Aspect: A Question of Class (1970)

The Aspect column from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ask any reasonably literate but otherwise typical Lefty for his appraisal of the class structure of capitalist society and he will probably inform you that there are two classes in society — the working class and the capitalist class. There is even a reasonably good chance that he will be able to recite Marx’s definition of these from the Communist Manifesto :

 By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage-labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live. [1]

But give him a couple of minutes more and he will no doubt be at least neck deep in the regular assortment of complex arguments about the relative roles of the working class and the middle class/petty bourgeoisie/salariat which collectively represent his grand design for the socialist revolution.

In other words, nearly all left-wing groups exhibit a very definite schizophrenia on the question of social classes. At an abstract, intellectual level they will adhere to the Marxian position, but for all practical purposes (that is for deciding their overall strategy and their day to day tactics) they rely on an entirely different analysis of society. As an illustration of this we could refer to the ways in which such organisations reacted to the upheaval in France in May 1968. They all argued that this episode had an enormous significance not just because millions of ‘workers' showed their dissatisfaction and contempt for Gaullisme through strikes and demonstrations but also because “many sections of French society followed the lead of the workers — footballers, office workers, customs men, hotel workers . . .” [2]

Ideas such as these are as dangerous as they are confused. Not only do they lead to a completely false assessment of what constitutes the socialist revolution but they also serve to reinforce the divisive pressure which capitalism is bound to exert on its workers, They encourage the already widespread belief that wage earners in different sectors belong to different social classes and therefore do not have identical interests — a myth which as much as any other helps to keep capitalism secure. By way of contrast, the Marxist approach of the Socialist Party of Great Britain offers a means of uniting workers around an understanding that all “wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live” are members of the working class and therefore have a common interest in getting rid of capitalism.

Perhaps we can clarify this by taking a group of workers regarded by most people as impeccably ‘middle class’ and showing how they arc exploited. The dental profesion is particularly interesting in this respect because not only are they a relatively small body of workers on whom a considerable amount of data has recently been published but also because they are in the uncommon position of having been ground down into working directly for wages within the last generation. Up till roughly twenty years ago dentists in Britain really were self-employed people. But the transfer of most dental surgeons to the National Health Service in the immediate post-war years meant that they were now nearly all employed by the state. (Out of 15.000 dentists in Britain in 1967 only 500 were estimated to still be working in private practices).

Like many other workers, dental surgeons in the general dental services are paid on a piece rate system. There is a complex mechanism for fixing these rates but basically it amount to the government periodically laying down a target annual net income for the average dentist, providing he works a specified number of hours per year. The Dental Rates Study Group then draws up a set of fees designed to produce average earnings at the target level. This method of payment has been described by many dentists as the ‘treadmill system’ "for, as more treatment is carried out each year by dentists working faster or more efficiently than previously with the help of technological changes, the scale for that treatment will fall, or at least not be increased to the extent that it might." [3] To give an example of how this works in practice we could mention that the fee being paid for a single surface amalgam filling in the mid-sixties (13s.6d) was less than it had been ten years previously (15s.). How this affects the individual dentist was well summed up in the report just quoted:

  The system is such that income is in fact related to the total number of courses [of treatment] an individual practitioner undertakes since the more the profession accomplishes, the lower the income per course. Thus if an individual dentist maintains only a constant performance his income falls. [4]

The pressures acting on this group of workers over the last twenty years have given rise to enormous increases in productivity— and an equally enormous upsurge in the rate of exploitation. The total number of courses of treatment carried out in the general dental services by roughly the same number of dentists throughout has more than doubled since 1949, while the cost to the government of providing this treatment has fallen from more than £5m. to around the £2m. mark (at constant 1949 price levels).

The ways in which dentists react to this situation are no different from those of other workers. Two recent surveys on the attitudes of dentists towards their wages and working conditions [5] showed that 55 per cent objected to the long hours they were forced to work to maintain their incomes, a similar percentage found the pace of the work gruelling, and 78 per cent disliked the restrictions placed on their work by their method of employment. Despite these sort of data, however, many left-wingers would object that although it might be possible by these means to demonstrate that objectively groups like dental surgeons are members of the working class, subjectively they remain intransigently capitalist minded. Such sections, they would say, can be “integrated into the system, to monopoly capital” by the relatively high wages and other benefits which (according to the Leninist theory of imperialism) capitalism can use to buy off parts of the working class in the most advanced countries. And as evidence of the overriding capitalist ideology of professional workers like dentists they would point to the fact that they do not consider themselves working class. Perhaps more than anyone else they differentiate between their own status and that of manual workers and other lower paid strata.

But objections such as these can be shown to be sociologically quite naive. The conviction that higher paid workers can be bribed into accepting capitalism by the level of their salaries rests on the assumption that in their attitude towards society they will be predominantly motivated by money or material rewards. If this were the case, it would be clearly shown in their work motivation. Such a theory has a very long pedigree, but at the same time has very little else to recommend it. As Tom Lupton, the professor of industrial sociology at the Manchester Business School, has put it:

  It is easy to fall into the error of supposing that because the desire for money is by common consent a compelling motive for working that it is also the overriding motive. Work is a social activity, that is it involves the worker in relationships with others. If the worker is faced with a decision whether to attempt to maximise income or to sacrifice possible gains for the sake of establishing or maintaining satisfying relationships with his workmates, he might well choose the latter course. [6]

Researchers like Lupton arrived at these conclusions mainly by studying the working behaviour of piece rate workers in factories. Research into the motivating factors for dentists has given results almost identical to those for other piece rate workers. Thus a recent survey carrying the question ‘What are the things you like most about your work?’ elicited the following responses:

These sort of figures, then, do not give a very impressive backing to the contention that higher paid workers like dentists arc primarily concerned with the defence of their supposedly privileged position and must therefore be considered as being distinct from the bulk of the working class. But, for all that, it does remain true that white collar workers (and among them the example we have been using of the dental profession) generally do regard themselves as different from industrial workers. But, of course, this is not a one way process. Blue collar workers reciprocate with similar prejudices about non-industrial workers, regarding them as ‘middle class’ and so on. It is quite illogical to use the common left-wing argument that subjectively white collar workers are outside the working class because they do not identify themselves with their fellow workers. Exactly the same stricture can be applied to blue collar workers.

An unbreakable sense of working class solidarity can only spread at the same rate as socialist understanding develops among all sections oft he workers. The Socialist Party constantly attempts to foster this unity in its work of analysing capitalism and its class structure and presenting the socialist alternative to present society. On the other hand, the divisive activity of the Left is entirely symptomatic of their slovenly attitude to Marxist theory. Almost to a man they are committed to ‘leading the working class’. A hard task indeed when they don’t even know what the working class is!

John Crump

Footnotes:
[1.] The Communist Manifesto. SPGB, 1948. p. 60
[2.] Socialist Worker. June, 1968
[3.] The Dental Service. London, 1969. p. 20
[4.] Ibid. p. 27
[5.] British Dental Journal. September, 1969. p. 222
[6.] Industrial Society. Penguin. 1968. p. 297
[7.] Adapted from BDJ. September, 1969 p. 222

Socialism and Planning (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism will be a planned society. For the first time in human history man will have not only extensive control over his physical environment but also — more importantly — control over his own social relations. With the ownership of the means of production vested in the community, and under its democratic control, we will be able to produce goods and services directly to satisfy human needs, without the intervention of the market or any means of exchange. People will freely determine, and take, what they need to live and to enjoy life. Information regarding the types and quantities of goods required will be fed back, either direct to the places of production or possibly to some control communications agency. Those people in the particular production units concerned will then decide, on the basis of the existing level of technology, how best to arrange their affairs so that the necessary goods may be supplied. The problems which a Socialist society will face will be of a purely technical and administrative nature, without the complications of capitalism involving wage bargaining, investment, buying and selling, insurance, banking, etc. The government over people will give way to the administration of things.

Because Socialism is a planned society however, it is not to be thought that conversely all planning means Socialism. Socialist planning means Socialism. Socialist planning is by and for the community; capitalist ‘planning’ is a futile attempt to regulate the market in the interests of profit and those who live off profit. Capitalist society, far from having a community of interests, is firmly based on an irreconcilable antagonism of interests between owner and non-owners of the means of production — the capitalist and working classes. Attempts at planning by the State, where they are not laughed at, are feared by the working-class and rightly so. The coercive state machine will not exist inside Socialism, for the class division in society having been abolished there will no longer be any function for it to perform.

The confused association of any kind of planning with the object of Socialists is particularly dangerous in the field of "Town Planning” where the state, both nationally and locally, is playing increasingly extensive roles. Many town planners, it is true, have a genuine desire to arrange matters for the benefit of all, but they are working with an established set of priorities over which they have little influence. Inevitably profits are taken into account first, so that in deciding on the retention or phasing out of villages and towns, or the construction of transport systems, what is "reasonable” and "practical” often conflicts with human happiness. The sad fact is that people who suffer directly from such moves, because they accept capitalism, are forced to accept its priorities, or at least the terms in which any discussion of priorities is to take place. Thus a natural beauty spot cannot generally be saved from the intrusion of overhead electricity pylons, merely because it is beautiful. It would usually have to be proved that the profits made from, say, tourism were enough to cover the extra cost of excavation for underground cables. More often than not where people do protest against the designs of the planners they are accused of being selfish, holding up "progress" or not being concerned for the “general good”, which the fluent town planner is all too able at claiming to represent.

There are those of course who point to the "irrational” objections made to much town development, which they claim would be as much a problem in Socialism as under capitalism: East Enders preferring London slum life to New Town conditions for instance, or the inhabitants of a small decaying mining village preferring their present life to that in a large modern housing estate. These objections however are only irrational if one accepts the myth that rising material consumption in the form of an extra bathroom, television set, etc. is the panacea for human satisfaction. It is here that the two sides of planning show themselves to be in conflict. For it is the inability to plan for the economic and social security of people, that makes them reluctant to accept the benefits of town planning. Both the East Enders and the mining villagers have established a degree of community through long contact, and common suffering which has bound them into a force capable of withstanding some of the pressures of capitalism. A bathroom and central heating are no compensation for the loss of this to the atomised existence of the big city dwellers.

Only Socialism is capable of solving this problem, by enabling people to have control over their own lives, with democratic organisation of the productive process, geared to satisfying human need. To take a simple illustration, if in Socialism it would take less materials and human effort to have one large town instead of two smaller communities, if the people concerned preferred the second arrangement, then that would be the course pursued. There is no question here of which would attract and retain industry, for in both cases industry would be under the control of the community, and would consequently be sited in accordance with their needs and not the needs of a privileged minority for profit as to-day.

M. Ballard

Who are the Democrats? (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism cannot be established until and unless a majority of the class of wage and salary earners want and understand it. Most workers now support capitalism so the immediate task of socialists is to convince other workers that they are wrong to support capitalism and to persuade them that Socialism is the only solution to the problems they face. All that now prevents the establishment of Socialism is this lack of socialist understanding among the working class, and such understanding can only come about as a result of the successful propaganda activities of a socialist party. The best conditions for socialist propaganda and for the growth of socialist understanding is the limited political democracy of capitalism. This is the main reason why the Socialist Party of Great Britain has always stressed the importance both to the socialist movement and to the working class of the freedom to express ideas.

The classic statement of our case against the suppression of opinion appeared in the Socialist Standard in February 1941 in an editorial on the banning of the Daily Worker the previous month.

  True to our basic principle we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be. We have always thought and always said that the activities of the Communist Party have been a continual menace to the Socialist movement and the interests of the workers . . . All the same the S.P.G.B. is opposed to suppression of opinion. In our view the way to counter any kind of propaganda, and in the long run the only way, is to meet it in the open in unfettered discussion. We are entitled to add that we practise what we preach and have always thrown open our platform to our opponents.

We stand by this today and still open our platform to all our opponents to state their case against Socialism. However, some of our opponents take exception to our debating other of our opponents. The ragbag of assorted trotskyists, maoists, castroists, etc, etc., known as “the left" have taken us to task for opposing in public debate racialist parties like the National Front and Mosley’s Union Movement. And not only do they criticise us for this, but they have tried to prevent us doing it.

Most of their arguments for doing this can be traced back to the mistaken theory of fascism concocted by the Comintern in the 1930’s in order to further the foreign interests of state capitalist Russia. In 1935 the Russian government began to work through the League of Nations for an alliance with Britain and France against Germany, Italy and Japan. The role the overseas “communist” parties were to play was to win support of workers in Britain and France for an alliance with Russia. This, however, had to be justified in pseudo-Marxist terms. Hence the theory that fascism served the interests of the “most reactionary” sections of finance capital. This paved the way for an alliance with “less reactionary” capitalist parties (and States) against the fascists.

The singling out of the fascists for special opposition using methods (like breaking up meetings and threats of physical violence) not used against other capitalist parties is thus a left-over from the pre-war foreign policy of the rulers of state capitalist Russia. It amounts to a policy of compromise with capitalism. It encourages illusions about ‘‘the lesser evil”, thus pointing to a policy of support for one capitalist party against another.

1942 edition

The analysis of what fascism was and how to combat it made by the Socialist Party of Great Britain was naturally different from that of the Russian government:

  Fascism does not exist in the blue of the heavens: like every other social phenomenon, it is related to, and has its origin in, a social background. And that background is the democratic capitalism that “popular fronters” and other exponents of working class compromise with capitalism, wish to administer. That capitalism inevitably gives rise to working class problems has already been mentioned: but with equal inevitability it also gives rise to problems of a specifically capitalist nature, such as maintaining the profitability of production; securing new, and retaining old markets; the necessity of forging “national unity" when faced with war with rival capitalist groups, etc. And it is precisely in an attempt to solve these problems that the ruling class has recourse to Fascism. That these problems can be permanently solved is precluded by the nature of the capitalist system itself; but that will not prevent the capitalists from making the attempt where no other means will serve. Fascism, then, is a political form best adapted to meet the needs of certain contemporary capitalist states. 

   As long as the working class supports capitalism and capitalist policies, it will be tempted ultimately to give its support to that policy best calculated to meet the political and economic needs of capitalism—even though that policy may be fascist. 

  Democracy for the working class can only be consolidated and extended to the extent that the working class adopts a socialist standpoint. To renounce Socialism so that democracy may be defended, means ultimately the renunciation of both Socialism and democracy (Questions of the Day, 1942 edition).

The way to oppose fascism then was to continue to campaign for Socialism. To do otherwise, to abandon Socialist propaganda for mere anti-fascism, was dangerous for, as we pointed out, ‘‘provided the ‘fascist menace' is real, the formation of a bloc of non-socialist antifascists does not impede the advance of Fascism, but if anything, serves to expedite its progress".

Of course fascism is not a threat in Britain today, but if it were the policy of those who try to stop us putting up a socialist opposition to racialist and fascist parties would be helping it on. Besides, many of ‘‘the left” are themselves advocates and defenders of dictatorship ; they aim to seize power and set up a state capitalist dictatorship in Britain along the lines of those they support in Russia or China or Cuba or Yugoslavia or Algeria or Egypt, etc. etc. But even though they, like the fascists, are a threat to democracy we still say they should be allowed to express their obnoxious views and we are equally prepared to debate them as we are the National Front and the Union Movement.

Principles of Socialism (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is a world-wide social system in which the means of production will belong in common to mankind and will be controlled by them for their own benefit. Production will be carried on solely to satisfy human needs. The wages system, buying and selling and money will disappear. In their place the principle "from each his best, to each his need” will operate.

Socialism can only be achieved by political means. At present the capitalists are able to keep their privileged position because they control political power. To free themselves from wage-slavery workers must therefore organise into a political party whose aim is to win political power and to use it to replace capitalism by Socialism.

Socialism can only be achieved by a socialist class. Until workers want and understand Socialism, it is impossible. Thus only conscious, majority, political action can achieve Socialism. Minority action, whether on the industrial or political fields, cannot. The way to political power lies through the ballot box. A socialist working class can use the vote to win power just as today they use it to hand over power to the capitalists. A Socialist party can have only one aim: Socialism. For a socialist party to seek support on the basis of a reform programme can only lead to compromise with capitalism.

To free themselves from wage-slavery workers need no leaders. Leaders only flourish on the ignorance of their followers. Once workers understand their interests and know that they want Socialism, they require no leaders. All they require is political organisation.

Trade unions arise out of the class struggle that goes on under capitalism between workers and capitalists. They will be necessary and useful as long as capitalism lasts. However trade unions have their limitations. They cannot be used to overthrow capitalism. Only conscious political action can do this.

There is no Socialism in Russia or China.

In these countries the workers are still exploited by a privileged minority through the wages system. Workers there have no trade union or political rights. The system in Russia and China is state capitalism, not Socialism. Government ownership of industries is not Socialism either. It too is state capitalism.

Socialists are opposed to all wars. Workers have no interest in fighting in wars since all wars are fought over the markets, trade routes and sources of raw materials of rival capitalist groups.

Socialists are opposed to nationalism. Workers have no country save on paper. Workers all over the world have a common interest in achieving Socialism. Nationalism is a device used to get workers to support their masters in peace and war.

Socialists are materialists and are opposed to religion which has always been a prop to class society.

Money for Biafra (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amid the welter of publicity given to the amount and extent of the aid offered by various states to Nigeria, the information contained in the share prices quoted above has been overlooked by many people in the emotion-charged atmosphere generated by the mass media. All the aforementioned companies have large interests in and/or around the territory claimed by secessionist Biafra. It is worthwhile here to point out that if the economic advantages (mainly Oil) had not been situated where they were, there would have been no secession, leastways, not by the Igbo tribe.

As soon as markets opened after the formal surrender was announced, there was steady buying of these shares. This would seem to imply that concern for the situation in Nigeria is not solely based on humanitarian considerations. Which indeed it isn’t.

Before the outbreak of war, Nigeria was rapidly joining the top ten oil-producing countries. Up until the attempted secession, the total oil output of the country was 582,000 barrels per day (bpd) which brought in an annual income of £100,000,000. Last year, even with the war raging around them, the oil companies managed to extract 550,000 bpd, and experts calculated that this figure would have been half as much again (775,000) if production had not been disrupted by the fighting.

The oil in Nigeria has two great advantages over other oil supplies, which make it such a highly desirable commodity. Production is so situated as to be able to supply the whole of Western Europe and America, without the necessity of rounding the Cape of Good Hope the economic significance of which needs no explanation. The other great advantage lies in the chemical constitution of the oil. It is relatively free of sulphur, and is in great demand for its pollution-free qualities.

Now that the fighting had ceased, it is expected by oil production experts that within a short time, Nigeria will be producing 1,000,000 bpd, which will raise the country to the status of eighth position in the league of oil production. To facilitate the attainment of this status. Shell/ BP were granted safe access to their oilfields (by the federal authorities) in the spring of 1969 to implement a programme of repair and expansion, the cost of which was £52,000,000. Shell BP are expecting to boost their own production to 500,000 bpd shortly. This target will be achieved with the aid of an offshore tanker terminal. with the capacity to receive oil pumped direct from the oilfields at a rate of 350,000 bpd.

SAFRAP, the French state-firm, was producing 41,000 bpd prior to the outbreak of war, but it is extremely doubtful if they will be allowed to resume production after supporting the losing side.

J. T. S.

Where is Russia going? (1970)

Book Review from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics, ed. by Z. Brzezinski. (Columbia University Press. 27s.)

This book is a collection of articles on the future of Russia’s political system that first appeared in the American propaganda magazine Problems of Communism.

The American government has discovered an effective propaganda weapon in using what can loosely be called Marxist ideas to criticise Russian society. Not that any of the contributors to this book would call themselves Marxists, but the method they apply — basically an economic interpretation of politics—is one which Marx pioneered.

Though none of them use the term "state capitalism” (which is a little surprising), all of them realise that Russia is not a classless society but one where a privileged group rule over the mass of the people.

The basic premise which all the contributors seem to share is that, as one of them puts it, "a modern economy can mature only in some sort of democratic political system”. Russia’s political system of totalitarian one-party rule has, they argue, got out of line with its modernised industrial system. Sooner or later political change must come; the question is how? Will the ruling party be able to reform itself so that it becomes a forum for conflicting ideas and interest groups? Or will it be overthrown in a popular uprising or a military coup?

Making predictions about Russia’s future has always been risky, but one thing is certain: capitalism will continue there in one form or another until the workers organise to convert the means of production from the class monopoly of a privileged few into the common property of the whole community.

Adam Buick

Letter: Without conflict? (1970)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

An article in the January Socialist Standard concludes: "Socialism . . .  will be a society . . . without conflict." I fear that may play into the hands of those who accuse us of planning to construct a "perfect society."

Though of course Socialism will eliminate economic and military conflict, the word "conflict" does have a broader usage. Socialism will not, for instance, abolish conflict of opinions, tastes or personalities.

Yours for Socialism,

D. R. Steele

(Birmingham Branch)

50 Years Ago: Engels on The Materialist Conception of History (1970)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the Materialist Conception of History, the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above proposition into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure — the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juriducal philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems — all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. It is under the mutual influence of all these factors that, rejecting the infinitesimal number of accidental occurrences (that is, things and happenings whose intimate sense is so far removed and of so little probability that we can consider them non-existent and can ignore them), that the economical movement is ultimately carried out. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of any simple equation. We ourselves make our history, but, primarily, under pre-suppositions and conditions which are very well determined. But even the political tradition, may, even the tradition that man creates in his head, plays an important part, even if not the decisive one.

(From a letter written by Frederick Engels, reproduced in the Socialist Standard, March 1920).

The mad world of capitalism (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again bricks are piling up, brick-workers are being laid off and brickworks closing down. All because the manufacturers can no longer find a profitable market. There are about 1.800,000 houses in England and Wales officially classified as “unfit”. But the fact that millions of people need better homes does not affect brick production for the simple reason that it is not profitable to produce bricks to build houses for people who would not be able to pay for them.

Meanwhile, in France the government are worried about there being “too much food". According to the Times (23 January 1970), the solution advocated by one group of academics and civil servants is that one-third of the present cultivated area of France should be taken out of food production. The Vedel Commission recommended:

Whatever rate of modernisation is adopted, agriculture will continue to build up surpluses if it continues to exploit the same area as today. Whatever happens, the excess land that will have to be withdrawn will be at least 10m. hectares.

To do this would be in line with what other governments, notably the American, have already done in a bid to prevent the production of food that cannot be sold profitably. It is not that people do not need the food—the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that up to half the world’s population go to bed hungry—but that because they cannot pay for it there is no profit in growing food for them.

Stockpiles of bricks beside slums; proposals to cut back food production in a hungry world—just two more examples of how capitalism cannot serve human needs.

Labour’s run up or run down (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most casual readers of the daily press will have noticed that of late there have been two subjects which have occupied the attention of the forecasters. One is who will win the World Cup. The other is when Harold Wilson will call the next general election.

Now we all know that political journalists have to live. But this business of articles claiming to be authoritative probes into the Prime Minister’s innermost calculations on the timing of the election seems, like the sale of Christmas cards, to be starting earlier and earlier. Wilson, after all, has a whole year to play with — and in the absence of some sudden crisis or development he will probably need every minute of it.


Wilson has amply demonstrated during the past five years that, even though he had plenty of opportunity to do so, he is not a man to lose his nerve. One of the more fascinating spectacles of recent days has been the cool cheek of Labour’s campaign to refurbish their image. The mind reels at the assertion that Labour’s ideals—wage freeze, unemployment, implication in Vietnam and Biafra—are our ideals. It reels at the claim that Labour has soul. Soul in the panic racist legislation they have rushed through? Soul in their encouragement of industrial rationalisation — which means redundancy, upheaval and intensified exploitation?

The soul campaign was part of Labour’s effort to play a very old trick—and one which has often been successful. This is the trick of optimism. It need not be specific—indeed it is more effective for being as vague as possible—but it must set out to create an impression of wellbeing. This is the explanation for all the blabber which came frothing from ministerial lips a couple of months back about the Seventies. The conclusion we were all supposed to draw from all this was that December 31 1969 was the last day of a rather gloomy, unenlightened age while January 1 1970 was the beginning of a new, exciting expansion prosperity and conquest.

From the government’s point of view, the big drawback to this kind of campaign is that it needs quite a bit of time to work its magic. This may be all very well if no unforeseen crisis looms over the first horizons of the glorious Seventies and if the Tory onslaughts can be held at bay. In that event, the Labour government will be lucky to be judged solely on their failure to deliver the goods—an apt phrase, in view of the evidence that voters largely mark their crosses according to how a government’s term has improved or worsened their lives materially.

Last November, for example, New Society published a review of opinions of life in the Sixties and of what was hoped for in the Seventies. They gave over a thousand people a list of changes which took place in the Sixties and asked them to say which had pleased them most and which they objected to the most. Now the sampling method is of course very limited in its validity, especially when it is confined by a structured list of questions. But anyone who takes an interest in political propaganda will not be surprised to know that over half of those interviewed in this survey said they were most pleased with higher old age pensions and 18 per cent liked what they called their rising standard of living.

High on the list of dislikes were student unrest and coloured immigration—two issues which, in various disguises, are almost certain to appear in the election programmes of both the big parties. When the people in the survey were asked what they most hoped for from the Seventies they were still strong on material aspects. Their highest preferences were for keeping prices down, keeping unemployment low and "getting the country’s economy sound”.

Perhaps the government has managed to convince enough voters that the balance of payments problem, which not so long ago was the insistent reason for us all taking cuts in our standard of living, has been solved by a combination of economic wizardry and discovering a massive book-keeping mistake. In line with this, some of the pressure has been taken off wages and, as prices also climb, the Labour government seem to have resumed the traditional policy of most post-war British governments of continual, gentle inflation. At one time Wilson may have had ambitions to make his name by ending this policy once and for all but if he had he has been beaten, just like the rest and his defeat may be worth some votes from workers who have forgotten his promises to keep prices down and end inflation.

It will be harder for Labour to keep up a front on other issues. On unemployment, for example, it seems to have become accepted that each winter there should be something be 600,000 out of work; the figure for January was 629,000. Unemployment is largely a regional matter, being highest in the North, Wales and Scotland (although even in the "affluent” South-East there are hard-hit pockets like the Isle of Thanet.) The Labour Party answer to this, just like that of the Tories, is to offer financial inducements to industry to set up factories in the low employment regions, This sounds very simple and anyone who reads the official advertisements aimed at businessmen, telling them about the concessions awaiting any firm going to the development areas, must wonder how any sane board could resist the offer. But capitalism’s profit motive applies itself in many complex ways and in the event Labour’s policy, like others before it, has failed to end unemployment or to spread it evenly; the three worst regions still have about 4 per cent of their workforce on the dole.

Another hot political issue is housing. In the 1955 election Anthony Eden, who was then Conservative leader, made a lot of headlines with a promise that a Tory government would build 300,000 houses a year. Since then the bidding has crept up until now hardly a murmur is raised at Labour’s current promise to be responsible for 500,000 new homes a year. Performance has been rather different. The highest post-war figure was 413,715 in 1968—and last year there was a slump to 366,793, the lowest since Labour came back to power.

The Conservatives can of course be relied upon to make the indignant most of this situation—even if to do so they have to forget that they also failed to solve the housing problem. But anyone who is concerned with housing as something which affects human beings, and not just a convenient plank in a political party’s platform, must by now have come to the conclusion that any figures for homes completed, or not completed, is almost meaningless. To begin with, it takes no account of the rate at which old homes are decaying into slumdom. Then there is the fact that the lower a worker’s income the higher proportion of it be must spend on housing. The result of this is that a worker’s housing difficulties actually increase as he becomes less able to deal with them. And this is a developing trend, which threatens to overtake an increasing number of workers—to climb, in fact, up the wage scale.

The government will have to do a certain amount of agile capering to dodge this sort of issue and if past experience is anything to go by will obscure the real debate with statistics of homes completed, what the Tories didn't do and so on. It will also be helpful to them if they can divert attention from such problems by discovering new ones and sure enough there has recently been a great deal of fuss about pollution. Everyone now seems to be against pollution — even some of the firms who are responsible for so much of it. The knowledge of pollution has been available for a very long time, except that anyone who spoke out on it was always classified as a crank or trouble maker standing in the way of the advance to the age of white hot technology. Now that capitalist politicians have got hold of it, one is entitled to wonder what they have in store for us—what officially legalised pollution, what smokescreen to cover other issues.

Finally, there is the publicity campaign on Wilson himself who, after lying low for so long, is suddenly seen to be still Prime Minister. No opposition leader can ever hope to rival the publicity a Prime Minister gets when he is out and about on the great affairs of capitalism’s states. We can expect full coverage for everything Wilson does from now on, as we got it for his trip to America. If all goes well for him, he might even decide to start giving us some more of those straight-between-the-eyes talks on television.

In one way or another workers—even those who vote Tory—will accept this as right and proper and part of the natural order of things. Labour M.P. Raymond Fletcher wrote in a recent issue of Encounter that “. . . capitalism works and most people are quite content to let it.” What Fletcher is really saying, of course, is that the Labour Party has failed and he is fed up. There is a certain justice in this failure because Labour said they could make capitalism work; they called it Socialism, helping the confusion which makes workers support the system. But it is wrong to say that workers are content with capitalism. All around us, every day, we see evidence of their discontents, their struggles, their suppressions. If they are politically stubborn this is because they can see no alternative to capitalism. So they go on putting their cross down for Labour or Tory—in ignorance, or perhaps anger, or even despair.

Ivan

European pollution year (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

During this last decade there has been a growing interest in the problem of pollution. In all industrial countries rivers arc being polluted to an alarming extent with waste from factories. Detergents are everywhere used and these substances cannot be easily removed from water, so our drinking water supply is being depleted. In America some scientists have proclaimed that in ten years time at the present rate of pollution, the U.S. will have to bottle drinking water to conserve its water supply.

Lakes are being polluted with factory waste and with chemical insecticides washed off the land by rain, or dropped into the lakes by spraying aeroplanes. Lake Erie in America has now become so polluted that fish cannot live in it, and today it is a gigantic sewer.

Pollution of air from petrol and diesel fumes is already a big problem, and Los Angeles (once a health resort) is now one of the worst affected towns in the world. Petrol and diesel fumes are a known cause of lung cancer and respiratory diseases.

The insecticide DDT has been banned in many countries, and is so widespread that it has been found in the bodies of penguins in the Antarctica and animals in the Arctic. Practically every human being stores this nerve poison in the fat tissues of the body.

Stocks of war gases are a potential menace as these terrible poisons could kill thousands of people in peace time, by their accidental release into drains and rivers.

Residues of radio active fall-out from nuclear tests, and the waste products of atomic factories, are a constant and insidious danger to mankind. Buried atomic material has escaped from its lead containers in the sea and poisoned fish; it remains active, with unpredictable possibilities.

Pollution of the sea with oil from ships discharging their waste, and the much bigger hazard of oil ships meeting disasters, such as the case of the Torrey Canyon, pouring tens of thousands of tons of oil into the sea, are a constant menace. Fish, sea birds, plankton, and other wild life upon which fish live must depend—and thus our food—are all adversely affected. Added to this is the contamination of the beaches with oil and the spoiling of holidays.

Chemicals used in food manufacture have increased enormously. The food trade employs more chemists than any other industry, and about 1,000 different chemicals are regularly used in food processing. Flavouring essences, colouring matter, preservatives, anti-staling agenus and anti-oxidants are used more now than ever before, and the nutritional value of all our foods is decreasing as a direct result.

Food is not produced because people need it. There are plenty of hungry people in Asia and Africa but nobody is going to produce food for them unless they can buy it. Food is produced for profit—“no profit, then no food” is the rule of the farmer, the miller, the baker, the grocer and every food vendor. So long as food is produced for profit then just so long will food be faked and adulterated and falsified by advertisements to increase profits.

So long as it is cheaper to dump factory waste into rivers then so long will it be done.

Politicians and other authorities cannot rid the world of pollution because it means getting rid of the profit motive in society, which they are committed to maintaining. Up to now they have only spread confusion in this field (as in every field). No amount of legislation and amendments to Acts on pollution, or food making, or banning certain drugs, would put this matter right. As soon as one drug is banned because of its side effects, there are a dozen more ready to take its place. And so it is with detergents, insecticides and all the rest.

The many conferences to deal with pollution that have been planned this year (which is officially Conservation Year) are bound to fail in the same way as the disarmament conferences failed, and because of the same reason. The prime cause of pollution is capitalism itself, for capitalism cannot function without polluting the world. No doubt efforts will be made to stem the tide, but capitalism is bound to fail to conquer this problem for it is capitalism itself that is creating it. 

Horace Jarvis

Brighton Councillor's allegations: The facts (1970)

From the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January a Brighton Councillor, Millyard, resigned from the Labour Party giving as one of his reasons that a number of Brighton Labour's ward parties were dominated by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This was a tribute to the success of our comrades’ efforts there to bring our name to people's attention; but quite inaccurate as our comrades pointed out in the following statement :

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, since its foundation in 1904, has visualised a socialist society as a world-wide system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of production, with free access to the necessities of life available to all mankind; which can only be achieved by the conscious effort of the majority, expressing their will by means of the ballot. Thus we consider that any organisation which seeks only to win mass support without the necessary understanding of how such a new society could be built from the present, can never achieve Socialism.

Accordingly, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has always been a completely democratic organisation with an Object and Declaration of Principles (reproduced on every piece of literature published by us) which makes [our] position unmistakably clear. Furthermore, every meeting of the Party (including administrative meetings) has been open to public and Press alike, ever since our foundation.

The policy of ‘boring from within’ i.e. the infiltration and control of other political organisations, such as the Labour Party, has repeatedly been denounced as a dangerous and useless tactic in the Socialist Standard and other Party propaganda. Our insistence that a socialist party can only succeed as a completely independent organisation has been unequivocably stated from the beginning.

This should not be seen as a sectarian attitude. It is simple logic. Our aim is the establishment of a new human society. To dissipate our energies infiltrating other organisations (which merely seek to maintain the present society) instead of striving to gain conscious support for our ideas, would be stupidly futile. Thus our attitude might be summed up in the well- known (if slightly re-arranged) cliche : “We must not only be independent, but must be seen to be so.”

The Socialist Party’s case has been put forward locally for a number of years by an active Brighton Group, by means of Public Meetings, debates, pamphlets, the local Press and Radio as well as our regular discussion meetings every Thursday evening. With the growing disillusion of would-be socialists within the many organisations of the so-called ‘Left’, it is not surprising that our ideas are being examined and discussed more attentively.

There is, therefore, no excuse for the absurd accusations levelled at us by Cllr. Millyard. Contrary to the opinion of the Brighton & Hove Herald editorial, he obviously has not the slightest knowledge of our Party’s activities, and cannot have made any attempt to verify his wild statements before making them.

Should Cllr. Millyard be prepared to defend his accusations, we shall be glad to accommodate him at any time, in open debate with an independent chairman (perhaps the writer of the Herald editorial would oblige). Alternatively, a retraction by Cllr. Millyard would seem to be called for.

Trade Unions (1970)

Book Review from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade Unions, by Peter Lane. (Bastford. 18s.)

This book is supposed to be a simple history of trade unions for use in secondary schools.

With illustrations on nearly every one of its 90 pages, it traces the rise of trade unionism in Britain from the early days of small craft and local unions to the Trades Union Congress of today. Lane merely expresses the orthodox role of the TUC today: as a body more concerned with the well-being of the British (capitalist) economy than with the interests of the workers. He manages to avoid any mention of unofficial strikes.

He also gives a misleading idea of the views of Robert Owen and William Morris. Owen is made out to be a militant syndicalist who believed the unions should overthrow capitalism in a general strike and then themselves run industry. Morris, on the other hand, is supposed to have held that trade union control of industry “might be won peacefully’’ and to have founded, along with Ruskin, the so-called Guild Socialist movement.

Lane would have been nearer the truth if he had reversed the roles he assigned to Owen and Morris, only neither of them advocated syndicalism or trade union control of industry. Owen stood for a federation of producer co-operatives (“the cooperative commonwealth") to be achieved gradually and peacefully. Morris was a Marxian socialist and stood for the common ownership and democratic control of industry to be achieved by revolutionary political action (which he believed would most likely be violent).

It should not be too much these days to expect accurate facts to be given to schoolchildren.

Adam Buick

Not democratic (1970)

Book Review from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Greek Tragedy, by Constantine Tsoucalas. Penguin. 6s.

THE Socialist Party of Great Britain has always argued that in places like Britain where there is a more or less democratic State — that is, where the state machine, including the armed forces, is under the control of a popularly-elected government — a Socialist majority can win power peacefully in an election.

Others (few of whom really share our view that there must be a Socialist majority before there can be Socialism) argue that the capitalists will never allow their rule to be overthrown by peaceful means.

The Greek Colonels’ coup in April 1967 seems, on the face of it, to give some validity to this argument. For here, a few days before the start of an election campaign which a radical democratic party was expected to win, the armed forces supported by the King and prominent businessmen imposed a military dictatorship.

However, a closer study of the facts shows that this coup does not disprove our proposition. Constantine Tsoucalas’ book clearly shows that Greece did not have a democratic State before 1967: there was a parliament though elections to it were often rigged, but even this had no control over the armed forces.

This was a legacy of British occupation after the war. By agreement with state-capitalist Russia. Greece (which had strategic importance for control over trade routes through the Eastern Mediterranean and over the oil fields of the Middle East) was assigned to British capitalism’s sphere of influence. The British government had been faced with a problem since the bulk of the armed men in the Greek resistance, who were set to take over when the German army left, were under “communist” leadership. Tsoucalas describes how the British government built up a rival military force out of the Royalists in the old Greek Army and even out of former collaborators. Their political puppets, on the other hand, were chosen from the pre-war liberals and republicans. Writes Tsocalas:

The double structure of power, democratic in the political facade but Royalist-fascist in the forces of coercion, which was gradually built up from 1943, was to be a crucial factor in the future. For the construction of the new Army as an autonomous entity, not subject of governmental authority, did not end with the termination of the civil war. Despite the fact that the right wing was in power between 1952 and 1963, the army remained ‘untouchable’. Under the nominal authority of the King, the special status of the armed forces which was planned by the British in 1944-6 became the dominating characteristic in the Greek political game.

The government’s rigging of the 1961 election was so blatant that it provoked a popular reaction which further strengthened the opposition Centre Union. This party, which had adopted a vague programme of democratic reform, won the 1963 elections and its leader, the ageing George Papandreou (a former British puppet), became prime minister. His government curtailed the activities of the secret police and put through some minor reforms of the State structure, but

despite changes in the senior personnel of the police, despite the atmosphere of freedom, despite the liberalisation of the trade unions, the most important weapon of the Right—the Army, stronghold and last resort of the system of vested interests—was not touched at all.

In 1965 Papandreou was ousted as prime minister in a sordid manoeuvre in which some of his parliamentary supporters were persuaded to abandon him by offers of Ministerial posts and perhaps also of money. The Centre Union, again in opposition despite popular support, moved towards a more radical position. The radicals’ leader, Papandreou’s son Andreas, made it clear that if elected his party would this time carry out a thoroughgoing democratic reform of the State: putting the King in his constitutional place; purging the Army and subjecting it to government control; ending the vested interests in government contracts of certain Greek tycoons by a policy of State enterprise. Faced with this prospect, which they could no longer ward off by rigging elections or corrupting politicians, the Army, the King and the tycoons resorted to a military coup and dictatorship.

The Colonels’ coup was thus not the overthrow of an already established democratic State, but a bid to prevent the establishment of such a modern capitalist political structure. A coup in an essentially undemocratic State faced with the election victory of a democratic reform party has no relevance to our proposition that a socialist majority can win control of an already established democratic State through elections.

Adam Buick

Obituary: Comrade Bill Waters (1970)

Obituary from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to report the death of our comrade W. Waters after a short illness. 

Bill Waters was 66 and had been a member of the Party for forty years. He was a very active propagandist for Socialism. A good indoor and outdoor speaker as well as a good writer, he contributed numerous excellent articles and book reviews to the Socialist Standard, especially during the forties and fifties. He served for a short time on the editorial committee, was the secretary of the pre-war Dagenham branch and, at one time, our overseas secretary. He represented the Party in the North Paddington by-election in 1953. He was active to the end, ever ready to do a lecture or write an article (the last of which appeared in September 1969).

Our comrade Waters was a bus driver and a very active member of the Transport and General Workers Union, playing a prominent role in the big busmen's strikes of 1936 and 1955.

Bill had many interests other than politics. In his hot house he raised a variety of exotic flowers; he was a keen and skilful photographer and he had a great knowledge of London and its history, which he used in talks on the radio.

We extend our sincere sympathies to his family; we are conscious that their loss is also ours.

Listen, Anarchist! (1970)

Book Review from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the great crimes of Bolshevism has been to identify its own dictatorial state-capitalist policies with Marxism, thus unfairly discrediting the latter. Quite sincere people have been understandably repulsed by the arrogance, cynicism and dishonesty of the self-appointed Bolshevik "vanguards", and have reacted in various mistaken anti-Marxist ways — by losing interest in politics, becoming Social Democrats, moving to the "Right" or enrolling with the anarchists.

We repeat: this must be laid at the door of the Bolsheviks. This is the upshot of their "leadership" delusions, their "developing consciousness through struggle". That does not excuse the anarchists and others from all responsibility. They have drawn the wrong conclusions; with a little thought most of them are capable of drawing the right ones. For example, many of the anarchists who represent bolshevism (or even the present Russian regime) as the logical outcome of Marxism, are well-read enough to realise that they are thereby doing a disservice to the truth.

Curiously enough, though anarchists and Bolsheviks abuse each other heartily, they are agreed on the fundamental question. This basic agreement can be seen in their response if confronted with the Socialist case. When it is suggested that prior to the Socialist revolution the majority of workers must grasp what Socialism entails, both anarchist and Bolshevik reply in precisely the same manner: by ridiculing such an "academic" approach, by muttering about "sectarianism", in short, by claiming that ordinary workers are incapable of acquiring a clear understanding of Socialism before organising together to achieve it.

But since both, in a confused manner, want some sort of social change, and both see the working-class as vital to this process, it is necessary to maintain that workers possess some naive revolutionary desire. Therefore, in analysing the events of May 68 in France (for example) they need some explanation of why revolution didn't result, and find it in the French "Communist" Party.

Socialists, on the contrary, maintain (as a fact, and not because they like it) that the great majority of workers have no wish for Socialism nor understanding of it. Because of traditional ideas, most workers see Capitalism as the only practicable method of operating society. This applies to French workers, just as it does to workers in Britain, America, Russia or China. It is therefore pointless to seek for some special agency which "holds the workers back". The French CP is chiefly an expression of the workers' capitalist outlook, not the cause of it. Since Socialist understanding does not drop out of heaven like the holy ghost, in the space of a few hours, it was clear to every Socialist that the May events had no prospect whatsoever of turning into a revolution. The subsequent election proved this beyond question.

Both anarchists  and Bolsheviks  take the view that "goals emerge from struggle." If any form of "struggle" intensifies, they tend to welcome it as a sign of "rising consciousness" (though often the workers involved are clearly as conservative in their ideas as they were before). If "struggle" becomes very sharp, this is seen as a "revolutionary situation," and in such situations the actions of determined minorities are thought decisive. It is argued either that the workers really do want a revolution, but this desire is "inarticulate" (even "instinctive"!) Or else it is admitted that they have no such aim, but the claim is made that in certain circumstances they will be forced by necessity to adopt the revolutionary course.

These views are often defended with the statement that "people learn by experience," an utterance which demonstrates confusion. The great majority of ideas in anyone's head did not derive from their own personal experience, but from friends, workmates, school, the family, newspapers, TV etc. We all know that arsenic is poison; few of us learnt it by personal experience.

In fact, an item of experience does not lead of itself to a specific conclusion. If a group of people are subjected to a similar experience, they may draw a variety of conclusions about it: the decisive factor will be the system of ideas they have formed before the experience. If there is an economic slump with mass unemployment, Socialists will recognise this as a consequence of the anarchic capitalist market, Christians will conclude that lack of righteousness among the population has brought its inevitable retribution, common-or-garden reformists will believe that incompetence or utterly abnormal circumstances are responsible, fascists and Bolsheviks will put the blame on "finance capitalists," attack political democracy and demand better leadership. Most workers will probably decide that "their country" has been too soft on immigrants, long-haired layabouts, dole scroungers and red wreckers. These ideas will largely determine the way they act, especially the way they vote — and the rise of Hitler should have taught us the crucial importance of the way workers vote.

Naturally, experiences spark off changes in ideas, but until the possibility of Socialism, the moneyless world community, has become widely known and discussed, there is no hope for the emergence of mass Socialist understanding. When two explanatory systems compete in people's minds, then events may decide which is adopted. But given the present near-monopoly of capitalist ideas, it is impossible for the minds of millions to wake up to Socialism until there is a sizeable Socialist movement spelling out the arguments for social revolution.

Given their similar view of working-class ideas, both anarchists and Bolsheviks counterpose leadership plus formal organisation to leaderlessness plus "spontaneity." The Socialist proposal that ordinary working people can operate democratically without leaders, using a large, complex organisation to carry through the revolution, is beyond the comprehension of anarchists and Bolsheviks alike.

The writings reviewed here seem to make some effort to escape from the conventional anarchist standpoint, but this effort turns out to be little more than a gesture. Listen, Marxist! is the bravest try, consisting mostly of an attack on what the author imagines to be Marxism, which is really bolshevism. "Marxism", we are told, means soviet power, puritanical morality, workers' states, vanguards, leaders. We are informed that Marx thought of the Socialist revolution "almost entirely by analogy with the transition of feudalism to capitalism," that chronic economic crisis formed the focal point of his theories, that Marx predicted a continual reduction of workers' real wages, that he didn't foresee increasing state ownership, that he didn’t include white-collar workers in the working-class, etc, etc. On this last point the author admits that Marx defined workers as people who had to sell their labour power— and then argues that he must have meant something different!

In view of all these elementary mistakes about what the writer is supposed to be attacking, it is tempting to dismiss this pamphlet as a tale told by an ignoramus, full of four-letter words, signifying nothing. This would be wrong however, for the author has come to a number of conclusions in line with the Socialist case, and in contradiction to the consensus of traditional anarchism. For example, he lays great stress on the potential plenty which now exists, and concedes that anarchism in the past was doomed to failure because it was rooted in scarcity. He admits that the Russian Revolution replaced Tsarism by state capitalism, a change from the usual anarchist line that Russia is Communist (which is supposed to show that Communism is the same as Capitalism). Further, he emphasises that what has been lacking in twentieth-century revolts until now, including the French May Events, has been sufficient consciousness among the population at large, (or as we would prefer to say, with our desire to avoid unnecessary jargon, sufficient understanding).

Of course, these arguments are precisely those of Marxism. We can only confront the followers of Anarchos and similar groups with the fact that most of the observations they announce with such pride as sensational novelties designed to show "that Marxism has ceased to be applicable to our time . . . because it is not visionary or revolutionary enough," are to be found in the pages of the SOCIALIST STANDARD for years (or decades) past. And without some of the confusions which appear in the Anarchos document.

Apart from numerous cloudy assertions ("Political institutions as such are decaying." The revolution will be made by a "non-class." etc.) we find here the specific dogma which underlies anarchist as well as Bolshevik activity: the incapacity of workers inside capitalism to understand Socialism. Thus, Anarchos tells us that "in a revolutionary situation, the revolutionary organisation presents the most advanced demands: it is prepared at every turn of events to formulate . . . the immediate task . . ." So for all the writer's talk about "consciousness," he does not envisage a united working-class which has democratically decided on its revolutionary strategy, but an entirely fluid situation with competing groups advocating different demands: it is he who falls into the trap of seeing the Socialist revolution by analogy with capitalist revolutions.

"For the first time in history, the anarchic phase that opened all the great revolutions of the past can be preserved as a permanent condition by the advanced technology of our time." But this "anarchic phase" and its apparent alternative, vanguardism, really mutually condition each other: where workers have not advanced to the Socialist stage of leaderless democratically-disciplined organisation, their choice is naturally between leaders, who will stamp on them, and foredoomed, futile "spontaneity."

The group called Solidarity do not use the words "anarchist" or "anarcho-syndicalist" to describe themselves, but the gist of their case is the same. Since they are reacting against Bolshevism (nearly all their pamphlets read as though penned with a Trotskyist peering over the writer's shoulder) they have undoubtedly made some advances in understanding, and on a number of issues have come round to views pioneered by us. But they remain entangled in outdated Leftist ideas. Their fundamental flaw is an obsession with "workers management" as a solution to working-class problems. They fail to appreciate that in terms of genuine human freedom, how work is managed is a side issue. The important thing is that all work should be entirely voluntary—a condition demanded by Marx's slogan "Abolition of the wages system!" "Workers management" is in no way incompatible with Capitalist exploitation.

Cardan begins The Fate of Marxism by listing some of the bewildering variety of so-called "Marxisms," all mutually contradictory. He bemoans the fact that Marxism "has become impossible to pin down. For with which Marxism should we deal?" An obvious first step would seem to be to look at what Marx had to say, but Cardan evades this by a curious line of argument. (He has already given ample evidence that he hasn't read Marx. See the SOCIALIST STANDARD, February 69) He claims that "the significance of a theory cannot be grasped independently of the historical and social practice which it inspires and initiates." In other words, Marxism must be held responsible for everything done in its name—which opens up truly fabulous possibilities. In a similar manner, Darwin could be refuted by Desmond Morris, or Mendel by Hitler.

Like everyone else, Marx made mistakes, and so has the Socialist Party. But Cardan cannot stomach this approach:

“It is no longer possible to maintain or to rediscover some kind of 'Marxist orthodoxy'. It can't be done in the ludicrous (and ludicrously linked) way in which the task is attempted by the high priests of Stalinism and by the sectarian hermits, who see a Marxist doctrine which they presume intact, but 'amend,' 'improve,' or 'bring up to date' on this or that specific point, at their convenience.”

According to Cardan then, it is wrong to stick to a theory, and equally wrong to amend it. We must admit to accepting some of Marx's ideas — a heinous crime, certainly. And rejecting some of Marx's ideas? Oh dear yes, we plead guilty to that fiendish trick as well!

Revolutionary Organisation declares: “Whilst rejecting the substitutionism of both reformism and Bolshevism, we also reject the essentially propagandist approach of organisations such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain." Solidarity is of course equally as concerned with propaganda as we are, but its propaganda consists overwhelmingly of reports of strikes and other activities, whereas ours consists of posing an alternative form of society and explaining how it can be achieved.

The "learning by experience" clap-trap predominates here: Solidarity apparently seriously believes the "people in struggle do draw conclusions which are fundamentally socialist in content." Not that they occasionally do, nor that they might do, but that they do. Obviously if this were the case we should have got Socialism long ago.

In this vein, the pamphlet stresses that workers in conflict with management "counterpose their own conceptions and ideas of how production should be organised." Often they do—but these conceptions and ideas are equally capitalist in character. The number of workers who understand the need for doing away with production for sale, remains very tiny.

If we are to appreciate how the revolution in ideas (a necessary precondition of the social revolution) will occur, we must first rid ourselves of the simplistic fallacy that people change their minds only when they burn their fingers.

David Ramsay Steele