About Socialism (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?
It is a political party, separate from all others, Left, Right or Centre. It stands for the sole aim of establishing a world social system based upon human need instead of private or state profit. The Object and Declaration of Principles printed in this introductory leaflet were adopted by the Socialist Party in 1904 and have been maintained without compromise since then. In other countries there are companion parties sharing the same object and principles, and they too remain independent from all other political parties.

2. What is capitalism?
Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, etc.) are monopolised by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, but, as a class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?
No: as long as capitalism exists, profits will come before needs. Some reforms are welcomed by some workers, but no reform can abolish the fundamental contradiction between profit and need which is built into the present system. No matter whether promises to make capitalism run in the interests of the workers are made sincerely or by opportunist politicians they are bound to fail, for such a promise is like offering to run the slaughter house in the interests of the cattle.

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?
No: nationalised industries simply mean that workers are exploited by the state, acting on behalf of the capitalists of one country, rather than by an individual capitalist or company. The workers in nationalised British Leyland are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned Ford. The mines no more belong to "the public" or the miners now than they did before 1947 when they were nationalised. Nationalisation is state capitalism.

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?
No: the so-called socialist countries are systems of state capitalism. In Russia and its empire, in China, Cuba, Albania, Yugoslavia and the other countries which call themselves socialist, social power is monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. The features of capitalism, as outlined above, are all present. An examination of international commerce shows that the bogus socialist states are part of the world capitalist market and cannot detach themselves from the requirements of profit.

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?
Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism. In a socialist society there will be common ownership and democratic control of the earth by its inhabitants. No minority class will be in a position to dictate to the majority that production must be geared to profit. There will be no owners: everything will belong to everyone. Production will be solely for use, not for sale. The only questions society will need to ask about wealth production will be: what do people require, and can the needs be met? These questions will be answered on the basis of the resources available to meet such needs. Then, unlike now, modern technology and communications will be able to be used to their fullest extent. The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their self- defined needs. Work will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation: the coercion of wage and salary work will be abolished. There will be no buying or selling and money will not be necessary, in a society of common ownership and free access. For the first time ever the people of the world will have common possession of the planet earth.

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?
Capitalism, with its constant drive to serve profit before need, throws up an endless stream of problems. Most workers in Britain feel insecure about their future; almost one in four families with children living below the official government poverty line; many old people live in dangerously cold conditions each winter and thousands die; millions of our fellow men and women are dying of starvation — tens of thousands of them each day. A society based on production for use will end those problems because the priority of socialist society will be the fullest possible satisfaction of needs. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are subsidised not to produce more: yet many millions are malnourished. At the moment hospital queues are growing longer and people are dying of curable illnesses; yet it is not "economically viable" to provide decent health treatment for all. In a socialist society nothing short of the best will be good enough for any human being.

8. What about human nature?
Human behaviour is not fixed, but determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate. Even under capitalism people often obtain pleasure from doing a good turn for others; few people enjoy participating in the "civilised" warfare of the daily rat-race. Think how much better it would be if society was based on co-operation.

9. Are socialists democrats?
Yes: the Socialist Party has no leaders. It is a democratic organisation controlled by its members. It understands that Socialism can only be established by a conscious majority of workers — that workers must liberate themselves and will not be liberated by leaders or parties. Socialism will not be brought about by a dedicated minority "smashing the state", as some left-wingers would have it. Nor do the activities of paid, professional politicians have anything to do with Socialism — the experience of seven Labour governments has shown this. Once a majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, they will take the necessary step to organise consciously for the democratic conquest of political power. There will be no Socialism without a socialist majority.

10. What is the next step?
Many workers know that there is something wrong and want to change society. Some join reform groups in the hope that capitalism can be patched up, but such efforts are futile because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. People who fear a nuclear war may join CND. but as long as nation states exist, economic rivalry means that the world will never be safe from the threat of war. There are countless dedicated campaigns and good causes which many sincere people are caught up in, but there is only one solution to the problems of capitalism and that is to get rid of it, and establish Socialism. Before we can do that we need socialists; winning workers to that cause requires knowledge, principles and an enthusiasm for change. These qualities can be developed by anyone — and are essential for anyone who is serious about changing society. Capitalism in the 1980s is still a system of waste, deprivation and frightening insecurity. You owe it to yourself to find out about the one movement which stands for the alternative.

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If you have read this set of principles and agree with some or all of them, contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism.

Running Commentary: Moore or less? (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Moore or less?

Connoisseurs of the repellent in politicians will find much to absorb them in the career of the Right Honourable John Moore MP. Promoted after the last election to take charge of the Department of what is quaintly called Health and Social Security, Moore was soon marked down — or should it be up? — as a Rising Star.

Apart from the fact that he is a wealthy man, he combined good looks with a huge appetite for work, physical fitness and the most arid of Thatcherite policies. Basking in a bond of mutual admiration with the Prime Minister, Moore began to look like a future occupant of Number Ten himself and the political scribes raked through their stock of oleaginous adjectives to describe him, coming up with words like dashing, dynamic, ambitious . . . It would be most churlish of anyone, not to be grateful that so vastly talented a man should give himself to cherishing our health and welfare.

But things did not go as expected and now words like "lack-lustre", "feeble" or "indecisive" are more likely to be attached to him. This comes about partly through the gathering crisis in the National Health Service, highlighted by accounts of desperately sick babies having to wait for life-saving operations, of nurses at the end of their badly paid, hardworked tether and a procession of eminent doctors to Moore's office to demand that more money be allocated to the NHS.

Moore's response to this pressure — the current Tory orthodoxy — is that the government's policies are steadily building a strong economy, which is the best safeguard of an even higher investment in health care. Beside the pictures of those babies and those nurses, this came across as dogmatic, evasive and uncaring of anything other than the balance sheets. In any event he put the case ineptly; suddenly Moore is seen as a sickening political liability rather than the flavour of the month.

John Moore MP

He could expect little sympathy among his own party. His apparent position of Thatcher's blue-eyed boy, and the media nonsense about him. served to unite the competing ambitions of other leading Tories into one to undo him. There have been whispers about the fragility of his loyalty to Thatcherite policies — that he was a precinct captain for the Democratic Party during his time in America and once an ardent follower of the dreaded Ted Heath. His recent illness called into question his physical ability to cope with high office. The skids, in other words, have been placed under the once inexorable upward march of John Moore.

It all makes a diverting little story of the horrors of capitalist politics — not a profession for the squeamish. But however ruthlessly they compete against each other all politicians are agreed that the social system should continue and that they should employ themselves in trying to persuade us of this. Moore's job, as far as this goes, is to tell us that we must accept inferior health care in the "national interest". At present, this is an assignment too tricky for him. If, as so many of his colleagues hope, Thatcher decides he is not up to it, there will be no real change — someone else, similarly ambitious, similarly cynical, will take his place to try to convince the workers to carry on denying and betraying their own interests.

Heroic neurosis

If you think that men are naturally aggressive and that wars are fought, not to protect or enlarge capitalist interests but as an outlet for this "natural" aggression, a Dr Wilson has got news for you.

He is an army psychiatrist and does not agree with you (BBC Today programme, 20 January). His job is to alleviate psychoses and nervous breakdowns of soldiers who have been in battle.

Things have improved, he says, since World War I, when men returning — or running away — from battle, shaking and crying in shell shock, were branded cowards and deserters, dismissed the service with ignominy in the first case and shot in the latter. Nowadays he and his colleagues are employed to recondition and return them to service (which, of course, makes much more economical sense to those who employ them).

Everyone who goes into battle suffers, he says. Battle is the most terrible experience; it is the worst thing that can happen to anyone (not the most exciting adventure, as some would have us think. We all remember the advertisements "The Army Will Make a Man of You"). Men who have seen their mates blown to pieces don't go back to fight for causes but to avenge the dead and injured or because they see it as the only way to prevent the same fate befalling them. If you can't get them back for that, you'll never get them back.

So much for "natural aggression". Of course modem long-range conventional and nuclear weapons overcome this problem for those in whose interests wars are fought. Death at a distance — whether in battle or by starvation — does not have the same impact, even when shown on television. In those circumstances Dr Wilson could return to his earlier task of trying to recondition the civilian casualties of the system.

Get moving

How many people noticed that recently we went through seven days called National Motivation Week? National what? you may ask. Well it might have been better known as Behave Yourself and Get On In the World Week; its Director (the source of whose authority must be something of a mystery) expressed the essence of what the week hoped to achieve with the insightful assurance that "Inside many yobs is a yuppie trying to get out”.

So it was all a matter of a concentrated effort to rid society of the yob — which, as we all know, is a threat with which civilised life is at present confronted. Yobs are non-motivated; they are non-responders, non-achievers. Aimless cynicism is their distinguishing trait; they doubt their ability ever to improve their lives so they give up trying and divert their energies into loutish, disruptive behaviour.

National Motivation Week aimed to rescue these poor people from their yobdom and turn them from morally impoverished failures into yuppies, who are not aimless, who respond to the morality that people are esteemed according to how rich they are and whose motivation is as conspicuous as a Porsche on a council estate. Yuppies, in other words, are supreme examples of the benefits of motivation.

We are familiar now with campaigns which aim to concentrate reformative effort onto some problem during a defined period. We remember World Refugee Year, which ended with more refugees in the world than it began with; Children's Year, which did not stop children being abused, beaten and killed by their families; 1987 was Shelter for the Homeless Year, which could be bad news for anyone without a home.

But what if National Motivation Week, spearheaded by its dynamic if shadowy director, manages to do better? What if all the yobs and under-achievers are suddenly uplifted into starry-eyed, thrusting yuppies? Apart from those who may feel that as a cure this may turn out worse than the disease, we will see the end of one misled and distorted view of capitalism and its frustrations only to have it replaced with another, just as baseless and futile.

In spite of all the obstacles which capitalism places in the way, human beings are constantly giving evidence of their motivation to care for and co-operate with each other. These drives are misdirected and often stifled by a social system whose basis takes no account of human interests. Yobs and yuppies — and all the other caricatured derelicts of capitalist morality — are just people who have yet to understand their social origins.

What prognosis for the health service? (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a society where goods are produced solely for profit, the fact that social needs are subordinate to the demands of profitability can be demonstrated quite simply by the fact that coal mines are closed, the elderly die of cold each winter; food production is curtailed despite widespread starvation in "underdeveloped" countries and malnutrition among the poor in "developed" countries; houses stand empty and building workers are unemployed while people are homeless or live in substandard dwellings.

Services are provided, at a price, to ensure a profit, or are state-funded to facilitate profitability or avoid social disorder (which also affects profitability). It was in this spirit that the Public Health Acts of the last century were passed to eradicate the cholera epidemics, which threatened rich and poor alike, and to combat Chartism and civil disorder. The National Health Service of 1948 was formed in accordance with these same economic rules; the workers' health needed to be conserved because of a shortage of labour and the social unrest of the 1930s had to be averted in the post-war reconstruction of industry.

In recent years capitalism has undergone one of its periodic slumps and state-funded services have been reduced as profitability has been adversely affected. And, in terms of profitability, it is unnecessary and uneconomical to conserve workers' health when there is a reserve army of over three million unemployed.

Concern about the National Health Service and industrial unrest among nurses has reached unprecedented levels. A national survey carried out by the Association of Community Health Councils of England and Wales showed that 50 per cent of health authorities are cutting services to patients by closing beds, wards or specialist units and that: "Parts of the NHS are on the brink of collapse and will fall apart this year unless immediate action is taken" (Guardian, 4 January. 1988). A study by the Incomes Data Services stated that nurses receive the worst compensation in British industry for working a continuous three-shift system and that "A flood of nurses may leave the health service because of proposals by the Government to alter their pay structure" (ibid.).

These reports are to some extent confirmed by the strike of 38 night nurses at North Manchester General Hospital on the 7 January 1988 and the news, a few days later, that the Manchester Royal Infirmary is on the verge of bankruptcy unless more funds are provided in the near future to offset debts incurred by the cuts in their income for the current financial year. In the short term, over 140 redundancies have taken place in a desperate attempt to balance the books.

The Manchester nurses' decision to strike was provoked by the government's intention to reduce the extra pay for night and weekend work and, at the same time, alter nurses' working hours, making the shifts more unpleasant, to provide greater flexibility and economy of labour at the expense of nurses' wages and free time. Enhanced rates for nurses working nights and weekends have been paid only since the mid-1960s and took several years to reach the level of time and one-third for Saturday and night work and time and two-thirds for Sundays and bank holidays. As poor as these rates are, compared with industry, they have been pegged at the 1984 level of pay for trained nurses and. consequently, have lagged behind still further. It is not surprising that the British Medical Journal stated that one in five qualified nurses do one or more extra jobs to supplement their low pay.

It is in keeping with the government's plan to run the health service as cheaply as possible that general managers have been bribed with the offer of bigger bonuses if they can make further savings in the budget of their district health authorities. Further redundancies; closures of more beds and specialist units; the extension of "flexible" hours of working for health service staff will be attempted as the general managers boost their earnings at the expense of their fellow workers and turn a blind eye to the distress of patients as waiting lists for hospital treatment increase.

Although increased productivity and harder work are almost tenets of faith of capitalist government, pay cuts and redundancies are the rewards for an increased patient turnover of nearly forty per cent in the last two years in many British hospitals. To add to the problems of providing an adequate health service there is a shortage of school-leavers which has led to a fall in the number of nurses starting their training. The last time there was a shortage was in the 1950s when Enoch Powell. Minister of Health at that time, launched a recruitment drive in the West Indies and saved the National Health Service from collapse by the exploitation of black, female labour. The ready availability of recruits from the West Indies throughout the 1950s and 1960s also managed to suppress the level of nurses' pay. But Britain's immigration laws have stopped the supply of labour from the Caribbean to help this time.

Up to a point, the present shortage of trainee nurses will not disturb the government as much as it did in the 1950s because the health service is contracting in response to the recession and some ward closures can be blamed on the difficulty of recruitment. But the situation is quite serious — the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital has closed wards recently because of a shortage of trainee nurses (Manchester Evening News, 8 January, 1988) — and the government knows that closing children's wards causes emotions to run high, which can pose problems at election times.

The difficulty of recruiting nurses in London because of the high rents and prohibitive house prices has forced the government to abandon the sale of nurses' homes in the capital and consider providing £20 million to improve nurses' accommodation in the Oxfordshire and Metropolitan regions (Independent, 22 August. 1987). And the Manchester strike forced the government to abandon cutting the rates for nurses' night and weekend work, although the attempt to alter their working hours is still going ahead despite widespread opposition from the health service unions.

The increased turnover of patients and poorer laundering, catering and domestic services has led to increasing stress levels for staff; junior doctors work excessively long hours trying to cope with the rising numbers of admissions. The government's attempt to "privatise'' hospital laundering, catering and domestic services has led to a poorer quality of service due to cuts in the workforce and the use of more part-time, temporary staff. Even where hospital "in-house" tenders were sufficiently low to prevent these services being contracted out to private firms they were still at the expense of staff redundancies. Either way, fewer workers were expected to try to provide the same services as before.

Nurses are also manipulated in this way. Bank nurses, particularly the less expensive enrolled nurses, are employed to cover shortages of staff due to sickness. Thus a trained nurse may languish at home for a week or two and then be asked to work a day or night shift at short notice. These nurses receive no holiday or sick pay and demonstrate how "flexible" labour is merely an euphemism for further exploitation.

As much as the National Health Service is unnecessary from capital's viewpoint in a recession — and John Moore. Secretary of State for Social Services is trying to get a Bill through Parliament to allow hospitals to make a profit, to shift the burden for health care back to the individual — it is also recognised that health services provide a safety valve by "patching-up" the problems created by poverty, poor housing, pollution and stressful, alienating work.

It is unlikely that nurses will leave in the large numbers predicted by Incomes Data Services because there are few alternative jobs to go to. And although the private health sector is expanding it cannot provide employment for all the nurses currently employed by the National Health Service. Even the emigration of nurses has slowed because of contracting health services abroad.

Although there will be further cuts in health provision with an extension of charges for prescriptions, dentistry and other treatments, the government realises that it cannot afford the unpopularity of dismantling the National Health Service with the risk of a return to the political unrest seen in the 1930s. But above all it cannot risk people questioning what makes them ill; for if the workers realise that they suffer from unnecessary illness and early deaths because capitalism makes them poor, and that it is preventable, then they might want more than a reformed health service.

Carl Pinel

Danger: capitalism at work (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Conservatives were the first government to act on the issue although the dangers had been known for 15 to 20 years" declared Francis Maude, Minister of Consumer Affairs, in the House of Commons on 13 January. He was referring to the government's intention to bring in legislation to ban inflammable foam furniture from the beginning of March 1989. In trying to score a point off his Labour critics the Minister avoided having to answer the real question: if the dangers had been known for 15 to 20 years, why wasn't anything done before?

The short answer is: because we are living in a capitalist society where furniture, like everything else, is not produced for use but for sale on a market with a view to profit. If satisfying the need for it was the sole reason furniture was produced, then the problem of having to ban the use of inflammable foam or any other dangerous material in its manufacture just wouldn't arise. Only furniture that was comfortable, solid and safe would be produced. But under capitalism the main reason furniture is produced is not to satisfy needs but to make a profit. Of course what is produced has to have some minimum use, otherwise it would not sell, but safety is a secondary consideration especially if catering for it will increase the cost of production.

Profit is the goal of production under capitalism. It is why production is undertaken and is what every firm, whether private or state-owned, must seek to obtain. Profits are created in the process of production in the form of surplus value and represent the unpaid labour of the producers, the value of what they produce over and above what they are paid as wages. Profits, however, are realised — converted into money (the form in which they really are profits) only on the market when the products in which they are embodied are sold.

All firms are therefore engaged in a competitive struggle to sell their products, precisely in order to realise the profits that are embodied in them. To succeed in this struggle they must be competitive in the sense that their production costs must be low enough to allow them to sell their wares at the going price and at the same time make enough profits to be able to invest in more up-to-date cost-reducing equipment. Competition can oblige all firms to run fast just to stay still. To remain in the race for profits, firms must stay competitive and to stay competitive they must continually increase productivity; to increase productivity they must make profits and accumulate them as capital invested in new. more productive equipment.

The furniture industry is no exception to this rule but. as an industry producing overwhelmingly for sale to wage and salary earners, it has an interest in keeping its prices low, not just through increased productivity but also through keeping the quality low too. The consumption of wage and salary earners is limited by the size of their wage packet or their salary cheque, so they are under constant financial pressure to go for the lowest-priced furniture on sale. This means that when there are two pieces of furniture on offer it will be the one with the lowest absolute price rather than the one with the lowest price-quality ratio that will tend to sell the best. In other words, the furniture industry is one of those industries that can make more profits by selling a large amount of low quality, low-priced goods than by selling a small amount of higher quality, higher-priced goods.

It is clear that in this situation, arising out of the competitive nature of capitalism combined with the restricted incomes it imposes on wage-earners, if no controls exist then furniture manufacturers will use the cheapest material in the manufacture of their goods even if this material is dangerous to the user. This is not contested by people in the trade; indeed, it is taken for granted, as can be seen from recent comments by them in the press.

A safer foam material has been available for some time but has not been used in all furniture because it is more expensive than the dangerous foam. The marketing manager of Dunlopillo, a firm that can produce the safer type of foam, was quoted as saying: . . .

  the [furniture] manufacturers are in a cut-throat business. They won't ask for more expensive foam unless they have to (Independent, 6 January 1988).

A similar view was expressed the next day by the merchandising director of Harris Queenway, the furniture retailers:

  We are in a commercial world. I still have my doubts whether the public will buy the safer furniture. They seem more affected by price and comfort (Independent, 7 January 1988).

After March 1989, if the government's legislation goes through, only the safer furniture will be available in shops. Before supporters of capitalism cite this as an example of how conditions under capitalism can be improved by reforms, they ought to reflect on the fact that, on the minister's own admission, nearly 20 years went by between the discovery of the danger and the banning of the incriminated material. In the intervening period hundreds of people have died unnecessarily, including the 12 over Christmas — without whose deaths ministers would have gone on giving for even more years the same reason for doing nothing as that given by one of their predecessors in 1980: "Alternative fillings would lead to soaring costs in the production of furniture”.

Even if some legislation to protect people's safety and health is eventually enacted, the long delay in reaching this stage is in itself proof of the inherently anti-social nature of capitalism in which it is normal that profits should come before safety. What has happened in the case of dangerous foam in furniture is the general rule every time that some issue concerning people's health or safety arises under capitalism. Two members of the Green Alliance environmental lobby group give us another recent example:

  In 1976. the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended changes in our air pollution regulations. Six years later, the Government agreed to consider these recommendations. After a further four years it published a consultation paper. Shortly after the election, however, it announced that there was no parliamentary time for legislation (Independent, 13 January 1988).

Legislation will no doubt eventually be passed, perhaps in time for a minister to declare "our party was the first to act on this issue although the measure to protect people's health had been recommended for 15 to 20 years".

Its exactly the same story with regard to water pollution. In 1975 the EEC Commission proposed a Common Market framework directive "on the quality of water intended for human consumption". Five years later, in 1980, the EEC Council of Ministers adopted the directive, giving Member-States two years (to 1982) to incorporate it into their national legislation and a further three years (to 1985) for the higher standards to be applied. The directive, however, also allowed for exceptions and for a longer time-limit for compliance if justified. The higher standards, which in any event represent only the minimum that scientists consider should be done to reduce the danger to health, have still not been applied in Britain. The British government has in fact invoked one of the exception clauses to request a delay in implementation until 1989.

Among the substances whose presence in water is to be controlled are nitrates. These chemical substances have been linked to stomach cancer and to the “blue baby" syndrome. They get into drinking water through some of the artificial fertilisers farmers spread on their land to increase yields — to be able to stay in the race for profits — being leached off by rain into water supplies. The problem is particularly acute in East Anglia. The National Farmers' Union are demanding compensation for the "loss of competitivity" that will result if restrictions are imposed on their use of nitrate fertilisers.

That water supplies have been polluted by artificial fertilisers has been known for many years but nothing much has been done about it until now because, as the NFU rightly points out, to do so would have reduced the competitive power of farming firms which, like all other firms, are in business to make profits rather than to supply useful things. This is a classic example of the environment being polluted as a consequence of the competitive struggle for profits.

Another dangerous farming practice has been the use of anabolic steroids to fatten up cattle for sale. These stay in the meat and are still there when it is eaten by humans, and so get passed on to us. As a result of a scandal a few years ago, a ban on the use of these hormones for this purpose was adopted and came into force in Common Market countries on 1 January 1988. Once again complaints about loss of profits have been made, revealing why they were employed in the first place. Michael Leathes, secretary-general of Fedesa, described by the Times (24 December 1987) as "an animal health association funded by the European animal drug manufacturers", stated:

  The ban will result in the loss of about 10 per cent extra bulk in an animal that a farmer would expect from using previously legitimate implant steroids — that effectively kills his profit.

Some of those involved in the administration of capitalism are very well aware of the limitations that the operation of its economic laws impose on what can be done to reduce the danger to health and to the environment resulting from current farming practices. Consider the following statement by James Kerr, Head of the Farm and Countryside Service to the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture:

  While it is right and proper that environmental considerations should be given much more attention than in the past, it must be not be forgotten that farmers are in the business of producing food and unless they can do this efficiently they will not be able to compete in the marketplace and will go out of business. Such a situation is clearly not in the interests of either farming or conservation. Farmers must therefore continue to take advantage of new developments in technology to remain viable (Europe in Northern Ireland No 38. December 1987).

It is not that all new cost-reducing techniques are necessarily more anti-ecological than the techniques they replace but simply that the effect on people's health and on the environment is not the deciding factor in their adoption, as it would be if the aim of production was to provide for needs rather than to make profits.

It is true that in the end capitalism is forced to take some account of these considerations but only after the damage has been done — after some source of water has been polluted. after people have died or had their health damaged — and then only to the extent that the damage done raises production costs, either directly or through reducing the productive efficiency of wage-earners, to a level where it becomes less costly to take steps to reduce pollution than not to do so.

Too little, too late is neither a rational nor a satisfactory approach to protecting the environment and people's health and safety but it is the very most that the rigid economic laws of capitalism will ever permit.

Adam Buick

Whose Budget? (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every year, in the months before the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes the Budget speech, the media engage in the popular game of guessing what changes in taxation will be made and giving advice about what the changes ought to be. The professional politicians concentrate on the second aspect: each one. according to party, telling us how, if the government adopts the right financial and taxation policy, the whole nation will benefit, the "right" policy being the one at present advocated by the Tories, the Labour Party or the Alliance. The detailed remedies are sharply divided. Increase income tax and the corporation tax on company profits, or reduce them? Increase government expenditure or cut it down? Get government revenue mainly from income tax or from VAT? Spend more on defence or on education and the health service? Go for more inflation and rising prices or less? The variety is endless.

There are a few things the three main parties have in common, as shown by their programmes at last year's general election. They all promise to reduce unemployment, to do something to help the poor and to get rid of class divisions in society. (The Alliance called their Programme Britain United). Over the size of government expenditure they divide into two camps: the Tories want to cut it down, while the Labour Party and the Alliance want it to be heavily increased, these two conflicting policies being their main remedy for unemployment. The two arguments go like this: The Tories say that if the government spends less and therefore raises less by taxation and borrowing, this leaves more for the public to spend, which creates more jobs. The other two parties say that if the government spends more this creates jobs and reduces unemployment. The Alliance programme put it:

  We will give more spending power to the poorest people in our society, which will itself generate more economic activity.

Both arguments are nonsense. Transferring "spending power" from the government to the public or from the public to the government does not increase the total and does not generate anything. In the years of rising unemployment from 1979 government expenditure not only went up sharply every year but represented also a higher proportion of total national income. Another test is to look at what happened when government expenditure was consistently lower than it is today. Measured against total national income, pre-1914 governments spent less than a fifth of the amount now being spent. But that low expenditure no more prevented the Great Depression, with its heavy unemployment, which lasted for 20 years from 1875 to 1895, than did high expenditure prevent the depression which began in 1979.

We don't now hear of inflation itself being advocated as a cure for unemployment but that was Labour Party policy in the 1930s and as late as 1982 a member of the TUC General Council, Clive Jenkins, was advocating inflation “to create millions of jobs " (Financial Times 27 October 1982). Inflation should not, he said, exceed a rate of 14-15 per cent a year. Events gave him his answer: between 1978 and 1981 the inflation rate averaged 14¼ per cent a year and unemployment went up from 1,383,000 to 2,520,000. The following year it went up to well over three million.

Most workers are convinced that they have a vital interest in the Budget because it can raise or lower income tax (PAYE), and affect the price level. They believe that they would be better off if PAYE was reduced and if prices did not rise. Of course at the moment the changes take place, but in the long run the workers' standard of living does not depend on whether PAYE or prices are high or low; it depends on whether capitalism is expanding or in depression and on the effectiveness of trade union organisation. The question of wages and tax was dealt with by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations (1776). If, in given market conditions, an employer can get the workers needed only by paying them £200 a week, a tax on wages has to be paid by the employer because, in these market conditions, it is still necessary to offer take-home pay of £200 a week. In the 19th century governments accepted that conclusion and income tax was not levied on wages.

After the introduction of PAYE the amount deducted from wages has been consistently high, for many workers 25 per cent or more but the average purchasing power of workers' take-home pay is higher now than it was before PAYE and, with some short-term setbacks, has continued to rise in spite of a massive increase in prices. It has continued to rise since production began to expend again in 1981 and is now about 15 per cent higher in real terms than it was in 1979. In spite of heavy unemployment employers have only been able to get the kind of skills they need by paying more for them.

The generally accepted view is that a direct tax like income tax cannot be "passed on", but some economists take the view that corporation tax on company profits costs the companies nothing because they can get it back by charging higher prices. William Keegan, economics editor of the Observer recently wrote (24 January 1988): "He [the Chancellor] belongs to the school of thought that, in the end, it is the consumer who foots the corporate tax bill". This is a curious belief. If true, why do companies and the Confederation of British Industry keep urging the Chancellor to reduce the tax? Broadly speaking companies sell their products at what the market will bear. They cannot, at will, ignore market conditions and charge more than the market will bear if corporation tax goes up.

What the Budget contains is the outcome of conflict between different sections of the capitalist class, each trying to unload on to other sections the inescapable costs of government. Hence the representations made to the Chancellor before the Budget giving the reasons why he should reduce, or at any rate not increase, the amount levied on the group making the representations. Last year the brewers and distillers got their way and duty on alcoholic drinks was not increased. The tobacco trade, in spite of their argument that they were being "ruined" by cheap imports and high duties, had to put up with another increase.

Coming back to wages it is instructive to see what happened in the latter part of the 19th century. Having been weak and quite ineffective the trade unions grew rapidly in membership and organisation. The study made by Professor Bowley and G.H. Wood of wages and prices showed that between 1870 and 1900 average real earnings of the workers, after discounting price changes, rose by over 70 per cent (the table was reproduced in An Introduction to the Study of Prices by Walter Layton). The organised workers had been able to get a share in increased productivity and also to cut into profits. Frederick Engels, who had watched this going on. noted in 1892 "the remarkable improvement of the conditions of the workers in the great trade unions".

Where do the three parties, Tory, Labour and Liberal, stand on the struggle of the unions to get higher wages? They all profess to approve of trade union organisation but. as governments, their chief concern is to maintain profits by preventing what they call "excessive" wage increases. Every government since 1945 has introduced some kind of "incomes policy" to keep wages down. Under the Labour government of 1945-51. the Chancellor, Stafford Cripps, laid down the principle that wages must not be increased because prices had gone up; the only justification for higher wages had to be increased productivity. Thirty years later, in the Winter of Discontent of 1978-9. the Callaghan Labour government tried to restrict wage increases to five per cent while prices were rising by 10 per cent. In their 1987 Election Programme the Alliance had a proposal to discourage employers agreeing to wage increases higher than the government wanted, by imposing a special tax on the profits of such employers.

The working class should disregard how the capitalists choose to frame their Budgets. They should look to their own organisations, remembering however that there is a limit to what the unions can do. As Marx pointed out. wages cannot rise to the level at which the employers cannot make a profit. He also called on the working class to solve their problems by establishing socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

A day out in Cheltenham (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

An active member of the largest trade union in the country, I was recently asked by a colleague if 1 would attend a march and rally in support of trade union rights at GCHQ Cheltenham. The event was on our doorstep and it would look bad if so large a trade union did not attend the event.

I agreed to go only to find, on the day itself, just three of us there to show the district banner. But even that was not to be — not because we were unwilling but because our District Secretary would not release the banner for the day in case it got dirty or damaged. So the banner remained decorating the wall of his office.

We arrived early for the demonstration. It was bitterly cold and raining. The meeting place was the Pump Room, a huge building set in a park. After buying coffee from the refreshment stall we decided that shelter was needed and that everyone present must be a bit mad to be milling around outside the Pump Room instead of inside. At one end of the building we found double doors with the notice General Council Members Only. So we went around to the other end of the building only to find the same notice. So we went in.

The TUC steward challenged us, then reluctantly agreed to our staying in the building since it was so cold outside. When we had stopped shivering we had a look around at the columns, arches, chandeliers, a decorated ceiling — and then we spotted the bar. We all immediately felt better for arriving early. However we were told that the bar was for providing free drinks for the General Council. Of course there was no need to worry about drinking and driving since they had luxury coach transportation. We left the building in disgust and braved the elements between the Pump Room and the nearest pub.

When we returned the march had just started. There were bands playing, hundreds of trade union banners and many thousands of dedicated trade unionists from all over the country. We spotted one of our banners from the largest union in the country and marched behind it. This district had gathered much more support — at least six people were present before we joined them.

We stayed with the march until it reached the town centre. By now, none of us were interested in attending the rally and listening to the hypocritical bleatings of the leader of the General Council of the TUC. So we sneaked off to a pub and then went home. For trade unionists it was not an inspiring day.

Mike Tavener

Letters: Life in Socialism (1988)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life in socialism

This month, two interesting letters raise the same question of how socialist society will deal with violent individuals. We hope our reply covers the point in both letters, their other points are dealt with separately.

Dear Editors.

Whilst heavily in support of the aims of your party, I am concerned about the treatment of criminally disturbed persons in your envisaged society, whilst right in your condemnation of the media hype following the events in Hungerford in August 1987. I would like to know how the SPGB sees a Socialist society handling anti-social elements such as habitual drunk drivers or gun-wielding "madmen" without resorting to coercive organisations such as a Police or Militia. (I do realise that in a society of production according to need the pressure to drink to excess would be highly reduced.)

I would also like to raise the matter of professional competence, in a recent (November) issue you talk of an after-shave brewer deciding to grow bananas, are we to take it that the SPGB thinks that anyone could tackle any job in a Socialist society just because they think themselves equal to the task. e.g. engine driver or civil engineer say? I know that the current professional bodies exist to maximise the wages of their members, but I'm also glad to know that the chap who designed the Tay bridge knew what he was doing whenever I cross it.

Yours for Socialism.

Jonathan Drane 

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

#    #    #    #

Dear Editors.

I subscribe to your excellent magazine and can find no fault with your arguments (as an ex-Green Party member I particularly enjoyed the "green" issue) but 1 do have three questions:

1. On a number of occasions your magazine has expressed a belief in the non-existence of God. Is this the view of the Socialist Party or just of the individual writers? Are a belief in God and a belief in Socialism mutually exclusive?
2. You say that Socialism is not possible in one country but must be worldwide. What if a country could be totally self-reliant? I realise that there would be limits on how high their standard of living could rise because of the limits on resources available in any one country but we have this problem at an international level so couldn't a self-reliant country become socialist?
3. Would prisons exist in a socialist society? Of course theft would be a thing of the past but surely there would still be some men who wanted to rape, hurt children etc - surely you can't see capitalism as the only cause of bad behaviour? Yours faithfully.

Michael James

Stockton-on-Tees

Reply

First, our comments on the question of restraining violent people in socialism:

Capitalism is highly selective in its definition of people who are "anti-social" and "criminally disturbed”. If the Hungerford killer had sprayed his bullets indiscriminately among Argentinian soldiers in the Falklands he would have been a national hero. Yet the motivation, the state of mind and the preparation for such acts are often similar. Much "anti-social" behaviour now is really a desperate response to the demands which capitalism makes on us; in many cases it is healthier than a docile acceptance of the indignities of wage slavery. Many human beings can't cope with the repressed. exploited, deprived lives they are forced to lead. They rarely respond as catastrophically as at Hungerford; more typically they haunt their doctor's waiting room, or their local pub or, in extremity, roam the grounds of a mental hospital. Social society will be free of those pressures, which means that most of the "bad behaviour" which is now an everyday occurrence will not happen.

But what about the few who, after all this, will cause problems? How big a problem would this be? Today, only a very small percentage of the people in prison are there because they have committed crimes of violence and of these an even smaller proportion are a danger to the public. Socialist society would be such that even that small number would be even further reduced so that, if the problem was present, it would apply to very, very few people — those who could not be absorbed and coped with through the care of the community. Without doubt, those few would have to be restrained but society's interests would demand that they be treated as the sick people that they are and the places where they are held would reflect that. Unlike the police, the military, the prisons today, this would all happen through majority will, with society's full participation and concern.

On Jonathan Drane's point about professional competence:

The function of much "professionalism" is to surround the "profession" with a mystical defence to conceal the fact of the professionals' fallibility (not every example of civil engineering endures like the Tay bridge). This is an inevitable result of the fact that "professionals" just like everybody else need to sell their labour power to an employer and to the fact that they engage in the production of wealth and services which are for sale with a view to profit. Thus "professionalism" is often aimed at separating the “professional" from the people who experience the results of it — the people who might for this purpose be called consumers. None of this will apply in a socialist society, where production will be a harmonious, cooperative effort. Socialism will be a sane society; it will of course recognise that certain jobs demand special knowledge and experience but those who have that knowledge will not be privileged, apart from the rest.

On Michael James' questions about religion and socialism in one country:

Socialists do not believe in god or in any supernatural influences (neither, strictly, do we "believe in" socialism; we advocate a social system based on common ownership of the means of life because the evidence proves that this is the best way of running modern society). There is no evidence for the existence of god; the only logical and consistent explanation of the world and what happens in it must have a material basis. Socialists affirm that this life is the only one we know of and to preoccupy ourselves with some other existence, outside the known and the material, would divert us from the task of dealing with capitalism's problems by establishing a different system.

Socialism will develop out of modern capitalism; it can't come from any earlier social system. Modern capitalism's interlocked economy and communication means that no one part of it can be self-reliant. For example, what would a "socialist country" do about international travel and safety systems7 Would it refuse to take part in them? Would it refuse to take advantage of developments in productive techniques or medical science in the capitalist part of the world? If not. how could it preserve its socialist nature when dealing with capitalism? Socialism will be a matter, not of just self-sufficiency but of abundance, of full and universal co-operation and participation in all that the world has to offer the human race.

Our brief replies may not do full justice to the questions raised in these interesting and encouraging letters. We urge Jonathan Drane and Michael James to visit their local branch of The Socialist Party. They will be warmly welcomed and have full opportunity to discuss their ideas.

Editors

Lazy people

I have read with great interest your set of principles. and would further like to know the answers to the following points:

1. Do the SPGB believe in Parliament?
2. Even with the support of the majority of British people. Britain would, by the SPGB's own criteria (Para 5) then only be a state capitalist nation, how is the leap from state capitalism to world socialism to be made?
3. In the SPGB's vision of a socialist future (Para 6) it is stated that work will be undertaken on the basis of voluntary co-operation. What is to become of the minority who refuse to contribute? And what incentive is there to perform "dirty jobs" (refuse collection, sewage work, monotonous labouring)? Yours.

Paul Weston

Manchester

Reply

Socialists aim at the democratic capture of political power, as this is the only way of taking over the state machine and so changing it from capitalism's army of class coercion into an "agent of emancipation", This will entail the election of delegates, by a conscious socialist majority, to the places where the state machine is controlled in this country parliament, in America Congress and so on. That is why we are a political party and not, as some people mistakenly believe, an educative organisation.

As socialism cannot be set up separately in any part of the world it follows that it must be established world-wide and, to all intents and purposes, at about the same time everywhere. This is perfectly reasonable; our ideas are formed through our material conditions and are therefore at pretty well the same stage of development all over the world. In particular the working class in all countries have the same attitude toward the vital question of carrying on with capitalism: they all fall for the same diversions into futile reforms and politicians' promises. Just as capitalism now receives this universal support, so will the ideas of socialism.

With all the incentives to work in socialism it would be only a very, very small minority who might, for some reason, choose to stand aside from the hugely exciting and satisfying task of producing to meet human needs. If there were such people, refusing the opportunities to realise their full potential as human beings, society could easily carry them in their unhappy condition. After all, a massive amount of capitalism's knowledge, energy and resources is now wasted in unproductive effort salespeople, accountants, lawyers, police, armed forces and so on.

Much "dirty" work would easily be eliminated in socialism; all that stands in the way of this at the moment is capitalism's priority for profit above human welfare. Socialism's priorities will put human welfare first. Any such work which could not be eliminated would, we are confident, find no lack of volunteers. Since it would be essential to human society that it be done it is not conceivable that, having established socialism, people will then damage that society by refusing to do necessary work.

Paul Weston's questions are interesting and worthwhile. He would be welcome at The Socialist Party branch in his area, where he could discuss his ideas more fully.

Editors

50 Years Ago: The Communists and the ILP change places (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not often that two political parties change places so completely as the ILP and the Communist Party. In 1919-1924 the ILP was busily engaged in securing the election of a Labour Government, in the belief that such a policy would secure certain immediate gains and pave the way for the gradual reform of the capitalist system. The Communists, on the other hand, denounced Parliamentary methods and preached Soviets and armed revolt. In the intervening years experience has disillusioned the ILP and sent them sneaking into the position vacated by the Communists, while the latter, under Moscow’s orders, are seeking a Parliamentary alliance with Labour and Liberals in the guise of a Popular Front.

The following is a passage from Mr Fenner Brockway’s recent book, " 'Workers' Front" (Martin & Seeker. 3s. 6d.):-

  The hope that Capitalism can be transformed to Socialism through the means of the Capitalist state  . . .  is an illusion. Socialists should use the constitution of the Capitalist State as fully as possible but they should recognise that finally they must conquer the Capitalist class through their own actions and organs, through Workers' Councils or Soviets . . .  and in the last resort, if necessary, through their own Workers' Army . . .

And now the Scottish ILP, at its conference on February 13th. 1938 (The Times February 14th. 1938), is attacking the Communists because the latter advocate the policy "of collaboration with sections of the capitalist class and capitalist governments," in other words, because the Communists have adopted the ILP's own past errors and the ILP has adopted those of the Communists!

The ILP, of course, is as wrong now as it was then, so are the Communists.

[Article published in the Socialist Standard, March 1938]

Hate and its Causes (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the difficulties facing terrorist organisations is the fact that they leave their dead and their maimed on the spot to repel their supporters and anger and increase the resolve of those who oppose them.

That is one essential difference between the act of dropping bombs from aeroplanes onto "enemy" cities and planting duffle bags stuffed with lethal manure. When aircraft crews dropped their bombs over Germany or Britain, during the last war, despite the fact that they were doing exactly the same thing — in a much bigger way, of course — as the IRA are currently doing, and for the same imagined reason, it was easy for the people at home to laud them as heroes. Not only had the population at home been hyped up with hate propaganda based frequently on lies that government would not have to admit to until thirty or fifty years had passed, but the corpses, the maimed bodies and the wrecked homes that the local population witnessed were the work of "the enemy" and, as such, reason enough for "our boys" to retaliate.

Neither we, nor the Germans, were exposed to the handiwork of our respective "heroes". The sight of innocent people slaughtered needlessly, the vision of dead children and maimed people condemned to live would not have been in keeping with the view that the war was between good and evil.

IRA bombers have no such protection from the consequences of their bloody deeds. Incidents like Enniskillen leave them openly exposed as brutal killers. The barbaric incident at Enniskillen not only brought horror and sadness to the Unionist community in Northern Ireland, it brought remorse and genuine grief to the great majority of the nationalists and it had an undoubted effect on the level of support amongst the latter for the IRA. But it brought more — the most cynical exploitation of the dead and the injured who became a mere propaganda ploy in the hands of the government and the leadership of the Ulster Unionists.

With the active assistance of the media, the idea was promoted that Enniskillen was the definitive horror, a new dimension in the magnitude of terror. As a matter of bloody record, of course, there was less than half the number of casualties at Enniskillen than there was on the occasion when the UDA bombed Dublin and Monaghan and less than on the occasion, in Derry, when an obviously calculated political decision was taken by the British government to stop embarrassing protests once and for all by allowing paratroopers to open fire on innocent protest marchers.

The utter hypocrisy of politicians, like Paisley and Molyneaux, was revealed a few weeks after Enniskillen when they publicly mourned the death of an assassinated leader of the UDA — the IRA's opposite number in terror and the perpetrators of murder by both the bullet and the bomb.

Every week, since Enniskillen, brings its quota of victims of murder or maiming from one "side" or the other. But without exception, all the victims are from the ranks of the working class. The politicians may breathe fire from their protected homes and their armoured cars but all the active participants in this remorseless war of attrition are people whose life is governed by the need for a job or by the meagre limits of state hand-outs. All are members of the working class.

Shorn of the callous hypocrisy, the tribal slogans and the insidious righteousness of the politicians, this surely is the central point. If the conflict, that draws on the loyalty and sacrifice of its working class participants and is fuelled by the murder and maiming of people who share a common class identity, serves any purpose, that purpose must be the belief that victory will bring some benefits, at least to those in whose name the victors claim to act.

Members of our class are dying; members of our class are being maimed; members of our class are being sentenced to long periods of imprisonment; members of our class are becoming increasingly imbued with bitterness and hatred of other members of our class.

Like the people who cheered on "our boys" during the war. without being exposed to their handiwork, so there are those in Britain and elsewhere, who have never heard a bomb go off, never seen a bullet-riddled corpse and never seen the smashed knees or the hooded body of a kid sentenced by a terrorist court for "anti-social" behaviour. It is easy for such people to have notions about a revolution in Ireland and to fit such notions into their crazed jig-saw of revolutionary romantics. Such nonsense might prove ego fodder for the left-wing heroes of the public bar. But, surely, it behoves workers here, in Northern Ireland, and especially those workers who give active or passive support to the political violence of any "side", to examine the options and. especially, to look at how victory for one side or the other will affect their way of life.

The nationalists have their dreams. The Provisional IRA leadership may try to translate those dreams into the politics and economics of a modern welfare-capitalist republic but their followers, and most of their active cadres, know even less about the economics of capitalism than their leaders. To the followers, the Republic is a Brit-free fairyland where the unionists, if they stay, are for evermore silent.

Poverty, jobs, economic crisis, homes, crime, all the social problems that are present in every state of capitalism, including so-called "socialist" republics, are not on the agenda. In the cultural euphoria of a victorious tomorrow, there will be solutions; Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison will come up with answers that no politician, alive or dead, has so far come up with to solve these problems.

The hated RUC will be gone. If the new police are modelled on the current IRA custodians of law and order, hooded corpses and youthful cripples will be commonplace. But that won't happen. The new force that would succeed the RUC would have different uniforms and different personnel, but their work and their methods would be exactly the same: ensuring that the laws on which capitalism's property rights are founded were rigidly enforced on the working class.

Sinn Fein's social and economic policy consists of a number of statements airing Sinn Fein aspirations for the future. Fortunately for Sinn Fein and the IRA. their supporters and most of their activists accept the bait of sectarian and racist propaganda and are not too concerned about the social realities of life in a future Sinn Fein Ireland. According to Sinn Fein, those social realities would be based on "a social and economic system which would strike a balance between Western individualistic capitalism with its poor and hungry amidst plenty on the right, and Eastern Soviet state capitalism (or any of its variations) with its denial of freedom and human rights on the left"! (Eire Nua p4)

So Sinn Fein policy for the future of its supporters and the people of Ireland is a synthesis of “free" capitalism (which Sinn Fein, rightly, claim allows poverty amidst plenty) and Russian-style, state-capitalist tyranny. It is for this, an even more brutal and even less democratic form of capitalism than we endure now. that men, women and children have had to die; for this that men and women are imprisoned; for this that Enniskillen happened!

If the loyalists, like the republicans, have their dreams then either their hopes for tomorrow are dismally limited or their memory of yesterday seriously flawed! Unlike the republicans, who think they can go forward to an Alice-in-Wonderland future where economic realities will be blotted out by ubiquitous tricolours and street names in Irish, the dream of those who lead the loyalists is to go back!

The ambition of both the Unionist Party and the megalomaniacal Paisley is to see Northern Ireland return to the method of government that existed before the troubles. Doubtless Molyneaux and Paisley each see themselves as Prime Minister and each is prepared to make certain concessions to the nationalists in order to achieve their political ambitions.

Amazingly, despite the fact that it is less than twenty years ago since the Unionists did rule at Stormont, they have managed to create the myth among many working-class Protestants that those were the good old days. Were they? What exactly was Northern Ireland like during the period when it was ruled by the Unionist Party?

Perhaps the most attractive memory for those hardened into sectarian prejudice by the troubles is the naked bigotry of successive Unionist governments. The brutal, repressive laws may not have affected those who supported the Orange state; they may have been as oblivious of the evils of sectarianism and repression as the law-abiding South African white is of the evils of apartheid. But, even the most case-hardened bigot must now realise that it was fifty years of sectarian posturing, of discrimination and vote rigging, that prepared the ground for the savagery of the Provisional IRA.

Nor were the working-class Protestants of Northern Ireland the beneficiaries of the vicious sectarianism promoted by Unionist politicians. Certainly, some puny peripheral rewards were handed out to working-class supporters of the government in order to feed the illusion that they were looking after those workers who were Protestants.

The facts were different. Unionist Ulster had a poorer standard of living than that endured by workers in the rest of the UK Unemployment was higher, the anti-trade union Trades Disputes Act was retained long after it was scrapped in Britain, slums were the worst in western Europe and the Unionist Party showed its distaste for social welfare legislation when its Westminster representatives opposed the extension of British welfare schemes to Northern Ireland.

The staunchest Unionist working-class supporters have only to look at the wee streets of the Shankill and Newtownards Road, at the rural slums of south Antrim and north Armagh to realise the contempt and neglect that they received from the successive Unionist governments for their loyalty and support. Slums, unemployment, and general poverty may have been marginally worse in Catholic working-class areas but these miseries were general and any working-class Protestant who thinks the Unionist state conferred any real benefits on him or her must surely suffer from an acutely impoverished imagination.

The Unionist Party was guilty of promoting bigotry and distrust among the working class but. contrary to the fictions generated by nationalists and republicans, the general poverty of working-class life in Northern Ireland was not caused by the Unionist Party. It had the same cause as poverty in the rest of Ireland and elsewhere; capitalism. The bigotry and the fictions surrounding it were simply part of the varying strategies that governments employ to conceal that cause.

Northern Ireland is just one of the many trouble spots of capitalism. The Lebanon, Israel, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Korea, Nicaragua, to mention but a few, are others. The slogans and "cultural" battle-cries may be different but behind these is the poverty that gives validity to the aspirations of the contending forces.

Irish and British politicians and their obedient servants in the media refer to the "two traditions" in Northern Ireland and that idea has been promoted into general acceptance by the public at large. Certainly, the political and, more particularly, the economic history of Ireland has created illusions of traditional differences that have a grim reality in the events of the present. That those “two traditions" did arise largely from economic causes is borne out by the present phase of political strife.

The Provisional IRA was not born out of popular consensus among northern Catholics for an all-Ireland gaelic state. On the contrary, it was the rejection of the demand for jobs and homes and a widening of the franchise, to put them on a basis of perceived equality with Protestants within the northern state, that created the conditions out of which the Provos emerged.

The government did abolish the property qualification that limited local government franchise — a qualification that discriminated against working-class Protestants as well as Catholics. Even if the government had had the will, there was no way in which, within capitalism, it could have provided jobs and homes for everybody.

In other words, had the Unionist government been able to abolish unemployment and solve the disastrous housing problem in 1969. the Provisional IRA would never have emerged and incidents like Enniskillen would never have happened.

The various Unionist governments that ruled Northern Ireland repeatedly showed their contempt for the working class as a whole. They can hardly be blamed, however, for failing to solve the poverty problems which underpinned the present troubles. These are the normal, insoluble problems of capitalism; the problems that governments of all political complexions throughout the world have repeatedly failed to solve.

That is something that workers in Northern Ireland should bear in mind when the politicians, green or orange, or the hard men of the paramilitary organisations, canvass their support or assistance.

Richard Montague

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Calvert's Press

Blogger's Note:

The Calvert Press Workers' Co-operative were the typesetters and printers for the Socialist Standard at this time.

See Also:

• Letters: Were we censored? (April 1988)
• Letters: Political health warning? (May 1988)
• Letter: IRA again (June 1988)

Obituary: Jack Marsh (1988)

Obituary from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

After a lifetime in the Socialist movement, Jack Marsh, of Central branch, died suddenly at his home in Manchester on the 18th January.

Jack was influenced at an early age by his father who was the first secretary of Manchester branch when it was formed in 1907. Although Jack did not formally join the Party until the seventies, for many years he regularly disposed of a number of Socialist Standards and disseminated socialist ideas among his acquaintances.

Our sympathy goes to his wife and family.

AGA

Sexual Liberation and Clause 28 (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is not a mere economic proposition. It is about more than simply "us" owning the factories instead of “them". It is about more than our standards and norms becoming the dominant ones instead of the norms and standards of capitalism. If socialism has any meaning it means freedom for human beings to determine their own lives in a society which is theirs. Not only freedom from the powers which oppress us now but freedom to aspire to new ways of living and co-operating and creating which are currently stultified by the money system.

In a socialist society we shall decide what our own needs are. We shall not be told by the DHSS that this much is what we need, or by advertisers that this is what the really fulfilled consumer ought to want, or by pseudo-scientists, such as psychiatrists, that this is how the properly satisfied human being shall behave. In a socialist society we shall trust our own desires and respect the freedom of those who are different to live as they wish.

It is under capitalism, where everything from the homes we live in to the food we eat and the way we love one another has become turned into a commodity to be marketed, that freedom is crushed. You want to eat good food, but in a buying and selling system rubbish is more obtainable than good taste and high nutrition. You may be house-proud, but if you are poor then you will be destined to dwell in a home which it is not easy to take pride in. Without free access to what you need, the market consumes your freedom to choose and spits it back in your face.

Because we all live in an extremely unfree society we are all conditioned to be unfree. Teaching the behaviour of conformity is one of the prime objectives of capitalism. If you are not "normal" you are a threat. The much advertised "individualism" which capitalism offers is totally bogus. Social survival under this system means obeying their rules, their morals, their code of living. Deviate and you are in trouble.

Capitalism does its best to turn sex into a commodity. The family is the official institution within which this commodity must be confined. If you have a certificate from the state and. usually, a ritualistic blessing from one of the god franchises, then it is unsinful to make love. Woman on her back; man on top — primitives called it "the missionary position" because they had never come across such oppressive and rigid ideas of love-making before the civilised merchants of capitalism came to show them how to make love the "normal" way.

Love for its own sake is a wicked deviation in a system where nothing is done for its own sake. Under capitalism you cook food to sell it; you have sexual intercourse to produce new labour power which can be exploited. Doing these things for their own sake is an indulgence to be frowned on. There is a time and a place for everything and the time will be when you are not being exploited (which is very little time for most people); and the place is within the family. Love and sex outside this straitjacket is an offence.

Because capitalism is an unfree system it legislates against certain free desires. In the last century sexual relations between men were outlawed. Fortunately for lesbians. Queen Victoria could not imagine that women would indulge in such deviant behaviour, so the anti-homosexuality laws applied to men only. Such laws led to decades of emotional agony for vast numbers of men who had to express their love in private, always fearing a knock on the door from the police or the ever-present blackmail threat. Even after the repeal of that law in recent times the anomaly remains that the age of legal consent for homosexuals is five years higher than for heterosexuals. What sort of unfree society is it that tells people that it is illegal to express their love until the state offers its consent?

AIDS, a disease which can be passed on sexually, has created a moral panic. It is seen as being the price that capitalism must pay for having slightly loosened the chains of moral conformity in recent years. A moral backlash is now underway as the chain-tighteners are looking for an excuse to fill in the cracks of freedom in capitalism's sexual edifice. They want to pass laws to push "abnormal" sexuality back into the realm of criminality.

Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill, moved by those well-known Tory freedom-fighters, David Wilshire and Dame Jill Knight, seeks to make it illegal for local councils to show positive images of homosexuality. We must assume that the movers of this authoritarian law believe that millions of us are potential homosexuals and that if we are shown in schools or libraries or theatres or art galleries anything positive about homosexuality we shall all be making our way to the nearest sexual outlet. (Public school dorms, army officers' messes and Tory clubs are the most readily accessible outlets for such desires, according to those who know.) They cannot have much confidence in what they assert unquestioningly to be "natural" and "normal" if they must ban its opposite in case their children are instantly convinced that that is the way to be.

The aim to control what images of sexuality we may receive is the action of totalitarian bigots who prefer repression to expression and law to love. They symbolise the fear which makes the moralists of the profit system ultimately worthless and historically fossilised. For example, the would-be sex controllers who moralise in hysterical terms about how "abnormality" must be crushed because otherwise our kids would not be safe from the attacks of devious homosexuals, always forget to note the obvious fact that the vast majority of cases of abuse against children (both sexual and violent) happens within the nuclear family and is perpetrated by heterosexuals. Research carried out in the USA has indicated that children of mothers in lesbian relationships are less likely to be abused than those in typical nuclear families.

Socialism will be a free society. The resources of the world will belong to us all as a human family. Production will be solely for use. We shall all have free access to the goods and services available. There will be no wage labour: each will work according to their ability and take according to their self-determined need. There will be no discrimination on the basis of gender, colour, or sexual orientation. Socialism will offer economic freedom and that will provide the basis for true cultural freedom. The two are inseparable.

Cultural and sexual freedom cannot exist within a capitalist society. How will we ever be free to behave as we want while the means whereby we live are not owned or controlled by ourselves? How can people inhibited by the restrictions of poverty be free to enjoy sexual pleasures to the full? The right to live as sensually happy co-habitants with nature will be possible once we have become free from a society which organises our lives for us, as if our humanity is an impediment to the real earthly purpose of making profits.

In a socialist society we shall co-operate without laws. Some of us will choose to retain many of the forms of living and loving which we have enjoyed under capitalism, only stripped of their moral and legal contexts. If we decide to live in families nobody will stop us. Those who wish to live monogamously will do so, not because it is economically necessary or socially the norm but because for some that is how emotional fulfilment works best. Others will choose other ways of expressing themselves and no state will exist to stop them, no psychological experts will tell them whether they are feeling the right feelings. Only in a socialist society will the basis for real liberation of human feelings and relationships be possible.

It is a sign of life that many teachers, librarians. theatre workers and artists are resisting with vigour the move through Clause 28 to ban and censor and repress what workers may be allowed to see and hear. But even if the battle to defeat Clause 28 is won and in the present climate of hysterical moral crisis that is not likely — all we will be left with is capitalism with the cultural chains minutely loosened. That is not good enough. Until there are no laws against loving, or bans on any books, or states legislating about what it is right to feel, or bigots pronouncing on the terms of normality, society will not be free and those of us who want it to be cannot rest.

Steve Coleman