups of experts, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, comes up with a figure of 6.4 percent. He favours a figure “of about 5 or 6 percent”; this is based on comparing the commercial property market with the labour market.

“There are significant ‘hiring and firing ’ costs in both—so companies usually don’t hire property by the day any more than they hire labour by the day. Well, I am told by those who work in it that a typical period in that market might see about 6 percent of buildings unemployed, or vacant. ”

One pleasing aspect about the establishment of socialism is that such experts as the CEPR and economic journalists will be freed from their arduous research and allowed to pursue some useful occupation.

Poverty and TB

The British Medical Journal recently carried a report that the incidence of tuberculosis is rising. In the last five years there has been a 12 percent increase.

“Anyone can catch tuberculosis but it is more likely to spread from person to person in overcrowded conditions and individuals who are badly nourished or otherwise in poor health are less liable to fight off the infection, ” says the British Medical Association. Dr John Moore-Gillon and Dr Malcolm Law of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, have now discovered that TB is 10 times more common in the poorer tenth of the population than the richest tenth " (Herald, 13 April.)

The increase of unemployment and homelessness has led to an increase of this poverty-related illness. Just another example of the needless suffering of a section of the working class because capitalism is more concerned with profits than public health.

Who are the immigrants?

The Observer (30 April) under the headline “Jospin hopes to recruit Le Pen’s rag-tag army” reported that the so-called Socialist Party in France were eager to get some of the votes cast in the first ballot for the National Front candidate.

“Pierre Buccelato, 60, is one such voter. A former builder who found himself among France’s three million unemployed when recession struck, he now sells flowers on the edge of a sprawling estate . . . Railing against the foreigners who he claims are awarded council flats ahead of ‘French people ’ he said he once voted for Mitterand but now agrees with Jean-Marie Pen’s National Front. ‘Immigration is why we have no work. Get rid of the immigrants and we’ll get our jobs back,’ he insisted, pausing to admit that he himself was an Italian immigrant who had arrived in France in 1957.”

All workers must seek wages wherever they can. Blaming “foreign” workers for unemployment is stupid. In the world recession of the 1930s there was hardly any immigration to France but there was high unemployment. As long as workers support politicians like Le Pen, Chirac or Jospin capitalism will continue, with all its problems.

The Rich get Richer (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite John Major's claim that it is his aim to create a classless society there is hardly a day goes by without new revelations coming to light concerning the fact that capitalism in Britain is as class-divided as ever between the rich and the poor.

Two recent publications confirm the inequality in the ownership of capital that is the basis of capitalism. The first is the 1995 edition of Social Trends, an official government publication. The second is the report on Income and Wealth published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Rowntree Report is mainly about the distribution of income but it contains a chapter on the distribution of wealth based on recent research as well as on government statistics.

The part on inequality in the distribution of income demolishes the misleading view put forward by the Tories (but not just by them) that because real incomes rose by 36 percent between 1979 and 1992 this meant that everybody became better off by that amount over the period. When the figure is broken down into income groups it becomes clear that only the top 30 percent had an increase of 36 percent or more; the great bulk of people didn't get this; 50 percent got less than this, 10 percent got no increase at all. while the bottom 10 percent ended up worse off in real terms, i.e. their standard of living actually fell; they had less to consume. Given these figures even the capitalist press was obliged to talk of the “rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”.

When it comes to the distribution of wealth the first problem is the definition of “wealth”. There are at least four different definitions used by the government: (1) "marketable wealth”, or assets owned by persons that can be sold or cashed in; (2) "marketable wealth less value of dwellings”, which takes the value of privately-owned houses and flats out of the first figure; (3) marketable wealth plus the notional capitalised value of people’s accrued occupational pension rights, and (4) marketable wealth plus the notional capitalised value of both occupational and state pension rights.

The last two of these—sometimes called “personal wealth”—are quite useless as it is invalid to regard future pension rights as a capital sum belonging to the pensioner. These rights are not marketable and so this sum is entirely notional as far as the individual is concerned; they can't sell it or bequeath it. As far as they are concerned it isn’t part of their wealth, so it doesn’t make sense to say that they own it. All they have is the right to be paid a pension, which is what a pension right is and nothing more.

The absurdity of converting the legal right to an income into a notional lump sum which the person concerned is then said to own can be seen by looking at “income support" The law lays down that everybody has the right to have their income made up to a certain minimum level; if they have no other income then they have the right to be paid an income from the state equal to this level. Yet nobody has suggested that a person’s income support should be converted into a notional capital sum and attributed to them as their wealth. The absurdity of doing this is so obvious; these people are destitute, they have no wealth; that’s why the state has to pay them something. But there’s no difference in principle between a pension right and the right to income support. What is absurd in the one case is just as absurd in the other.

Adding notional sums for pension rights to the real assets that "marketable wealth” represents distorts the figures completely and makes people appear much richer than they actually are. For instance, a table in the Rowntree Report (Figure 50) shows that in 1992 total marketable wealth amounted to £1,689 billion. When a notional capital sum for pension rights and another for secure tenancies at below market rents are added the figure for “total wealth" increases to £3,325 billion, i.e. nearly doubles.

What this means is that nearly half of total so-called personal wealth is fictional as far as the persons who are supposed to own it are concerned. It has no real existence for them.

In fact most of it has no real existence at all since there are no real assets in the economy that correspond to it. It is true that this doesn’t apply to funded pension schemes but their value is only about a third of the value of the capitalised pension rights attributed to individuals in these government statistics and, in any event, it makes more sense to see the really-existing assets these funds represent as belonging to the employer who set up the scheme rather than to the future pensioners.

The way these false figures distort the facts can easily be demonstrated. The bottom half of adults own between them only 8 percent of marketable wealth, or an average of about £600 each. When all the fictional, non-marketable “wealth” is added their percentage share rises to 17 percent of a figure nearly twice as big. This increases their average “wealth”-holding to around £2,500. Suddenly, by the stroke of the statistician’s pen, they can be portrayed as more than four times wealthier than they actually are. It's all a nonsense but it is easy to see the political motivation behind it.

Wealth and capital

The only meaningful figures for the distribution of wealth are the first two: those showing the concentration of personal marketable assets and those showing this minus the value of houses and flats. The difference between these two can be seen from table 5.23 in the 1995 edition of Social Trends which gives the provisional figures for 1992:

For some purposes, the first column is valid—to show how much personal property individuals actually possess whether they invest it or whether they are consuming it. But, for demonstrating the inequality that is at the basis of capitalism, the second column is the more valid since socialists contend that capitalism is based on the inequality of ownership of wealth that provides an unearned income (i.e. on wealth that is invested as capital) rather than of all wealth, some of which is used for consumption (as are most houses).

What the second column shows is that the top 1 percent (less than half-a-million individuals) own nearly five times as much income-providing assets as the bottom 50 percent (some 22 million people). And that the top 5 percent own more (53%) than the bottom 95 percent (47%). Or, put differently, that out of every 20 people one of them owns more than the other 19 added together.

These figures haven’t changed much since 1976. If anything the rich have got richer, relatively as well as absolutely. In 1976 the top 5 percent owned 47%; they now own 53%; while the share of the bottom 50 percent has fallen from 12% to 6%.

Actually, even this second column doesn’t give the true picture of the inequality of capital ownership since it is only concerned with capital that is personally owned, i.e. that is attributable to individuals. An appreciable amount of capital, however, cannot be attributed to identifiable individuals as individuals; it is owned collectively as by the government, by trusts and by pension funds; it also includes any part of the assets of companies that is not attributable to shareholders.

This non-personal capital is equally part of total capital and when taken into account reduces the share of capital owned by the bottom 95 percent of the population. Capitalism really is based on their exclusion from the ownership and control of all but negligible amounts of capital.

How poor are you?

Just how negligible can be seen from a revealing 1994 study, quoted by the Rowntree Report, by three researchers based on data obtained by the 1991-2 Financial Research Survey carried out by National Opinion Polls (The Distribution of Wealth in the UK, James Barker, Andrew Dinot and Hamish Low, Institute of Fiscal Studies Commentary No 45, 1994). This shows (Figure 54) just how few financial assets most people own:

This means, as the Rowntree Report put it, that “half of all families had financial assets of less than £500 in a 1991-2 survey, and 90 percent less than £8,000”. This certainly puts things into perspective. Most people only receive trivial amounts of unearned income since their holdings of financial assets are so small.

Owning or buying your house and having an extra £10,000 - £15,000 invested somewhere is probably the height of most people’s ambition (though only a few of them are going to attain it, and then only within ten years of their deaths). But it is still not enough to get you into the top 5 percent and, if you are below pension age, it is certainly not enough to allow you to live on your unearned income and so free you from the necessity to seek an employer.

The income from an investment of £15,000 (which is the upper limit for the bottom 95 percent of the population) might top up your income if you’re retired but it’s only peanuts as far as those on the top 1 percent are concerned. There the lower limit is £36,801 and the upper limit is the sky, as the latest Sunday Times's (14 May) list of "Britain’s Richest 500" shows. Number One on the list are the Rausing brothers owning £4,000 millions-worth of wealth, followed by the Sainsbury family with £2,520 million. Fourth is the Duke of Westminster with £1,500 million. Mrs Windsor is seventeenth with a mere £450 million.

Adam Buick

Alice in Labourland (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year, curious about how many Labour MPs agreed with the wording they carried around on their membership cards, and what they actually understood their Clause Four to mean (what for example, is common ownership of the “means of exchange” all about?), our Media Dept sent each of them a copy of our Object, written incidentally before the Labour Party was even formed:

“The establishment of a system of society based upon the
 common ownership and democratic control of the means 
and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by
and in the interest of the whole community.”

We asked them three questions:

1. Do you regard the above object as being a desirable political goal?
2. Do you regard “common ownership ” as a socialist objective?
3. On what basis do you see your political position as differing from the above Object?

We also challenged each of them to debate the issue of common ownership and democratic control. Not surprisingly, perhaps, not a single one was prepared to take us on. Common ownership has never been on Labour's agenda after all, in spite of Clause Four. In fact we began to wonder how many of them, before the current “modernisation” of the Labour Party, even knew they had a Clause Four, never mind what it meant. 

As for how they now thought Clause Four stood up against our Object, we didn't really expect too many replies demonstrating a clear understanding of socialist ideas from a party which is gearing itself up to run British capitalism, and if we expected muddy thinking and evasive answers, we were not disappointed. Few of the replies received dealt directly with the questions asked, and from those that did, it is clear that “common ownership” in the Labour Party is a wonderfully flexible and adaptable term.

It can mean literally common ownership (as long as it’s expressed as an ideal only, and not intended to be put into practice); or it can mean state ownership and control by a small elite. It can mean a democratic system where goods are produced to satisfy human need (as long as it’s expressed as an ideal only, and not intended to be put into practice) or; it can mean—State ownership and control by a small elite. It can mean a noble ideal which Labour has steadfastly and unflinchingly advocated (but it doesn’t), or it can mean, er, state ownership and control by a small elite.

As Lewis Carroll put it: “When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

A few of our would-be political leaders demonstrated a similar talent for childlike fantasy. As John Marek MP so eloquently put it: "common ownership to me can mean many different things”. John Gunnell agreed: "common ownership can take different forms and it is not practicable for all the means and instruments of production to be in common ownership.”

Keith Hill thought that “democratic control, but not exclusively common ownership, is a desirable political goal". And Max Madden's response was a two-page speech, the climax of which was “we need imagination and innovation to devise new ways of administering public control. . .”.

Austin Mitchell considered that "Democratic control is desirable, common ownership is another matter”, he felt the need however to add- “I wouldn’t have wanted to change Clause Four and regard the whole business as a waste of time, but if the Leader decides to throw himself off a cliff, the Party has no alternative but to catch him”. Catch him? Most of them in their eagerness to get their hands on the spoils of governmental control are lining up like obedient, well-trained lemmings just waiting for the order to jump.

Chris Mullin suffered from a different delusion. Just like your average Daily Mail reader, he was under the impression that common ownership has already been tried somewhere: “I agree that a society based upon common ownership is a wonderful ideal. The only difficulty is that it has proved catastrophic in all the countries where an attempt has been made to introduce such a system”. Where on earth could he be thinking of? Surely not the corrupt state dictatorships of Russia, China, etc?

Mike Gapes found our letter “rather irritating” and wouldn’t answer the questions. John Cummings also seemed rather irritated. He preferred not to tell us what he thought because: “I feel that the Labour Party’s constitution is a matter for Labour Party members alone to decide”. Now there’s a novel idea, ordinary Labour members being given a say on decisions regarding their Party’s constitution! Whatever next?

Bryan Davies was honest enough to admit that “the establishment of a system of society based on common ownership is not a realistic objective for a Party seeking to obtain power” (and presumably not once they’ve got “power” over us either), but isn’t this precisely what Labour have been telling us they stood for all these years? Bob Ainsworth certainly knew what he wanted if he got into power: “a strong market economy helped, encouraged and regulated to operate in the public interest”. (Isn't that what they promised last time?)

Poor old Tony Benn, daft as ever, missed the whole point of the three questions. His response was: “'Thanks for your letter. I don’t want to see Clause 4 changed either.” Perhaps in a moment of wild optimism he thought our object was Clause Four.

Labour supporters intending to put their trust in this lot. should consider another piece of Lewis Carroll advice: '“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat’.”

Labour, by the admissions of their own MPs don't even understand what "common ownership” means, never mind stand for it, and have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, promises and a meaningless replacement for the meaningless Clause Four. The rules at both the Mad Hatter Tea Party and the Labour Party are the same: “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today”, or to spell it out even more clearly: "Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.' I don’t see any wine,' she remarked. 'There isn't any,’ said the March Hare.”

Is it just a coincidence that Labour’s policy and promises come straight from Alice in Wonderland. Finally, before we leave the subject of Alice, this is how Alice Mahon MP replied to the above questions:

1. Yes, it's an admirable goal and one 1 share.
2. Yes, common ownership is an obvious socialist objective and one I hold very dear.
3. None.

So, what on earth is she doing in the Labour Party? We would strongly advise this particular Alice, and anyone else holding up the Labour bottle marked "drink me” to check out the contents a bit more carefully.

Nick White

Levellers or Diggers? (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of April a few hundred demonstrators occupied the site of the old Wisley airfield near George’s Hill, in Surrey. This was where, in 1649, the Diggers had set up a communist community with the aim of starting a movement to make the Earth “a common treasury for all” again. The demonstrators called themselves the “New Levellers”. this was appropriate because, like the original Levellers (but unlike the original Diggers), they were demanding a reform of the laws governing land ownership and use rather than the abolition of private property, as the leaflet we distributed pointed out.

Many of the Levellers of the 1640s, being inexperienced in rebelling against the injustices of the market, and yet to recognise the incompatibility between FREEDOM and PROPERTY, sought to reform and make just property relationships. For example, the Leveller leader, Lilburne, in March 1648 wrote that the Levellers had “been the truest and constantest asserters of liberty and property (which are quite opposite to communitie and levelling)”.

THE TRUE LEVELLERS were the Diggers. Their ideas can serve as an inspiration to those of us in the 1990s who detest and reject the iniquities of the commercial system. The Diggers stood not for state ownership but COMMON OWNERSHIP: “The earth with all her fruits of Corn, Cattle and such like was made to be a common Store-House of Livelihood, to all mankinde, friend and foe, without exception” (A Declaration From the Poor Oppressed People of England).

Where all wealth is commonly owned there will be no need for money. In the above-quoted Declaration the Diggers proclaimed that “we must neither buy nor sell. Money must not any longer . . . be the great god that hedges in some and hedges out others . . .” Production must be solely for use and all people able to take from the common store on the basis of FREE ACCESS. As Winstanley explained in his Law of Freedom: “As everyone works to advance the Common Stock so everyone shall have a free use of any commodity in the Storehouse for his pleasure and comfortable livelihood, without buying and selling or restraint from any”. This is a wonderful and compelling socialist vision of a society where all things in and on the Earth are the common property of all; where all people give according to their abilities and take freely according to their needs; where money and other time-wasting features of property relationship are done away with. It is a practical alternative to capitalism’s property mania.

Modern Tory defenders of property assert that owning things makes us free. This false equation between liberty and property was spread by the 17th defenders of property power, and was also accepted by several well-intentioned Levellers, just as it has been by subsequent leftists who have feared to break with the ideas of THE MONEY SYSTEM. In truth, property and money make us unfree. As Winstanley stated: “True freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the Earth”. Those in Britain living beneath the poverty line and the millions in the world dying from starvation should see the sense of that.

Socialists must learn from the wisdom of our Digger predecessors and have the boldness to state the case for A MONEYLESS WORLD SOCIETY – a case now more materially feasible and globally urgent than ever.

Press Exposure: Make Your Excuses and Leave (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Richter scale of blatant deception it does not come up to George Orwell’s Newspeak but it is a pretty impressive misnomer, for a newspaper which carries very little proper news and which pays scant attention to what goes on outside these shores to be called the News Of The World.

Not that that has ever worried the people who own it or edit it. Their yardstick for the success or failure of the paper is how much it is talked about in the pubs on a Sunday. And as it has a circulation approaching five million—which means a probable readership of nearly 15 million—it is a fair bet that whenever people are in alcoholic bondage on Sundays there will be some discussion of the News Of The World's latest account of the roller-coaster sex lives of the royals or TV soap stars or famous sportsmen or obscure clergymen.

Of course it might be that the people leaning up against the bars will find other things to interest them. Like the recent WHO report that every year 12.2 million children under five die "because they are poor". Like the training now being given to Job Centre staff to deal with an expected upsurge of violence from claimants made even more desperate by cuts in benefits. Like the revelation that since peace broke out in 1945 there have been three crises in which America and Russia were on the brink of all-out nuclear war. But that is the real world of capitalism, in which the News Of The World has only a limited interest.

Getting close

The paper was born in 1843 and has always been noted for peddling the more sensational style of journalism, giving the full treatment to the likes of Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen. Aristocratic divorces were a convenient way of catering for its readers’ assumed need for respectable sexual titillation. All of this was driven by the paper’s belief in itself. Emsley Carr, who edited it for 50 years, once asserted that it was ". . . always right. Nothing we did could ever be wrong".

This confidence had something to do with the News Of The World’s knack of getting close to its readers. Free insurance was one way of doing this; another was a missing person’s service (often aimed at funding someone who stood to gain from a will). Most famously of all. it ran the John Hilton Advice Bureau (Hilton was a professor of industrial relations at Cambridge) which helped with readers' problems on pensions, insurance, rent and the like and took up many cases. The spin-off was not just in publicity and higher sales but the fact that the Bureau sometimes opened up an avenue of investigation which could lead to a tasty story. For the News Of The World being close to its readers paid off; in the 1950s its circulation exceeded eight million.

But the readers need to be not only titillated. They had also to be shocked, frightened, amused, outraged—if possible all at once. Too often this has been manipulated by the selective exposure of someone who has been through the courts for sexual offences. It matters little that in so many cases the offender has themself suffered sexual assaults; in the columns of the News Of The World they are less than human— "fiends" or "beasts" or "perverts". And when they leave prison the paper continues to pursue them, protesting hysterically at wherever they live or whatever job they find.

Making excuses

The paper’s preoccupation with crime, the pornography of which they pretend to legitimise, has led it into some contradictory stances. On the one hand they make a lot of denouncing criminals, at times offering rewards for information leading to the conviction of a murderer. On the other they can befriend the notorious "acid bath" killer Haigh and pay for his defence in court after he had given them exclusive rights to his memoirs. More recently this preoccupation has reached the pitch of an obsession to including “dole scroungers’’ who must seem, to the News Of The World readers in the pubs, to be infesting the country and threatening to bring down the Stock Exchange. Lloyds and the money market with the rest of capitalism's class structure.

This obsession might be taken more seriously if the paper had a stronger reputation for respecting the truth. For example in 1991 it ran a story about Clare Short, the Labour MP who was campaigning against the cult of Page Three girls. This story was about a classified advertisement in Tribune which suggested that readers might like to send for a selection of "granddad’s naughty pictures"—the nature of which can easily be imagined. The News Of The World presented this boring, insignificant item—it could hardly be called news—as if Clare Short was in some way responsible for the advertisement when in fact her only connection with it was that she was a Tribune reader.

The sort of "exposures" the paper excels in are normally of some type of prostitution—the wilder and more bizarre the services on offer the better. So carefully have these investigations been arranged and reported that they have added a new phrase to the usage of English. The story begins when a reporter poses as a punter and. as what might be called the crunch approaches, has to extricate himself, complete with hidden tape recorder, from a potentially embarrassing—even dangerous—situation. Breathless readers are told how it is done: "I made my excuses and left."

Since 1968 the News Of The World has been owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is not renowned for upholding high journalistic standards, especially when the lower the standards the higher the sales. Before Murdoch took over, between 1891 and 1970 the paper had six editors. After Murdoch arrived, from 1970 to 1993 there were 23. Perhaps this is part of the paper’s proud boast (it was, after all, an advertising slogan) that All Human Life Is There.

But—all human life? The poverty, famine. fear and disease which is what human life is under capitalism? The futile, posturing leaders who the News Of The World urges us to support according to the whims of its proprietor? The corruption and cynicism of a social system which exploits and degrades its useful people and assumes that they will suffer it all. provided they have a weekly helping of malicious rubbish to wash down with their booze on Sunday?

Time to leave. And no excuses. 

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

The News of the World finally shut up shop in 2011 after the fallout from the phone hacking scandal.

These Foolish Things: It takes your breath away (1995)

The Scavenger column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It takes your breath away

Orimulsion is a cheaper fuel for electricity power stations. It is based upon bitumen and is imported from Venezuela. Since it has been used at Merton power station, near Ramsgate, asthma attacks in the area have quadrupled. Because it is cheap there are plans to introduce it at a number of other power stations.

So what's new?

They throw the most lavish parties. Last year they air-freighted more than £13 billion in cash into the country to satisfy the popular demand for foreign currency. Their offices are already extravagant temples to Mammon. But now Russia's bankers want more.

With the Kremlin’s help they arc amassing enormous political power. In short. Russia's new plutocracy can boast of wealth and influence to rival the Medicis or the Rothschilds. Sunday Telegraph 16 April.

Current account

In the first five years of private operation, the regional electricity companies accumulated £1 billion surplus funds, instead of reducing charges to customers. Professor Stephen Littlechild, the highly-paid regulator appointed to prevent such excesses, either knew nothing about this or chose not to take any action. Whichever was the ease, he was useless.

The Thatcher nightmare

House prices have fallen by 25 percent in real terms since 1990 and experts believe that they have much further to fall. Over a million people in Britain arc caught in the negative equity trap, where they currently owe an average of £7.000 more in mortgage repayments than their home is worth on the market. Apart from the debt burden, this makes it extremely difficult for them to move house. During Margaret Thatcher’s rule, with her campaign for a “home-owning democracy” and income tax relief on mortgage interest payments, house prices doubled in seven years. Now the market is swinging back again.

True Brits

National Grid, the electricity transmission company being privatised, has avoided paying almost £2m in tax by setting up a financial arm in Dublin.

The company ladled £160m of its cash flow into the tax avoidance scheme before the government stepped in to make the arrangement less attractive.

A National Grid spokesman yesterday confirmed the existence of the "special purpose” firm and defended it as: “a tax-efficient way of managing the company’s money which is our duty on behalf of the shareholders. It is part of our treasury function, and normal practice for UK companies that have big cash flows” Independent on Sunday, 2 April.

The Scavenger

Whispering Sweet Nothings (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blah, blah; blah, blah; Blair, Blair. This column has decided that a change is as good as a rest and it is time to commit ourselves to utterly platitudinous cliches. Away with this talk of bosses, wage slaves and unseemly class struggles. What politics needs today is a good dose of empty rhetoric—and by Jove, we’re out to let you have it, bang between the eyes (as our role models, the boxing commentators, say).

A political cliche in the hand is worth two in the bush, and a stupefying slogan in time saves nine.

Perhaps there is some truth in the observation that most political speeches these days read like the outpourings of a cheap word processor which has been deprived of human contact, but let none be deceived that cliches are a recent invention. Even before the inane banalities of Major Clinton and Paddy Blair, creative depths were reached by orators of old whose capacity for saying nothing was in direct proportion to what they had to say.

Take Hitler, for example. By most historical accounts this “evil genius” had verbal powers which could hypnotise a crowd faster than Churchill could down a litre of brandy. In fact, Hitler was a transparent nutter, a loud-mouthed cliche-merchant who, without the musical build-up and the theatrical setting would have been regarded merely as an out-of-work painter with an irreparable groin injury. Watching newsreels of Hiller’s rants, as well as those of Mosley’s pathetic echoes, is an invitation to a cliche-spouting competition. Take away the mass unemployment, hyper-inflation and defeat in a recent world war and Hitler's platform at Nuremberg would be about as popular as the Catholic Evidence {sic) League in Hyde Park on a drizzly Sunday. Or take Thatcher. (Take Hitler, take Thatcher. . . take the bloody lot of them.) another sufferer from chronic verbal diarrhoea. Takeaway the TV cameras, the specially-invited audiences and the VIP label and put Maggie on a platform in any high street in Britain; she wouldn’t last ten minutes. Which is nine minutes longer than her successor would last and longer still than Reagan who reportedly went through the entire 1984 presidential election campaign without responding to a single spontaneous question.

Cruel commentators have labelled New Labour’s new-look, brand-new, extra-new-ingredients, we’ll-swap-four-of-your-old-claws-for-one-of-our-new-ones Object as being a bit. . . er, wordy . . . and, well, empty. Hot air, to be precise. The Blur leadership need not feel slung by such criticism, for in committing themselves to such apple-pie platitudes they are merely following a long-preserved record of cliche, going back to their party’s founder. Defining socialism in June 1896, Keir Hardie surely surpassed even the new Clause Three-And-A-Quarter when he explained it to mean “brotherhood, fraternity, love thy neighbour as thyself, goodwill towards men, and glory to God in the highest”. Now, that is what you call a relentless commitment to unadulterated cliche.

So what if almost everything that every politician says sounds the same? Has it not occurred to Generation X, whom the sociologists tell us are characterised by a universal disdain for politicians, that they sound the same because they stand for the same thing? Try selling Coke and Pepsi without, after a while, descending to cliches about fizz, bubbles and cold soda on a hot day. Nobody accuses Pepsi ads of dwelling on the obvious merits of ice-cold drinks or Kellogg of talking too much about breakfast instead of lunch, or Punch and Judy of pursuing the same boring quarrel when they could always go to Relate and patch things up. So why expect defenders of a social order which should by rights have been put on the scrapheap with the Hillman Minx to have anything original to say?

It is high time that voters stop bleating about the cliched vacuity of those who seek to lead them and realise that secondhand tripe is quite good enough for anyone seeking to be led. Or, to put it another way, "You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it think”,

Steve Coleman

University Challenge (1995)

Party News from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are you a student or employee at a college or University? Would you like to assist the spread of socialist ideas within your College or University? If so, you may be interested to know that the Socialist Party has embarked upon a nationwide campaign, leading up to and during the 1995/1996 academic session, to make its viewpoint more widely known within the student community to 1) attract more students into the Socialist Party and in the longer term 2) set up a national network of Socialist Student Societies.

The campaign will involve compiling a database of contacts (who will be put in touch with each other) in higher education establishments, writing to student societies and offering to provide them with Socialist Party speakers for meetings and debates, making our presence felt at Freshers’ Fairs and, finally, organising a one — or possibly two — day Winter School in London (involving workshops, meetings, debates & video-shows) in early December.

If you would like to get involved, please write as soon as possible to:

“University Challenge" 


c/o The Socialist Party, 

52 Clapham High Street, 


London SW4 7UN

There'll be another one along in a minute (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Chelmsford 105

At the end of March a demonstration, addressed by Bill Morris of the TGWU and John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, was held to protest at the plight of the Chelmsford bus drivers who last November were subject to the despicable but predictable anti-working-class action by the now private bus company, Eastern National, owned by the Badgerline Group of Companies. One hundred and five of them were sacked. The drivers had been using normal industrial procedures to support their grievances, these were soon exhausted and a ballot was held which gave a 74 percent majority vote in favour of strike action. The drivers were warned by the management that if they proceeded with their strike they would all be sacked. This was apparently written into their contract of employment. They went ahead with the strike with the full support of the union—and were sacked.

The TGWU bulletin, circulated in the Chelmsford local papers, rightly points out that the fight for reinstatement is fast becoming a historic dispute, and that it has highlighted the class bias of our laws which allows management to sack workers for taking a few hours perfectly legal industrial action.

We have seen many times the type of anti-working-class action practised here by Eastern National. Even before strike action was taken the bus company had organised advertisements for new drivers in the local press and made arrangements for the transfer of drivers from other Badgerline companies in other parts of the country, at great expense to the company. It is blatantly obvious that their aim was to destroy all effective organised union activity in order to impose worse conditions of employment on all Badgerline workers.

Some of the “Chelmsford 105”, as they have been called, have set up a rival bus company with the assistance of the TGWU and are operating alongside the larger bus company’s buses offering a free service. The aim is to disrupt the Eastern National service as much as possible by eventually matching their service bus-for-bus and hitting them where it hurts the most—financially.

The chance of this having the required effect and getting Eastern National to decide to reinstate the sacked drivers is very slim. So what is the logical outcome for this reasonably successful new bus service if not to convert a free service into a commercially-run concern?

We would then have competition between two business organisations both clambering for a share of a limited market Even now we have competition between union members in both organisations, both fighting for their own interests.

The drivers, who were very unfairly dismissed (but legally correct in the eyes of the law) arc obviously very critical of the methods adopted by the managing director of Badgerline, Mr Orbell. But if in the day-to-day running of any new rival bus company it became necessary to cut costs and increase productivity to retain the correct profit margin, how would the new management cope with this type of problem? Would they not have to make the same sort of decisions as the bigger bus company?

The new management may say: we would certainly not run our company the same way as Eastern National, we would be much more interested in the welfare of the employees. In other words, they would be "good" capitalists. This might even happen for a brief while, but what would happen when the competition hots up or another recession bites into the profits? The new management would have to do all that is in their power to preserve the profits of the company—it is the only way it can operate, if it wants to survive. This is the basis of the capitalist system.

Continuous quest for profit

This continuous quest for profit drives all business organisations to the most despicable anti-working-class tactics. This drive for profit is what makes people compete; business against business plying for the same trade, worker against worker fighting for the opportunity to be employed. All the good intentions in the world will not make the capitalist system operate in the interest of all the people

We need to understand how the capitalist system works against our interests and that the only way to achieve a life where we are able to contribute our energy, skills and talents and share the wealth of the world, is to replace the system of competition we are presently forced to suffer. We need to totally adjust our way of life, and establish socialism and do away forever with competition and concentrate on a life of co-operation. We can do this by running society, exactly as we all do now, but in the interest of us all and not the few fortunate enough to own it.

Allan Goldsmith

50 Years Ago: Atrocities—Cynical Ruling Class Attitude (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

For weeks on end the British Press carried horrifying accounts and pictures of atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps; mass starvation, brutality, sadistic cruelties perpetrated by degenerate guards on helpless men, women and children, prisoners buried alive, tortured by solitary confinement and so on. Some of the worsened conditions of recent months may have been due, as one of the German guards said, to transport difficulties—the stupendous Allied bombing of roads and railways can hardly have failed to produce disorganisation—but this does not affect the main facts of appalling brutalities over a long period. But if the facts are substantially agreed this is certainly not true of the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Far from accepting the views of many newspapers and capitalist politicians we deny their right to raise hands in holy horror; or to attempt to fasten the responsibility on the German workers. On several counts the British ruling class and their spokesmen have not the slightest justification for the attitude they adopt. (. . .)

By all means we protest against atrocities and brutality, but we do so not as an expedient according to circumstances but against atrocities and brutality wherever and whenever they occur.

It is for the working class of the whole world to see as it really is the cynical and hypocritical use made, by the capitalist class of atrocities, and not to let themselves be divided by capitalist propaganda directed against first one and then another foreign nation. It is capitalism itself that produces the worst atrocity of all—war, and which everywhere has a record of brutality towards the working class and colonial peoples in peace or in war.

Only Socialism can end it and only world working class unity can achieve that end.

[From an article in the Socialist Standard, June 1945.]

Letters: And do slam the door . . . (1995)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a number of letters along the same lines. Extracts from some are published below.

“I am a non-affiliated socialist, who has been a traditional "Labour” voter since eligibility, but find that my views and beliefs on socialism are deemed as anachronistic and extreme by the modern Labour Party.

I am not prepared to modify or adapt my beliefs to political concepts which are, in my opinion, the antithesis of true socialism.

I was born and bred in Ebbw Vale, in the South Wales valleys, which, whilst a bedrock of "Labour-voting socialism”, also reflects the true face of 1990s’ Britain; poverty, high unemployment. social and material deprivation, and hopelessness.

And all the modern Labour Party offers is diluted conservatism! Surely "Clause Four" is what defined the socialist policies within the Labour Party’s own philosophy?

I have longed dreamed of a "Utopian” society where housing. education, welfare and health care are readily available to all; one classless society.

Please forward information and membership details of the Socialist Party, so that I can. at long last, physically contribute to the cause."

J.R., 

South Wales.

“I am at the moment a member of the Labour Party. Whilst I agree the Labour Party is bureaucratic. it is at least better than the Conservative Party. If Blair gets his way over Clause IV, then I believe Labour will never be able to win power again. Therefore I must help to ensure that Clause IV stays. However the Socialist Party is most in line with my own view of Socialism, therefore I will be interested in joining sometime soon."

J.T., 

Portsmouth.

“I was in the Labour Party for only one year but I have seen enough to make me believe that Labour are not capable of tackling Britain's major social and economic problems. And since they have elected Tony Blair as leader this only confirms my belief about the party. If you could send information on your party to me then I could get in contact with you about joining."

B.M., 

London.

“I received a copy of Socialist Standard some time ago and have just acted upon it. I would be keen to take up membership. Can you point me to a local contact or branch. My history is ex-Labour Party. CND (still active anti-Sizewell B and C), Cruise-watch but disgruntled over Labour Party. Its view of 'Socialism' and what it means does not equate with my thoughts. I thought the argument 'Compromise' was just to get the Tories out. I went along with it but this new episode finally pushed me into a decision. Many fellow comrades share my view." 

K.W., 

Suffolk.

"After 20 years’ membership I've quit the Labour Party. The Special Conference, both its decision and the way it was conducted. was the blessed limit. I’m not going on my neighbours’ doorsteps to advocate the joys of the 'Rigour of competition' and the ‘enterprise of the market’.” •

T.L., 

London.

Letter: Missing something here (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Re the editorial in the April issue. I assume that the vague reference to "the Green movement" gaining power refers to the Green Party.

What is your evidence for alleging that the Green Party is pro-capitalist? Which part of the Green Party manifesto opposes, or is incompatible with, “the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing and creating wealth"? I may be missing something here. 

K. A. Gilchrist, 

Canterbury

Reply:

The Green Party’s general objective of a “sustainable society" is not at all incompatible with the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources. In fact it could only be achieved on this basis. The Green Party, however, does not stand for common ownership and democratic control, but for the retention of private ownership, profit-making and the market on a small-scale—in other words, for small-scale capitalism, involving small firms producing for local markets, instead of the Big Business capitalism geared to the world market that we have today.

Among the passages you have missed in the Green Party’s Manifesto for a Sustainable Society is the following on “Monetary Policy": 

"In a Green society the informal sector will eventually gain in significance so that formal transactions and money generally will have a lesser role than at present. There is however no reason why a financial system cannot be made to work in the interests of the community . . . The place of the commercial banks in financing enterprise will gradually be taken by mediating, non-profit local community banks providing low-cost finance, both at district and regional levels" (EC 640 and EC 642. 1993 edition).

Have a look too at the sections on taxation and Basic Income which also assume the continued existence of the market and monetary economy. Such an economy, even if reduced to a local scale, is incompatible with common ownership and democratic control. This is because if productive resourcesarc owned in common so is the social product and the problem then becomes not how to sell it but how to share it amongst the community on a non-monetary basis.

The market, banks, money, taxes, etc. disappear as meaningless. Instead, the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" applies where each person contributes what they can to production and then has free access according to their self-determined needs to what they require to lead an enjoyable life.

Editors.

Letter: A malicious attack? (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

There must have been a page missing from April's Socialist Standard. When I came to read the review of Strike Back by Ernie Roberts, what I found was an extensive review of pp. 32-33 and a malicious attack on E. Roberts.

So a mistake was made (has it been pointed out to the publisher?) Is Roberts the first person to make a factual error in a book? I think not. The venom in the review made me think that Roberts was guilty of a crime against humanity, rather than a simple error. Although I disagree with Roberts's tactics over the years, he has done some good work in the trades unions and in fighting fascism. So when are we going to have a proper review, by a more rational reviewer?

Wayne Holmes,

Neath, Glamorgan

Reply:

Alright, so it wasn't a proper review but it wasn’t that bad. We never said Ernie Roberts was not a good trade unionist nor that he was not a good anti-racist. By all accounts he was both of these. We criticised him for helping to spread the lie that the SPGB is anti-union and for being a loyal supporter of state-capitalist Russia. We feel we are entitled to be annoyed about this since the thousand or so militant trade unionists and political activists who will read his book will go away with a completely false idea of our attitude to trade union action, and may be put off from taking us seriously as a result, without us being able to do anything about it.

Editors.

Passing the parcel (1995)

TV Review from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Election nights are almost exciting, and Local Elections ‘95 on BBC 1 last month proved to be no exception. There was David Dimbleby with a twinkle in his eye and a Mars bar in his pocket. Peter Kellner looking studiously professorial next to a bank of computers. Anthony King thumbing through his mental book of historical precedents and the ubiquitous Peter Snow arms flailing like a whirling dervish in conversation with Magnus Pike. "Just a bit of fun” is Snow’s catchphrase. and of course it all is just that, at least for him.

For the politicians it is different—election night is akin to a life-or-death prognosis. John Selwyn Gummer had seldom looked glummer as the news trickled in of the most humiliating Conservative defeat in local elections on record. Frank Dobson chortled like a Father Christmas on Prozac and the Liberal Democrats' spokesman was there as well, popping up like Chad over a wall occasionally in the hope that nobody would forget he was there too. But it was Labour's night, and if all Frank Dobson's Christmases had come at once. John Prescott beamed as if his political marriage to Tony Blair had just been consummated in spectacular style. He opened a bottle of champagne at Labour Party headquarters and thrust the spray orgasmically at the cameras, adjectives tumbling over one another just as the Moet tumbled out of the bottle.

It was indeed touching that the working class could have had such an effect on their fellow human beings. Touching, though not altogether surprising, as it is the workers who put the politicians in their exalted position to start with.

If local election night demonstrated anything it was that the Labour Party . . . pardon me. New Labour, is on a roll of gigantic proportions and that the Tories are digging themselves further into a hole and not out of it. Labour, on this performance seems set to win a General Election and they will be aware at this time like at no other that dangerous talk costs political lives. During the election campaign itself they showed themselves cognisant of this fact, fighting the battle on presentation, managerial abilities, sharp suits and white teeth. "Policies" has become the most dangerous word in their vocabulary. When tackled about this by Dimbleby. Frank Dobson shrugged his shoulders and gave a "what can we do" look. Local government, he said, is hamstrung by government subsidies and capping, and so even if Labour wanted to spend more on education or local services, it couldn't.

At this point John Gummer intervened to claim that you could not blame the Conservative government for the belt-tightening consequences of the world recession and that in any case things were getting steadily better under the foresighted stewardship of John Major. But then came the pièce de résistance—Sir Teddy Taylor. Tory rebel, beamed in via satellite or some such device to tell the panel that they were all wrong as the real problem was Europe. "I know I'm being a bore . . ." he said, and of course he was right. And right about something else too. He went on to say that just as it didn't matter which of the parties controlled the councils, neither did it matter much which party controlled Westminster, as they were all prisoners of the system, the headquarters of which he identified as being somewhere in Belgium. Now he might have been misplaced about the importance of the last bit. but his substantive point, of course, has a lot going for it.

Travel with Teddy

Travel round Britain and can you tell where a Conservative council ends and a Labour one begins? Travel around Europe or any other part of the world and try doing the same with governments. It is very difficult indeed, and Sir Teddy has obviously noticed. Given all this, quite what his function is as a politician must be in some doubt, his obsession with Brussels notwithstanding. If he thinks politicians are as impotent as this (and they generally are) then it cannot be long before he packs it all in forever and takes to the stage.

But have some sympathy for him. Sir Teddy showed that he had grasped, in his own hamfisted way, a fundamental truth of capitalist politics, even if he lacks the full explanation for it. And this is that, in reality, election nights at present are momentary interludes in a mind-numbingly tedious and pointless exercise. They are the time when the two rival but otherwise identical brands of cola release their sales figures, when two bluebottles climb up a wall to see who can reach the ceiling first. Pointless, though at the same time mesmerising if your life is empty enough. And if the phrase "get a life" should be directed anywhere, the BBC studios on election nights are as good a place as any to aim. 

Dave Perrin

Rochdale election results (1995)

Party News from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the May local elections the Socialist Party ran a candidate in the Central and Falinge ward of Rochdale Borough Council. Our candidate, Roger Chadwick, polled 144 votes or 4.6% of the vote. The Conservatives didn't bother to put up a candidate but, where they did, in one ward they only got 90 votes. The socialist vote was also higher than that of the racist and fascist BNP. The full results are given below.

Central and Falinge

Thomas (Lab) 1745, Ali (Lib Dem) 1201, Chadwick (Soc) 144

Newbold

Entwhistle (Lab) 1304, Collinson (Lib Dem) 1294, Henderson (BNP) 104

Smallbridge and Wardleworth

Sanderson (Lab) 1990, Greenwood (Lib Dem) 1555, Taylor (Con) 90, Abrahams (Ind) 51

SPGB Meetings (1995)

Party News from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brainless Barkings of Goons (1995)

CD Review from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Great Parliamentary Speeches (EMI. 1995). CD £14.99. TC £9.99.

This is a collection of memorable speeches and witticisms from the first sixteen years of parliamentary broadcasting in Britain. Famous parliamentary occasions included range from the fall of the last Labour government, the debates on the Falklands war and the downfall of Mrs Thatcher, and examples of the caustic wit of Healey, Skinner. Heseltine et al are also provided.

As well as this, the usual ramblers make an appearance: Ron Brown, Ian Paisley, Nicholas Fairbairn, David Evans, making up the numbers with their glorious parades of idiocy. The producers of this CD/Cassette can be commended for including them on the grounds that no record of parliament and its proceedings would be anything like a true one if it omitted the brainless barkings of goons such as these.

Other performances from more substantial figures demonstrate how wasted their talents have been in the pursuit of ignoble causes. Michael Foot's majestic piss-take of a “bewildered" Sir Keith Joseph is worth the money on its own—but listen to his fawning support for Thatcher during the Falklands war and things soon come back into perspective.

Overall, it's an interesting enough record of the great and the good parliamentary shenanigans since 1978, but if you are going to buy it may be wise to get in on cassette—the nature of parliamentary broadcasting means that the sound quality doesn’t really justify spending an extra fiver buying it on CD. and ten pounds is pricey enough when you consider that they are only politicians, and as such, rarely have anything really sensible to say.

Dave Perrin

Socialism in India (1995)

Pamphlet Review from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manifesto of the World Socialist Party (India)

This is the 14,000-word manifesto adopted by our companion party in India at its founding Conference in Calcutta in March. It sets out in clear terms the socialist analysis of the artificial scarcity of the profit system, the rise and fall of state capitalism in Russia and elsewhere, and why nationalism, religion and leadership are incompatible with socialist principles.

The manifesto begins by explaining the political route which the authors took before coming to adopt the principles and analyses of the World Socialist Movement. After leaving the Communist Party of India (Marxist)— the governing party in the Indian state of West Bengal for some years now—in 1982 the group eventually became part of the so-called “Left Communist milieu" who trace their origin back to those early members of the Communist International criticised by Lenin in his pamphlet Left Communism, An Infantile Disorder.

From 1989 on the group began to reject two key assumptions of this milieu. First, that “in 1917 the working class in Russia made a political revolution led by the Bolshevik Party" but which soon went off the rails and ended up as state capitalism due to the mistaken economic policies adopted by the Bolshevik leaders. Second, the need for a transition period "administered by workers' councils with labour vouchers". The Manifesto clearly expresses this rejection: the Bolshevik coup was not a workers' revolution of any kind and had nothing to do with socialism: "Bolshevism or Leninism is state capitalism and by definition all questions of Leninism are state capitalist".

Labour-time vouchers are rejected as being "a form of economic rationing with exchange" since inevitably such vouchers would begin to circulate and so become money, whereas socialism is a society of abundance in which there is no need for any general unit of account: "Abundance does not have a measure of measures. For us its only measure is satisfaction of needs." In fact, a long section is devoted to producing the statistical evidence to show that once the artificial scarcity and organised waste of capitalism are eliminated, enough food, clothing, housing and other material goods can be produced to allow every single person on the planet to live decently and for the implementation of the principle of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”.

The WSP (India) regards the Indian unions as not being genuine trade unions in that "unlike Europe and America, most of the big trade unions have been organised from above more as fundraising, vote-catching political subsidiaries of self-seeking 'leaders' than as spontaneous grass-root, independent and autonomous organisations of the working class to defend their economic interests". Because of this, and especially the fact that rival unions are linked to rival political parties and used to serve their ends, our Indian comrades say that Socialists in India cannot work within them but should instead seek to encourage workers to organise democratically outside them on the basis of regular general assemblies and recallable delegates. Since clearly they have a better knowledge of the situation in India then we do, we willingly defer to their judgment. In any event, the trade union question is one over which Socialists can, and do, have different views.

The Manifesto can be purchased from us at 52 Clapham High Street. London SW4 7UN (£1 post paid, cheques payable to "The Socialist Party of Great Britain"). It will also be available in Bengali, the world's sixth language. when supplies arrive from India.

Most Attractive Utopia in English (1995)

Book Review from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris: News from Nowhere Edited by
 Krishan Kumar.
 Cambridge Texts in the
 History of Political Thought. (ISBN 0521 42233 7 £12.95.)

This new edition of Morris’s classic socialist work is different in that it includes an index and footnotes. enabling it to be read as a text in the history of political thought.

For in addition to having, as Krishan Kumar puts it in his introduction, "good claims to be considered the best, certainly the most attractive utopia in English", News from Nowhere is a work of political theory about the nature of socialism and the socialist revolution.

Socialism for Morris (for which he uses the alternative term "communism”) is a classless society of common ownership in which people relate to each other in a co-operative, democratic and non-hierarchical way without money or government. As to the socialist revolution. in Chapter 17 on "How The Change Came", Morris describes a revolution in which the "Combined Workers" use their industrial strength to impose common ownership and workers' management of industry on the ruling class and to overcome their violent resistance. It is what ten to fifteen years later (Morris was writing in 1890) would have been called a "syndicalist" conception of the revolution.

We don't think this is entirely realistic in that it ignores the need, in order to minimise violence, to neutralise the State by winning political control (Morris later came to this conclusion too) but Morris's theory is still worth studying as an alternative theory of democratic revolution (the Combined Workers enjoy majority support and are organised on a democratic basis) and one that rightly rejects both parliamentary gradualism and the seizure and exercise of power by a vanguard elite. But judge for yourself. Read (or re-read) the book.

Adam Buick

Internet: Forum or Marketplace? (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people, by now. will have heard of the Internet. It is one of those jargon words that have entered popular consciousness. For those unclear as to what it is, the Internet is basically a computer linked by the telephone system to millions of other computers around the world providing an easy and relatively cheap form of global communication. (Provided, of course, that you have a computer in the first place.)

Most people who access the Internet do so through so-called "gateways" which in effect are companies who sell software necessary to log on, along with a subscription to several megabytes of computer storage space, for downloaded information like e-mail letters or news. Some companies like CompuServe aren't gateways but run their own exclusive network accessible again through a subscription. With a rapidly expanding number of people—30 million at the last estimate—with access to the internet, the attraction of this market, and its potential for commercialisation by gateways and proprietary networks is obvious.

Computer exponents have been promoting the Internet as the most important breakthrough in communications since Gutenberg printed the first bible in the vernacular, and on the surface they are right. Anyone with access to a computer, a modem and the necessary software can send electronic mail (e-mail) or log on to news groups discussing anything from Anarchism to The X-Files.

The benefits of this technology have not been lost on various political groups. Neo-Nazis in America have for years had their own network. Anarchists also see the organisational rewards of the Internet and many wax lyrical about the non-hierarchical, democratic nature of the "net". But in reality the Internet is just like any other information forum in capitalism.

The Internet operates like a market-place, interest groups all pitch in willy-nilly. Because of the relative newness of the Internet this swirl of babble can be mistaken for an electronic Greek agora, but already even this rose-tinted view is being dispelled as the big corporations move in. The Rupert Murdochs of the world aren't fooled for one minute by the anarcho-tech’s talk of the Internet being a window into a libertarian future. Literally billions of pounds are being invested into ways of capturing the 30 million-plus people who have access to the internet, these people aren't contributors to a brave new experiment in global communication. They're a Market.

As with all development in capitalism access to the technology is unequal and market-driven. Even though the number with access to the Internet is rising rapidly, there are untold millions who will never have access, or at best a restricted one. because their ability as consumers is limited. Even those with purchasing power cannot evade the logic of capitalist market culture. In the next few years the Internet will be superseded, as the technology improves, by combining television and computer into a wider, corporately-controlled medium, in which all the fake, superficial culture of capitalism will be pumped into people’s homes on an even more unrelenting level.

The Internet provides us with another example of the technological dynamism of capitalist development being restricted by its own economic laws. Time and time again technology has been developed with the potential to liberate humanity from want, but instead has been used to maximise profit for a small minority. Just think what benefits the Internet could bring in a socialist society for the global assessment and distribution of needs as well as the spread of information. 

Jonathan Meakin