Running Commentary: If Thatcher goes (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Thatcher goes

It may take some time to accustom ourselves to the idea that Michael Heseltine wants to take care of us all — to protect the weak, the sick and the poor — but that is what we may have to face, if Margaret Thatcher should cease to be Tory leader. If it comes to that, not so long ago it would have been difficult to accustom ourselves to the idea of Thatcher losing her grip but now, as the Westland affair swells from a cloud no bigger than an ex-Defence Secretary's hand to a darkness stretching to the far horizon, the unthinkable becomes readily believable.

The opposition to Thatcher within her party is. we are told, to do with her style of government— her ruthless and overbearing pursuit of her ends and her preference for a cabinet full of unquestioning toadies rather than suffer a single stimulating critic. This has left her back benches crowded with what is called ministerial talent who were not however talented enough to prevent themselves being quietly snuffed out or to remember that Thatcher's adopted style was what once, in those heady days after the 1979 and 1983 elections, endeared her to the party.

How gleefully, for example, they all once grasped at the Russian award of that title of the Iron Lady; how approvingly they regarded her forays into EEC negotiations, showing those nasty foreigners that they could not pull the financial wool over her steely eyes; how gratefully they applauded her implacability over the Falklands war: how rapturously they laughed when she scornfully denied to a Tory conference that she wanted to be another Edward Heath: "This lady's not for turning".

If the Tories are deserting her now. this can be for only one reason. Exposed as no different from the rest, as a cynical and deceitful politician whose principles are those of day-to-day opportunism. Thatcher suddenly looks like a disaster. There is panic in the Tory ranks; how else can we explain Heseltine's audacious claim to be a compassionate politician?

And if Thatcher goes, what then? Will she be replaced by a Tory government pledged to introduce the politics of One Nation? Will the Tory wets come squelching back into the cabinet? Will British capitalism become managed by a bunch of landed gentlemen from the shires — Pym, Gilmour, Prior — rather than upstart advertising executives and small business people? Will all of this be bolstered by the sulking Ted Heath and by Willie Whitelaw, desperately plugging the holes in the dykes of party unity?

Such a government would be presented to us as offering new hope for a more humane and secure future. There would be whispers about reducing unemployment, reviving the National Health Service, smoothing the rougher edges of the deepest poverty. It might be a propitious time to overlook the fact that these leaders are already associated with wretched failure, in the governments of Heath, Douglas-Home and Macmillan. There is no reason to believe that they will be any more successful in the future.

One Nation is in any case not an exclusively Conservative idea. Every Labour government comes to power with the same sort of promise, to unite the interests of everyone into a great drive for competitive British exports, full employment, a controlled economy, efficient state services and so on. They may call their policies by different names the National Plan, the Social Contract but essentially they are the same as One Nation and they suffer from the same basic fallacy.

Capitalism is not a society of unity. It is based on class ownership of the means of life and therefore on class conflict. It cannot be controlled or moulded by politicians or economic experts into something which it is not. It cannot operate in the interests of the majority of its people. It must continue as a system of anarchy, poverty, disease and war.

All of that is taught to us by experience and by an analysis of capitalism. Unless the working class act to abolish capitalism, the prospect is dismal — a succession of ineffective governments distinguishable only by their style of empty promises and of the excuses they give for their impotence. We have had time enough to accustom ourselves to that idea — and time to act on what we have learned from it.


Policeman’s brawl

The role of the police is primarily one of institutional coercion on behalf of ruling-class power. Anything else — helping old ladies across the road, for example — is entirely incidental. This being the case, it is plain to see that activities such as we have witnessed on. say, the miners' picket lines, or at Grunwick, are not in any way exceptional but rather conform to the normal expectations of the class that recruits and pays the police. In exchange for these relatively lucrative services the police in turn can normally expect to be shielded from prosecution or conviction should their activities kill or maim. The cases of Jimmy Kelly and Blair Peach are only two of the many instances where this has proved true.

So what about the latest example of protection from the consequences of brutal thuggery for which, in the knee-jerk terms of the Director of Public Prosecutions, there exists insufficient evidence on which to prefer charges? We refer, of course, to the vanload of policemen looking for a punch-up in Holloway who gratuitously attacked five boys, two of whom — the black ones, significantly enough — ended up in hospital.

On this topic, somewhat surprisingly, the Guardian has managed to serve up something a little less bland than its usual jesuitic fare. Its second leader of 5 February. "Police beyond the law", contains much that is unquestionably accurate, including the clear recognition that the government is protecting the police. Of course it is. But what sticks in the Guardian's craw is any nasty revolutionary notion that such partisanship is class-based. The inescapable truth is that capitalism's police, "right" or "wrong", have a bounden duty to close ranks in tribal complicity on behalf of their and our masters.


Kick start

In the month that saw politicians stabbing each other in the back and rival groups of capitalists fighting it out for a share in Westland helicopters, life for the working class went on pretty much as usual.

The number of people registered as unemployed rose to 3.4 million. Shortly before the figures were announced, the Job Start scheme was launched by the government. This is the latest attempt at cosmetic surgery to conceal capitalism's failure to provide people with employment and hence the means to live. It is to be run in nine key areas (not necessarily those with the highest unemployment) and involves unemployed workers being offered £20 a week to "top up" their wages if they take a job which pays less than £80 a week. In other words, the government is subsidising bosses who pay low wages. The rationale is that the long term unemployed lose confidence and need encouragement to go back to work. Of course what they are really worried about is that unemployed workers who realise that they will only be a few pounds a week better off by taking a job that pays very little may decide not to bother. But having bribed workers to take on low paid work with the extra £20. the government will withdraw the grant after six months.

Capitalism depends on workers selling their labour power for the lowest wage or salary that employers can get away with paying. Workers are educated, trained and conditioned into believing that wage slavery is freely entered into and necessary to human dignity: to work for a living, no matter how badly paid the job, is better than "living off the state". But if workers see through this myth and decide that it is not worth going to work for a few pounds more than they can get in benefits, then the state has a variety of ways of coercing people into going to work for low wages. YOPS and YTS schemes have been used to try to instil the work ethic into young unemployed people and now Job Start is to be used for the same purpose with older unemployed workers.

Print unions fight for survival (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not for the first time The Times newspaper is at the centre of a bitter industrial dispute. In November 1978 Lord Thomson, then owner of the paper, decided that he was no longer willing to run it at a loss. He demanded from the unions agreement to accept new printing technology, the elimination of “unofficial" strikes and a big reduction of staff. Failing to get agreement he locked out the workers and The Times was off the streets for nearly a year. When work was resumed it was on terms far short of what Thomson wanted and two years later he pulled out and sold to Rupert Murdoch. In January 1986 Murdoch took the printing of his papers, The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World out of Fleet Street to his new plants at Wapping and Glasgow.

At Wapping printing is being carried on by 500 workers belonging to the electrical workers' union and the print unions, in place of the former 5,000 members of the print unions, all of whom were sacked when they came out on strike. Murdoch admitted that the changes had not been fully effective. There was a fall in the number of copies printed and considerable difficulty arose over distribution, in spite of the fact that in London it was taken over by a new fleet of vans. Murdoch said he was confident that all the difficulties would be overcome in a few weeks. Print union officials said it was only the beginning of a struggle which could go on for months.

Much had happened since 1978 to change the position of the unions and the management, including the building of the Wapping plant at a cost of £100 million of which £7 million was spent on American computer equipment. The law governing strikes and picketing had been tightened by the Thatcher government, and the print unions had already been defeated in their resistance to the use of the new technology by Eddy Shah, who is publishing a new paper in March without employing members of those unions. Conflict with the law in that battle had already cost the National Graphical Association heavily. The Financial Times (27 December 1985) estimated that the cost, including further court claims still pending, may reach £2.000,000.

A similar struggle over new technology was going on at the same time between the print unions and other newspaper proprietors including Robert Maxwell, owner of the Mirror group of papers. That dispute was settled by agreement with the unions, which led Maxwell to say rude things in the Mirror (27 January) about his rival. Whereas, said Maxwell, he had followed ‘The British Way" of negotiating with the unions. Rupert Murdoch, importing brutal tactics from Australia and America, "prefers to destroy them". Lest it be thought that "The British Way" differs essentially in its purpose from the Murdoch way. it should be noted that the Mirror has also got rid of 2.000 printers, "most by early retirement or voluntary redundancy".

At the time of writing it is not possible to know with certainty what will be the outcome of the dispute but the prospects for the unions look extremely bleak. They were counting on the help of the TUC and other unions, but already most of the journalists, though against the instructions of their own union, have accepted Murdoch's terms. The printers are hoping that the Transport and General Workers' Union will succeed in blacking the distribution of Murdoch s papers and that the TUC will condemn and possibly expel the Electrical Workers' Union, which however shows no sign at present of obeying TUC instructions. Many transport workers too, are ignoring the instructions of their union not to carry Murdoch's papers.

Basically what the struggle is all about is the ceaseless development of new techniques as a feature of capitalism in the search for cheaper methods of production. The capitalists who adopt the new and cheaper methods capture the market. Those who fail to do so go out of business, as has happened with several newspapers and threatens others. There have been many such developments in the history of printing: from the hand compositor setting individual letters, to the keyboard monotype and linotype and latterly to the new system which enables journalists to print the final product without the involvement of compositors. The writing on the wall for the London newspapers is the claim by Eddy Shah that he will be able to sell his newspapers at less than half the price of existing papers. The whole newspaper industry has to adopt the new technology or face bankruptcy, because the advertisers' money will flow to the cheaper journals.

Workers in every occupation have always been affected by this aspect of capitalism. The railways almost destroyed the canal companies and horse transport, only to be hit themselves by motor and air transport. Sailing ships were replaced by coal fired steamships and then by oil burning ships. The inland telegraph service has gone. There has been an enormous reduction in the numbers of coal miners and farm workers. Along with having to meet competition from oil, gas and nuclear power the coal industry has seen a change which replaces men in the pits by workers in other industries. Before the newly opened Selby pit produced a single ton of coal, £1,000 million had been spent on new coal cutting machines and other appliances. In agriculture the old. nearly self-sufficient farms have been replaced by those dependent on a vast input of fertilisers, weed-killers and pesticides from the chemical industry. Jobs on farms have been replaced by jobs in the chemical industry.

The trade unions, in seeking to protect their members' jobs, have had to make a hard choice. They can hope to delay the introduction of the new techniques and can often do so, as have the Fleet Street printers, but at the end of the road they either have to negotiate a reduction of jobs, as on Maxwell's Mirror, or risk losing all the jobs as on Murdoch's Times group of papers.

The stock argument of capitalist economists has always been that workers should not resist the new techniques but welcome them on the ground that if the price of the product is reduced its market will expand and there will be more, not fewer, jobs. In a limited way this is sometimes true. Following the publication of the Daily Mail in 1896. and other cheaper papers with wider circulations the numbers of workers employed in the printing and paper trades continued to increase. And it is reported from America (Sunday Times 19 January) that a similar development has taken place there, following the use of new technology.

  The new technology revolution in American newspapers has brought increased circulations. a wider range of publications, and an increase in newspaper jobs — in spite of reduced manning in the composing rooms.

The increase of other jobs is of course no cause for gratification to the compositors whose jobs have gone. In general, technical developments hit hardest at older workers, unable to adapt to the new requirements.

And the argument of the capitalist economists ignores the fact that not only is capitalism always creating some unemployment but periodically it rises to peak levels, as at present and the parties of capitalism can do absolutely nothing to prevent it.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Socialism everywhere (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Years ago, socialist propagandists used to point out to the reformists that their work of popularising old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, etc., would only end up with the openly capitalist parties dishing them by adopting the proposals for themselves and getting the credit. To clinch the matter, socialists added that a time would come when capitalists would steal the word "socialism" itself and use it to gain a further lease of life for capitalism. Events have faithfully followed this anticipation. If what they say were really true, the workers' difficulty today would be to find some spot where socialism isn't. First, there are Russia's 170 millions supposed to be living under socialism. Now Germany. with its “National Socialist Party" in the saddle, has just been officially declared to be socialist. The Berlin correspondent of the Economist (February 1st) writes as follows: ". . . it is affirmed that Socialism is under way (indeed, this week it is officially stated to have already replaced capitalism)." Then the three Scandinavian countries, with their Labour Parties in power, are described as "socialist" in the English Labour Press, along with New Zealand and Western Australia. At home we have the old-fashioned section of the Labour Party still insisting that the Post Office is socialism, while the new gang (Mr Morrison) calls the Transport Board "socialisation." and tells us that we have a socialist London County Council. Where the Government is not controlled by a Party calling itself socialist, it often has one or more leaders who were Labour Party stalwarts, e.g., MacDonald and Thomas, Mr Lyons the Australian Premier, and Mussolini and several of his colleagues.

Only knowledge of socialist principles will make the workers proof against being misled by capitalist and Labour Party misrepresentation.

[Editorial from the March 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard.]

Terms time for teachers (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February, I obtained an interview with John Bills, the West Midlands representative on the National Executive of the National Union of Teachers. By coincidence, it was exactly a year since the teachers' unions in England and Wales began their industrial action in support of their pay claim.

Like most TV viewers and readers of cheap newspapers. I have found it very difficult to be sure of the facts in the dispute. I know that a large number of parents are angry at having to fetch children away from school at odd hours. I know that there is increasing concern about the examination prospects of older pupils. I know that the police have been receiving complaints about the behaviour of youngsters on the streets when they would normally have been in school. But about the teachers' side of the case I have heard very little .

This is not very surprising. The present government's union-bashing policy has received careful but consistent support from the media. And most people, workers themselves in other jobs not under immediate threat, have watched — some have even applauded or collaborated as one section after another has been isolated, attacked and defeated. GCHQ workers, the miners, newspaper printers are just some of those whose downfall has been carefully engineered and publicised.

Now it appears that teachers' unity is breaking down in the face of relentless government pressure and bad publicity. The representatives of the National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Women Teachers are balloting their members with a recommendation to accept the terms offered by the local education authorities, their direct employers. Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Education and Science has refused to support any agreement based on these terms with extra government money. The National Union of Teachers, the largest union, has refused to accept the terms.

The recession
John Bills is the Head Teacher of a junior school in Oldbury, near Birmingham. The school was cheaply built at the back of houses about twenty-five years ago. Now it is deteriorating badly. It needs a lot of money spending on it. but it won't get it. Pupil numbers have fallen over the years with the declining birthrate. Like other industries, education is going through a recession. Thousands of teachers have left the service, and real salaries have continued to fall with inflation in spite of annual pay negotiations. A joint working party set up by the unions and the employers in 1984 concluded that, in the ten years since the pay structure was last revised, teachers' real income had fallen by 34 per cent. The salary structure is very complicated. There are over 300 different pay levels for teachers in schools (quite apart from colleges, polytechnics and universities). It is designed to produce competitiveness and hierarchical divisions among people who will pass these values on to the rising generations. NUT policy has always resisted this trend, and its present campaign for a flat-rate increase of £23 a week has aimed at improving the conditions of the lowest paid teachers in particular.

A new teacher who has satisfactorily completed three years' full-time training is paid £5,442 (£104.65 a week). If he or she takes a degree, the general practice these days, this is raised to £5,883 by giving them two years seniority. With thirteen years seniority their salaries will have risen to £8,556 (£164.53 a week). Anything above this must be reached by gaining promotion.

Why not strike?
Teachers earning this sort of money are unable to afford a strike. Their trade unions have no strike funds like those of the older industrial unions with long histories of battles with their employers. It is only in recent years that teachers have been forced to recognise that they, too, belong to that huge class of people in society that has to sell its mental and physical energies to employers on the labour market in order to get a living.

In this respect they are weak when it comes to a struggle to resist reductions in their real wages. So they have wisely avoided an expensive all-out strike. But they have strengths too. A large proportion of the work that most of them do in practice is not acknowledged in their contracts. Officially they are not paid for running sports or clubs or school trips outside school hours They are not paid for running errands in their cars or taking children abroad on holidays or attending meetings on new examination structures or meeting parents or supervising pupils during their lunch break or taking other teachers' classes when they are absent. All this is expected of them traditionally as what has come to be called "good will". And it is this which they have withdrawn to a large extent over the past year, together with very brief, selective strikes, often of only a few hours. The disruptive effect has been considerable, but inevitably it has injured children and their parents rather than the employers or the teachers' ultimate paymaster, the state. It is. however, precisely this strength in teachers' hands which the government, in the person of Keith Joseph, is determined to take away from them.

Big deal
Joseph has insisted that everything included under the heading of "good will" should become compulsory before teachers are given any more money. And the money that he has been talking about in rather shifty global terms would amount to a pay increase of just over 2 per cent a year for the next four years, with no preference given to lower paid teachers. He has mentioned the figure of £1.25 billion, but central government would provide less than half of this. Local authorities would have to find the rest out of their existing budgets. In addition, Joseph has already begun to earmark some of it in advance. He has had second thoughts about compelling teachers to do dinner duty. He has instructed education authorities to set aside £50 million in the first year to pay part-time staff to do the job. Subsequent years will probably take more.

Little deal
It is not surprising that the teachers' unions were united in finding the government's proposals unattractive. In comparison, the terms offered by the local education authorities have begun to seem almost acceptable after nearly two years without any increase — at least that is how it looks to some teachers. And perhaps this has been part of the government's strategy. The employers have offered a 6.9 per cent increase. For those higher up in the salary and management hierarchy (heavily represented in the NAS/UWT) this could mean a substantial improvement. For the lowest paid teachers it would give only an extra £7 a week.

But the offer is not without strings. And the strings are very similar to those of Keith Joseph: to qualify for the 6.9 per cent, teachers must first call off all industrial action and "return to full normal duties". Then they must accept a ruling as to what constitute full normal duties, and these would become contractually obligatory. The ruling will be made by a three-man team set up by ACAS (the government's conciliation and arbitration service). In other words, unconditional surrender for a one-off pay increase.

So the government is now nearly half-way home. The teachers' unions have been split, and for the same reasons as other trade unions have been broken in the recent past: some sections thought they stood to gain, even though others lost. This can seem like hard-headed (if selfish) realism in hard times. It is not. In the teachers' case, the employers' offer was put on the table only because they were taking united action; and because that action was disruptive without weakening the teachers. If, as seems likely, NAS/UWT members vote to accept the employers' terms without the NUT members, then they will have sold both strengths: unity and freedom of action. The next time there is a confrontation with the employers, they will be without any bargaining power at all. That is short-sighted, not hard-headed. I learnt a lot when I went back to school that morning.

Ron Cook

Star Wars (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of January, the American space shuttle Challenger blasted its way, not into space, but into oblivion, with a spectacular televised explosion. The seven crew members were all killed, including a schoolteacher who had been intended to be the first civilian in space — part of the propaganda battle to give the massively expensive space programme some public respectability. But such projects are not primarily about propaganda and certainly not about the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Half of the shuttle's flights are for specifically military purposes, and it plays an important role in preparations for the latest of Reagan's fantasies, the Star Wars programme.

Star Wars is officially known by the euphemistic title of Strategic Defence initiative. The declared intention is to place a "dome'' or “umbrella" around the United States, making it immune to attack from ballistic missiles launched from Russia. Existing anti-ballistic missile systems work on the principle of destroying or disabling the incoming warheads as they re-enter the earth's atmosphere over their target. Star Wars envisages this as simply the third line of defence in a far more sophisticated network. The first element of this would be to attack the missile boosters just after they are launched and before they release individual warheads, which would in turn be the subject of the second set of interceptors. If each layer of defence destroys 90 per cent of its targets, only 0.1 per cent of the warheads launched will reach their destination.

It is the first part of this network — against the booster phase — that represents the biggest innovation and is most dependent on new technology. Various kinds of beam weapons have been proposed to accomplish this aspect, including such exotica as X-ray lasers. All would be incredibly risky and expensive — one proposal, for instance, would require for its functioning the use of at least one-fifth of the entire American electricity output. Add to this the fact that whatever system is chosen would be of enormous complexity, could never be operationally tested and would have to work perfectly at the first time of asking. It is no wonder that many leading American scientists have flatly stated that the whole Star Wars project is technically just not feasible.

The arguments about Star Wars display the logic of the madhouse, but this after all is the logic of capitalism. The American government's justification for Star Wars is that it is. in Reagan's words, "about peace, not war". With the US supposedly immune from nuclear attack, there would be no further place for the deterrence doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD), which nuclear ideologues claim has so far kept the nuclear peace. Instead there would, it is claimed, be a real incentive on all sides for drastic reduction of nuclear weapons and their eventual complete abandonment.

Sceptical critics have pointed out a number of flaws in this cosy picture. One is that if the Russian rulers saw as imminent the installation of an impregnable nuclear shield over the United States, they might be minded to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike first; Star Wars would then have triggered, not prevented, nuclear war. Another shortcoming in the Reaganesque logic is due to a change of emphasis which has taken place in the Star Wars plans. In place of the original vision of watertight security, realisation of the problems with this has caused its replacement by the idea of almost total security — a leaky umbrella, as it were. But this radically changes the options available, for the revised version is only useful for defending military targets (though this has naturally not been stressed in US government propaganda). The reason for this is that if only a single warhead out of one hundred launched at a city gets through to its target, that city is destroyed. But even the leakiest umbrella may be able to delay the destruction of missile silos long enough for a retaliatory nuclear strike to be launched. In addition, a leaky umbrella might suffice to beat off an attack from any Russian response to an American first strike — which would make such a first strike a more "attractive" proposition to American hawks. It should be noted, too, that Star Wars offers no defence against low-flying cruise missiles or submarine-launched missiles.

It should not be thought, however, that Star Wars represents the first step in the militarisation of space, for this is something that was achieved long ago. Over three thousand satellites have been placed in orbit since Sputnik I in 1957. and three-quarters of these have had military purposes. Of the huge sums of money spent every year on space research by Russia and America, about half is on military work — not taking account of the fact that much work done for civilian reasons may have military applications. The simple idea of dropping bombs from satellites is out of the question (the bomb would simply continue in orbit) but ballistic missiles, spy satellites and anti-satellite weapons are all very real.

Even under capitalism, though, not all uses of space are military. Satellites already provide masses of other kinds of information about the earth: the position of mineral deposits; the routes of oil slicks and icebergs; developments in the weather; the effects of soil erosion; the likely location of earthquakes; and so on. Some of the information which can be gathered in this way is incredibly detailed. For instance, healthy and diseased wheat reflect infra-red radiation to very different degrees, thus making it entirely feasible for satellites to provide data leading to discovery of the amount of diseased wheat growing in a particular area.

Satellites are also useful for communications purposes, such as international telephone calls. In addition, they can monitor for distress signals. One such system is said to have saved over two hundred lives (in maritime emergencies and forced aircraft landings) in a two-year period. Such undertakings demonstrate that the global co-operation envisaged in a socialist society is not at all outlandish. All the information obtained from space could then be used for the benefit of humanity, not to defend the wealth and power of a few.

There are, of course, international treaties concerning space. In 1967. the United Nations negotiated the signing of the Outer Space Treaty which, for example, bans military bases on the moon. But it does not outlaw all military uses of space, nor does it define the crucial and vague term, "space”. A particular bone of contention is what is known as the geostationary ring. This is the area of space 36.000 kilometres above the equator: satellites located here remain fixed in relation to an observer on the earth, so that they never set or rise, thus offering obvious advantages from a communications point of view. At present "slots" in this geostationary ring are allocated by a branch of the International Telecommunications Union. But in 1976 a group of representatives of countries on the equator met and issued a declaration to the effect that any country on the equator automatically owned that portion of the geostationary ring that was directly above it. Thus are capitalist property rights extended into the vacuum of space.

Which brings us back to Star Wars. The first reactions of Western European rulers were consternation and disarray. The French government opposed the whole idea, the British government was divided (Thatcher for, Howe against). Then came the news that $26 billion was earmarked for Star Wars research over the next five years, and that some of this might be coming Europe's way. Already. Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh has received a grant of $150,000 to work on optical computers. The French government is now encouraging French companies to compete for a share in these research funds. But there is no doubt that the bulk of the money will go to the large American arms manufacturers such as Rockwell, Boeing and Lockheed.

What a waste it all is. All the resources and know-how which, throughout the world, are devoted to "perfecting" the means of killing could so easily be devoted to ending hunger and poverty. But to do that means campaigning not for a change of government or for nuclear disarmament, but for the only line of defence against war — the establishment of socialism.

Paul Bennett

Socialist Correspondence Club (1986)

Party News from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1983 a Socialist Correspondence Club was formed with the aim of breaking down the sense of isolation felt by many socialists across the world. Since then the number of participants has grown substantially and now includes readers of the Socialist Standard in Britain, Ireland, America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Poland, South Africa, Zimbabwe and France.

The Club's membership list is now being updated. Would readers who wish to join please contact the co ordinator. Louise Cox, at Flat 3. The Mount. Lower Street. Haslemere. Surrey GU27 2PD. England, stating their name and address, and most importantly, any specific interests they have. The deadline for all letters is the end of April. Those already on the list are asked to advise of any change of circumstances.

Shortly afterwards a complete list of members will be sent to all participants for each to decide with whom to start a correspondence. It is also planned to include with the list the first newsletter of SCC. This will include advice on initiating socialist activity in different parts of the world and details of literature and tapes which could help to this end. Short items of news and information should be sent to the co-ordinator as soon as possible.

A highly adaptable animal (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Compared with a lion, a gorilla, or even a horse, the human animal is weak, slow and defenceless. And yet homo sapiens has become the dominant species of the planet. Our species developed none of the specialised attributes that have fitted other creatures so perfectly for their environments. Physiologically, we have hardly evolved at all since we became a distinct species. Whereas other species have evolved to fit their environments and the available food supplies, human beings have remained unspecialised, but very adaptable. Instead of their bodies altering to suit their environments they have altered their environments to suit themselves.

Human beings spread across the surface of the planet, occupying tropical rain forests, deserts, temperate regions and even Arctic ice. They lived upon virtually every type of food possible, from seal fat to tropical fruits and desert insects. And from this variety of life-patterns arose wide differences in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, feelings and behaviour. Almost every conceivable kind of belief and behaviour has been adopted by some human beings at some time somewhere. Although we are one species, from the jungle of New Guinea to the streets of New York, the inhabitants of different places may think and act in quite dissimilar ways.

And yet a baby, carried across the world from New Guinea to New York and brought up there, could become a complete New Yorker, with the accent, the food preferences, the personal habits, the love of baseball and the Stars and Stripes, and the average tendency towards obesity, heart disease, divorce and crime. The basic animal is the same, but all behaviour patterns are shaped by the society in which the child is brought up.

Making a living
But if societies mould individuals, different types of society are themselves shaped by a number of external factors, as well as by the activities of individuals and classes within them. The basic needs of the human animal are, like those of any other mammal, food, drink, warmth and sex; but these needs have not been easily met. For most of human existence the lives of the great majority have been dominated by scarcity. The methods of making a living from the land and sea have therefore been the major influences upon the sorts of lives people have led, the types of society that have been formed, and the attitudes and behaviour of the members of those societies.

The development of gathering roots and fruit, organised hunting and fishing, the growth of herding with its nomadic pattern of life, the emergence of agriculture, encouraging settlements, and the growth of towns and cities — all this has repeatedly modified relationships within societies. It has modified the material conditions of life and led to the accumulation of riches for some and poverty for others.

The discovery and utilisation of metals, and the development of more and more complex tools and machines have often gone hand in hand with progress in methods of making a living, increasing the amount of wealth produced per head of the population many times over; but the benefits of these improvements have not been shared by all members of society. After the rise of settled townships on an agricultural base in Mesopotamia, trade between localities developed; for the first time the product of hands and brains took on an alien life as commodities to be bartered, and then bought with that abstract commodity — money. Property, realised at the boundaries between tribes, began to impinge within. Laws of inheritance were formulated and the first property society developed when people came to be bought and sold as slaves.

Chattel slavery gave way to feudalism, and feudalism to capitalism; and still all the land and factories and mines and transport are owned by a small minority of the population, who make the laws to protect their wealth, and employ the majority to work for them.

Employers and employees
The fundamental division between workers and employers in the structure of modem society affects all the relationships within it. It affects feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and has a fundamental effect upon the personality of every individual. The child brought up in a family owning a few million shares, a few thousand acres, and four or five houses to live in has a completely different outlook on life from that of the child brought up in the average factory or office worker's semi-detached house on a housing estate. The children born into a family with adequate capital realise as they grow up that they are part of an élite with the freedom to chose how they occupy their lives. They may also realise that, although they will not necessarily do the hiring and firing themselves when they grow up. and may never even see the mines, factories and offices where their wealth is made, their inheritance of capital will make them employers of other human beings. The vast majority of children, on the other hand, become aware that their future depends upon being able to find someone to employ them. If they want to succeed in this, not only their education but their dress, their manners, their attitude to authority, even their political opinion must conform to the standards laid down by employers.

The employment they must seek is a fundamental part of a society in which the market, the price mechanism, the profit motive have come to dominate almost every aspect of life. There is a tendency for all relationships to be reduced to that of buyer and seller. And the interests of buyer and seller are opposed to one another. Good business consists of getting the better of someone. Competition means winning by fair means if possible, by foul means if necessary. The fictional heroes are gangsters, ruthless tycoons, spies "licensed to kill”, or policemen using the same kind of unconventional methods.

Contradictory values
This, therefore, is the atmosphere in which most children grow up. We are born essentially the same living beings as our ancestors of thousands of years ago; but we learn to think and feel and act from what goes on around us. From school, the newspapers and television, we take in the knowledge of the world's hunger and disease. At other times we learn that “butter mountains" are being piled up. milk poured down quarries, wheat burned, or crops ploughed back into the ground. We may not bring these facts together in our mind to raise questions about the system by which society is run indeed we are actually discouraged by the schools and the media from doing so. Instead we are persuaded to believe that the present organisation of society is eternal — even divinely ordained — and that it is ordinary people like ourselves with our selfishness. laziness and greed, who are to blame. And so. unresolved, these contradictions remain at the back of our mind, causing confusion, frustration, and a vague sense of guilty helplessness.

At school and at home we are repeatedly told that kindliness, cooperation and constructiveness are the guidelines of good social behaviour, but the films about war. robbery and violent crime that form one of television's staple diets teach very different lessons: there are always "baddies" against whom violence is not only justified but necessary and even enjoyable — Nazis, terrorists. Apaches, criminals, mad scientists. Martians, agitators. Russian spies, and so on.

We are taught that hard work and thrift are the recipe for success in our future "career"; and then occasionally we see members of the ruling class in the news, who never do a day's work in their lives and spend money like water, playing at fox-hunting on their ten thousand acre estates, or racing ocean-going yachts, or shooting grouse on their Scottish moors, while our hard-working, thrifty parents get worn out before our eyes with years of work and worry. Our potential for behaving with affection, generosity, trust and creativity is made to seem naive and ridiculous up against the power of wealth in a society of ruthless competition.

There are many different reactions to the disillusionment (sometimes called 'maturity") that this causes, and none of them is good for the individual. The commonest, because it avoids conflict with authority and the forces of law and order, is an almost complete refusal to be concerned with the problems of society. Workers who take this line silently or openly admit that they cannot make sense of what goes on; and they absorb themselves energetically in their darts team or football supporters' club, hobby or garden, trying to remain unaffected by the drudgery of their daily job. or the threats of unemployment or nuclear war.

The original ad from the March 1986 issue.

Others look for scapegoats to blame: black people (if they are white), white people (if they are black), men (if they are women). Jews, foreigners, atheists, trade unionists, and so on. The fashions change from time to time.

Still others become completely cynical turning to crime or something close to it. in an attempt to beat the system and to get hold of the only thing which seems to have any value money. The use of tranquillisers is widespread and the number of people who receive psychiatric treatment at some time in their lives has risen rapidly. We behave like this because we are forced to live under conflicting pressures which, as individuals, we do not have the power to resolve.

All of us. whether we remain relatively sane or not. are inevitably contaminated by the social values that provide the real motive power of capitalist society. The behaviour of capital in its urgent, relentless drive to make profit, which can be reinvested as capital to make yet more profit, regardless of human need or suffering, is the essence of avarice or greed. The very structure of modern society, in which the minority own and control all the means of producing and distributing wealth — and employ all the powers of the state to preserve their monopoly this class-divided structure has insecurity and self-interest at the foundations of society. None of us can fail to be affected by it.

Yet, adaptable as we are, we cannot completely fit the pattern that modem capitalism demands, because it is inconsistent and, at times, directly contradictory. Articles and advertisements regularly appear in magazines and newspapers explaining how we can become rich by setting up in business and applying "hard-headed" (ruthless) business principles. But when workers, especially those organised in trade unions, apply such principles in wage negotiations there is a chorus of condemnation from the press. We hear, only too often, that "there is no sentiment in business"; but as workers we are exhorted equally often to be "loyal" to the company we work for. Modern wars are fought over power and wealth — as becomes only too clear when the truth comes out afterwards — but they are always presented to the working class as fights for freedom of one sort or another, in order to persuade us to risk our lives in killing workers from other countries.

This inconsistency is inevitable. Capitalist society is not a collection of individuals with common interests and a common set of guiding principles, it is a society deeply divided, at odds with itself. Class conflict was built into the foundations and shows up every day in its workings. To criticise workers as being selfish, greedy, unco-operative, deceitful, violent, when these are the main characteristics of the nations and the businesses with which we are compelled to be involved all our lives is to add insult to two hundred years of injury. Certainly these are anti-social forms of behaviour; but then this is an inhuman social system. As long as we, its working-class majority, allow it to continue, we can expect nothing better.

(An extract from our most recent pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism: How We Live And How We Could Live.)

Profits from diseases (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

All over the world ill-health and premature death are caused by capitalism's ruthless drive for profits. It is tragic that this should be the case, given technological advances and medical knowledge of the causes of major diseases in both the "underdeveloped" and industrialised countries.

Cancers are a common cause of death in the West but are mainly preventable, being related to smoking, occupational hazards, environmental pollution or diet. Every year more than 50.000 people in Britain die prematurely as a result of cigarette smoking, or from diseases to which cigarette smoking substantially contributes. Although the habit is known to be directly linked with lung cancer, heart disease and chronic bronchitis there has never been any attempt to regulate the highly profitable tobacco industry. The treasury receives about £4,000 million a year from tobacco tax and in return makes a token gesture of warning the public of the dangers of smoking. By contrast the tobacco industry spends £80 million a year on advertising to persuade the public that smoking is either manly or the hallmark of sophistication and success.

In underdeveloped countries the problem is worse: in the absence of information of the health dangers of tobacco consumption and unrestricted advertising, cigarettes, often with a high tar content, are marketed in a quite unscrupulous way. The expansion of tobacco growing has also taken land from socially more necessary but less profitable food production.

In Britain there are about 2,000 deaths a year as a direct result of working in the asbestos industry or living near an asbestos factory. The industry employs over 20.000 people and is worth £200 million. But in spite of knowledge of the dangers of asbestos for the last eighty years, regulations to control the levels of asbestos dust have only been introduced gradually and inadequately since 1932 and. in a number of cases, not properly enforced. The Asbestos Information Committee, faced with public pressure and fears over the dangers of asbestos in the 1970s. spent about £500,000 advertising the cheapness, usefulness and "safeness" of the material. But public anxiety over blue asbestos led to the closure of some British factories and the transfer of mining to countries where the absence of regulations allows greater profits to be made, at the cost of workers' lives.

A number of other industrial processes are hazardous. Exposure to benzene can cause leukaemia; angiosarcoma (a rare liver cancer), cancers of the lung, digestive tract and brain can be caused by working with vinyl chloride; working with acrylic fibres increases the risk of developing lung and colon cancer; pesticides, particularly 2,4,5.—T, are dangerous carcinogens and. in some cases, cause severe birth defects in later generations.

The response of the chemical industry has been unvarying: to deny the health risk; to withhold information (the report on the causes of the Seveso explosion was not made available to the Health and Safety Executive in Britain or the trade unions); to put pressure on governments by claiming that the cost of pre-market testing and implementing safer working methods would be too expensive and lead to factory closures. And, as was the case with mining blue asbestos, multinational firms often move their factories to countries where controls are more lax if profitability is threatened. The tragedies of Bhopal and Seveso illustrate the devious ways in which multinational industries evade safety regulations in countries like Britain and the United States by exploiting workers who are inadequately protected by safety laws.

  . . . by offering compensation, the state recognises the risk to workers. However, it also accepts the continuation of the risk at its existing level and as a result it is the British worker who bears the burden of proof. Such flagrant discrepancies are not due to lack of information. but reflect the influence of industry on the regulatory process and a lack of commitment by government bodies to the removal of unnecessary cancer hazards from the workplace (L. Doyal and S. Epstein (Eds). Cancer in Britain, Pluto Press)

A number of food additives have been shown to cause cancer in animals yet they continue to be used to make food more attractive. mould resistant, or sugar-free in the case of saccharin. The production of food is grotesquely and artificially manipulated under capitalism to provide maximum profits. The European Economic Community maintains a policy of restricted food production. having recently cut back milk production by nine per cent, while 82 million acres of land were taken out of food production in the United States in 1982.

All of this happens despite millions of deaths from starvation or diseases associated with malnutrition because it is the ability to pay, and not social needs, that determines who will eat under capitalism. But, in the more “affluent" countries profits are increased by extending the number of processes which food undergoes. Easily digested junk-foods with a low-fibre, high-fat and high-sugar content are sold at inflated prices. Obesity, heart disease, bad teeth, constipation and cancer of the bowel are all problems which have, in some degree, been blamed on the refined foods consumed in industrialised countries. The health conscious person can buy — usually at a higher price — products such as bran, which have been originally removed in the refining process. To charge more for not adulterating food must be one of the most brazen forms of profiteering imaginable.

There are nearly 7,500 drug preparations available, a figure which has more than doubled in the last 20 years in spite of the fact that the majority of health problems could be treated with less than 200 drugs. The proliferation of drugs has not been due to their effectiveness; indeed, the reverse is the case, with nearly one in thirty hospital patients in Britain being admitted as a result of the side-effects of drugs.

Drugs such as Thalidomide and Debendox have caused severe birth defects; oral and injectable contraceptives have caused cancers of the liver, breast and uterus; female sex hormones have led to birth defects and cancers; anti-arthritic drugs frequently lead to ulcers, and "Opren" resulted in 61 deaths in a two-year period. Products of dubious benefit, or even those which are positively dangerous, are marketed with callous disregard for the well-being of the consumer. Drugs which are only available on prescription or restricted in Britain are sold over the counter in underdeveloped countries, allowing extra profits to be made at the cost of people's health.

The environment has been damaged in the quest to produce goods as cheaply as possible to undercut competitors. Inner city pollution leads to higher rates of chest diseases such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema; the smogs of the 1950s forced some legislation to control smoke emission from factories, but with competition to produce goods more cheaply in a time of recession there have been calls to relax environmental controls. Dangerous chemicals and radioactive waste are dumped with scant regard for public well-being, while in the vicinity of nuclear power stations deaths from leukaemia exceed the national average.

Ill health and premature death are inexorably tied to the profit system; drugs could be safer; dangerous food additives need not be used; the pressure on young people to smoke and the stresses of employment which reinforce the habit could be removed; food could be produced for all of the world's population; working with chemicals could be safer; pollution of the environment is not inevitable; the elderly need not die from the cold. But it will require the abolition of capitalism and of production for profit: only a society which produces for human needs can stop workers' lives being squandered.

Carl Pinel

Editorial: What We Mean By Socialism (1986)

Editorial from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In socialism there will be no social organ of coercion — in short, no state, not even a so- called "workers' state" — and so no police, no armed forces, no courts, no prisons, no machinery to coerce people to do what they might not want to do.

Socialism will be a stateless society in which people will co-operate, on the basis of common ownership and democratic control. to produce what they need as individuals and as communities. This co-operation will be entirely voluntary and so will have to be undertaken because people want to, because they realise that it is necessary and in their best self-interest. In other words, because they have socialist understanding.

Clearly, since such a society can only function with the voluntary co-operation and conscious participation of its members, it can only be established by people who want it and who understand all its implications. By definition socialism cannot be established by a minority. It is just absurd — a contradiction in terms — to suggest that some minority could force the majority to co-operate voluntarily.

Socialism will be a stateless society because it will be a classless society — classless because it will be based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Or, put another way, the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth — the land, the farms, the mines, the factories, the offices, the warehouses, means of transport and communications will belong to nobody. There will be no private or state property rights over them. They will simply be there, to be used by the members of society to produce what they require to satisfy their needs. The concept of "property" will be replaced by that of "use"; legal property rights enforceable by the state will give way to democratically-agreed rules for using the means of production, a situation summed up by the term "democratic control".

Since capitalism — the social system which will be replaced by socialism — is already a world-wide system, so will socialism be. It will be a world community in which all that is in and on the earth will have become the common heritage of all humanity. Territorial rights over parts of the globe will disappear along with property rights.

On the basis of common ownership and democratic control, production can be reoriented towards what is, after all, its natural goal: to providing the useful things that human beings need to live and enjoy life. In other words, production for profit, production for sale, and production for the market will give way to production solely and directly for use. In fact profits, sales, markets — and money, wages, banks and all the other paraphernalia of buying and selling — will completely disappear in socialism. It will be a moneyless society in which goods will be produced and distributed simply to satisfy some human need or other.

In socialism, just as money and monetary calculation will disappear from the sphere of production, so they will disappear from the sphere of distribution too. Here the rule will be free access according to self-defined needs. People will be able to go into stores and take what they need without having to hand over either money or some "labour card" or any other kind of ration ticket. This will be possible, firstly, because the elimination of capitalism will enable society to produce enough to satisfy the material needs of everyone; and secondly because, contrary to the myths maintained by the defenders of capitalism and class society generally, people's material needs are not infinite.

So the main features of socialism are: world community, common ownership, democratic control, production for use, free access. It only remains to add that socialism is an immediate possibility. All the conditions for its establishment are present except one — precisely the majority socialist understanding we have been discussing. In other words, as soon as this last condition is met. as soon as a majority of wage and salary earners want and understand socialism, it can be established immediately, without any so-called "transition period".

Bloodsucker flees (1986)

Book Review from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Haiti: Family Business by Rod Prince Latin American Bureau (London. 1985)

The recent political unrest in Haiti, resulting in the flight of pitiless dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. makes this study particularly timely. A byword for terror and corruption, the country has a history of armed intervention by governments and an undeveloped political system in which presidents have been wholely corrupt. Prince shows that the people of Haiti have been suppressed by arrest, brutality and imprisonment and that this pattern has been consistent since its establishment as a French colonial possession in the seventeenth century.

Haiti has been independent since 1804. although it was in debt to France until 1922 and has been financially dependent on the United States throughout the twentieth century. François Duvalier was elected president in 1957 and proclaimed life president in 1964. The dynasty was continued after "Papa Doc" died in 1971 and his son Jean-Gaude ("Baby Doc") was proclaimed President-for-Life in the same year.

Prince describes Duvalierism as "a black nationalist ideology with a radical rhetoric" which claims to be opposed to the "ideological intolerance of a levelling and inhuman communism" (p.28). The regime controlled national finances for personal gain without feeling a need to reveal the extent of its tax income or disbursements. As Prince points out:

the continually widening gulf between the corrupt and luxurious lifestyle of the elite and the wretched conditions of the mass of the people has produced further tensions, (p.34)

Duvalier's power base was dependent on the United States and the business elite of Haiti. Security was maintained by the Voluntaries de la Securité Nationale, who did not receive salaries and consequently practised widespread extortion of cash, goods and crops. Their efforts tended to concentrate on political party leaders, journalists, trade union activists, church figures and community development workers. After 1977 there was some cosmetic relaxation of oppression but in May 1984 all political activity, except that in support of Duvalier. was banned. In April 1985 there was a concession allowing political parties, but subject to the guarantee of Duvalier's Presidency-for-Life. There was a promise of elections in 1987 but only approved political parties would be allowed to participate. In other words, the system did not permit serious opposition but only variations of Duvalier.

According to the World Bank, 78 per cent of the rural population and 55 per cent of the urban live at or below the level of absolute poverty. In a country where the state is the largest landowner the Duvaliers were the main beneficiaries. At the same time Haiti is the recipient of massive foreign aid. primarily from the United States. This actually adds to Haiti's problems for, according to Prince, the distribution of free food undermines the market so that "aid actually exacerbates problems of poverty and dependence" (p.46). There is also the problem of "free" food being sold in the market place.

Haiti epitomises the corruption of capitalism at its most blatant:

One pet cent of the population receives 44 per cent of national income but pays only 3.5 per cent in taxes. An IMF team which visited Port-au-Prince early in 1981 found that US$16 million had disappeared from various state bodies over the previous three months They also found that President Duvalier had obtained US$20 million from government funds for his personal use in December 1980. and the central bank had been instructed to pay his wife Michèle a salary of US$100,000 a month, (p.51)

This is a country whose gross external debt in 1983 was estimated at US$859 million and in which 90 per cent of the population live in destitution and squalor with an income of less than the minimum wage of US$3.00 a day.

The United States has an uneasy relationship with Haiti, condemning its corruption and incompetence yet maintaining close ties because of its "friendly government" status.

One grotesque aspect of Haiti's poverty was the export of blood. With infant mortality so high, surviving Haitians are rich in anti-bodies:

At different times an estimated 6.000 donors sold their blood at US$3.00 a litre, and five tons of blood a month were shipped to US laboratories run by companies such as Armour Pharmaceutical. Cutter Laboratories and Dow Chemicals. (p.80)

There is no depth of poverty that capitalism is not capable of exploiting

Philip Bentley

Letter From Europe: Whose turn to screw the workers? (1986)

The Letter From Europe column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you are reading this article after 16 March you will already know the results of the general elections in France: Mitterrand's so-called Socialist Party (PS) will have lost its overall majority in the National Assembly, the National Front will have won a parliamentary representation for the first time, the previous opposition leaders will be arguing over what to do, and so on.

But this is only the tinsel of politics. The real issue in these, as in all elections everywhere in the world, is whether or not the wage and salary earning class is once again to put political power into the hands of the capitalist class that exploits them. Unfortunately, given the level of political consciousness in France, as elsewhere, the result is a foregone conclusion: these elections are going to be won by the capitalist class. Their control of political power will be confirmed by the re-election of a National Assembly composed exclusively of politicians pledged to support the continuation, in one form or another, of the money-wages-profits system that is capitalism.

The differences between the contending parties — whether the so-called communist and socialist parties on the Left or the RPR. UDF or National Front on the Right — are purely superficial, a question of which particular gang, or combination of gangs of place-hunters is to have responsibility for managing the governmental affairs of the French capitalist class. In short, who — the Left or the Right — is to have the privilege of turning the screws on the wage and salary earning class in France.

At the last general elections, held in June 1981 following Mitterrand's election as President. the Left won a landslide victory and a coalition government dominated by the PS — but with the participation of Communist Party (PCF) Ministers came into office. It promised to restore full employment by nationalising the banks and a few key industries so as to be able to plan economic growth, which would also be used to finance improved wages and social benefits. Naturally, as was predictable from a knowledge of the economic laws of the capitalist system, it failed utterly to achieve these goals.

Administering capitalism

After an initial increase in certain social benefits for the lower paid, within a year — by June 1982. to be exact — the new government had imposed a wage freeze and cut social benefits. Despite the nationalisation of the banks and the conversion of a number of firms from private to state capitalist enterprises, unemployment continued to rise and poverty to grow, as the workings of capitalism made a mockery of the Ministry of Plan's paper projects to expand production in the face of the world-wide capitalist depression.

In the end. the new government settled down to administering capitalism in the only way possible: as a profit-making system operating in the interest of the profit-taking class. The PCF participated in this anti-working class administration of capitalism for a full two years after the government's U-tum in June 1982. since its ministers did not resign till Laurent Fabius took over from Pierre Mauroy as Prime Minister in July 1984.

The outgoing government — essentially composed of members of Mitterrand's PS — is fighting the election not on what it has done to honour the promises it made in 1981 (how could it?) but on the negative theme of "we were not as bad as a right-wing government would have been". Thus, in one newspaper advertisement comparing the rise of unemployment under the pre-1981 governments with what had happened since 1981, the PS declared that unemployment had "only" risen 38 per cent since it came to power — the reader was assumed to have forgotten that the Left government had come to power on a promise to reduce unemployment, not preside over its rise to over 2.5 million. And one televised debate between the Prime Minister. Fabius. and the main opposition leader. Jacques Chirac, turned into an argument as to which of them had been the more successful in holding down wage costs — Fabius claiming that his government had been more successful than that of Chirac in the early 1970s but forgetting the PS's promise to increase, not decrease, "popular consumption"!

Since the Labour Party in Britain has a programme of vote-catching promises very similar to the pre-1981 PS — basically, trying to plan the expansion of production by the same mixture of state control and increased consumer purchasing power — it is worth examining exactly why the Left-wing government in France failed so utterly and ended up trying to transfer money from the poor to the rich (from wages to profits).

Why reformism fails

The classic reformist programme of trying to correct the evils of capitalism in the interests of the workers has never succeeded because the system just cannot work in the interests of wage and salary earners. It is based on their exploitation and functions according to definite economic laws which are beyond the control of governments, however well-intentioned or resolute.

Of course, there are certain things which governments can do. They control the armed forces and the other means of coercion. They can pass laws and apply them. In the economic sphere they control the issue of the currency. But they do not and cannot control the economy. Certainly, they can pass laws and make plans concerning economic matters but this does not mean that these can be put into effect or that, if they are, they will have the intended results. Capitalism, as we said, is an economic system subject to its own economic laws which governments ignore at their peril. These laws can be summarised as:

★ capitalism is an integrated world economy; there is no such thing as the "British economy" or the "German economy" or even the "American economy". There is only the world capitalist economy, which exists in all countries.
★ as government activity does not of itself produce wealth, all the resources allocated by governments (whether on "defence", social reforms or subsidies to nationalised industries) have to come out of the profits made in the productive sector of the economy, whether private or state-owned.
★ the private sector of the economy is exclusively motivated by profit-seeking, since profits are the main source of the finance it needs to continue to engage in productive activity. Indeed, in the end, achieving a monetary profit is the only reason the private sector has for producing.

In a depression the government — whether left, right or centre — has to pursue a policy of austerity for the working class because the logic of the capitalist system demands that priority be given to profit-making by capitalist enterprises. As a matter of fact, even in periods of prosperity governments must abstain from taking measures that threaten profits. In times of slump, however, they must do all they can to restore profitability: they must cut back and restrain both their own expenditure (which ultimately can only come from taxes and other charges on profits) and the wages of the workers (which are a direct cost to enterprises).

It is because capitalism cannot function in any other way that the outgoing reformist government in France ended up pursuing basically the same policies as openly conservative governments in Britain. Germany and America. The political colour of the government makes no essential difference; what counts are the economic laws of capitalism which these governments are obliged to apply.

In time, as the world capitalist economy recovers, markets will gradually re-appear but there is nothing that any government can do to hasten the process. They can help industry prepare for the recovery by encouraging it to "modernise" — to eliminate the least efficient enterprises — but this is what tends to happen anyway in a depression, whether or not the government intervenes. So all a government can do — and all the so-called "Socialist" government in France did — is to work with the economic laws of the capitalist system. This has been the fate of all past and present reformist governments in the world which have set out to make the capitalist system function in the interests of the workers and will inevitably be the fate of any future Labour government that comes to power in Britain.

Adam Buick 

Obituaries: Renee and Harry Hamme (1986)

Obituaries from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

To record the death of one member of the SPGB is not an enviable task; to record the passing of two comrades in a short space of time leaves a gap not easy to fill. Renee and Harry Hamme were both members of North West London Branch.

Renee died last Autumn after a short illness, bringing to an end a partnership that spanned many years, not only in the SPGB but also in the World Socialist Party (US). Renee's last visit to NW London Branch was on the night Harry gave a talk on various aspects of psychoanalysis and its relevance to our case. Prior to their departure for America, they had both been members of Westminster Branch for some years. In America they settled close to San Francisco, but despite its attractions they were almost in isolation and missed the comradeship of fellow socialists. The writer, on one of his visits to the States, enjoyed not only their hospitality but hours of discussion covering many aspects of the socialist case. From time to time they attended opponents' meetings, challenging the very roots of the capitalist system and astounding the audience with some revolutionary aspects of socialism. To offset the isolation, Harry wrote a number of articles for the Western Socialist.

A longing for home and for socialist contact brought them back to England a few years ago, to join North West London Branch in January 1982. which they regularly attended.

The death of Renee was a bitter blow to Harry, who died last month. He was tenacious in argument and would never concede a point until completely convinced of its validity. He had plans for some Branch lectures that regretfully never reached fruition. A Master Baker by trade, his doughnuts were the highlight of many Conference lunches and tea sessions.

To their daughters Jane and Barbara, and to other members of the family we offer our sympathy. To the socialist movement, they gave according to their ability. We shall miss them a lot.

Cyril May

North West London Branch

Questions from a reader (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I have read the literature you sent me, after my response to your advert in the New Musical Express, and have a few questions to ask. It would be helpful if your answers were numbered as I have listed them.

        Thank you.

Nicky Wiy

Slough, Berks

If world socialism is to come about democratically, must you wait until every country allows the vote?

If you mean literally "every country", then the answer is "no". We certainly don't envisage waiting about for the very last person to catch up. Since the impetus towards socialism would already be having a tremendous impact on the world political stage and, in particular, in countries still without the necessary democratic processes (if any), we don't think there will be anything causing us to wait around. The rapid and widespread adoption of socialist ideas would alter fundamentally the nature and quality of world politics and impart the necessary impetus towards the transformation. The wheel of history would then rotate to the critical point-of-no-return. A socialist majority of the world's population would have sufficient confidence and political power to be able to announce the count down of the lift-off for socialist revolution.

The needs and inner dynamics of modem capitalism, whether the free enterprise or state capitalist kind, make unavoidable the eventual global extension of the limited forms of political democracy sufficient for our purpose. The real problem is here and now — how best to reach the point at which we who have access to the seats of power start exercising this enormous influence around the world. And that requires all of us to work unstintingly to achieve socialist majorities whenever we can — right now!

If there is no police force after socialism is established, who will enforce any laws that remain after those relating to property are repealed — e.g. those relating to assault, GBH, murder, etc?

There will be no laws remaining to deal with socially unacceptable acts of violence such as those to which you refer. All law and jurisprudence now arise from, and are geared to. the needs of the present acquisitive, aggressive, anxiety-ridden system; they are primarily protective of property. "Good public order" serves to keep the dispossessed in their place, their hands off the property of the owning class and their understandable outbursts of anger, violence and frustration under control by the state.

There may be anti-social acts of violence after the establishment of socialism; neither we nor future communities would want to shirk the issue. But each will have to be considered on its merits (or demerits) by each community — no longer motivated by concepts of retribution, revenge or fear of a break down of "law and order". There may well be cases where society's expressed revulsion may not be enough or appropriate — in which case the democratically arrived at decision to apply the ultimate sanction of the minimum necessary restraint, or enforced isolation from those thought to be at risk, may have to be made by that community.

Although the fundamental changes in relationships and attitudes and the quite different social milieu of free access and equality will remove the cause of most violent acts, the members of a community could not be expected to stand idly by on the rare occasions when a member of that community behaves irresponsibly. Socialist mores, common sense and self-discipline would determine what was acceptable and what was unacceptable, rather than invoking the concept of laws, crimes and punishments or commanding obedience by coercion.

When socialism is established, will those people who are in prison as a result of breaking property laws during capitalism be released?

Yes.

On the back page of the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard, the article gives me the impression that examinations have no value. If doctors, medical students, etc. were not tested theoretically and practically, how would we know if they were competent enough to do operations or to carry out experiments which would yield meaningful results?

This article. "Making the grade", was not intended to give the impression that all examinations are valueless and would be dispensed with in socialism. But certainly the experience of most people would suggest that, though the possession of an educational or professional certificate may serve as an entree to some jobs, it alone is not necessarily an indicator of real ability or comprehension. Indeed the concentration of tunnel-visioned parents, pupils and teachers on "achievement" —memorising fragmented, unrelated facts to meet the challenge of the exam paper — can lead to bizarre, not to say horrifying results.

The author was also emphasising the nature of the examination rat-race (Japan provides a good example) and the need for schooling to be tailored to meet employers' demands for efficient, standardised workers, graded appropriately to ensure value for money.

Within socialism aptitudes, mental and physical dexterity, skills, courage, ingenuity and inventiveness will be encouraged and developed in all. Of course, if someone is called on to perform a complicated operation on a patient or on a computer. there will be experienced persons in attendance who will have been delegated to ensure that all goes well. Those individuals will be the contemporary beneficiaries of socially transmitted knowledge and experience — none of whom would think of themself as exalted, as some consultants do today. In socialism no one could be motivated by the prospect of status or material advantage.

In your yellow leaflet Questions and Answers about Socialism, you say that thousands of people in this country die each winter of hypothermia. I would like to know from what source you obtained these vague statistics. In the book Consuming Secrets (page 224) there is listed official Government figures on deaths from hypothermia. They are: for 1970 - 16 deaths; 1971 - 15; 1972 - 21; 1973 - 22; and for 1974 - 17. I admit these are old figures and give no indication of those who suffer from hypothermia but do not die. The number who so suffer is about 5 per 1.000 OAPs. However, I do not see how the number of deaths has risen by approximately 8,000 per cent in eleven years.

Government figures on the number of people dying of cold each year in Britain are not dependable. But even if their very low figures are accepted. that still leaves large numbers of people (hundreds) dying of cold every winter. That would be bad enough, but there are reasons for believing that the real figure is in thousands rather than hundreds.

Each year tens of thousands more people die in the winter than in the summer; 80 per cent of these are over 65. In the ten years before 1980 the death rate was 17 per cent higher in winter than in summer for those aged 60-69; 20 per cent higher for those aged in their 70s and 25 per cent higher for those over 80. On average, approximately 45,000 more old people died each winter than each summer. In 1982, when government figures put the number of deaths from the cold in the 600s. 42,500 more people aged over 65 died in the winter months than the summer ones. We accept that not all of them died of hypothermia (some died of other conditions made worse by the cold) but it is highly unlikely that of 40,000 plus extra deaths, less than 1.000 can be attributable to lack of protection against the cold. In Sweden, where the sharp contrasts between summer and winter temperatures do not affect some areas, there is no equivalent rise in winter deaths among the old.

Many old people are not found until some time after they die. As a result, doctors do not know their body temperatures near to the time of death and hypothermia can neither be proved nor disproved. Geriatric specialists do not give a figure, but suggest that large numbers of deaths caused by the cold are undiagnosed because of this delay in examining the body.

Many doctors are reluctant to write on a death certificate that a person has died of the cold because of the stigma attached to this way of dying. Pressure is put on doctors by families, anxious to hide the fact that they have neglected an elderly relative and by local authorities, whose Social Service Departments fear that a large number of deaths in their area caused by the cold will reflect on them. Doctors involved in the study of death resulting from the cold acknowledge the existence of these strong pressures.

A very important reason for the false picture given by the government figures is that the BMA has quite arbitrarily fixed a body temperature above which a person is said not to be suffering from hypothermia - 95°F. The official measurement of normal body temperature is 98.4°F. So, according to the BMA. a person in their 70s, 80s or 90s can be found dead with an internal body temperature which is 3.8°F lower than that considered healthy for an active, young person and a doctor is not permitted to state that they have died of the cold.

In a survey carried out by the Medical Research Council in 1972 (findings published in the British Medical Journal, January 1973) it was discovered that one in ten old people examined were suffering discomfort or illness as a result of their body temperatures being under 98.4°F. If that figure is applied to the 65+ population in 1986 we can say that 900,000 old people are now living in what the MRC defined as hypothermic conditions. Of course, not all of these will die of the cold, but it is probable that tens of thousands will and likely that hundreds of thousands will die earlier than they might due to the cold. Clearly, the energy exists to provide warmth for all of these people.

Malcolm Wicks, one of the researchers involved in the above-mentioned MRC survey and report, has stated that "We know that there are tens of thousands of deaths each winter caused by the cold". Most medical and geriatric specialists accept Wicks as the leading authority on this subject (see his book. Old and Cold). The question is,  do we believe Wicks and the medical profession or the government?

Please also see the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard for the article "Hypothermia in the old".

How seriously does the SPGB take conservation?

The Socialist Party has frequently expressed its anger at the waste and the despoliation which capitalism generates. We are fully aware that the profit system poses a serious threat to the environment and have been sounding the alarm about the state and future of the world's ecology for decades. We contend that it demonstrates the urgent need to establish world-wide socialism. Then, attention to need would take its proper place alongside unjaundiced consideration of the health of the world's population, biosphere and resources. The conservation lobby, though deserving credit for exposing the details of this threat, would do well to bear in mind that what enrages them are symptoms of a sick world economic system; a cure can only be obtained by removing the cause of the sickness.

I have only been eligible to vote since last March, but I have never seen any candidates for the SPGB. If socialism is to be brought about democratically, candidates should be in every constituency in the country. This does not seem to be happening and I wonder how high this issue is on the Party's list of priorities?

The Socialist Party gives electoral activity a high priority and seeks to put up candidates in every constituency, national and local, whenever it can. That we at present only manage to contest a few constituencies is simply a reflection of lack of financial and political support. Meanwhile, we work energetically in all avenues open to us to inform and persuade workers as to what is in their best interests.

Editors.