The Change of Rulers in Iran (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a story said to have circulated in Tehran recently about a meeting between the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1963 after the riots which Khomeini had played a prominent part in stirring up. “I’ll pay you $25 million if you leave the country”, said the Shah. To which Khomeini is supposed to have replied, “I’ll give you $50 million if you leave”. In the event Khomeini was forced into exile for nothing. This time it’s the Shah who has left, though no doubt with a lot more than $50 million in his pockets. Of course no such conversation ever took place but the story does neatly illustrate that the social conflict in Iran was essentially between two sections of the propertied class there.

The Shah is the son of a jumped-up army officer who seized power in 1921 and had himself proclaimed Shah, or Emperor, a few years later. He came to the throne in 1941 when his father was deposed by the Allies for his pro-Axis sympathies but only acquired dictatorial powers in 1953 in a coup d’Etat which overthrew the nationalist Prime Minister, Mossadek, who in his day was the bugbear of the British press for having dared to nationalise the British-owned Persian oil industry.

Oil is of course the source of the immense wealth of the Shah and the section of the propertied class he represented. The payments which oil companies pay to the States where oil is produced are a form of ground-rent. The Iranian State receives this rent purely and simply because it happens to monopolise a part of the globe where oil is found. The Shah used this windfall, first, to build up the Iranian armed forces and, secondly, to introduce industrial capitalism into Iran. In doing so brought into being a new class of rich entrepreneurs independent on his State for the capital they invest.

But there already existed in Iran a class of wealthy people, the bazari, the merchants and traders of the bazaars which exist in all the big towns. The bazari existed long before oil was discovered and long before industrial capitalism was introduced. Their economic role in pre-capitalist Persia was to keep the towns supplied with food and other essentials, and this role still survives to a certain extent today although it has been severely reduced by the alternative commercial and banking network that has accompanied the coming of industrial capitalism.

The bazari have always been closely linked to the mullahs and ayatollahs, the priests of the Shi’ite sect of Islam to which most Persians formally belong. The mosque is generally situated in the bazaar area but, more important, the Shi’ite priests are financed by the various payments the merchants are required to make to them under Islamic law:

“The Shi’ite hierarchy, from the simple mullah to the ayatollah also collects a substantial tax, the khoms or ‘fifth’ which consists of taking one fifth of all commercial profits and, generally, on any capital gain as well as on the sale of lands belonging to Muslims to a person of  another religion . . . The amount of the ‘fifth’ is in principle divided in two, one part is normally reserved for the destitute, on condition that they are sayyeds, that is descendants of the prophet. The other part is distributed amongst the mullahs and ayatollahs. These also have the right to a hidden tax, the zahat, which consists in asking every believer to dispose of any ‘wheat, barley, dates, raisins’ but also of any ‘gold, silver, camels, sheep and cattle’ which he does not really need. This zahat is what now permits the church to help a large number of strikers.

“But the Iranian Shi’ite hierarchy has access above all to the immense wealth of the bazari of all the main towns of the country. For centuries, it has forged close links with this little business world, has given the blessing of Allah to certain transactions and has thrown all its weight against the secular power. When this latter became too demanding or when its desire to modernise the country became too restricting, the bazari knew that Shi’itism was behind them and were prepared to do anything for it” (Républicain Lorrain, 14/1/79).

Two Iranian economists writing in the December issue of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique describe how the Shah’s policy of developing an industrial capitalism in Iran adversely affected the bazari:

“After the 1953 coup d’etat, the re-integration of the Iranian oil economy into the world market and the ‘open doors’ policy led to a change in the pattern of trade, exceeding more and more widely the organisational capabilities of the bazaar. The beginnings of an import-substitution industry afterwards aggravated the difficulties of the bazaar, which was excluded from the new circuit of exchange set up to serve the needs of the new industries. The traditional importing of consumer goods gave way to the importing of capital goods, and the quotas or duties adopted to protect the nascent industries heavily penalised the traditional activities of the bazaar.”

They go on to note how this also hit the finances of the Shi’ite priesthood:

“This economic marginalisation of the bazaar is directly connected with the simultaneous weakening of the network for financing the ‘clerical funds’; these, under the control of the religious leaders known for their moral integrity, receive and distribute various forms of Islamic taxes and alms . . . Today, the inflow of money into these funds controlled by the progressive or combative ayatollahs bears witness to the extent of the struggle of the traditional bourgeoisie against a new class linked to the interest of the multi-national firms. But, in the first phase of industrialisation, the weakening of the bazaar which has historically lived in symbiosis with the religious institutions (financing of clerical funds, legal-religious framework for contracts) considerably reduced the socio-economic effects of the redistribution which the latter assured.”

The Ayatollah Khomeini first came into prominence in 1963 as the instigator of riots centred on the bazaars in Tehran and some other cities, riots which were ruthlessly crushed by the Shah’s armed forces.

It can thus be seen that the conflict in Iran is not, as it is often pictured, between a Westernising ruler and a reactionary priesthood defending old-fashioned values. That particular conflict is only an ideological reflection of the more basic conflict of sectional interest within the Iranian propertied class, between the bazari and the new bourgeoisie brought into being by the Shah. Behind the condemnations on religious grounds of beer and mini-skirts (indeed of any kind of skirts) lies an earthly material interest.

For the time being, against the logic of history, the bazari seem to have come out on top. Through their links with the mullahs and ayatollahs they have been able to control the urban poor, including large sections of the working class, and to use their discontent as a battering ram to overthrow the Shah and his regime. The urban poor of course had plenty to be discontented about. Frequently recent migrants from the countryside, they have been forced to live in disgusting housing conditions, only finding employment, if at all, at starvation wages. Independent trade union activity has been banned and strikes crushed sometimes with loss of life. The notorious secret police, the SAVAK, with its omnipresent system of spies and its torture chambers, has been there to root out all opposition to the Shah’s dictatorship.

It is sad that this discontent should have been directed by the mullahs to defend the sectional class interest of the bazari and towards the chimera of an “Islamic Republic”. But there is a reason for this. The only opposition to the Shah that was able to survive the onslaughts of SAVAK was the bazaar, with its independent economic base, and the Shi’ite priesthood it financed. The mosques thus became the focus of opposition to the Shah, especially as the bulk of the urban poor are first-generation migrants from the countryside where religious sentiments are always stronger.

It now looks as if the people of Iran are to have an “Islamic Republic” inflicted on them. But whatever happens industrial capitalism has come to stay in Iran, whether or not the mullahs like it or what comes with it (consumption of alcohol, a certain freedom for women). The Koran, which originated in a pre-capitalist agricultural and trading society, may lay down rules as to how such a society should work – indeed its rules are merely the reflection of the way such a society did work—but capitalism cannot be run according to them.

What will probably happen is that after an initial attempt to put the clock back for the benefit of the bazari, religious thinkers will be found within the “Islamic Republic” to declare that industrial capitalism is not after all contrary to the Koran. This happened in Tunisia a few years after it got its independence from France, as reported by the old News Chronicle at the time (5/3/1960):

“Up to now, as in the rest of the Moslem world, Tunisia’s life came almost to a standstill during Ramadan because of the dawn to dusk fast. In some cases production dropped 70 per cent. 

Bourguiba has not banned the fast outright. But he has stated firmly that fasting will not be accepted as an excuse for less work” (quoted in the Socialist Standard, April 1960)

As for the workers and peasants of Iran, they will rapidly find that they have just changed one set of rulers for another.

Adam Buick

Lessons of the Spanish Civil War (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forty years ago. after three years of bloody civil war, the victorious Franco supporters came to power in Spain and imposed their long rule of savage repression. The war cost 600,000 lives, including about 100,000 “who may be supposed to have died by murder or summary execution” (The Spanish Civil War, by Hugh Thomas).

Propagandists for both sides presented the issues in simple terms—the Francoists’ “defence of religion against Communism and Russian influence”, opposed to the Republicans’ “Defence of Parliamentary democracy against reaction and German and Italian invasion”. However, the outstanding feature of the civil war was that hardly anything was what it seemed to be, and in the confusion, misjudgement was general.

There were Catholics on both sides. Many of the poorer priests in Spain sided with the Republicans, and in this country a number of Catholics like Dr. Morgan, Labour MP and medical adviser to the TUC, gave active support.

Although the Franco revolt included part of the Spanish armed forces, most continued to support the government and in spite of his monarchist backing Franco did not restore the monarchy. Neither did he join his German and Italian allies in the second world war which quickly followed the end of the civil war, at which time the Stalin government which had been providing arms to Spain to fight the German troops, entered into its pact of friendship with Hitler.

While the Conservative Party in Britain mostly supported Franco, an influential group actively campaigned to get the British Government to intervene on the side of the Republicans, on the ground that British capitalist interests would be imperiled if Germany got control of Spain and, through it, of the Mediterranean. Other sections of the Conservative Party, while aware of the force of the argument, took the view that British intervention might provoke the war with Germany for which they were not yet ready.

The Civil War from the start was overshadowed by the rivalry of capitalist interests between the Powers, Germany seeking to get a base in the Mediterranean and Britain, France and Russia wishing to prevent it. In addition German capitalism aimed to get control of mineral wealth in Spain. Hugh Thomas says that Germany’s condition for arming the Franco forces “was German participation in all the important iron ore projects in Spain. In return for this rich prize Germany committed enough war material to Spain to tip the balance finally towards the Nationalists.”

This was also the view of the Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists:

The rebellion could not have taken place if the Spanish fascists had not already come to an arrangement with Hitler and Mussolini, who agreed to a mutual aid arrangement against Spain, in furtherance of their imperialist ambition. (Three Years of Straggle in Spain. Freedom Press).

Also, Germany and Italy as well as the French Popular Front government, seized the opportunity to try out new weapons of war in battle conditions.

Inside Spain the line-up on the Franco side rested largely on the big landowners and the Church, both of which saw their privileges threatened by the Popular Front government. It was estimated in 1931 that more than half the total land was owned by less than one per cent of the population and it was the declared intention of the Government to break the landowners’ stranglehold. It was not the capitalists who in the main supported the Franco rebellion—they also saw the big landowners as their enemy.

Capitalist parties belonged to the Popular Front, and the government which held office at the time of the rebellion was entirely composed of "radicals” and “progressives”. Although the Spanish “Socialist Party” (similar to the British Labour Party in outlook) was the largest party in Parliament, they were not in the government until some six months after the start of the war.

The declared aim of the Popular Front government was to establish in Spain a “Parliamentary democracy on the English model”, but to what extent did this represent the views of the voters and parties in the Popular Front? It was certainly the aim of the “Socialists” and the trade unions with whom they were allied, as well as of the capitalist parties in the government, but most of the other Popular Front supporters were completely opposed to it.

The Spanish Communists said that that was their aim too, and for saying so they were condemned by the Trotskyists and Anarchists. It would have been very odd if the Spanish Communists, who supported the Stalin dictatorship in Russia, had really favoured democracy. In fact it was for them merely a temporary political manoeuvre, as the Communist Jose Diaz put it:

To have attempted to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat would have meant skipping a necessary stage of development. . . . (Lessons of the Spanish War, 1936-1939).

He argued that premature disclosure of the real aim would have hampered the government in getting aid from abroad.

The largest body of supporters of the Popular Front, the Anarchist and trade union bodies which jointly published Three Years of Struggle in Spain made no secret of their total opposition to “parliamentary democracy” and determined to prevent its operation. They ridiculed the idea that “the revolution for which we were fighting” was “a new kind of democratic republic: that our politics should circulate in the orbit of the western democratic tradition of England and France.”

Their aim in the war had been, they said, “that the proletariat should repulse the State, no matter what political and economic parties stood in the way.” They complained that republican governments since 1931 had been hardly less repressive than had been the monarchy. Writing when the war was over, they had to admit that, in taking part in the government, helping to form a regular army and allowing Russian control, they had had to compromise—“no one knows it better or regrets it more keenly than we do.”

It is obvious that the Popular Front was a facade, and there never was working class unity for “parliamentary democracy”. The course of the war brought the bitter antagonism of the rival factions to the surface with mutual charges of murder and betrayal and the declaration: “neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism.” They charged the Communists with holding the view "Better lose the war than allow the revolution”.

The fact is that democratic political methods require a degree of development, including working class maturity, which did not exist in Spain in 1936. Oliverra, himself a supporter of democracy, writing in the Labour Party journal Labour (September 1936) noted that the industrial capitalists were either neutral or pro-republican and described the Franco rebellion as “the last fling of feudalism". But he believed that at that time "Liberal institutions" could not take root in Spain.

Spain is very different today. Great advances have been made in industrial development and Anarcho-Syndicalist ideas have lost much of their appeal. Spanish capitalism, with its limited monarchy and parliamentary system, is now in course of coming into line with those of the European powers in the Common Market.

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialism: But isn't there an energy shortage? (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

" . . . The babassu palm (Orbignya marlinana) is perhaps the ideal way of converting solar energy into usable, storable fuel, in terms of yield per hectare, capital investment, running cost, and minimum research expenditure, because the basic technics are already known. This Brazilian species grows up to 70 feet high and lives about 200 years, growing on land that has so far been found unsuitable for permanent agriculture . . . If we calculate from the maximum 90 tonne a hectare nut yield [from the babassu palm] and include the charcoal, methyl alcohol and wood gas on their fuel value, this total is equivalent to 28.9 tonnes of Middle East crude oil per hectare. Multiply this by up to one thousand million hectares, roughly one sixth of the land suitable for babassu palms . . . the total is 28.9 milliard tonnes, which is ten times the world crude oil production in 1970 . . " (From a report by the Henry Doubleday Research Association called, “Green Power. A Permanent Alternative to Nuclear Energy”.)

General Election '79 (1979)

Party News from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington South & Finsbury

Islington Branch are stepping up activity in this area prior to the forthcoming General Election and would welcome assistance from other members and sympathisers. A note will appear each month of proposed activity. The following has been arranged for March.

Canvassing. Mondays, 5th and 19th. Meet Angel Tube Stn 6 p.m.

Literature Sales Drives at Chapel Market. Sunday 11th, Saturday 24th. Meet Angel Tube Stn 11 a.m.

Please bring your own supply of Socialist Standards, although copies will be available if required.

Tentative plans have been reached for printing a Manifesto and bulletins; the holding of indoor meetings etc and publication of the Manifesto in the local paper. All this needs money.

OUR TARGET IS £1,000.00. We have got off to a good start with a donation of £100 from Islington Branch.

Whilst there are many causes aimed at extracting hard earned cash from your pockets, here is one of prime importance. Will you help?

Donations, large and small please to The Treasurer, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4. — marked Parliamentary Fund. We will let you know in due course what is coming in.

The economics of sport (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anthropologists sometimes refer to sport as an example of how codes and conventions can radically alter the significance of everyday activities, pointing out that anyone anywhere can kick a ball past a post but that only within the institutional framework of a football match can one score a goal. This can be taken further: only in a society based on commodity production can one get paid for scoring goals, making runs, serving aces, converting tries, and so on.

As with everything else under capitalism, sporting activity cannot be carried on in isolation from harsh economic realities. This applies also to participatory sports of non-experts. Providing sporting equipment (pitches, clothing. rackets, balls) is big business, geared to making a profit. There is no point in producing only top quality cricket bats and tennis balls, since most workers cannot afford to buy them. As a result, thousands of workers spend their time producing cheap saleable sub standard goods.

But when most people speak of the money involved in sport, they are referring to the vast sums earned by leading professional players, for instance £40,000 to the winners of a recent tennis doubles tournament that involved playing just five matches. Top boxers like Muhammad Ali can earn a million dollars a fight, though much of this money goes to support a large retinue of hangers-on. In most sports, the possibility of such huge earnings is comparatively recent; the maximum wage for footballers was only abolished in 1961, and we have all seen stories of how yesterday's goalscoring heroes are today's social security "scroungers''.

In fact the vast majority of professional sportspeople sell their labour power (their sporting proficiency) for a wage not noticeably greater than they would receive in a factory of office. Indeed, there was a case a couple of years ago of a Fourth Division footballer returning to his previous job as a carpenter because it was better paid.

Many county cricketers—those who have not caught Kerry Packer’s eye—spend the winter on the dole and on the breadline. And it should not be forgotten that for most a career at the top will last fifteen years at the outside. Even the highly paid George Best looked to his post-footballing future by opening a chain of boutiques while he was opening up opposing defences.

Let's look a little more closely at the economics of football. Only a handful of league clubs can exist on income from gate money. Others survive by selling their best players for huge transfer fees, but most rely on various fund-raising schemes run by their supporters’ clubs or on money made available by their directors. Football club boards are usually self-perpetuating elites who deny their players and other employees any say in the running of the club, are often prepared to sack the manager after a handful of adverse results and yet themselves remain in charge no matter how badly things are going. At Newcastle United the directors refused to appoint as manager a man the players preferred: this was one of the causes of the disputes which led to many of the best players leaving the club and the remainder becoming so demoralized that United were relegated. The directors stayed put. however.

In view of the unprofitability of most clubs, directors aren’t in it for the money (the recent controversy over the issue of new shares at Manchester United, perhaps leading to enormous profits for the chairman and his family, is exceptional).. Directors are normally wealthy businessmen who either regard football clubs as rich men’s playthings (the way other capitalists view their mistresses) or aim to acquire some local kudos or publicity. The very last people to be considered at any football club are the paying spectators: at far too many grounds the view from the terraces is atrocious if more than a handful turn up to watch, while sanitary facilities are a disgrace. Part of the explanation for this is that money spent on new players entitles the club to tax relief, while that spent on ground improvements does not.

The most recent example of the impact of financial considerations on sport is undoubtedly Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. The world’s leading cricketers were persuaded by merciless application of the cheque book to play against one another in matches not under the jurisdiction of the official cricketing authorities but concocted for the benefit of Packers’ television cameras. Packer’s TV station had been unable to wrest coverage of Test matches from the Australian government broadcasting service, and his response was to stage and televise his own matches. Various commercially-directed gimmicks followed such as portable pitches and floodlit cricket played with a white ball. One hilarious episode was a match played in the United States, which introduced such variants as bowling all overs from the same end (to make things easier for Americans brought up on baseball). America, you see, offered an enormous potential market where there was no built-in opposition to Packer’s series. It may be arguable that spectators will see more and better cricket under Packer’s scheme, but what is certain is that the ordinary county cricketer has in no way benefitted.

One effect of increased commercialization has been the disappearance of the amateur from many sports. Lawn tennis was made open just over a decade ago, ending the ludicrous situation where full-time tennis players were officially amateurs, their jobs usually being “representatives” for sports goods firms. In football the FA Amateur Cup has been discontinued and cricket no longer distinguishes between Gentlemen and Players. Amateurs still exist at or near the highest level in some sports (Scotland’s Queen’s Park Football Club, for instance) but as a rule the part-time player cannot hope to compete with the full-time, professionally-coached, opponent. Hence the proficiency of Eastern European athletes, who are able to devote almost the whole of their time to sport while being strictly amateurs whose official occupation is student or teacher. Variations on this idea are by no means new. Arsenal Football Club was founded in 1896 as a works team of the Woolwich Arsenal, but soon players were conscripted for the team and then placed in jobs specially created for them (an ignominious start to such a famous team).

The lack of profitability of most sports has led to an increased reliance on two sources of revenue, sponsorship and television. The winners of the £40,000 prize mentioned earlier can proclaim themselves not just as World Double Champions but as Braniff Airways World Doubles Champions. Other lucky people can win the John Player League or the Texaco Cup, or can take part in a Coca-Cola International. He who pays the piper calls the tune, of course, and events are often modified to suit the sponsors' requirements.

The importance of television’s financial support for sport is graphically illustrated by the deal between the Football League and London Weekend Television, an agreement so momentous that it led to questions in the House of Commons and investigation by the EEC. Sports like Rugby League, which has permitted live televising of games, have seen gates diminish and hence an even greater dependence on cash from TV. One of the problems with marketing (an appropriate word) soccer in the US is that, unlike American football, it lacks those brief natural breaks so suitable to the insertion of advertisements during a live broadcast; perhaps players will be encouraged to waste even more time at throw-ins so that the precious ads can be slotted in.

So while watching and taking part in sport is one of the ways in which many workers relax and enjoy a respite from their daily toil, it is as well to remember that even there the requirements and limitations of capitalism still make their ugly presence felt.

Paul Bennett

Diary of a Capitalist (1979)

The Diary of a Capitalist column from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sunday

Lord and Lady Brownlow were telling me the other day of their family financial arrangements. Their four-year-old son, Peregrine, has just inherited £3 million. As they said, he will remain “a very normal little boy”.

Someone must have eavesdropped, because now the Daily Express columnist Jean Rook (29.11.78) has seized the chance to make a cheap sneer. How can any four-year-old with £3 million be “normal”, she says. She has missed the point entirely. He is a very normal little boy by capitalist standards. What’s so special about three millionnn? Nobody said anything about him being normal from a working-class point of view.

Journalists pretend to forget that the two classes in our society are completely different. What is normal for us in the capitalist class is not, of course, normal for the rest of the population. For example, you wouldn’t find a capitalist making a cheap sneer. An expensive one, possibly.

Monday

At the club this morning we all agreed what a splendid letter dear old John Wakeham, the Conservative MP, wrote to the Daily Telegraph the other day (15.11.78). He said, in a fine peroration. “Conservatives put their country first, their party second and themselves last.” Absolutely true, we told each other, if by Conservatives you mean the upper-class people who really run the party. Some of us at the club were Labour supporters, and we all accepted it was true of Labourites and Tories alike among the ruling class How different from the workers! Someone made an impromptu speech attacking these greedy union- members, always selfishly trying to grab more devalued money—the “Gadarene rush” as one industrialist called it recently. We all enjoyed the implication that these people perpetually worried about their wages and salaries are simply swine. We had a few rounds of drinks to toast our own self-sacrifice, and the noble unselfishness of all the moneyed people like us. heroically putting their country first and themselves last. We all tried not laugh.

Tuesday

Had a few people to dinner myself this evening. Among the trimmings were half a dozen edible dormice at £39 each (from a farmer near Stockport, Sunday People, 24.12.78). a few jars of caviar at £104 a pound (Observer, 24.12.78) and a small bottle of Hungarian Tokay wine probably dating from the 1680s. which I got recently at Sotheby's for £1300 (Daily Telegraph, 14.12.78). There isn’t much eating or drinking in any of them, but it’s these little things that show your guests you have made an effort.

Wednesday

The poor old Shah of Persia! So the Iranian capitalist class has decided to ditch him. 1 warned him last winter what might happen. I was staying on Kish Island, in the Persian Gulf, where (as the Daily Telegraph put it, 11.11.78) "a complex of villas, casinos, and a luxury hotel has been built and where bevies of imported French girls act as 'maids’. Further lavish development is planned.” It is only for the upper class —"the very rich of the Gulf area, influential Persians, and the aristocracy.” Others need not apply. "Strict security screening makes certain that only the favoured are allowed into the exclusive holiday club with its £800 membership fee. a compulsory £8000 credit card and villas at rentals running into thousands." The idea is an obvious money-spinner, given the number of people around with pots of money to spend on enjoying themselves, and the Pahlavi Foundation, the Shah’s family trust, apparently provided most of the finance for setting up this paradise of extravagant pleasure for the well-heeled (Observer, 7.1.79). "The Shah and his family have spent several winter holidays at a Royal residence on the island but not at the club where the French 'maids’ sunbathe topless" (Daily Telegraph, 11.11.78).

When I stayed there I had several talks with the King of Kings, as he is (or was) known to his friends. I told him that despotism, with its censorship, its vast armed forces, and its secret police (such as the Shah’s Savak), and all the expense of jails for political prisoners, was very expensive. In Britain, I said, the ruling class was firmly in power. and our system was much cheaper. I tried to persuade him to allow freedom of speech, political association, and so on. I pointed out that under our system only the very rich could run mass newspapers and magazines, or own TV and radio companies; and with the state radio and TV also pouring out pro-capitalist propaganda continuously, the people of Britain have so far been persuaded into almost total support of capitalism. The political parties that come to the top in our system (I said) all advocate various models of capitalism, whether mainly private enterprise, mainly State-controlled, or something between the two. So capitalism is safe whichever party is in power; no expenditure is usually necessary on secret police, military tribunals, expensive political jails, or a censorship apparatus; and you can boast of your democratic freedoms, which is very useful in drumming up support for the State, both in peacetime and (even more) in wartime.

The Shah, however, said it wouldn’t work at present in Iran. Practically everyone in Britain can read, and so is subject to written propaganda: not so, yet, in Iran. Nor are TV sets as common there as here. When universal education and hire purchase have put this right, said the Shah, he would think about it.

And now it’s too late! Perhaps I'll drop a line to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the new "strong man", giving him due warning. Despotism seems more stable than democracy; really, the opposite is true.

Thursday

Have made an agreement for the first day of the shooting next season. I’ve got some nice pheasant and partridge moors for £3500 for an eight-gun syndicate, including myself. Last year the first-day bag of these moors was 700 birds. It’s getting a bit on the expensive side—in lots of places a couple of good days after the pheasants will cost you well over £500 per gun (Daily Telegraph, 11.12.78). Last season I got up a little party and we took a 10,000-acre estate pheasants and partridges for £20,000.

I like imagining I'm knocking over some of these damned strikers or picketers when I’m after the game. Each pheasant I kill, I say to myself—that’s another of these idle trouble-makers accounted for! Shooting’s too good for some of them.

Friday

A lot of unnecessary fuss in Denmark. The Danish Minister of Education. Mrs. Ritt Bjerregard. went to Paris for a Unesco conference, and her expenses for a thirteen-day stay were £5,700 (Daily Telegraph, 23.12.78). The Danish PM told her to pay part herself, and when she refused, sacked her.

A storm in a teacup. £5700 is nothing out of the ordinary—I've spent much more than that in two weeks in Paris! If this Mrs. Bjerregard is a member of the capitalist class, she could easily pay it herself; if not. she shouldn't have enjoyed herself on that scale.

The truth is. the Minister seems to have been enjoying herself as if she were rich, when she wasn’t.

Saturday

Though democracy has many advantages for the ruling class in advanced Western societies, it is not without its drawbacks. Sometimes I wonder if the rival political parties don’t go too far in their battles to secure the fruits of office. There’s no denying that some awkward facts do leak out occasionally.

Mr. Callaghan and most of his ministers have committed themselves to the thesis that the working class causes inflation through pay-increases, which is their defence when they are criticized over the continuing rise in prices. Of course we in the ruling class know that this claim is nonsensical, but it is good propaganda and makes for exciting newspaper stories against the greedy proles. But in their haste to discredit Callaghan's lot and grab place and power for themselves, some Tories have been prepared to show up Callaghan's naive errors, even at the expense of abandoning a first class anti-worker argument. The Daily Telegraph published a middle-page article recently (15.11.78) in which the author pointed out that rising wages cannot push up the price of goods unless the Government validates increased prices by printing more money . . . That this is clearly true is suggested by the fact that many firms have been unable to recoup rising labour costs by increased prices: for if prices could always be raised by as much as costs rose, no firm need ever lose money.” A week later (22.11.78) another middle-page article recalled the real reason why Governments of all kinds have continuously and deliberately inflated the currency for the last forty years: "Keynes persuaded a whole generation that by expanding the money supply and generating mild inflation, thereby reducing real wages, it would be possible to circumvent union opposition to necessary wage-reductions.”

Now we all know that these are the facts of the case. The Telegraph writers have exposed Callaghan—either he has been deliberately doing one thing and saying another (whatever you call that kind of behaviour), or he is painfully ignorant of elementary economics. But supposing the workers get to know of this? Most trade union leaders who appear on the TV hasten to register their agreement with Callaghan’s claptrap. self-evidently fallacious though it is, and grovellingly apologize for their members who have gone on strike hoping to regain the standard of living they thought they had agreed to work for a year ago, is it wise to abandon such a splendid weapon, which the newspapers continually use to pillory the workers?

When Mrs. Thatcher gets to Number Ten she may probably want to use the same argument, blaming the unions for the inevitable results of the state’s Keynesian economics: I hope she won’t find the ground has been cut from under her feet.

Alwyn Edgar

". . . Change the environment, change the man. Simple". (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "Consider the people's store, after full automation, the implementation of the theory of economic advantage. You dig. no waste makers, no harnesses on production. There is no intermediary, no money. The store, it stocks everything that the body or home could possibly use. Why won’t the people hoard, how is an operation like that possible, how could the storing place keep its stores if its stock (merchandise) is free?

Men hoard against want, need, don’t they? Aren’t they taught that tomorrow holds terror, pile up a surplus against this terror, be greedy and possessive if you want to succeed in this insecure world? Nuts hidden away for tomorrow’s winter.

Change the environment, educate the man, he’ll change. The people’s store will work as long as people know that it will be there, and have in abundance the things they need and want (really want); when they are positive that the common effort has and will always produce an abundance, they won’t bother to take home more than they need. . . .”

From Soledad Brother—The Prison letters of George Jackson (Penguin Books)

50 Years Ago: Capitalism and christianity (1979)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Christian will tell us that if only we would all show a spirit of brotherhood, the spirit of Christ, and exercise forbearance and be unselfish, all our industrial troubles would vanish. For the most part employers and workers, even those who are nominally Christian, make no special effort to apply their Christian principles to their relationship with each other. There are however religious persons, Quakers for example, who do profess that their religion can and does have a very intimate bearing on their everyday activities, including the running of a business. Thus the Cadbury family claim that the application of Quaker principles to industry has made Bournville something of a model for the industrial world, containing the hope of a solution for the problems of modern history.

The question has been raised in an acute form by the application of ‘‘rationalisation" in the Cadbury cocoa business, the subject of an article in the New Leader (Feb. 22) by a Quaker member of the Independent Labour Party. Three years ago, he says, there were distressing scenes when another 400 women, some of them over 40 years of age, who had been with the firm since early girlhood, were added to Birmingham's 30,000 unemployed.

"I confess", says Mr. Chamberlain, "that as members of the Society of Friends, I had hoped for great things from Quaker employers. I had hoped that they might have given a bold lead to other employers. But with the action of the Cadbury family my hope has vanished".

It has taken 25 years for an ILP speaker and writer to learn that capitalism is a system of society organised not for the satisfaction of human needs, directly, but in the first place for profit-making.

(From an editorial "Capitalism and Christianity" in the Socialist Standard, March 1929)

Political Notebook: An old man does not forget (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

An old man does not forget

Harold Macmillan, the Edwardian fop whose languid manner concealed a very sharp political brain, was eighty five years old last month—an occasion marked not just by the usual flood of obsequious congratulations (what’s so clever about a member of the ruling class reaching old age—the real heroes are workers who make it into retirement) but also by a long television interview with none other than Robert McKenzie.

McKenzie, it will be remembered, was playing with his psephological toys when Macmillan was creating history by leading the Tories back to a third victory at the polls. That victory was even more remarkable for the fact that it came a few years after the Conservatives were in disarray after the collapse of Eden’s Suez adventure, which succeeded in pleasing no one in his party.

Macmillan’s technique was essentially simple. First imply—or even, if you are forced to. promise—to do one thing and then, as the realities of capitalism require it, do something else. For example, while he personified all the patriotic nonsense of the heyday of the British Empire, he worked steadily and stealthily to dismantle it.

Like most politicians, he was cursed with an albatross—an unwise statement which probably cost him more support than it won for him. Ever since he said it. Macmillan has been trying to prove that he did not mean that we had never had it so good; on television he pretended to forget who had coined the phrase.

Macmillan succeeded, for a time, by means of openly treating the working class with contempt. And they never resented it. Now, in a winter of deep discontent, Macmillan still does not bother to hide his feelings, holding forth from his sumptuous Sussex home about problems which do not disturb the even tenor of these final days.

As long as it's black

One of the most famous sayings of the original Henry Ford was that of course his customers could choose any colour car they liked as long as it was black. Everyone laughed and bought a black Ford car.

And in a sense that is what is going to happen at the next election. It is a fair bet, that much of the argument between Tory and Labour parties will be about which of them has the more effective method of dealing with the present crisis in British capitalism.

In fact, there is nothing exceptional about this crisis. Every government tries in some way or other to hold down workers’ wages. Since the war, some governments (usually Labour) have succeeded in this for a time, subduing the unions with a mixture of promises and arm twisting.

But this can’t last for ever; workers whose living standards are going down sooner or later begin to notice it—and try to do something about it. And the something must, in the last analysis, be to strike.

Confronted with a situation like this, in the early days of 1974, Edward Heath’s Conservative government accepted a suggestion from the Pay Board (as it then was) to set up something called a Relativities Board. The idea behind this was to pretend that a pay rise conceded to the miners was not really a rise at all—only an ironing out of ‘‘relativities".

This useful and adaptable, piece of jargon is now being used by the Labour government, again to disguise the fact that their attempts to hold down wages are being beaten! Callaghan, apart from offering rises up to ten per cent, is also muttering about a Relativities Board to design ultimate justice for us all.

Nobody should be deceived by this transparent attempt to convince us that there is some enduring solution to our problems under capitalism. Nor by the politicians' mouthings that the parties of capitalism are at odds over the matter.

Thorn or Rose

For some years now one of the sharpest and most uncomfortably barbed thorns in the side of the Labour government has been Frank Field, director of the Child Poverty Action Group.

The CPAG was formed in 1965 to draw attention to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of families living below the poverty line and to demand government action to help them.

So a lot of their work consisted of a detailed, searching analysis of the so-called Welfare State. Their examination of reforms like social security benefits, Family Income Supplements and so on could have done nothing to encourage anyone to believe that such measures hold out hope of any lasting improvement in working class living standards.

Indeed, during the last few months of the previous Labour government — in March 1970 — CPAG presented their findings on Labour’s reforms:

The charge therefore stands: the poor are relatively worse off under a Labour Government.

Field has not allowed any respite to this government: he was at the centre of the row over the leaking of Cabinet minutes which revealed Labour’s intention to postpone the child benefit scheme (a footling reform, hardly worth minuting let alone leaking the things).

Simple souls might assume from all this that Field was an unrelenting opponent of the Labour Party, whose schemes leave the poor relatively worse off than ever. But the politics of reform are not so simple. Field, who in 1966 stood as Labour candidate for the rock like Tory seat in Buckingham South, has had better luck this time—he is Labour candidate for Birkenhead. where the majority in October 1974 was over nine thousand.

No doubt Field has already worked out how he will reconcile his former attacks on the Labour government with his support for them. He must also be hoping that the voters in Birkenhead will not find any problems in swallowing this particularly audacious piece of hypocrisy.

Correction (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our notebook piece, Gormley, The Scab, last month, there was a slip. The poor devil who wants to form a genuine trade union is not a Polish miner but a Russian one and the “union” leader whom Gormley met is also Russian. (The mistake occurred because the two scabs met at a jamboree in Poland.) It is worth adding that the Russian miner (who is now incarcerated in a ‘‘hospital" where Gormley’s friends pump him full of mind-bending drugs) is not even guilty of the crime of being a Jew. He is no more a Jew than the appalling Gormley himself. And what do communist members of the Anti Nazi League against racism say about the Russian government “accusing" a man of being a Jew?

Letters: Democracy and Socialism (1979)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy and Socialism

I concur with your exposure of Russia, China and similar countries as slate capitalist. However, I wonder if at times your attitude on this matter is not too negative, if not contradictory. For example, in the August 1978 edition of the Socialist Standard, in an article entitled 'State capitalism and the Russian dissidents', you stated that you could not support the Russian dissidents in their strivings for political democracy and. by implication, for private capitalism. Yet, in the September Socialist Standard you featured tracts on the power of the vote. One of these declared that socialists must capture control of the slate machine through Parliament. If socialism is to be achieved by democratic means, how can you refrain from supporting the fight for democracy (a prerequisite for socialism) in any country? Do you expect the Russians to stagnate and temporise until a socialist government is elected in Britain?

Secondly, as you made clear at the time, the Bolshevik revolution was not a socialist one and could not have been, because Russia was a predominantly peasant country and needed to industrialise. However, can you explain why, if it was not the intention of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to introduce socialism, the socialist ideology was adapted and persists today, even if it is based on the assumption that socialism is a prelude to communism? Further, if you accept that Russia had to continue to develop and progress (under capitalism) and you have stated in past copies of the Socialist Standard that capitalism has served the purpose of providing us with the potential to fulfil everyone’s needs, would you have been happier if Russia had developed more along the lines of the capitalist countries of the West, that is. with a greater degree of private enterprise?

P. S. Maloney

Palmers Green London N13

Reply:

The article ‘State Capitalism and the Russian Dissidents' showed how some opponents of the present Russian dictatorship, while struggling for some measure of political democracy there, envisage replacing Russian state capitalism with private capitalism. Socialists cannot support such a struggle; we oppose capitalism whatever form it takes. Where then do we stand on the issue?

Political democracy—in the sense of freedom of expression, the right to organise into parties, possession of the vole and so on — is essential for the establishment of socialism. But if socialists drop their uncompromising stand for socialism and instead campaign for some reform — including the vote — they cease to be socialists. They end up, like the Russian dissidents, standing for capitalism, which would in the end hamper the struggle for democracy, since capitalism’s “democracy" is anything but stable.

So what should workers in Russia, or any similarly repressive regime, do? Wherever possible they should struggle for socialism, which is a society of common ownership and democratic control of th. means of wealth production and distribution. The most effective, and enduring, struggle for democracy is the struggle for socialism.

The ideology of socialism was used fraudulently to justify the Bolshevik revolution. which marked the birth of capitalism in Russia. That fraud continues; while claiming to be socialist, Russia has a privileged class, a powerful military machine and a repressive state apparatus. The words socialism and communism mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably. Socialism is not a prelude to communism; this is another example of historical confusion used to explain away the existence of state capitalism in Russia. When capitalism is abolished it can be succeeded by only one social system, which can be called either socialism or communism.

Socialists are not particularly concerned about how capitalism develops; this will vary from time to time and from place to place. Neither do we argue that every country must pass through the same process of developing capitalism before socialism can be established. One country can learn from another and compress its development, as happened in Japan after 1857. Overall, society moves towards socialism and the job of workers everywhere is to help it by spreading socialist propaganda.

The important thing is that, in terms of resources, the world is capable of setting up socialism now. All that is needed is for the working class to stop supporting capitalism and to opt for socialism. Workers in Russia are not immune to socialist ideas and we look forward to the day when we can welcome a companion socialist party there.

Editors.

Parliament Does Matter

Dear Comrades,

B. J. Clifton in his letter (February Socialist Standard rejects the SPGB view that it is mistaken to believe that class rule is based upon economic power. Perhaps he should consider the implications of the alternative view that class rule (control of the state) IS based upon economic pow'er (command over the means of living) which would imply, of course, that irrespective of whether workers support capitalism, as long as capitalists have economic power, they will rule. What this means can be demonstrated by the following formula;

Capitalist class rule ensures the existence of capitalism. Capitalist class rule is based upon capitalist economic power. Capitalist economic power is an inherent and inevitable feature of capitalism. Therefore, capitalism can never be abolished because the condition that enables the capitalists to successfully defend their system — their economic power—is an inherent aspect of the system they are successfully defending thanks (ultimately) to their economic power! Apparently then, capitalist economic power is both the cause and the result of the same thing; their class rule. Looks like they’ve got a foolproof guarantee for perpetual existence so all we workers can do is glumly resign ourselves to an eternity of wage slavery!

If that sounds like one of those awful metaphysical riddles that must have a catch somewhere I would suggest you would not be wrong in thinking so. The point is that capitalist class rule does not exist irrespective of whether workers support capitalism but because workers support capitalism. As the article, "The Parliamentary Road to Socialism” pointed out, capitalist economic power cannot be separated from the massive support, expressed by the election of capitalist parties to Parliament for the system which enables the capitalists to have this economic power. The exercise of power implies the ability to coerce which depends, in the final analysis, on the active or passive willingness of those coerced, to be coerced. Take away the political support for the capitalist system provided by the working class—and the only effective and democratic method of doing this is through parliament where political power is legitimised in the first place — then the economic power of the capitalists will disappear with capitalism itself.

Fraternally,

Robin Cox, 

Haslemere, Surrey.

Running Commentary: How much are you worth? (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

How much are you worth?

Have you ever thought about the man who emptied your dustbin having the power to bring Civilised Life As We Know It to a halt? Or the woman who washed the floor in the hospital ward? Or the person who unlocked your child's school in the morning?

We only ask these questions because of the hysterical denunciation in what is politely known as the media—but which was once, more healthily, called the gutter press—of the recent strikes as acts of crass irresponsibility which would lead to millions dying or being unable to read and write or something similarly dreadful.

It is, of course, perfectly true that a disruption of hospital services, or an accumulation of garbage, or an interference with the water supply, could quickly produce a number of serious problems.

But so far the gutter press has not followed up its flash of insight into the value of these workers by concluding that this very fact must make them worth a very high wage indeed.

Of course this does not apply to everyone. Incensed by the strikes. Spike Milligan, described as a comedian, threatened to go on strike himself, which means he would stop telling jokes—something discerning people thought had happened already. Then there are people like the Royal Family who receive more in a month than the strikers will get in a lifetime and who could threaten to stop making silly speeches and trying to live in half a dozen palaces at once.

Or Roddy Llewellyn could really put the pressure on by refusing to lie in the sun in the West Indies or trying to sing.

In fact, if the entire capitalist class went on social strike tomorrow, by ceasing to exist as a class, the world would not notice the difference except that we would be free of a dead weight of parasitism and could get on with building a society where everyone stood equally.

This is one thing the gutter press will hold its silence over. The useful people in society are the working class; they have only to learn to run the world in their interests and not in that of the parasites.

A Cry For Help

Does this latest Pope really see himself in the role of King Canute, persuaded to try to hold back the inexorable tide?

For some time now religions of all sorts have attempted to disguise the fact that their theoretical justification (if it could ever be said to have existed) has been destroyed, by involving themselves in social problems.

The Salvation Army is perhaps the best known example of this, dispensing their own brand of nonsense along with shelter for drunks, battered children and the like. (The drunks may argue about the description of what they are offered as shelter.)

Other groups have followed the same line; in the more developed countries even the Roman Catholic Church has been able to contain priests who, making their own interpretation of their dogma, have seemed almost as interested in homelessness and vagrancy as in the catechism.

To do this, they have usually needed to put a pretty selective slant on what was allegedly said and done by the person known in certain writings as Jesus Christ. As the pressure of problems in modern society has built up the quasi political priest has become an increasingly evident spectacle.

Now. it seems, the Pope has had enough of this nonsense. On a recent tour of Latin America, he spoke out against those Catholics who are intellectually nimble enough to somehow relate Christianity with "Marxism” and to conceive Jesus Christ as a sort of Che Guevera.

The facts need to be stated. Religion remains, as when it was so described by Marx, the opiate of the people. It aims to divert workers from the immediate priority, of changing the social order here on earth, persuading them instead to accept the chaos of capitalism in the hope that there is a supernatural something after death reserved for those who have done so, with humility

This theory is constantly battered by reality. Can—or should—someone who is starving, or someone degraded and poverty stricken, accept this as natural and tolerable? Religion tries to make this adjustment, to have the best of both worlds. It tries the dishonest, the insupportable, the impossible.

Clearly, it was very unkind of the Pope to be so blunt to those of his followers who, in their desperation, are driven to try this trick. They are in need of help rather than criticism.

Is It Catching?

Whenever a City Editor is stuck for something to fill his column, he can always run off a few paragraphs on something he calls the British Disease.

This Disease takes different forms at different times but one unvarying symptom of it is that it is caused by British workers' unmanageable greed and laziness; another is that it damages British industry in its efforts to compete with that of other countries.

As we all know, the British Disease is at present characterised by inflation which, as all City Editors are agreed, is caused by workers who are greedy, lazy, etc., etc. . . .

This theory, popular as it may be. is not supported by the facts. Inflation, apart from not being caused by workers getting higher wages, is not peculiar to British capitalism.

President Carter recently took himself along to the Capitol to tell the American people (his speech was televised) all about the State of the Union. Some of his speech was devoted to a catalogue of America’s nuclear armaments and of how they can wipe out “every large and medium-sized city in the Soviet Union".

Apart from this joyful news, Carter also has a lot to say (although he did not call it the American Sickness) about inflation in the United States. Inflation, he said, is his overriding domestic priority; he urged Congress to approve the Budget he had sent them which was designed, just like Healey’s, to end inflation for ever.

Carter also addressed himself to the American workers. Without actually calling them greedy, lazy, etc. etc. ... he admonished them: “We cannot afford to live beyond our means, to create programmes we cannot manage or finance, or to waste our natural resources."

So not only does America suffer from this same disease of inflation as Britain: it also has to endure the same fatuous “remedies” being mouthed by its politicians.

Anyone who worries about inflation being contagious, spreading like some virile baccillus across the Atlantic, can take heart. It is caused by a deliberate act of government policy, as a method of eroding wages which cannot be held back in actual monetary terms.

It leaves workers chasing their tails— which is what it is meant to do. At anytime, a government can stop inflation, and replace it with other policies also designed to hold back wages. Whoever heard of a disease which the patients inflict upon themselves?

Media harlots (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

You cannot hope 

to bribe or twist, 

thank God! the 

British journalist.

But. seeing what 

the man will do 

unbribed, there’s 

no occasion to.

(Humbert Wolfe).

Bribery and Graft can—and do—take subtle forms. So can pressure on one’s job; especially in times of heavy unemployment. Otherwise, how else could the master class persuade workers such as journalists, type-setters, television and radio news-readers and interviewers, editors, chat-show hosts, camera crews, engineers and the like, to sustain the unremitting stream of heavily-slanted clap-trap with which we have been assailed over these past few months.

I refer, of course, to the well-orchestrated and wholly unprincipled attack which has been, and is being, directed at millions of workers whose resentment at finding their already modest standard of living even further eroded has boiled over into open — if uninformed — rebellion.

However, while recognising the effects of, on the one hand, the economic stranglehold the capitalist has on his hired labourers, and on the other, the lack of a true understanding of our condition as wage-earners under capitalism, it can do no harm to point up some of the shadier verbal and other techniques employed by the press, television and radio to convince the public of the greed and perversity, not to mention downright callousness, of striking trade-unionists (as if these same strikers were not themselves also members of the public!).

No doubt readers of this journal will have their own store of prize examples; including, perhaps, that memorable occasion on which Angela Rippon, reading the news, referred, apparently quite unconsciously, to  ". . . trade unionists and other extremists . . .” And that shining moment during which listeners to a morning news round-up-cum-chat-show could have heard an interviewer attempting to trap a lorry-driver picket into confessing that he fiddled his time-sheet in order to make up his money. (His ingratiating manner as he did so caused swallowed porridge to rise back into at least one listener’s throat. But when a BBC toady next interviews the Director-General of the CBI, take note of the obsequious little chuckle he manages to emit as he concludes a tendentious performance studded with gently sympathetic leading questions with his “. . . and thank-you, Sir John”).

From the screaming prejudice of the lady before the pickets (Look North, 24 January) to the Consultant Physician who spent a day refusing his selective services to trade union card-holders; (Radio 4, 25 January) from the threat to day-old chicks (due to have their necks wrung later, anyway) to the brigade of outraged ladies busy sharpening their umbrellas; from the priest who used his morning radio God-Spot (Friday, 2 February) to denigrate hospital workers and the like, to that other consultant (the same programme) who was whipped in to elaborate his contention that we should dispense with the less-than-dedicated services of half the hospital ancillary workers anyway; broadcasting and the press have been having a field-day.

What workers responsible for preparing and presenting such malevolent harlotry should remember is that it is directed against themselves—just as surely as at social workers or lorry-drivers, or hospital porters, or school caretakers, cooks and cleaners. It is intended to create a climate in which a more deferential working class accepts the specious argument that to ask for a few measly quid a week more in order merely to try to restore a deliberately-engineered cut in their wage-packets is to "bring the Nation to its knees”; or to create “uncontrollable inflation”; (who actually prints the money, anyway?) or "bring down your Labour Government". (The writer emphatically denies possession).

But the thoughtful worker can learn a valuable lesson from all these manifestations of capitalism in crisis. Our present system cannot be made to function efficiently no matter which government holds office, crude attempts to shuffle off the blame for the current state of affairs onto disaffected workers using the media of broadcasting and the press to do so reveals a blatant and cynical determination on the part of the capitalist class to hide this truth from the only other section of capitalist society which has the power to put things right: the 90 per cent of us who constitute the world's working class.

And that 90 per cent includes the ‘front’ men and women who push loaded news at us all via the airwaves and the printing-presses.

Richard Cooper

Editorial: Action for Socialism (1979)

Editorial from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The profit system is a spent force. The present method of organising human affairs is anti-social because all goods and services take the form of commodities. The great material achievements of the past two centuries have not served to substantially improve the lives of ordinary men and women, but to strengthen the power of the rich and privileged. Sale with a view to profit is holy law.

Capitalism makes the rich rich by keeping the poor poor. There is a class division arising from the minority ownership of the means of production and distribution. The working class receive wages and salaries in return for the use of their mental and physical labour power. The capitalist needs to buy this commodity — yes, labour power is also a commodity to be bought and sold, used and disposed of — because, during the course of production workers create values greater than the price paid for their labour power. This surplus value is the source of the profit which keeps the capitalist in his parasitic position. You can't have capitalism without profit and you can't have profit without workers who are willing to be exploited.

The working class is not coerced into accepting this exploitative relationship. Most workers share the view that the capitalist system is the best possible way of running things. The capitalists spend vast fortunes on maintaining this consent. The schools, the universities, the press, the radio and television, the Church — all of these means of securing social control: they are 'the opium of the people'.

That’s not to say there is total acquiescence. Workers complain about low wages, poor working conditions, bad housing, pollution of the environment, racial and sexual discrimination, the threat of war. Sometimes action is taken. In the case of wages and working conditions trade unions are formed, yet these can only win restricted, temporary gains. Other action takes the form of demands in which workers ask for legislative reforms from the owning class. Neither trade unionism nor reformism challenge the foundation of class society.

Different political parties promise to reform capitalism in different ways. In the industrially advanced countries the working class demonstrates its consent to being exploited by electing these thieves and liars into parliament. Whether the majority of workers vote Labour or Tory the role of the government will always be to arrange for the running of the system that exploits them. The army, the police and the legal system are there to look after things should anyone get in the way.

For the sake of profit-making, workers accept the most abject degradation. Children go hungry for the price of food; families are turned out on to the street because they can’t afford to pay their rents; workers kill each other in wars for markets that they will never profit from; people die painful deaths in under-equipped hospitals from diseases too expensive to cure; grown men beg in the streets for the price of a bed for the night. Meanwhile the Financial Times index serves as a barometer of the affluence of the few.

There can be no alternative to this misery which does not propose to end class division, exploitation and profit: the three-headed god of capitalism. The end of class division will be the result of the abolition of the ownership and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth by the rich. It will not mean State control of production, for the State, as a means of coercion, will be a relic of the past once there is no working class to control. The end of the working class must mean the end of exploitation, and production for profit. Once exploitation ends there will be no more production for profit.

That is what Socialism will bring to an end, but it is what Socialism can make possible that we need to consider. For the first time men and women will be free to discover their full potential, to develop their talents, acquire new skills and fulfil their pleasures to the full. Cost and legality will be an obstacle to no-one. Human beings will be able to co-operate, explore, create and plan in new and exciting ways. Democracy will become meaningful in Socialist society for the first time ever.

It may seem strange to realise that the working class has immense power under capitalism. Clearly this is not power over wealth: the wealth producers are treated with contempt, downtrodden, placed in poverty, alienated from their very humanity. But still they have one power which the exploiters do not. That is the political power to change the course of history. The consent of the working class is vital for the continuation of capitalism. As long as the working class place their faith in leaders of all kinds, it will be gratefully accepted. If, on the other hand, workers stopped trusting and started taking democratic political action on their own, there wouldn't be a thing the capitalist class could do to stop the transformation of society.

The Socialist Party was formed in 1904 by men and women committed to working class emancipation. They understood how the profit system exploited them and felt degraded and indignant by what they experienced; they understood that the system of exploitation would not be abolished by trade union militancy, by radical reform programmes, by enlightened leadership, by violent overthrow or by sitting back and doing nothing. The only way to make Socialism is to make Socialists. The larger the party of workers who understand the need for Socialism, the nearer that need will be to becoming reality. Every new member of the Socialist Party is a further nail in the coffin of the profit system. The process is slow. But those who join it can be confident in the understanding that they are engaged in a movement which will one day eradicate the suffering caused by the profit system so that people can construct a society fit to live in.

Their industrial crisis (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the hollow rantings of the media are to be believed we are currently in the midst of a serious crisis. Our lives are being disrupted by their ruthless trade union action; our economic stability is being undermined by their pay demands; our needs are unfulfilled because of their greed. Newscasters bring us the latest tales of violent picketing and malicious damage by men and women who have the cheek to put their wages above our convenience. Political pundits debate the effect the ‘industrial chaos’ will have upon civilisation. Phone-in presenters invite simpletons to air their views on how ‘we can get the country out of this mess’. The Sun printed a headline gloating over the fact that a worker on a picket line was shot. The Daily Express has invited readers to form strike-breaking squads. The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a statement saying, in effect, that enough is enough.

The cause of all this fuss is the miserable failure of the Labour Government’s 5 per cent incomes policy, the first consequence of which occurred before Christmas when the petrol tanker drivers came out for more money. They were followed by the TGWU lorry drivers and then ASLEF train drivers. Sewerage workers in the north of England were the next to come out, followed by NUPE, the union representing relatively low paid workers such as hospital ancillary staff, ambulance men, refuse collectors and gravediggers. When these workers are doing their jobs they are portrayed as duty-motivated public servants, but as soon as they ask for more than the pittance they are paid they are pictured as ‘mindless militants’ who are no longer part of the public.

There is nothing new about incomes policies not working. Legal enactments or ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ cannot override the need of trade unions to try to obtain better wages and conditions for their members. Jim Callaghan, posing as an avuncular headmaster, has always claimed to be the man who can work with the unions, just as Labour has claimed to be the party of the working class. But such alliances have little effect when it comes to the struggle between the workers demanding enough money to live on and the capitalists, both private and State, who have always to place profits above the social interest. Despite the failure of Labour’s voluntary incomes policy. Peter Walker, a member of Heath’s 1974 Tory Government, argued in The Guardian on February 5th that

What is needed is a consensus that Britain needs some kind of pay policy until its inherently inflationary collective bargaining system is replaced by something better.

Walker is clearly not a believer in learning from past errors. Neither are the trades unions. The sterile repetition of the incomes policy — wage demand — strike — return to work-cycle has done nothing to change the fundamental position of the working class. Demands for a ‘fair wage’ or a ‘decent standard of living’ simply demonstrate that trade unionists are captives of the ideology of the wages system. Hugh Hubert, in his report from the TGWU strike headquarters in West Bromwich in The Guardian (31 January) stated that

The West Midlands men don’t seem to want or expect (the strikes) to alter anything but the contents of their wage packet.

The current wave of industrial action has brought out Callaghan and Thatcher at their anti-working class worst. Callaghan, in case readers should forget, is leader of the Labour Party which was formed at the turn of the century to speak up for the trades unions in Parliament. Speaking up about them recently in the Commons he said he would be quite happy to break through a picket line — and he and his ministers have done so, thus showing their contempt for one of the basic principles of trade unionism — and that workers who go on strike are engaging in ‘free collective vandalism’. If Callaghan is playing the part of uncle, Thatcher seems to be auditioning for the role of mother as she warns the ‘militants’ that she will not stand by while the old and needy suffer the hardships following from industrial action. What sickening hypocrisy!

These upholders of the profit system accept as an inevitable everyday occurrence that old people receive inadequate food and warmth because of the expense of providing them, that workers have to wait months for vital hospital treatment while money to the NHS is cut back, that families dwell in filth for the lack of money to live comfortably. But when members of the working class can be blamed for these things, then they become unacceptable and indefensible.

The Left has reacted in a predictably hysterical way to the ‘industrial crisis’. Confusedly, they see trade unionism as class consciousness. Organisations like the Communist Party and Socialist Workers’ Party see wage demands as the best that the working class can aspire to without their political leadership. In 1974, when the Heath Government was in a similar position, the Left predicted an upsurge in revolutionary consciousness. Their advice to the workers then was to elect a Labour Government. Sadly, that advice was taken.

How long will it be before the working class realise that the wages system can never work in the interest of those who sell their labour force for a wage or a salary? The media preaches to workers about The National Interest. There is no common interest. The trade union hacks repeat the demand for ‘A Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work’. It is time that workers, inside and outside the trade union movement, recognised that their future does not lie with the prosperity of the British capitalist class, nor upon the size of their wage packet. The upheaval caused by the worker’s recent protests has shown the power of the working class When that power is used, not to merely decrease exploitation but to abolish the wages system, then the fruits of victory will be worth having.

Steve Coleman

Fighting the wrong class war (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been the proud boast of the Labour Party that they are better at governing because of their "special relationship” with the trade unions. This means, in effect, that they claim to run capitalism better than the Tories by keeping the greedy working class in its place. Now, as the Callaghan government staggers to the end of its term, we witness one of the most remarkable wave of strikes that anyone remembers. Railwaymen, lorry drivers, dustmen, hospital porters, school caretakers, are all getting in on the act — and at the time of writing the miners haven't even come on the stage yet.

What has happened has been that a government has imposed wage restraint which, with greater or less reluctance, the workers, led by their stooge union bosses, have swallowed for a year or two. But. like trying to restrain the tide, it really can't be done. Wages are the price of the workers’ energies and skills and when, thanks to government-primed inflation, all other prices shoot up. then wages/prices will assuredly follow (though of course less assuredly in places like Warsaw or Cairo where the prices go up and the workers themselves go down — under a hail of bullets). And if the tide has been dammed for a period, then it breaks forth with even greater violence when the dam bursts. It is ironic that just at the time when the government of Labourite twisters needs the help of their fellow twisters of the TUC, the latter have to let them down by ending the so-called social contract. They realise that their sheeplike followers are rather displeased at their lowered standard of living and might well start biting their shepherds.

Unfortunately, the term "sheeplike” is all too apt. A lot of members of the working class have the ludicrous idea that whereas they themselves ought to have a “decent” wage and might even have to strike to get it, other workers and other unions are greedy and aggressive and in general are letting ‘‘our" grand old country go to the dogs in a welter of strife.

STIFF WITH COMPLAINTS

Meanwhile, the class solidarity of the workers, even at a time like this, is shown to be rather a sick joke. The letter columns of the papers have been stiff with complaints from workers who make it clear that other workers have got a damned cheek to try to grab higher wages. So the lorry drivers think they have a tough job and are entitled to a basic of £65, do they? Well, what about us ambulance drivers? Our basic is nearer £45 than £65. Ambulance drivers don’t know how well off they are. How would they like to manage on the wages that we hospital cleaners get? And it is worth spending a moment here to look at some of the figures detailed in an article in the Guardian of Jan 17 headed: How Do They Get By On £40 a Week? The short answer is that Mrs Penny Hibbins (her parents knew what they were about when they christened her), a domestic worker at a hospital in Devon, a divorcee with four young kids, has £5 left after rent, rates and what they call food.

Does the mind boggle? Well, let it boggle a bit more. "Indeed, Mrs Hibbins agrees that she is one of those doing comparatively well”! We hear all the time that things are nothing like as bad as they used to be. Times change all right. But the more they change, the more they stay the same. And another point is worth stressing here. In the old days, the Labour Party used to say it was all the fault of greedy private capitalists. Let‘s nationalise things and the benevolent state will make all wage slaves happy.

In the bad old day the Labour Party would rant and rave against mean bosses. Now that they are in power, they rant and rave against "rogue elephants” — bosses who have the unpatriotic cheek to pay their workers too much! Callaghan threatened to punish Ford's for the crime of paying their strikers more than the 5 per cent which he had decreed was good enough for slaves of the conveyor belt. Absolute cruelty to bosses. They honestly didn’t want to pay their workers more than the 5 per cent. If the workers could get by without eating, they would be quite prepared to pay them nothing at all — and even Callaghan couldn't ask for greater patriotism than that. Ford’s only paid the 17 per cent (or whatever) because their awful workers went on strike. It’s sheer injustice to punish the bosses for paying over the odds.

And of course the nationalised concerns, National Health Service, miners. British Rail, will all have to breach the ludicrous 5 per cent with an inflation rate of twice that much. So will Callaghan impose sanctions on himself for breaking his own rules? (No Tory MP or media pundit caught him out on that one. How lucky to have opponents who are as thick as yourself).

Mention of British Rail makes it clear that the workers who think that all the problems are caused by other workers wanting too much are not just housewives in the supermarkets or teachers writing in the press. The class war in British Rail is of the kind to make old Karl tear his beard off. Abolition of the wages system? Someone must be joking. The guards on some trains were given the job of issuing the tickets. So they wanted a bonus for it. So BR said well, we’re saving on ticket offices so we’ll give them a bit of the loot. But these were NUR men. This was, of course, noticed by the ASLEF men, a smaller union but, being composed of people like the drivers, rather important. And, come what may, no engine driver can stand idly by while guards and porters get wages which creep nearer to their own princely salaries. So all drivers out; all workers who had to crawl to work in traffic jams in the blizzards (trust god to add a freeze-up to all your other miseries) cursed the selfish drivers.

Did anyone see any sign of any body of workers, or union leaders, or newspapers (and for this purpose let’s call the Morning Star a newspaper) suggesting that the workers should take a little time off from worrying how much more the other workers are getting and asking why it is that they are all exploited for the benefit of the capitalist class and their toadies like Callaghan? In the first place, only by such things as strikes and the threat of strikes can workers defend their living standards under capitalism. If the workers were docile, the capitalists (including the State) would see to it that Mrs Hibbins had even less than her fiver.

Papers like the Guardian publish learned articles by useless academics working out that after a strike, the workers usually take years to catch up with the wages they lost in the struggle. These fools don't begin to notice that without strikes their standards would be more like the life in Russia, where strikes are criminal and workers are ground down accordingly. But what is true is that all this strife and struggle is just one endless treadmill. And the truth is that workers can actually decide to get off the treadmill.

Let Gentleman Jim have the last word. Looking at the chaos all around he bleats: "What kind of society do we want in this country?" What kind of question is that from our "socialist" Premier? It almost makes you think he's not a socialist, doesn't it? If "we" means the electorate, then we must want the society we vote for; where we are exploited while Callaghan and his ilk live in places like his magnificent farm in Sussex.

L. E. Weidberg