Cooking the Books: All workers’ parties now? (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We’re now the workers’ party’ proclaimed the headline of an article by Nigel Farage in the Times (10 May) following his party’s gains in the local council elections. A week or so earlier on May Day, Zack Polanski had declared that ‘the Greens are the new workers’ party’.

So, who are ‘the workers’? Capitalist society is divided into two basic classes: a class that owns the resources needed to produce what the members of society need to survive, and a class, without such ownership, whose members are obliged to try to sell their working skills to obtain money to buy what they need to survive. The vast majority of the population are members of this working class, irrespective of what job they do or whether they work in an office or an industrial unit.

Farage wrote about ‘guys wearing orange jackets working for local councils, paid-up trade union members, or the self-employed’, which suggests he is thinking more of manual and industrial workers. That is certainly a common usage of the term ‘working class’, defined by occupation rather than exclusion from ownership of productive resources. There is evidence that many such workers who traditionally supported Labour have switched to Reform.

But if a party is to be judged a workers’ party because of the number of workers who vote for it, any party which has substantial support would be a ‘workers party’ as the vast majority of voters are workers. The Tories, the Liberals and the Scots and Welsh Nats would be workers’ parties too.

Polanski’s claim that the Greens are now the workers’ party is based on promising measures to benefit workers in the workplace. He sounds like a Labour politician of yesteryear:

‘The reforms introduced by Margaret Thatcher nearly half a century ago began the long march downwards in the balance of power and wealth in our country — from those who produce and do the work to those who profit from it …. We will address the massive imbalance in our workplaces and give control back to workers’.

His claim that the Greens are the new workers’ party is in effect a claim that Greens are the new ‘Labour’ party. But why does he think that the Green Party would be any more successful in shifting the balance of power and wealth in favour of those who produce the wealth? Why does he think that the Labour Party failed to do this? And, incidentally, when did workers ever control their places of work?

The Labour Party started off as a trade union pressure group to get legislation passed that would benefit workers. At best it could be seen as a party that aimed to improve the position of workers within capitalism but, although some reforms can do and have done this, capitalism can never be made to run in the interest of the working class, because it is a profit-making system and profits come from the unpaid labour of those ‘who produce and do the work’. It is an anti-worker system and no government can change that.

Farage’s claim that his party is a workers’ party is laughable in view of its openly pro-capitalist policies. Polanski’s claim can be dismissed as vote-catching rhetoric by an opposition party that has no chance of being called to honour its promise — and, if ever it was in that position, it would fail just as the Labour Party has done and for the same reason. Capitalism simply cannot be made to work for the workers.

A real workers’ party is one that advocates political action to bring about the immediate common ownership and democratic control of productive resources.

But not fighting capitalism (2026)

Book Review from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fight Oligarchy: Where We Go from Here. By Bernie Sanders. Penguin £9.99.

Oligarchy, the opening sentence states, ‘is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control the economic, political, and media life of a nation.’ Plenty of examples are given of inequality of wealth. For instance, Elon Musk is worth nearly $400 billion, more than the bottom half of US households. In Mexico, Carlos Slim is worth over $96 billion, while the Sultan of Brunei has wealth of $30 billion and owns 600 Rolls Royces.

Nor is it just a matter of individuals. Three Wall Street firms, Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street, are major shareholders in nearly all the largest American corporations, including Ford, ExxonMobil and Pfizer. Media ownership is extremely concentrated too: ‘Billionaires own and control virtually every major newspaper and radio network in the country.’ Moreover, there is massive oligarchic influence on politics, with gigantic donations and threats to run candidates against politicians who are the least bit awkward. Super PACs (Political Action Committees) can spend millions of dollars to defeat, for instance, members of Congress who oppose US aid to the Israeli government. The Democratic Party offers little resistance to Trump and the oligarchs, having supposedly ‘turned its back on the needs and suffering of America’s working class’ (but when did it ever support the interests of workers?).

At the same time, American workers are on average less well off than fifty years ago, adjusting for inflation. Eight hundred thousand people in the US are homeless, and over sixty thousand die each year because they cannot get to a doctor on time. Suicide rates have increased, especially among young people.

Sanders, an independent senator who has been involved with the Democrats, presents a vivid and harrowing picture of inequality and poverty in the US. He has been on a Fighting Oligarchy tour around various states, talking to audiences about what can and should be done to fight back. What he advocates is, however, the usual reformist fare: raise taxes on the rich and on large corporations, cut military spending, enact Medicare for all, make housing affordable, raise the minimum wage, improve pensions. But, even if made a reality (which is unlikely, given capitalism’s need for profits), this would leave the class division of society unchanged, with workers still subject to the unpredictability of markets and being exploited by their employers. A discussion of Sanders’ views in the April 2017 Socialist Standard noted that the so-called revolution he stood for then ‘leaves capitalism firmly in place’ . Clearly nothing in his views has changed since that time. The book is also quite expensive for such a slim volume.

Paul Bennett

Venezuela: another failure of reformism (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Venezuela is a petro-state, defined as a country with an economy and government that depend heavily on money from extracting and selling oil and gas. Oil was first extracted there in the 1920s and Venezuela was one of the founding members in 1960 of the oil-producers’ cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), that held the rest of the capitalist world to ransom after the 1973 Yom Kippur War which closed the Suez Canal and led to petrol rationing. The other four founding members were all in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Venezuela in fact has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

Ground rent

The main income of a petro-state is ground-rent rather than profit. Ground-rent is an income that accrues to ground owners because they happen to own land that contains some natural resource. In agriculture this would be land that is more fertile. The price of, say, wheat will reflect the cost of growing it on the land which provides the producer with a normal profit. Wheat grown on land that is more fertile than this will sell at the same price, despite the cost of growing it being less. The difference between the price the wheat sells at and the lower cost of production is ground-rent. In other words, those who own land with a lower cost of exploiting its natural resource than at the margin, whether this be wheat or oil, get an extra income above normal profit.

Saudi Arabia, as the country where the cost of extracting oil is lowest, gets the biggest proportional ground-rent. Other oil-producing countries, except those with the highest production costs, also benefit to a greater or less extent. The amount of oil rent a petro-state receives depends on the price of oil, the higher this is the more the rent (which is the economic logic behind the OPEC oil cartel). But OPEC can’t fix the price of oil at will or forever; other factors are involved such as the demand for oil, which fluctuates up or down depending on whether world capitalism is in the boom or the slump phase of its economic cycle.

The Gulf oil-producers are all dynastic states and a large part of the ground-rent they get goes to the ruling dynasty. The rest of the population, mainly immigrant workers from Asia and other Arab states, as non-citizens have no say in how the rent is distributed. Most of them live in poverty while the kings, princes and sheiks and their families live in the lap of luxury.

Politics and the price of oil

Venezuela was different from the other founder members of OPEC in that it was more developed both economically in already having a capitalist economy and politically in that its population were citizens with the right to vote. Because the government was so dependent on oil rents, the course of the political life of the country reflected changes in the price of oil.

From 1948 to 1958 Venezuela was a dictatorship, backed and brutally enforced by the army. During this period oil prices were high but the benefits went to the US oil corporations that had been granted concessions to extract oil, though some was used on infrastructure projects and to enrich the dictator and his political allies.

In 1958 the dictatorship was overthrown and Venezuela became a formal political democracy with competitive elections between rival parties. Successive governments began to take back ownership of the oil as concessions expired. In 1976 all oil in the ground became government property via a state enterprise, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Things were relatively normal until oil prices fell in the 1980s due to the ‘oil glut’ that came about following the post-1973 energy crisis.

The high price engineered by OPEC after the 1973 Yom Kippur War led other capitalist countries to seek and develop other energy sources (coal enjoyed a bit of a revival) and other sources of oil, leading to overproduction. The result in Venezuela was an economic crisis and in 1989 the government imposed an austerity that led to strikes and riots and attempted coups, including one in 1992 led by Hugo Chávez, a young army officer from a poor background. He was jailed but released after two years. On his release, he turned to conventional politics and won the 1998 presidential election, taking office in 1999. He was re-elected under a new constitution in 2000, then, despite a short-lived coup against him in 2002, again in 2006 and 2012.

There is no reason to doubt that Chávez sincerely wanted to improve the lot of the population of Venezuela, particularly the poorest. He was, basically, a populist Venezuelan nationalist. He didn’t claim to be a socialist when first elected president in 1998, just to be anti-elite and for using oil revenue to help the poor majority. It was only in 2005 that he declared himself an advocate of ‘21st century socialism’. In 2007 the name of his party was changed to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which is still the ruling party there today.

He was lucky in that soon after he first came to power the price of oil rose, providing his government with funds to pay for improved services for the mass of the population:

‘When Chávez took office in early 1999, oil was trading at less than $15 a barrel, but its price started going up almost instantly. By the time he was elected to his third term, in 2006, it was trading at about $60 per barrel; by the time his presidency ended upon his death in 2013, a barrel of oil was worth almost $100’.

With a healthy income from oil rents, the Chávez government was able to improve the living standards of the mass of the population:

‘Chávez’s government focused its efforts on bringing people out of poverty using the surpluses generated by oil revenue, buffered by high market prices. Social spending per person in Venezuela grew, in real terms, 170 percent from 1998 to 2006 and if we included the social spending made directly by Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) the figure reached more than 200 percent per person. In 2008 education spending was more than double what it had been in 1999. The number of people living in poverty dropped from 55 percent in 1998 to 34 percent ten years later. University enrolment has almost tripled since 2000. (… ). All of the redistributive measures undertaken by the government meant that in 2011 Venezuela was, by Gini coefficient, the least unequal country in Latin America …’.

Pretty impressive, which explains why Chávez was re-elected three more times. Some, particularly leftists from Europe, saw this as a successful move from capitalism towards socialism. The prominent Trotskyist Alan Woods (a leftover from the old Militant Tendency) was particularly impressed and met Chávez a number of times, becoming a propagandist for the ‘Bolivarian revolution’. But he wasn’t the only one. Even today some of those demonstrating against the US attack on Venezuela are doing so to defend the regime there because they believe it to be socialist. ‘The Bolivarian Revolution is committed to building socialism and independence’ declares one group (revolutionarycommunist.org). But it wasn’t socialism or a step towards it; it was an attempt to reform capitalism into a less unequal society which appeared to be working due to a period of high oil prices and rents.

Chávez died in 2013 shortly after being re-elected. In a sense he was lucky again, as oil prices eventually fell as a result of the drop in industrial activity that followed the Crash of 2008. He thus avoided being the head of government in Venezuela during a period of falling oil prices. That poisoned chalice was passed to his successor, Nicolás Maduro, and the Chavista military and political bureaucracy that ruled the country.

Maduro’s poisoned chalice

In 2014 oil prices fell from $100 a barrel to $40 and did not rise much again (even today it’s only about $60). The Maduro government was in an impossible position. Unable to maintain spending to benefit the population at its previous level it was forced to cut back. Popular discontent rose and in 2016 opposition parties won a majority in the National Assembly which went on to refuse to recognise that Maduro had won the 2018 presidential election. The ruling bureaucracy was not prepared to give up power and turned to political manipulation and repression to maintain it. The US and Europe, too, refused to recognise that Maduro had been legitimately elected and imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela which continue to this day.

With less income from oil rents the government had to cut the benefits it handed out, with the result that poverty and inequality grew:

‘According to a quality of life study conducted by a group of universities in the country, the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, reached 56.7 in 2021, surpassing that of Brazil. The research also shows an increase in the income poverty rate, with more than 90% of households living below the poverty line. The most recent data indicate an increase in inequality, with an index of 60.3, and a decrease in income poverty to 80.3% of households, a result of the modest economic recovery of 2022’. (translated from Spanish)

So, while the proportion of people in poverty fell from 55 percent in 1998 to 34 percent in 2008, by 2022 it was up to 80 percent. In 2011 Venezuela had been the least unequal country in Latin America in terms of income. Between 1999 and 2011 the Gini coefficient had fallen from almost 50 to 39. In 2022 it was back up to 60, higher than it had been when Chávez was first elected.

Some of this will have been due to the sanctions imposed in 2019 by the US and Europe but the decline had set in before that. Imposing sanctions is a cruel and cynical policy, arguably worse than military action. Its aim is to make the situation of ordinary people worse in the expectation that they will kick out the sanctioned government. It worked in the sense that it did make people even worse off as the government was forced to cut back yet more on the reforms of the Chávez period, and this did make people more inclined to vote to remove the Maduro government from office. Sanctions do not affect those in charge of the state as they can always ensure that they don’t suffer any personal privations and that adequate resources are attributed in priority to maintaining the state apparatus and its repressive powers.

Capitalist economists say that Chávez should not have distributed so much of the oil rents to improve the position of the poor, but should have instead invested more in developing capitalist industry to provide jobs and incomes to counter what would happen if oil prices and so oil rents fell or oil ran out. This is a lesson that the Gulf sheiks had learned, using their rents not just to lead a personal life of luxury but to convert themselves into capitalists in their own right by investing in industry abroad as well as in their sheikhdoms.

Given capitalism and how it works, there is something in what its economists say, but this is further confirmation that a government cannot continuously redistribute wealth to the poor; this will be unsustainable and lead to economic disaster. To function normally, the capitalist economy requires that even oil rents should be invested in capitalist production, not spent on improving people’s lot.

Living standards in Venezuela fell by 75 percent between 2013 and 2023, driving some 7 million out of a population of 30 million to leave the country to seek a better life elsewhere. Supporters of capitalism gleefully trumpet this as a failure of ‘socialism’. In fact, it was a failure of redistributive reformism that showed both the fragility of reform measures and that no government can keep on redistributing income to the non-owning majority without this eventually ending in economic disaster.

Adam Buick

Popularity (2025)

From the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just how popular is populism? Taking the media, social and broadcast, at face value it appears to be the surging political trend nationally and internationally. In Britain, Reform UK are feted as the almost certain next government in waiting. Every small rubber dinghy that braves the Channel crossing to disgorge its cargo of migrants on the Anglo-Saxon shore counts as a clutch of increased votes for the party. Their accommodation frequently features, on the evening news, as the epicentre of patriotic outrage.

For a while that stalwart British icon, the Turkish Saint George, had his banner raised to flutter from many a lamppost. Or it was draped around the shoulders of angry demonstrators traipsing through the streets of the capital to gather and be harangued by demagogues. Certainly those marchers, like most people, have a great deal to be angry about. Lives blighted by inadequate incomes, rising prices, serious failings in health and social services and a growing housing crisis.

Governments come and go, and nothing substantially alters, except often for the worse. Even a desperate grab for a major change, with its promise of significant transformation such as Brexit, quickly proves an illusion, its glister merely fool’s gold.

Despite being leading purveyors of this political vacuity in its previous incarnation as UKIP, Reform UK is presently gaining popularity as the prospective saviour of the nation. They have, of course, the advantage of novelty, not yet marked by failure of governance. Reform UK’s impressive showing in May’s council elections has been tarnished somewhat through a number of resignations by, expulsions and suspensions of, some of their new councillors. There is evidence from a previous seeming breakthrough in local government of similar serious failings.

The British National Party in 2003 made what appeared to be a breakthrough in council elections. This was seen at the time as a harbinger of further success come elections for metropolitan districts, the European parliament and the mayor of London. This expectation was largely frustrated in 2004. Although the BNP did gain 3 council seats in Epping Forest, scene of recent unpleasantness at the Bell Hotel, it lost 7 of its 8 seats in Burnley, but gained one in Bradford. This proved the peak of its success.

Reform UK have certainly exceeded this precedent and might represent the triumph of populism come the next general election. This then invites the question of how popular populism has to be to succeed.

In the 2024 general election Labour took 33.7 percent of the UK vote (34.6 per cent in GB) to acquire an overall majority of 172. In other words the democratic process as it now is elected a government with a large majority even though around 66 percent of those who actually voted didn’t vote for it.

The last electoral showing by a party boasting a popular surge was in 2019. The Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn had witnessed a large influx of new members to become by far the largest party, at a time when party memberships were declining and had been for a number of years. Despite this Labour accrued just 32.2 percent of the UK vote, noticeably down from Corbyn’s previous effort in 2017. Labour was popular enough to attract those new members, but not to become elected, falling 11 percent short of the Conservative vote on 43.6 percent.

Becoming a government does not require a party to be popular enough to win an outright majority of the vote. Indeed, in the multi-party system we now seem to have, somewhere around a third of votes might actually be enough as Labour showed last time. This then is presumably Reform UK’s target. Should it achieve that target it is a moot point as to how long that populism lasts when it is confronted with administering all the problems and contradictions capitalism continually generates. No party to date deliberately sets out to generally make people’s lives worse. Yet they inevitably are forced into enacting policies that are detrimental to workers when the economic imperatives of capitalism demand it. As Britain’s shortest serving Prime Minister, Liz Truss, quickly found out, economic mismanagement does not even require democratic process to be removed from office.

Populism is commonly associated with right-wing politicians and parties, but the left also make attempts at popular appeal. Following on from boosting Labour Party membership, Jeremy Corbyn has become the focus around which Your Party is being promoted. A loose conglomeration of disaffected Labourites and left-wing reformists, Your Party intends to become to the Labour Party what Reform UK is to the Tories. However, there are signs it is already failing before it has had the chance to present itself to the electorate.

Adnan Hussain, MP for Blackburn, has parted company with Your Party citing a toxic culture of infighting, jostling for position and factional competition. Also, there have been questions raised concerning access to, and deployment of, £800,000 raised in donations. Those who have had any experience of left-wing politics will recognise these as common features figuring in previous incarnations of popular front alliances of left Labour and Trotskyist ‘Socialist’ groups. Even if, however unlikely it presently seems, Your Party was to succeed in replacing Labour as the left alternative elected to govern the country, it would still face the fundamental constraints capitalism imposes on administrations.

A simple example: the Brexit referendum had two possible results, but only one outcome. A vote to stay in the EU meant capitalism, while a vote to leave meant capitalism. So it is with parliamentary elections; whichever party is popularly voted for – left, right or centre – capitalism remains the determining feature of society.

In a sense, all contending political parties are populist. They vie with each other for the popular vote, that 35 to 40 percent that unlocks the door to 10 Downing Street. All parties that is, bar one, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. There is no aspiration, not even a far-fetched one, to be invited by the monarch to form a government. This is not lack of ambition. Indeed the Socialist Party’s ambition goes way beyond the severely circumscribed aspirations of all the others.

Only the working people of the world acting in concert to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism can see the realisation of the aims of the Socialist Party. The common democratic ownership of the means of wealth creation to establish a moneyless society dedicated to meeting everyone’s needs without the imperative to make profits. The election of a popular parliament dedicated to serving the emergence of such a society would be an important element in that process. But it wouldn’t be the Socialist Party sitting on the front benches as there would be no front benches.

The socialist cause certainly needs much, much greater popularity than it presently has. That may involve socialist candidates standing in elections, with a view to raising awareness, provoking voters to think beyond the present political offerings.

Socialists do court popularity, yet not for themselves or even their party, but for socialism itself. No matter how unpopular that idea presently is it still remains, and will remain, the only alternative for people who want to take control and refashion society to meet their needs.

D. A.

Cooking the Books: Some reformists never learn (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

When, after losing the European elections to the National Rally (formerly the Front National), Macron called a snap election, the politicians regrouped to contest it. On the left, the hard-left breakaway from the ‘Parti Socialiste’ France Unbowed, the Communist Party, the Greens and the PS itself formed a New Popular Front (NFP) which emerged as the largest group in the National Assembly.

In an article in the Guardian (2 July), Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty (yes, him) described its economic policy and the logic behind it. They wrote of its:

‘ambitious policies to improve the purchasing power of poor and lower-middle-class people. These reforms include a substantial increase in the minimum wage, wages indexed to prices and free school lunches. Most importantly the NFP wants to prioritise investment in the future by increasing public spending on infrastructure – throughout the country, including in isolated rural areas – as well as in health, education and research’.

The two are co-authors of a book about elections in France since 1789 in which they concluded that it was people in small towns and rural areas that tended to vote far-right ‘first and foremost because of socio-economic concerns: they lack purchasing power, they suffer most from the lack of investment in public infrastructure’, adding ‘and they feel that they have been abandoned by governments of all stripes in recent decades’. Hence the rise of the far-right.

This seems plausible enough; it’s unlikely to be just because they want to kick immigrants out or stop more coming in (that’s only the false solution proposed by the far-right). Cagé and Piketty reckon that, if the parties of the left increase purchasing power and spending on public infrastructure they can win people away from the ex-Front National.

An increase in people’s purchasing power through higher and indexed wages and benefits and more government spending on public services and amenities is all very well but where is the money to come from? Ultimately, there is only one source: the profits of business enterprises. But the pursuit of profits is what drives the capitalist economy and if you tax them too much to redistribute income to the ‘poor and lower-middle-class’ or to pay for first class health care and education that will provoke an economic slowdown, making this unsustainable. That’s the way capitalism works and can only work: by giving priority to profits over satisfying people’s needs. Despite the political slogan, profits cannot be put before people.

The last time this was tried in France was in 1981 after Mitterrand was elected President and a government including the Communist Party came into office. In June the new government increased people’s purchasing power by putting up the minimum wage, pensions, family allowances and housing benefit but the result was a disastrous failure compared to which what happened under Truss was a storm in a teacup.

The increase in benefits had been paid for by recourse to the printing press; as a result, the internal price level in France got out of line with the international level. The franc was devalued in October and again in June 1982. By this time, the government had learned the lesson that if you are in office under capitalism you must respect its economic laws, and rowed back on its reforms, giving priority instead to trying to revive the profits of business enterprises and adopting a policy of ‘rigueur’ regarding wages and benefits. In March 1983 the franc had to be devalued for a third time.

While, to judge by the programme of the NFP, reformists in France have not learned by their previous failures to improve people’s lives by increasing their purchasing power, reformists in Britain have. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer here is skipping trying to do this and going straight to the ‘rigueur’ stage, called here fiscal responsibility.

George Galloway’s ‘Workers Party’ (2024)

From the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rochdale by-election on 29 February was prompted by the death of the previous Member of Parliament for that constituency. From 1972 onwards the seat had a mix of Liberal and Labour MPs. Labour no doubt expected an easy win there, which they may have achieved under pressure, even though a previous Labour MP, expelled from that party and then representing Rochdale as an Independent was standing for the Reform party. Their slogan is ‘Let’s Make Britain Great’, an obvious nod to Trumpism.

Also standing was George Galloway of the Workers Party of Britain (WPB), formed in 2019 by himself. Their slogan is ‘Building a New Working Class Politics in Britain’. Galloway was a Labour Party member for thirty-six years, and while presenting himself as radically left he is essentially a Fabian.

We write this before the result of the by-election is known but the odds on Galloway winning did shorten a little after the official Labour Party candidate got himself into trouble with his own party for remarks he made.

Based on media coverage it did appear that Galloway was concentrating on canvassing support based upon his long-standing support for the Palestinian cause and his complete antagonism toward Zionism.

The WPB Manifesto says:

‘The Workers Party of Britain is a socialist party but we are not Utopian, nor are we bound by abstruse theory. We have a common-sense analysis and a practical mission. The Workers Party is committed to the redistribution of wealth and power in favour of working people’.

Not the abolition of capitalism, note, but change within capitalism.

Their Manifesto goes on to list ‘some things we can do immediately’.

‘We will immediately increase the personal tax threshold for the poorest paid, removing tax entirely from the first £21,200 of wages for two million low-paid workers, and at the same time we commit to a one-off wealth tax on all estates valued fairly at over £10 million to make a start on redressing the colossal gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.’

Yup, truly revolutionary. Amongst other irrelevances to the working class:

‘Rebuild British industry… to provide useful secure jobs for all…’

‘We support campaigning to preserve the right to use cash.’

‘We will ensure working-class representation throughout the governance of the Bank of England.’

So much for the claim to be ‘a socialist party’ and the commitment ‘to offer a long-term and well-organised socialist alternative to the corrupt Labour Party…’

Despite all the firebrand rhetoric Galloway just wants to reform capitalism, which is no doubt trembling in its boots at the thought of him being a Member of Parliament.

Dave Coggan

Blogger's Update:

Galloway did indeed win last night's bye-election. 

More on Populism (2021)

Book Review from the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Psychology of Populism. The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy. Edited by Joseph P. Forgas, Willian D. Crano and Klaus Fiedler. (Routledge, 2021. 386pp.)

The stated aim of the 19 essays making up this book is, according to its editors, ‘to contribute to a better understanding of the nature and psychological characteristics of populist movements’. They further state that they ‘hope to highlight the fundamental threat that collectivist popular beliefs and strategies, both on the left and right of the political spectrum, present for the core values and the very survival of liberal democratic systems’. The shared understanding, implicit where not explicit, of all the authors is that the combination of the market with capitalist democracy constitutes ‘the most successful civilisation in human history’, and that modern populism, arising from both left and right, has certain common features such as rejection of liberal democracy, ethnocentrism, tribalism, xenophobia, emotional and/or identity-based politics, and feelings of personal impotence.

Current examples of governments considered populist whose features are analysed here are those of Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Russia, while strong populist movements in countries like France, Germany, Austria and the US are also subjects of study and discussion. Support for populism in these countries is seen as arising from such sources as simplistic beliefs, feelings of frustrated self-importance, ‘self-uncertainty’, a ‘need for personal significance, and the ‘human search for a meaningful world view’. And the detailed supporting analysis is often interesting and well evidenced.

But even though much of the analysis in these essays is acute and telling, many of the authors are too quick to identify what they term as left-wing populism with ‘Marxism’. In their introductory chapter, for example, the editors refer to Marxism as one of the ‘clear and well-articulated populist ideologies’ and the sworn enemy of any kind of individualism or tolerance. Referencing writers from the past with particularly strong pro-capitalist and anti-Marxist agendas such as Arthur Koestler and Karl Popper, they describe Marxism as featuring ‘the same degree of authoritarianism, dogmatism and intolerance also found in right-wing totalitarian movements’. The problem here, as with the ‘authorities’ they quote, is that by Marxism is meant dictatorial states which bear no relation to the thinking of Marx, regimes such as the Soviet Union or Mao’s China (well described as ‘a famine-wracked disaster’) and, in more recent times, countries often referred to as ‘Marxist’ such as Cuba and Venezuela, but again representing a travesty of any lesson to be drawn from Marx’s writings. And, again, on the ideological front, they refer not to Marx’s own writings or prescriptions but to Lenin’s distorted version or implementation of these and to modern-day theorists, often self-styled ‘Marxists’, who ‘share a strongly critical attitude to Western liberal values, a romantic attachment to anti-enlightenment communalism, and a cold-eyed focus on power as the major social issue of interest’.

The trouble is that what the authors are describing here has nothing to do with the analysis and theory which is at the root of Marx’s writings, seeking as it does to transcend so-called ‘liberal values’ and pointing to the need for a world society of common ownership and democratic control and of free access to all goods and services, where human beings, far from their individualism being denied or oppressed, are in ultimate control of their own choices and their own individual existence.

While this volume contains much that is instructive and thought-provoking for an understanding of how populism arises and is practised, it fails on the whole to see that it is the political and other divisions produced by capitalism’s so-called ‘liberal democracy’ that are the real lightning rod for the very populism it is dedicated to exploring and critiquing. And the notion with which it is shot through that individual freedom is incompatible with collective organisation is fundamentally wrong-headed. The ‘collectivism’ it continually refers to and deplores is that of dictatorial or semi-dictatorial regimes or ideologies, not that of a world society organised democratically to satisfy everyone’s needs.

Howard Moss

George Galloway: would-be Populist Leader (2021)

From the August 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the day the results of the recent Batley and Spen by-election were announced a Labour Party supporter responded to a comment about the meagre majority achieved. He was insistent that the 323-vote margin would have been 8,000+ higher had it not been for the appearance of George Galloway for the Workers Party of Britain.

From a purely psephological point of view the Galloway performance was remarkable for a representative of a small, leftish party. Nearly 22 percent of the vote secured a comfortable third place, a good 7,000 votes ahead of the Liberal Democrat, 5,000 or so behind the winner.

So perhaps the disgruntled Labour supporter had a point, except, of course, there is a large presumption involved. There is no way of determining whether an absence of Galloway and his new party would have resulted in in his 8,000 votes defaulting to Labour. Indeed, the experience of the previous by-election in Hartlepool suggests the Conservative candidate might have been a beneficiary too, especially given Galloway’s pro-Brexit stance.

There is a strong suggestion that Galloway profited from an alienated Muslim vote who may have perceived themselves as being tainted by Labour’s broad brush anti-Semitism accusations levelled at almost any anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian. It must be galling for a community more often the target of racism to feel themselves viewed as racists by the party they traditionally supported.

There is surely little doubt that the impressive vote was for Galloway personally rather than being an ideological breakthrough by the Workers Party of Britain. He has a background of championing anti-Zionism and favouring Islamic causes. There have even been suggestions that he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam, although he has denied this.

The Workers Party of Britain appears to be a left-wing manifestation of that recent political phenomenon, populism. On its website the Party states it is a response to a need following the defeat of Corbynism. It believes:

• The importance of a planned economy directing the role of the state.
• Free-market fundamentalism has gutted British industry, castrated society and destabilised the working class.
• The state should guide economic life.
• The working class needs to be united on shared class interests to struggle for socialism.
• Countries that have tried to build the socialist new world include the USSR, China, Cuba et al.
• Brexit is a positive move to secure Britain’s independence to pursue fiscal and monetary policies and take key utilities and transport into public ownership.

There is ‘A ten-point programme for workers’ promoted on the Party’s website that sits easily with left-Labour aspirations. It has garnered the support of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), which situates itself in the tradition of Stalinism and Maoism. Indeed, Galloway’s deputy leader Joti Brar is from a family closely associated with the CPGB (ML). For the Workers Party of Britain the problem is free-market capitalism, the solution… state capitalism.

Galloway has been here before of course. In 2005 he did even better, winning the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency for Respect, a political grouping backed on that occasion by the Socialist Workers Party. A parting of the ways quickly followed and it would seem he has moved from the neo-Trotskyist camp to the neo-Stalinist one. Either way, the prospects for democracy would be dim should such a grouping ever succeed.

Is it a party at all, or a Galloway supporters’ club? It seems highly unlikely that some John or Joan Smith standing for the Workers Party of Britain in Batley and Spen would have garnered anything close to 8,000 votes and their performances elsewhere have been derisory.

Personality politics blurs the line between those who’d style themselves left or right wing. Thus George Galloway was quite sanguine about sharing a platform at a Brexit rally with Nigel Farage. The public moment being far more crucial than principles.

The charismatic leader, or a leader who thinks himself charismatic, becomes all important. A previous attempt to displace Labour as the party of the working class in Yorkshire was the now less than marginal Socialist Labour Party led by Arthur Scargill who tried to politically exploit the prominence he gained from the 1984/85 miners’ strike. Indeed, the CPGB (M-L) was a split from it.

What these parties have in common is being political cul-de-sacs. Setting aside implications of serious democratic deficit in its politics, should the Workers Party actually succeed in displacing the Labour Party nothing much would change for the working class.

With Galloway as prime minister implementing his 10-point plan the workers would still be working for wages that represent only a portion of the value their labour power creates. After all, ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ has successfully created numerous billionaires while the working masses most definitely do not have control of the means of production and distribution.

In other words, the Workers Party in power would replace capitalism with capitalism, and a less successful version of capitalism if some the models quoted on the Party’s website are anything to go by.

The Batley and Spen by-election is a demonstration that there are no answers to the problems created by capitalism for the working class in any of the parties on offer, major or minor, left wing or right wing.

Kim Leadbeater MP made the usual platitudinous vague promises to serve all the community, bring people together and further local interests. Had the Tory won he would have spouted an almost identical speech. Similarly, the LibDem. Galloway would undoubtedly have been more vocally belligerent, but it would have amounted to the same.

This is because community divisions, Brexit, economic decline and the plethora of other problems are rooted in capitalism. The dreadful murder of Kim Leadbeater’s sister Jo Cox, the then sitting MP, was an extreme example of politics under capitalism. It is a system wasteful of human lives that is immune to political point scoring.

The Labour Party supporter decrying George Galloway for undermining the Leadbeater vote remains politically blind, as presently all too many are. There are no short cuts, no inspired leaders, no previous models to draw on. Only a majority recognition of the need for a system of common ownership of economic means, moneyless and cooperative – socialism – can address those problems people have in common, even as they seem to be divided.

Until popular delusions can be effectively dispersed the people of Batley and Spen and everywhere else in the world will continue to labour for the pecuniary benefit of the capitalist few.

Dave Alton

50 Years Ago: Marxism in Chile? (2021)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Salvador Allende is not the first president of Chile to proclaim himself a revolutionary. When Allende’s predecessor, the Christian Democrat Frei, was elected in 1964 he pledged himself to a ‘revolution in liberty’. Two years later found him sending in the army to break a strike in the copper mines; eight people were killed. As Fidel Castro rather neatly put it: ‘He promised revolution without blood and has given blood without revolution.’

Like Allende, Frei was elected on the strength of his promises to solve two basic problems. Firstly the concentration of land in the hands of a few vastly wealthy families while 350,000 peasants have no land at all. And secondly the domination of Chile’s economy by foreign (mainly American) capital, which is held to be responsible for the chronic unemployment in the country (currently running at about 7 percent) and the destitution of a large section of the population (one half of all families live on less than thirty dollars a month).

(…)

Allende’s Chile, just like any other country operating within the world capitalist economy, will have to compete on the international markets to sell its products. The prices of its commodities can be made competitive only by Chile keeping abreast of world developments in industrial innovation, by constantly reinvesting in new plant — by constantly accumulating capital. And this can be done only by Chile’s industries — whether nationalised or not — pumping surplus value out of the working class. That these ‘external coercive laws’ are continuing to operate was made quite clear in a radio speech by the new President when he announced that daily production of coal is to be stepped up from 3,800 tons to 4,700 tons — and then called on the miners to make sacrifices so that Chile’s coal can be sold at competitive prices on the world market.

Because the popular front government is responsible for Chile’s capitalist economy, inevitably it is being brought into conflict with the workers and peasants. Already there have been several strikes, some involving the occupation of factories, both in the capital Santiago and in the provinces. In December 1970 telephone workers in Santiago took over the central telephone building and held some hostages, calling for the immediate introduction of new salary scales which the government said it would introduce in time. In the same month three thousand municipal workers stopped work for 48 hours after demanding pay rises which the ‘Communist’ Minister of Finance refused, while fifteen thousand administrative workers were on strike too.

(Socialist Standard, March 1971)

Not for Workers (2020)

Book Review from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the People: Left Populism in Spain and the US by Jorge Tamames (Lawrence and Wishart, £17)

Most populist movements and parties are right wing: Fidesz in Hungary, Law and Justice in Poland, Trump supporters in the US, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil. At the same time, some left-wing organisations are described as populist, such as Syriza in Greece and the former Chávez government in Venezuela. Here Jorge Tamames examines two particular cases of left-wing populism, Podemos in Spain and the support for Bernie Sanders in the US.

Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what he means by ‘populist’. He claims to follow the view of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, according to which it involves people going beyond addressing individual problems such as racism, unemployment and evictions, and joining together as a movement. In Tamames’ words ‘The result is a community mobilising to protest against an entire status quo, not merely asking for a few policy tweaks’. But it is not spelled out just how this is supposed to apply to the movements he discusses or how it relates to the features usually claimed to distinguish populism, the distinction drawn between the elite and the people, and the opposition to pluralism and separation of powers.

Podemos, of which Tamames is a member, means ‘we can’. It was formed in 2014 and received over a million votes in the European Parliament elections in May of that year. Despite its supposed populist objections to an elite, on the ballot papers it was not the Podemos logo that was used but the face of its leader Pablo Iglesias, who had become a well-known contributor to TV discussion shows. Since earlier this year, it has been a junior partner in the government run by the PSOE, which is roughly the equivalent of the Labour Party. Podemos’ programme has included increasing the minimum wage and raising taxation for the rich, so it is hard to see how they are protesting ‘against an entire status quo’, as suggested above.

Sanders, who has a fairly positive view of Pope Francis, has said that he wishes to stand up to ‘the billionaire class’. His policies included implementing universal health care, raising the minimum wage and breaking up the largest banks. In 2019 he extended this to the Green New Deal and abolishing student debt. All this is probably fairly radical in terms of US politics, and he had more support in 2016 from those under forty-five than Hillary Clinton did, but it obviously remains within the limits of capitalism, and he has twice failed to win the Presidential nomination.

As the author says, ‘I refer to Podemos and the Sanders movement as “left” populists because their agenda, while more ambitious that that of contemporary centre-left parties, is nevertheless reformist and not vastly different from that of a Western European social-democratic party in the early 1970s’. So all the fuss about left populism boils down to it being more or less the same as the Labour Party under Harold Wilson! The book gives some useful background on the impact of austerity and rising inequality, but it unsurprisingly fails to show that populism of whichever brand has anything to offer workers.

Paul Bennett

Canada's White Hope — the C.C.F. (1934)

From the June 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since Jack Johnson won the heavyweight championship many moons ago, the world has with eagerness watched the coming and going of white hopes. In the more important realm of politics new movements are born and quickly die, the remains creating fertilizers for new hopes to befog the minds of the majority, who so far have shown no desire for a real change in the system.

It is two years since the birth of the C.C.F. in Calgary, and British workers may be interested to know what the mystic letters “ C.C.F.” mean, and what the organisation stands for.

The Canadian Co-operative Federation is the fine-sounding title represented by the letters in question, and to those of us who have had the Co-operative Commonwealth, i.e., Socialism, as our objective for years it is difficult to understand the minds which claim that their ultimate aim, but spend all their time advocating something else now.

The outstanding figure of the C.C.F. is James S. Woodsworth, one of the Winnipeg Labour M.P.'s in the Parliament at Ottawa. He is an ex-preacher noted for his radical ideas, and has turned out an able politician, judged by the standards of the capitalist parties.

In the 1921 election to the Federal House, sixty-four Progressives were elected, all with more or less Radical ideas. By 1925 most of them were absorbed by the Liberal Party, and in 1930 (including the Labourites), they only mustered fifteen members, who have since that time cooperated in a loose group.

August 1st, 1932, saw the first meeting and the first attempt at organisation, when a Farmer-Labour Federation was formed. This meeting was attended by delegates of Labour Parties of the four Western Provinces and the organised farmers of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The movement spread rapidly and culminated in a great Convention, held in Regina, July 19th to 21st, 1933. It was attended by 135 delegates, from Toronto and Montreal in the East to Vancouver on the Pacific Coast, at which the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation was founded.

The affiliations of the Federation consist of the Farmer-Labour Party of New Brunswick, the Labour Party of Quebec, the Labour Conference of Ontario, the I.L.P. of Manitoba, the Labour Party of Saskatchewan, the Canadian Labour Party of Alberta, and the so-called Socialist Party of British Columbia. Next, and perhaps most important, the organised Farmers of Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta joined up, with Manitoba farmers giving half-hearted support, but likely to continue to vote for the Farmer-Liberal Government which has power in this Province at present.

Another group giving support to the C.C.F. consists of a sprinkling of “intellectuals” of the Radical type, mostly college professors, doctors, lawyers and preachers. In addition, the organised Protestant churches have practically blessed the C.C.F. by passing resolutions calling for the "transformation of the present competitive system into a co-operative one.” C.C.F. leaders frequently quote from a recent encyclical of Pope Pius in an effort to link up the powerful Roman Catholic vote to their side.

The semi-feudal background of the peasants and workers of Roman Catholic Quebec will be hard to overcome, and radicalism of the pinkest type has not yet penetrated to that home of what has been termed bush-culture. To illustrate the outlook of some of the farming element of Canada to which the C.C.F. appeals, it has been related that a C.C.F. speaker, after declaiming against the Wages system, had one farmer agree with him in the following words: “Yes, I agree we should abolish wages. Hired men want far too big wages nowadays.”

The economic background of the new movement, therefore, is made up of, first, a very reactionary farm population whose main desire is a big price for farm produce. On the other hand, they demand a low wage scale for labour, not only amongst their hired hands, but also amongst the men who make their farm machinery, and those who on the railroads, etc., transport their produce to the markets of the world.

Secondly, a Labour movement with the regular Trade Union outlook largely imported from Great Britain but contaminated by the ideas of that most pitiful Trade Union movement, the American Federation of Labour, to which most of our unions are affiliated.

There are also groups organised as Social Reconstruction Clubs which are affiliated to the C.C.F., and from the leaders of those clubs flow a constant stream of half-boiled schemes and plans, and a constant fight against anything pertaining to a recognition of the class struggle.

The usual Left and Right Wings are already developing. The reformist S.P. of British Columbia is led largely by some ex-members of the old S.P. of Canada, who could see no possible career in the new Party organised in Winnipeg a few years ago with a programme similar to that of the S.P.G.B. They, along with some young members of the I.L.P. in Winnipeg and a small group of ex-semi- Communists in Toronto, comprise the Left.

The Farmers of Ontario are led by an avowed anti-Socialist, Miss Agnes McPhail, M.P. She has the help of two other fierce opponents of Sodalism, in the persons of Mr. Elmore Philpott, much boosted soldier-orator-journalist in Toronto, and Mr. John McLean, M.A., B.A., L.L.D. (Oxon.), Rhodes scholar and lawyer here in Winnipeg.

We see then that the new Federation represents (a) the wage workers of Canada, whose ideas are as nebulous as the ideas of the same class in other lands, and of course it can well be understood their immediate demands are equally confusing; (b) the farmers of Canada, whose hopes and demands have already been outlined as high prices for farm produce and low wages for the industrial workers as well as the farm labourers.

The C.C.F. have fourteen planks in their platform, subject, of course, to additions and reductions to suit the vote-catching needs of the moment. Some of the planks appeal specially to the wage workers. Plank 7, for instance, calls for “A National Labour Code to secure for the workers maximum income and leisure, insurance covering illness, accident, old age and unemployment, freedom of association and an effective participation in the management of his industry or profession.”

Mr. Elmer E. Roper, one of the Alberta Labour leaders, tells us, in the February issue of the Saskatchewan C.C.F. Research, that this plank is one that might easily appear in the Election platform of either of the old parties.”

The same could well be said of the other thirteen planks, but we will deal with them as we go on.

Plank 4 deals with “Agriculture” and features as its chief aim “Security of Tenure” for the farmers of Canada. To get what is meant by that elusive term we can refer to the "C.C.F. Agricultural Policy” as outlined by their principal farmer leader, G. H. Williams, President of the Saskatchewan Farmer-Labour group, in his speech at the Regina Convention, July 22nd, 1933. The present real owners of Canadian Farm lands—the Mortgage and Insurance Companies—are to be treated real rough by Mr. Williams and the C.C.F. when they get power. He says: ”We will give you bonds for your equity, bonds that will not carry interest. . . . These bonds will be payable over a period of years in the currency of the province as it may be at the date of payment." Then to the farmer, Mr. Williams says: “All improvements will, of course, increase the value of the land, and the State will guarantee to compensate you for the increase in the value of the land, brought about by your efforts." Not only that, but Mr. Williams says they are going to supply “through Socialism to the agriculturist, a marketing board, State credit and pegged prices. . . . In industry we guarantee to the worker a job at an adequate wage and we use the production for the benefit of the Canadian people. We will do the same for agriculture."

So that brings us to a new problem for the C.C.F. What will people use for money? Planks 2, 11 and 14 deal with this absorbing question. 1 Mr. C. G. Coote, M.P., one of their money experts, tells us, in the House of Commons on February 1st, 1933: “ The first step is a planned economy," and the next: "A central bank owned by the State, whose duty it would be to see that sufficient money is at all times available to allow us to distribute among our people the consumable goods which we can produce."

That, in part, is what the C.C.F. have copied from that enemy of Socialism, Major Douglas. Let us again quote from the organ of the "Saskatchewan C.C.F. Research Bureau," December, 1933, issue, where we read: "The only shortage is in money, and this artificial shortage is due to the policy of the financiers and is maintained by the powers of the State. The State will then make every man, woman and child an equal partner in the wealth of the country as a going concern. Backed by the inexhaustible resources of the nation the State can issue as much credit as is needed." Later we read: "There is no shortage of anything, except money, wherewith to purchase the things we produce, and a sane system of finance is all that is required to make things available. Sufficient purchasing power for everybody is merely a matter of accounting."

Here we have revealed the C.C.F. answer to Socialism. Socialism involves that goods shall be produced for use and not for sale. The C.C.F. say goods will be produced for sale, but that they will provide the people with money to purchase them, an impossible attempt to keep capitalism but escape the consequences of so doing.

The depression of the Seventies produced on this Continent the American Grange or the Patrons of Industry, the Nineties had their Populist Movement, and later we had Townley and his Non- Partisans, and in Canada the depression of the early Twenties produced the Progressives.

The Farmer Movement of Canada has its roots in those old discredited movements, with the same kind of currency cranks leading them, and the British Columbia “Socialists" and Winnipeg I.L.P.'ers trailing behind. Reactionary farmers representing the dog, and confused workers the tail. Why should the gods not laugh?

Plank 1 calls for “ Planning," as if capitalism was not planned beautifully for the capitalists!

Plank 3, on Social Ownership, reassures the most reactionary that confiscation is unthought of. It says: "We do not propose to adopt any policy of outright confiscation," and again: “We recognise the need for compensation."

Plank 5 calls for “ Import and Export Boards" to deal with foreign trade.

Planks 8, 9 and 10 deal respectively with “Health Service", “The British North America Act,’’ which governs the Canadian Constitution, and “External Relations." Then 12 and 13, dealing with “Freedom" and “Social Justice" bring to a close a programme which is a mixture of decadent Liberalism, Fabian Bureaucracy and Currency Confusion.

Practically every plank and clause is a denial of the purpose of the Federation, which is supposed to be: “The establishment of a Co-operative Commonwealth, in which the basic principle regulating production, etc., will be the supplying of human needs and not the making of profits."

The attitude of the Socialist Party of Canada towards this Federation is one of unbending opposition. We are opposed to the spurious “Socialism" advocated by their spokesmen and leaders, the Socialism that “recognises the need for compensation," or a Socialism which is going to issue money “to purchase the things we produce," or one that guarantees to the worker “a job at an adequate wage." We do not want a “Co-operative Commonwealth" like the one envisaged by Professor Frank H. Underhill, the head of the Brain Trust, when he says in his essay on Dictatorship: “The direct ownership and operation by government of the great strategic services, such as transportation and distribution of electric power." We don’t even want our planning done by “public officials."

No! we are opposed to bureaucracy, to a wage system, to compensation, and not only to Government ownership but to the coercive State itself. When all the people own all the earth and the means whereby wealth is produced, classes will automatically disappear, and if society has no owning and governing class, how can we have a Government, the function of which is to protect class ownership? The kind of administrative organisation then required will be essentially different.

To the young and earnest workers in the Federation we constantly repeat the old truth, that non-Socialists organised on a programme of reforms cannot further the work for Socialism. The changing economic conditions are working for us, disillusion will follow the futile efforts of Woodsworth, Pritchard and Queen to make a coherent movement out of such widely divergent elements as constitute the C.C.F. Some of their leaders will openly join the avowedly capitalist parties, but there will be no place for any of them in the Socialist movement, which has no use for Leaders, any more than it has for the other evil features of a system so detrimental to human welfare as modern capitalism.

Alex Paterson

(Socialist Party of Canada)

Venezuela: Rooting out corruption? (1999)

From the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1989, following mass rioting, after government austerity measures which cut working-class incomes, 300 people were killed by the security forces in Venezuela. Most of the bodies “disappeared”; but in October 1996, because of a putrid smell in a building in a cemetery, on a hillside just outside the capital, Caracas, dozens of unidentified corpses were discovered. They had been dumped there secretly by the state, and left to rot.

It was not, however, just the bodies of the workers that were left to rot. Much of Venezuela was in a state of decay. Moreover, as we pointed out last year (Socialist Standard, October 1998), the economy had been teetering on the edge of total instability throughout the 1990s. Not surprisingly, Venezuela was badly affected by the economic crisis spreading throughout much of the world. The government, whose currency had been under intense pressure for some time, launched an immediate round of public spending cuts. What has happened since then?

Seven years ago, Hugo Chavez led a failed military coup against the government, “in the name of Venezuela’s poor”; but was democratically elected president last February. He is a belligerent populist, who claimed that he would root out corruption, of which there is a lot, in Venezuela.

Following his inauguration, Chavez soon showed his hand. He began to prepare for the elections in August. He flouted the electoral laws by promoting his own candidates, and by appointing army officers to senior government posts. And he claimed that he had strong support among the poor majority. And he has been proved right. His left-wing coalition, which included his wife, his brother and about 20 of his former military colleagues, won 122 seats of the 131-seat assembly, in an 80 percent turnout.

He says that the new assembly will renew institutions which have been dominated by the two old parties for 40 years; and he wants the assembly to dissolve congress and the supreme court. Following his victory, Chavez claimed that:

  The victory of the patriots has been pulverising. We are building a true democracy in a way that those who destroyed the country from here didn’t know how to (Guardian, 27 July).

Official statistics admit that sixty-five percent of Venezuelans live in poverty, despite the fact that the country possesses the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere. During the last three decades, the per capita wealth of Venezuela has dropped twenty-five percent. In October last year, we asked: what of the working class? And we said that, for them, it can only get worse. We were right.

Despite the stabilisation of the currency, there has been a sharp economic downturn of the economy, resulting in the loss of about 600,000 jobs since Hugo Chavez took office as President in February. Moreover, we can safely predict that the majority of the people of Venezuela, the employed and unemployed working class, will continue to exist in poverty and deprivation, in the dilapidated apartments of Caracas, the run-down shacks of the surrounding ranchos or the one-storey slums of Maracy in Aragua state.

All Chavez’s proposed reforms, and all the present support of the workers, will not make one iota of difference. Only a change from capitalism to socialism will achieve that.

Peter E. Newell

A disaster waiting to happen (2000)

From the February 2000 of the Socialist Standard 

When the global economic crisis hit, first, the Pacific Rim countries and, later, Latin America and elsewhere, just over a couple of years ago, Venezuela was, as we noted (Socialist Standard, October 1998), particularly vulnerable. It had been economically and politically unstable for at least two decades, and corruption was rife (see Socialist Standard, September 1999).

In February last year, Hugo Chavez, the former paratrooper who had led a failed military coup d’état seven years previously, was elected president; and in August, he and his left-wing coalition won an overwhelming victory (but on a 53 percent turnout) in the elections to the National Assembly. He had proposed a complete rewriting of the constitution, the draft of which went before the new assembly, and was passed on 16 December.

According to his mainly right-wing critics, President Chavez has become a virtual dictator. He has increased, against the general trend worldwide, state intervention and control of the economy, reduced civilian control of the armed forces, and has probably secured the presidency for himself until 2012. He says that he needs such powers in order to “root out corruption” which, of course, he blames on previous governments. And, said Chavez, he would solve Venezuela’s economic ills. Nevertheless, between February last year, when he became president, and the beginning of December, unemployment had increased by a massive 700,000.

On polling day, last August, there was heavy rainfall throughout much of Venezuela, causing a number of landslides, 37 deaths, and the destruction of up to 2,000 homes. But worse was to come.

Beginning around 10 December, almost a year’s average rain fell, outside the usual rainy season, in five days. Torrential rain continued for another five days. The worse affected area was the tiny Vargas state bordering the Caribbean Sea in the north-west of Venezuela. Much of the country is flat; but there are hills and mountains, such as Mount Avila, inland and parallel to the coast, from Guacara in the west to the east of Caracas, the capital.

By 15 December, huge amounts of mud as well as large rocks and boulders began to slide down towards the coast. The soils, have, moreover, suffered constant erosion over the years; and when the natural dykes broke rivers formed, sending floods of muddy water onto the low-lying areas. Large swathes of the northern coast were swept into the sea. One of the towns to be worse hit was Carmen de Uria. It only had dirt roads; and it straddled what had been a small river, which had no proper embankment. After 10 days of rain, the river overflowed, cascading through many homes. Shortly after, Carmen de Uria was entirely buried under mud.

Floods like these claimed 100,000 lives in Venezuela

“It was,” said Piero Feliziani, an Italian geologists, “a holocaust waiting to happen.” But it need not have caused so much death, destruction and misery, even if it was a “natural” disaster. (The Archbishop of Caracas said that the rains “were divine retribution” for President Chavez’s radical policies!)

The basic cause, however, was the rapid development of a commodity-producing, capitalist, market economy from the early 1950s. According to Michael McCaughan in the Observer:

  “Venezuela, like neighbouring Colombia and Peru, was a largely rural society with strong family community ties until the fifties, when civil unrest and depressed crop prices forced millions into misery belts around the cities, where they piled high in precarious dwellings” (26 December).

For decades, there has been rapid, uncontrolled, unregulated immigration from the rural areas of extreme poverty to, and around, Caracas and other cities seeking employment, first, in the expanding oil industry and, then, in tourism. Indeed Venezuela’s weak economy depends almost entirely on oil and tourism for its foreign revenue. Vargas state has 500,000 workers who service the tourist industry, or commute each day to Caracas from the shanty towns and ranchos in the hills surrounding the capital. “Corrupt politicians and planners” turned a blind eye to such developments, where up to 350,000 workers existed, often without electricity, running water or main drainage.

This urban overpopulation is, according to Luisa Romero, an investment broker based in New York, “one more effect of the globalised economy”. It has also resulted in the death, disappearance and loss of habitation of hundreds of thousands of workers. Indeed, at the time of writing these lines, the numbers are not known, and may never be known, but have been estimated at more than 450,000, then times the number killed in Venezuela’s previous catastrophe, the earthquake of 1812.

Surely, if nothing else, the events and disaster in Venezuela at the end of 1999 demonstrate the need to replace capitalism by a new, democratic society of production, not of profit, but of use and the satisfaction of people’s needs; a socialist society of common ownership of natural resources (including Venezuela’s oil reserves if still required) and the means of production.

Peter E. Newell

Courting Popularity (2019)

From the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

POPULIST! This is the political vogue word of the moment, a pejorative term presently in common use especially in the media. President Trump, the Brexit vote, both are cited examples of what is being cast as a growing tendency.

Yet the word has a more honourable past. Originally, it referred to members of the US People’s Party, founded in 1891. It had a social agenda, championing public ownership of public services and graduated income tax.

It was a manifestation in the USA of the then emerging social democratic trend represented in Britain by the Labour Representation Committee and the Independent Labour Party, leading to the founding of the Labour Party.

This social democratic tendency was a working-class response to capitalism in the same way as – and emerging from – trade unions. An attempt to seek radical ways of reforming capitalism to favour the majority, to use democracy to improve the lot of working people.

The subsequent history of social democrats being elected to government has demonstrated that such populism, however heartfelt and well intentioned, is no match for the power of capitalism. Reforms conceded can be all too easily clawed back when the profit motive demands it.

However, while socialists must continue, as they did in the 1890s-1900s, to point out that reformism is a doomed strategy, being a populist was not deserving of the opprobrium associated with the word today. Indeed, the basic populist principle was advocating the right and ability of the common people to govern themselves.

Indeed, replace the phrase ‘common people’ with working class and there is the essential element of socialism, the working class acting politically for itself.

So what has happened to turn populism into a reactionary tendency? The problem lies not in any particular manifesto, but in the actual principle of courting popular support. This is denial of the working class acting for itself.

Instead, it relies on the ‘common people’ playing a passive role, even encourages such passivity. Political programmes, radical or otherwise, are concocted by parties standing apart from the people they purport to represent. There may indeed be working people involved in that party, but it is a small self-selected group presuming to know what’s best for the masses.

The aim is to elicit widespread support for a pre-formed programme exclusive of popular input. The only role for the electorate is to vote for it and trust the party will act on their behalf. In this sense, all parties putting themselves forward for election are populist.

A current example is the Scottish Nationalist Party seizing on the EU referendum vote in Scotland running counter to the overall British vote. Popular discontent is to be exploited for the sectional interests of the SNP, turning the voters’ gaze away from rather more pressing economic and social problems to which the SNP do not have answers.

Other parties in Scotland, seeing an opportunity to raise their profiles, tail along behind the SNP, hoping to gain some popular kudos, or pose a contrary British nationalism. This is where the populist motivation is problematic. Whatever its intent, it serves the political interests of capitalism by limiting the political interests of the working class.

Issues become binary: for or against independence, leaving or staying in the EU, Labour or Conservative and so on and on … And the only role for the working class, the electorate, is to choose one of the other. Proportional representation or transferable vote systems are merely variations on this essentially passive process.

Parties will even compromise their own programmes to court popular support, as the Liberal Democrats and The Green Party are presently doing as a ‘Remainer’ coalition. What none of the Westminster parties are doing, or can do for that matter, is to engage with the one fundamental issue: in or out of the EU the problem(s) of capitalism continue unaddressed.

A true working class populism must involve the working class organising itself through its own political institutions to determine how its best interests can be served. Democracy requires the popular acceptance of responsibility for playing an active part.

Otherwise it’s merely grumbling about, yet voting for, selected performers strutting about the parliamentary stage in ‘Westminster’s Got Talent’, a popular show for the moment – until those merely watching in the audience realise they could take the stage for themselves.

Dave Alton